Nearly a decade ago, the scholars Jakub Grygiel and Wess Mitchell labeled the areas of the world where U.S. power meets those of its rivals Russia, China, and Iran as the “unquiet frontier.”[1] There, Grygiel and Mitchell observed, America’s frontline allies were the key to stability, calling them “the first responders to the revisionist forays of their predatory neighbors.” What these allies need, in turn, are “U.S. support and guarantees. Without these, it is likely that some of these allies will buckle, and seek a deal with the revisionist neighbor.”[2]
Under the second Trump administration, the United States is putting that argument to the test, especially in Europe. President Trump has moved past his long-held critique of America’s European allies for spending too little on their own defense and has begun openly suggesting that the U.S. will not defend them, and that it might in fact leave the NATO alliance altogether. Whether this results in European states bandwagoning with Russia or attempting to balance against it without the U.S. is as yet unclear. What is, however, is that the shape of the European security order is changing faster than it has at any time since NATO’s founding over 75 years ago.
Since the end of the Second World War, Eurasia has been a central focus of U.S. national security thinking and policy. For some eight decades, there was a consensus within the U.S. policy community that, given Eurasia’s geographic size, population, and concentration of resources, its domination by a hegemonic power would represent a grave threat to American interests. U.S. policymakers also generally agreed that “Eurasia is not dependably self-regulating in terms of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons.”[3] What this meant was that Washington needed to remain engaged in Europe to prevent the emergence of a state with such absolutist aspirations.
None of these assumptions currently undergird American policy toward Eurasia, however. Instead, what were long-held, generally agreed upon premises have now become the object of debate in the U.S. These include: that NATO is critical to U.S. national security; that Russia is the only existential threat to Europe and the United States; and that Ukraine’s defeat of Russia is the most important shared security goal between Europe and the U.S. In various ways, the transatlantic consensus over all three of these objectives has broken down—with dramatic potential consequences.
While periodically re-examining the assumptions that guide national security policy is useful and important, the policy reformulation undertaken by the Trump administration risks gravely damaging U.S. and European security by ignoring the threat Russia poses to both. Indeed, Russia today is in many ways a more dangerous adversary than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. Like its Soviet predecessor, today’s Russia works to destabilize the political and social fabric of its adversaries, poses a conventional military threat, and represents an existential nuclear danger. Where Putin’s system differs from the Soviet one is in the personalization of power around the leader. In the Soviet era, at least after the death of Josef Stalin, the system was far more institutionalized than the current one in Russia is.
In the Soviet system, institutions—that is, the military, the security services, the foreign affairs and economic ministries, and other players like the Politburo and the Central Committee—all vied for influence. While it was far from democratic, this arrangement ensured the country’s leadership was presented with a multitude of views on any issue. By contrast, Putin’s system concentrates power around the person of the president, not around institutions. This means that access to Putin represents the most valuable currency in Russia today. And for those in the system, preserving that access means not telling Russia’s leader uncomfortable truths. This makes miscalculation by the Kremlin far more likely than it was during the Cold War.
The 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine offers an example here. Attempting to subdue a country the size of Ukraine with a population of more than 40 million using an invasion force of fewer than 200,000 troops speaks to a set of planning assumptions that were wildly off base. Quite simply, this was not a plan that any professional military organization would have produced. A key tenet of military planning is to clearly list the assumptions that undergird the plan, and to have a back-up plan in case any of these proves inaccurate. Two key assumptions in the 2022 Russian invasion plan appear to have been that the Ukrainian military would not put up much of a fight, and that Russian troops would be greeted as liberators, at least in the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine. When these assumptions were proven false, the Russian military appeared to become paralyzed.
The most likely explanation for the poor quality of Russian planning for its Ukraine invasion is that the plan was prepared by the Kremlin and the security services, with far less input from the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff than would be the case in a less personalized system. To preserve their access to Putin—again, the most valuable currency in the current Russian system—the military likely swallowed hard and accepted the orders it was given to carry out, though it harbored serious reservations about them. This incentive of preserving access to the leader despite serious reservations is a hallmark of personalized authoritarian regimes like Putin’s and explains why they so often miscalculate.
But Putin’s system has its advantages as well, and Ukraine is also showing where these lie. One is the streamlined decision-making process they display. In democratic or institutionalized authoritarian systems, a miscalculation like the invasion of Ukraine might have been followed by attempts to assign blame for the decision, change course, and take steps to assure it does not occur in the future. But in Putin’s Russia, the leader is not only committed to the course he chose; his very ability to retain power hinges on the perception of his infallibility. Instead of trying to understand the reasons for a miscalculation and rectify it, therefore, the entire system is committed to ensuring it is not seen as a miscalculation in the first place. So, Russia will sacrifice millions of its citizens, kill hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and drain its treasury in the pursuit of a victory in a war of choice that has now become existential to its leader.
This is what makes Russia so dangerous to Europe and the U.S. Its personalized decision-making system lends itself to serious miscalculations about the use of military force, and that same system means the leader—and therefore the entire system—are existentially invested in the course they choose, no matter how disastrous it may have become. This means not only that a Russian miscalculation which leads it to attack a NATO state is possible, but also that, if this occurs, the Kremlin will be willing to escalate to levels its adversaries are not. As long as Russia remains a personalized authoritarian regime, this is the danger it will present to the West. No amount of attempting to integrate it into Western structures, satisfy its professed security needs, or build economic interdependence with it will change these facts.
All facets of the contemporary threat posed by Russia—hybrid, conventional, and nuclear—are present along NATO’s eastern flank. Some of Russia’s hybrid or gray zone activities there are the same as Moscow undertakes against all NATO states: cyber-attacks, disinformation and malign influence campaigns, support for extremist political movements, and intelligence operations. But Russia’s geographic proximity to NATO’s frontline states gives it opportunities there that it lacks elsewhere in the Alliance.
For instance, Russia—via its proxy Belarus—has weaponized migration against both Poland and Lithuania. Moscow has also sent drones and manned aircraft to violate the airspace of Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania. Finally, it has engaged in sabotage activities against warehouses, railways, undersea cables, and logistics hubs all along NATO’s eastern flank.
After declining in the immediate aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s conventional threat to NATO’s eastern flank is rising anew as well. Early in the war, many Russian forces deployed along NATO borders were sent to Ukraine. But Russian units facing NATO have been reconstituted, and the Kremlin plans to significantly increase their number in coming years.[4] Military analysts have estimated that Russia had some 250,000-300,000 forces in its Western Military District before the war. After dropping in 2022-2023, their number began rising again, and estimates now assess they equal the strength they had prior to the war.[5] Moreover, this does not include the over 600,000 Russian troops engaged in the Ukraine war—which theoretically could be sent elsewhere thereafter.
Russia’s future plans should be even more concerning to NATO. The Kremlin has announced an ambitious rearmament and restructuring program for its military, designed with one goal in mind: to win a war against NATO. Plans call for an increase in Russia’s active military to some 1.5 million, with about 500,000 of these forces arrayed against NATO’s eastern flank. Several brigades are being expanded to divisions, and new divisions are being formed near Finland and the Baltic States. In addition, Russia has re-established the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, enhancing its ability to command, control, and supply the new and expanded units it is forming. Finally, it is refurbishing and expanding railways and other military infrastructure along its western borders.[6]
If war with NATO appears likely, Russia has demonstrated an ability to mobilize that few NATO members can currently match. To wit, Moscow’s August-September 2022 “partial mobilization” added over 300,000 soldiers to the Russian military’s rolls in only 37 days.
Russia’s nuclear arsenal likewise threatens all of NATO, but the danger to frontline NATO states is particularly acute. First, these nations are most at risk of a fait accompli, in which Moscow undertakes a rapid but limited land grab against a NATO member and then threatens nuclear escalation unless NATO accepts the new status quo. Next, Russia has already deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons and nuclear capable missiles and aircraft to Belarus.[7] This extends the range of Russian nuclear weapons and lowers the reaction time for NATO states. Taken together, Russia’s hybrid, conventional, and nuclear threat to NATO’s eastern flank is now the most acute and dangerous it has been since the Cold War.
NATO was slow to awake to the threat Russia posed to its eastern flank. Despite persistent warnings throughout the 1990s and early 2000s from vulnerable countries like Poland and the Baltic Republics, most of the Alliance labored under the illusion that Russia could be integrated into the prevailing European security order. Indeed, especially after the Alliance became engaged in the Afghanistan conflict, the de facto NATO motto became “out of area or out of business.” The idea here was that since there was no military threat in Europe, NATO needed to develop deployable military capability to help tamp down conflict and increase security farther afield, or it would have no reason to exist.
Even Putin’s 2007 Munich Security conference speech, which declared the West led by the U.S. to be Russia’s primary adversary, and the Russian invasion of Georgia some 18 months later, did little to change minds about Russia in NATO capitals. Thus, only five months after Russian troops attacked Georgia and occupied its two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Obama administration launched its ill-fated “reset” with Russia. It was only after Moscow annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 that NATO minds began to change, and even then, the process was uneven. NATO did deploy battle groups to Poland and the Baltic states to act as a deterrent to Russian aggression there. But it left the Black Sea region—the site of Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and subsequent 2014 foray into Ukraine—essentially unprotected. At their 2014 summit, NATO heads of state agreed to each raise their level of defense spending to 2% of GDP, but they gave themselves a decade to reach that mark. (At the time, only three of NATO’s 28 members—the U.S., UK, and Greece—were spending 2% or more on defense.[8]) And as late as 2021, many European NATO members were still far too reliant on Russian oil and gas, despite Moscow’s demonstrated penchant for weaponizing its role as an energy supplier. Indeed, Germany and Russia had completed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in September 2021, only five months before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
That February 2022 offensive finally focused minds in NATO capitals. The Alliance immediately began taking steps to assist Ukraine and to bolster its own security against Russia. At the 2025 NATO summit, partner nations agreed to collectively raise their defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, with 3.5 % of that on “core defense” capabilities (essentially personnel and equipment) and the other 1.5% on security-related capabilities like infrastructure, cyber, and resilience. President Trump likes to claim credit for convincing NATO members to spend more on defense, and his incessant criticism and thinly veiled threats certainly played a role. But while Trump may be the Godfather of increased NATO military spending, Vladimir Putin is the father. Consider this: when Trump took office for his first term in 2017, three NATO members were meeting the 2% mark; when he left office in 2021, six were; by the time he returned to office in 2025, 31 of 32 members of the bloc were spending 2% or more on defense.[9]
But while the percentage of GDP spent on defense is a useful benchmark and serves to frame the debate, it is less useful as a measure of actual capabilities that each Alliance member can bring to bear. This is because there is a fundamental difference between the U.S. and the rest of NATO. The United States is the only global power in the Alliance. This means that while, for instance, essentially all of what Poland spends on defense is available to NATO, only a fraction of what the U.S. spends is—or ever will be. The United States has security and economic interests around the world, and its military is structured and deployed to protect these. U.S. forces available to NATO are assigned primarily to U.S. European Command, with some forces from U.S. Northern Command also available for certain missions. But far more American forces are assigned and deployed outside the North Atlantic area, in the U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Central Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
The Trump administration’s reorientation of America’s national security posture has hammered home this fact. The 2025 National Security Strategy makes clear that Europe is, at best, the third priority among the five regions of the world it discusses, after the Western Hemisphere and Asia. The Trump strategy deprioritizes the threat from Russia and assigns Europe primary responsibility for dealing with Moscow. Indeed, where the 2022 Biden National Security Strategy mentioned Russia 71 times, the Trump strategy does so only ten.[10] And where the Biden strategy made clear that Russia was the primary imminent threat facing the U.S., the Trump strategy outsources that assessment to Europe, noting that “Europe now observes Russia as an existential threat” while expressing a U.S. desire to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia.”[11]
But the Trump administration’s actual decisions make clear that it sees U.S. interests in Europe as even less important. Shortly after the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and after effectively ending U.S. assistance to Kyiv, the Trump administration and Israel launched a war against Iran. Both the rationale for the war and its objectives have been shifting and unclear. More tellingly, though, the U.S. embarked on a war of choice against a second-tier threat after walking away from confronting the only imminent and existential threat to its security, Russia. And even if the U.S. does later decide it needs to confront Moscow’s aggression more resolutely—or respond to Chinese aggression against Taiwan or another American partner—the furious rate at which the U.S. has expended scarce resources on its Iran war will invariably make that more difficult to do.
This leaves America’s European allies with the uncomfortable prospect of having to go it alone, both in supporting Ukraine and in defending themselves against Russia. The question is whether they can. On paper, even without the U.S., NATO possesses advantages over Russia in active duty military personnel (1.9 million to 1.1 million), combat capable aircraft (2429 to 1377) and main battle tanks (6652 to 2000).[12] But without the U.S., European states would face serious shortages of the enablers of modern war, including intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), command and control (C2), strategic lift (air/sea), air-air refueling, integrated air defense, and long range precision strike.
Europe’s defense industrial base has suffered from chronic underinvestment, fragmented defense industries, and lack of coordination for decades. Fixing these problems and addressing Europe’s capability gaps will take time and sustained political will. If these prove lacking, some European states may seek cheaper ways to deter Russia without the U.S., and here nuclear weapons are the obvious answer. Several European states, including Germany and Poland, have expressed interest in having French or British nuclear weapons stationed on their soil as a deterrent, and France has obliged by unveiling a “forward deterrence” concept.[13] Russia would certainly see this as provocative and would likely forward deploy more of its own nuclear weapons to Belarus, further eroding what tenuous stability still exists between NATO and Russia.
But this is probably the least provocative way that European states could use nuclear weapons to seek to guarantee their security without the U.S. A more provocative option would be to pursue independent nuclear deterrents. In the past year, representatives from several have told the author in off-the-record forums that their countries are thinking along these lines. The effect of such efforts on strategic stability would be unpredictable, but in a world where arms control is dead, NATO is defunct, and the rules-based order is in tatters, the incentives for arms racing and the chances of war by miscalculation would certainly rise.
The Trump administration’s current fantasy that Russia poses no threat and indeed can serve as a partner for the U.S. is no more likely to bear fruit than the decades-long collective fantasy harbored by some European states that economic integration could turn the Kremlin into a reliable, predictable, non-predatory partner. Unless Russia is comprehensively defeated in Ukraine, something that requires a collapse of Putin’s personalized authoritarian system, it will continue to pose a threat that is both existential and unpredictable.
This is so because of Moscow’s impossibly high bar for its security needs (which NATO could not meet without fatally undermining its own), its outsized perception of threat, its almost limitless tolerance for risk, and its penchant for miscalculation. The sooner the United States and Europe come to this joint understanding, the safer both will be.
For those on the ground in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), watching the Iran conflict up close has been nothing short of a life-changing experience. Each interception of an Iranian missile or drone reflected not just a triumph of defensive technology, but a testament to sustained human effort: military personnel, civil protection units, and operation teams. Their continuous work to monitor threats, to coordinate responses, and to protect civilians demonstrated unprecedented discipline and a high level of national preparedness rarely seen in real time.
The consequences are far-reaching. The conflict with Iran (stuck in an uneasy ceasefire as of this writing) is compelling Gulf states to reassess regional dynamics and question the reliability of the previous regional status quo. There is now a growing recognition across the GCC regarding the need for a dual-track strategy that integrates strong defense capabilities with active engagement in multilateral diplomacy. Bahrain is at the center of this new balance.
Bahrain’s approach to Iran is grounded in realism. The difference in scale is clear: Bahrain, with a population of about 1.5 million, is facing a neighbor of over 90 million. To address this imbalance, Bahrain has historically relied on diplomacy and strategic alliances. These twin pillars continue to define Bahrain’s engagement today.
Diplomatically, the Kingdom consistently assumes responsibilities that exceed the expectations placed on small states. It has contributed to numerous peace and stabilization efforts, promoted tolerance and coexistence in international forums, and engaged actively in multilateral initiatives aimed at de-escalation, including participation in the Board of Peace initiative following the recent Gaza war. Bahrain also holds a long-standing reputation as a central partner in efforts to protect freedom of maritime navigation in regional and international waterways, an issue with clear global economic and security implications.
This activism was on display in April 2026, when Bahrain held the rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council, during which time it spearheaded the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2817 condemning Iran’s unjustifiable attacks on the Gulf states and Jordan with an unprecedented 136 votes. Bahrain also holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League Ministerial Council and chairs the current session of the Gulf Cooperation Council. These overlapping roles have amplified the Bahraini perspectives on Iran and regional security, one that is informed by geography, history, and direct exposure to risk.
Strategically, Bahrain has taken on an increasingly proactive role in recent years. The signing of the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement (C-SIPA) with the United States in 2023 marked a significant step in that regard, and the United Kingdom’s decision to join the arrangement in 2025 further strengthened this structure. The value of this approach became clear when Bahrain secured support from the UK during the conflict in the form of fighter jets to provide defensive air cover.
Iran has repeatedly claimed that Bahrain and other GCC states have enabled military operations from their territories. But in Bahrain, the naval presence of our allies and partners began well before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The naval base in Juffair has long served as a hub for Bahrain’s cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States, and today it is the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. This arrangement is the result of decades of institutional collaboration and reflects the logical evolution of longstanding alliances. Tehran’s depiction is intended to defend the indefensible: its attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure in the Gulf. Moreover, the timing of those strikes, followed attacks on Iran by only minutes, points to a deliberate, premeditated strategy on the part of Tehran to target and disrupt the region’s infrastructure.
The future trajectory of the region remains uncertain. Multiple theaters of tension persist, and an unprecedented volume of disinformation has greatly complicated sober analysis. From a Gulf perspective, though, two conclusions are clear and unambiguous.
First, GCC states must be directly involved in shaping any future security arrangements in the region. The exclusionary dynamics that characterized the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action should not be repeated. Securing maritime navigation through the Strait of Hormuz is an international responsibility; geography alone cannot justify shifting that burden exclusively onto the Gulf states.
Second, Iran’s behavior must be constrained. Decades of accommodation have enabled Tehran to project power through asymmetric networks, proxy forces, missile and drone capabilities, and coordinated information warfare. This conflict has once again demonstrated the Iranian regime’s willingness to endanger civilians in pursuit of strategic leverage. Restoring confidence will take time, and will require tangible limits on Iran’s destabilizing capabilities.
Yet however destructive they are, all wars eventually end. The question is what follows. For Bahrain, the objective is clear: a regional order defined by peace, prosperity, integration, and tolerance. These are principles that the Kingdom has consistently advanced, and which it will continue to uphold long after the current crisis recedes.
Contrary to the wishes of many in the West, Russia’s economy isn’t collapsing at present. Neither is it thriving, however. Rather, the picture is considerably more complex. The Russian “war economy” (those segments that have been repurposed to assist the country’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine) has expanded significantly, while the rest of its constituent parts have remained stagnant. The Russian population, meanwhile, is growing increasingly pessimistic, auguring potential instability ahead.
Vladimir Putin used to boast about Russia being an energy superpower. As late as 2023 and 2024, Russia’s president was still insisting that the national economy was strong, and that the raft of Western sanctions levied against it had been largely ineffective.
At first blush, there was reason for Putin’s bluster. Russia enjoyed two years of uncommonly good growth: 2023, when it grew by 4.1%, and 2024, when it expanded by 4.9%. Since October of 2024, however, the dominant assessment of the Russian economy has been one of “stagflation.”[1] The previous drivers of the country’s economic growth have been exhausted, and Russia’s growth rate has fallen back to 1% a year, which was the country’s long-term norm from 2009-2022.
This grim outlook now seems locked in. For 2026-2028, nearly all forecasters expect growth of between 0% and 1% a year as a result of factors like financing shortages, the effects of labor and modern technology, as well as high inflation. Russia’s public finances, meanwhile, are tightly constrained because of low taxes and a lack of access to international borrowing. As a result, Russia cannot sustainably run an annual budget deficit of more than 2% of GDP. In 2025, it reached a maximum of 2.6% of GDP, a figure which corresponds to $70 billion.
With GDP $2.6 trillion in 2025, Russia needs about $50 billion annually to finance its financial gap. But because of Western sanctions, it has had virtually no access to international financial markets for more than a decade. It must therefore rely on taxes, domestic borrowing, and drawdowns from the National Welfare Fund to stay solvent.
In ordinary times, this might be manageable. Ever since the severe financial crises of the 1990s, Russia’s economy has been managed by highly competent technocrats. These figures were once called reformers, later “systemic liberals,” and are now simply seen as apolitical technocrats. With few exceptions, Putin has given this cohort considerable autonomy in macroeconomic policy. The leading figures—among them Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (in office since 2011) and Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina (in her post since 2013)—have long tenures, are considered competent, and remain loyal to the Kremlin.
Putin’s own views, meanwhile, were shaped by the chaos of the 1990s. During that period, he learned that a financial crisis can break apart any government. He therefore settled on a conservative fiscal policy: one of near-balanced budgets, minimal public debt (currently 15% of GDP), and high interest rates to contain inflation. Until the invasion of Ukraine, Russia maintained large central bank reserves and low foreign debt.
But war and sanctions have strained Russia’s public finances in many ways. Inflation has risen, international financing is blocked, capital flight continues, revenues are under pressure, and military demands keep growing. Moreover, Russia’s long-term campaign against Ukraine has caused two major currency crises: the first in 2014, and another in March-April of 2022. On both occasions, the ruble exchange rate plunged and inflation skyrocketed. Both times, however, the Central Bank of Russia responded with sharp interest rate hikes and managed to stabilize the situation.
Still, the ruble exchange rate remains quite volatile. Official inflation figures appear suspiciously low, and the Russian government has banned independent inflation surveys. Meanwhile, nearly three-quarters of the country’s banking assets are held by a few state-owned banks, mainly Sberbank and VTB. These institutions, in turn, have channeled vast credits to arms producers and bought up large volumes of government bonds. All of which helps to explain how, until quite recently, the Kremlin had managed to paint a comparatively rosy picture of the country’s fiscal health.
A closer examination, however, makes clear that all is not well. The Russian federal budget for 2026 is revealing in this regard. Until 2025, the country’s military spending rose sharply and regularly; between 2021 and 2025, it grew by 250 percent.[2] But then, it suddenly stopped. The Kremlin now plans to maintain the same military and security expenditures in this year as it did in 2025: about $183 billion. As a share of its total federal expenditures, this represents a slight decline, from 41% in 2025 to 38% in 2026.[3]
What does this tell us? One important takeaway is that the Kremlin is no longer hoping for a sudden, decisive victory. Instead, it is preparing for a long war of attrition. That shift will naturally disappoint the country’s ultra-nationalists, who have long anticipated some sort of dramatic breakthrough.
Another is that the costs of militarization are increasingly being passed on to ordinary Russians. Until recently, the Kremlin took pains to present its “special military operation” against Ukraine as a free benefit to the Russian nation. No longer. The 2026 budget hikes the country’s value-added tax from 20% to 22%, a move which constitutes a direct burden on ordinary Russian consumers. Taxation rules for small entrepreneurs are being tightened as well, while reductions in social benefits previously put in place by the Russian government as a belt-tightening measure continue. Effectively, the Kremlin is now telling the Russian people that they need to pay for its unsuccessful war.
Even so, Russia’s war economy now faces four critical constraints: financial reserves are running out, energy revenues are declining, there is an extreme labor shortage; and a shortfall of imported technology exists. All of these problems are linked to the war and Western sanctions.
The financial sanctions levied on Russia by the West have been extensive, and these measures have had far greater impact than generally understood. Beginning in 2014, following Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, and then greatly expanding in 2022, following the launch of the full-scale invasion, they have cut off most of the Russian banking system from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, and frozen some $300 billion of Russian assets abroad. (Those assets have been contemplated for seizure by European authorities as a means to support Ukraine. Resistance from some quarters, however, has led Europe to opt to use only the interest generated by them instead.)
The impact has been substantial. Russia has been locked out of international borrowing and forced to pay back its debts when they have matured. Even so, Moscow has mostly managed to do so. At the end of 2013, Russia’s total foreign debt amounted to $729 billion; by the beginning of this year, it had shrunk by more than half, to $319 billion.[4] But there has nonetheless been a clear chilling effect. Even China, with whom Russia has erected a purportedly “no limits” partnership, has largely scaled back its financing of the Russian state.
In 2014, the late Senator John McCain famously quipped that Russia is a “gas station run by Mafia masquerading as a country.” At that time, two-thirds of Russia’s exports and half of its federal revenues came from energy exports, that is, oil and natural gas.
The prices of oil and gas vary greatly on the world market, though, and so do the revenues Russia secures through their export. In 2022, Germany’s sudden decision to stop buying Russian gas at the same time as it closed down its last nuclear power stations led to an extreme peak in the European gas prices, giving Russia record export revenues of $592 billion that year. Those subsequently stayed at around $425 billion a year from 2023 to 2025.[5]
The EU has taken the lead on energy sanctions against Russia, and as of this writing has passed 20 “packages” of such measures. These have included a progressive tightening of the noose around Russia’s energy trade. In 2022, for instance, Western countries introduced a price cap for Russian oil as a means of reducing the revenues flowing to the Kremlin from its energy sales. Initially, the price for Russian oil was capped at $60 per barrel, but in 2025 it was slashed further, to $47.6 per barrel. In parallel, the West has sanctioned nearly 600 Russian shadow fleet tankers.[6] As a result, Russia is set to receive at least 1% of GDP less in federal revenues this year.
Russia faces an acute labor shortage. Official unemployment has gradually declined from 4% in 2022 (in effect, full employment) to only 2% at present[7]—meaning that most enterprises are actually experiencing a shortage of labor. When Russia attempted a partial mobilization for the war in September 2022, approximately one million Russians emigrated, a significant portion of them young, well-educated men.[8] That has deterred Russian authorities from initiating another mobilization, but in practical terms the damage has already been done. The current state of labor scarcity holds back production and drives up wages. Moreover, foreign labor—traditionally a major input into the Russian economy—has dwindled as well, with migrant workers now afraid of traveling to Russia after 27,000 foreign men were drafted into the army in what appears to have been a not necessarily voluntary fashion.[9]
The grinding nature of the Ukraine war is having an effect as well. The conflict has proven exceedingly costly for Russia, in human terms. More than 1.3 million soldiers have now been killed or injured as a result of the war in Ukraine,[10] orders of magnitude more than perished during the decade-long Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989). And because the Russian armed forces require 35,000-40,000 new recruits each month due to the costly nature of the conflict, the Kremlin can barely keep up with the demand, especially after regional governors have slashed the previously ample military bonuses because of fiscal belt-tightening.[11]
All this has led to an extreme shortage of labor in the Russian economy. The problem has become so acute that Central Bank governor Nabiullina has defined it as the greatest problem now confronting Russian economy.[12]
Because of sanctions and broad visa denials, Russia has become highly isolated from the West. Few desirable countries are accessible to Russians, and hundreds of established Western companies have withdrawn from Russia in order to salvage their reputation and capital.[13] Those that remain risk becoming subject to extortion, with many turning into victims of “corporate raiding” (ie: theft either by businessmen close to Putin or state corporations).
The same is true of prominent Russian businessmen. Since the start of the war, dozens have died after mysteriously falling out of windows. Power remains concentrated in the hands of longtime Putin loyalists like Igor Sechin, Alexei Miller, and Arkady Rotenberg, who control the commanding heights of the Russian economy. Competence has taken second place to loyalty, while corruption has worsened. Russia’s ranking on the Transparency International “Corruption Perceptions Index,” a leading global indicator, has slipped to 152 out of 182 countries, cementing its position as one of the most corrupt nations in the world.[14]
The beginning of 2026 saw two dramatic but contradictory developments in the Russian economy. On the one hand, Western oil sanctions had finally begun to bite, causing a severe financial squeeze. On the other hand, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran boosted the global price of oil, while the U.S. relaxed oil sanctions on Russia, cumulatively creating the potential for an economic windfall.
On April 15th, President Putin held a meeting with his main economic policymakers at which he lamented that the Economic Development Ministry claimed GDP in January and February was 1.8% lower than in the same period last year.[15] That economic slowdown was driven by falling investment, weak business activity and declining oil and gas revenues. In particular, construction in Russia had fallen sharply. Putin has demanded improvement, albeit without proposing any concrete cure. An outside observer gets the impression that the resources needed for a course correction have by now been exhausted.
The Iran war has offered something of a reprieve. As the Russian economy finally appeared to enter a serious budget crisis, the conflict with Iran has given it a much-needed shot in the arm.[16] So, too, has the Trump administration’s decision to provide Russia with (presumably temporary) relief from oil sanctions, whether to stabilize global energy markets, to incentivize peace with Ukraine, or for some other reason.
The KSE Institute in Kyiv has offered up the most detailed numbers in this regard.[17] In 2025, the Institute notes, Russia’s oil export earnings amounted to $160 billion. In the central scenario examined by KSE, Russia would reap $235 billion in oil revenues as a result of the war, reversing the previous trendline of decline and potentially salvaging Putin’s regime from a budget crisis, as well as a likely domestic political crisis. All of which has arguably made Russia the main beneficiary from the U.S. war on Iran.
Even so, the larger trajectory is clear(and dismal). The deeper question is not whether the Russian economy will “collapse”; economic hardship alone rarely topples regimes. Rather it is how much pain the Russian people and the country’s elites are willing to tolerate before demanding real change.
Here, recent days show signs of movement. Even official opinion polls now highlight deep malaise within the country. [18] While many Russians claim that they want to “win” in Ukraine, an even larger majority simply want the war to end. The key question is whether they will eventually act on that desire.
During the decades of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was one of the most consequential foreign actors in Africa. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991, however, Russia’s profile receded. Resource constraints meant that Moscow was unable to continue the same scale and pace of activity on the continent. At the same time, ties with African nations slid down the list of priorities for the Kremlin’s post-Cold War leaders.
That has changed of late. Today, despite its difficult economic situation and limited military and diplomatic means, Russia has again become increasingly active and consequential on the continent. Its security interventions via the Wagner Group (now the Africa Corps) rank as its highest-profile activities. But the Kremlin is also running a range of diplomatic, economic, and intelligence activities among numerous nations across the length and breadth of Africa. This broad-based approach reflects the importance that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, has come to attach to the continent. It also signals Moscow’s determination to remain a player there for the long term.
The USSR considered Africa an important front in its Cold War struggle for global influence. It saw the continent’s anti-colonial struggles as opportunities to weaken its great enemy, the free and capitalist countries of the West, and vied with China to lead the African component of the global communist revolution. It likewise recognized the usefulness of the continent for projecting power into the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, including over key maritime routes, and pursued trade and investment with African states as well.
During those decades, the USSR’s most dramatic interventions were security related. Its military advisors deployed across the continent, including to conflicts where they often coordinated with security personnel from other communist bloc countries, especially Cuba. The latter typically provided the bulk of foreign communist combat power; for instance, Havana deployed over 300,000 troops to Angola alone over the course of its 14-year involvement there.[1]
In close coordination with the Cubans, the Soviets provided other types of support as well, such as technicians and military advisers, including KGB officers. And while usually not front-line troops, these advisers were close enough to the action to suffer periodic mishaps. In 1988, for instance, Eritrean rebels captured three Soviets, including two colonels, during their resounding victory over the Ethiopian army at the battle of Afabet. Soviet advisers also died in combat in Ethiopia, as well as in Angola, Egypt, and likely Mozambique.
The total number of Soviets deployed to the continent during the Cold War remains hazy, but it likely numbered in the tens of thousands. All told, over 11,000 Soviets may have operated in Ethiopia alone (including against the Eritreans during their liberation struggle and against Somalia during the Ogaden War) with around 80 killed.[2] As with the number of Soviets deployed, the exact number of those killed while operating in Africa remains elusive.
At different points during this period, the USSR had use of naval facilities in, inter alia, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia (in the area that is now Eritrea), Guinea, and Somalia. Its vessels made regular calls to African ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, and beginning in 1969, even maintained a continuous naval patrol in West African waters. The Kremlin also stationed various types of aircraft in countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, and Libya for reconnaissance and transport purposes.
The USSR was also a major supplier of weapons and military materiel to friendly countries and armed groups. Starting in 1958 and throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to Africa, though its help was concentrated and the scale of supply varied depending on the military and political circumstance. Between 1977 and 1978, for instance, it surged military assistance to Ethiopia,[3] and in two weeks in October 1973 sent nearly 10,000 tons of arms to Syria and Egypt after they suffered severe reversals following their attack on Israel.[4] In Angola, the Soviets sent an estimated 150,000 tons of military equipment to the MPLA in a few months in 1975 to take advantage of South Africa’s involvement in the war and the U.S.’s perceived weakness.[5]
While its security-related interventions were the most visible, Soviet activity in Africa included an array of traditional soft power activities—activities that continue to reverberate to this day. Tens of thousands of Africans received degrees or technical and military training from Soviet schools, often on Soviet scholarships. Among them were future presidents of Angola, Central African Republic (CAR), Comoros, South Africa, and Namibia, as well as a significant number of the elites of future ruling parties, such as the African National Congress (ANC), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). In the late 1970s, in fact, the USSR hosted the most African students of any country after the U.S. and France.[6]
By 1991, the USSR also had built a resident diplomatic presence in nearly every independent African country. It likewise established cultural centers in key countries such as Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and Ethiopia, and signed scores of trade and economic assistance agreements with African partners.
Most of that infrastructure evaporated at the fall of the USSR. Consumed by the political and economic turmoil that followed, Russia for years had little presence in Africa. However, as its competition with the West sharpened, especially following its 2008 invasion of Georgia and then even more so after its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow refocused on Africa’s usefulness. Relying in part on the links and goodwill the Soviets had spent decades cultivating, Moscow is now trying to rebuild influence in Africa to stymie Western activity and influence, to reap economic benefits, and to avoid diplomatic isolation and international sanctions.
Those efforts are taking both traditional and non-traditional forms, though economic and military constraints have forced Russia to focus on a few key areas of engagement. Chief among them has been security cooperation, especially the deployment of the Wagner Group private military contractor.
Wagner arrived in Africa in 2017, when Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir hired it to guard mining sites and protect his regime. From there, Wagner operations spread to other African countries looking for similar services. It became deeply embedded in CAR by helping President Faustin-Archange Touadéra’s government fight off a variety of rebel groups. Wagner was rewarded primarily with gold and diamond mining concessions and export rights, logging concessions, and latitude to undertake local business activities such as selling alcohol.
Wagner’s involvement with African gold appears to have been of particular use to Moscow. The commodity can be used for direct payments that evade Western banking sanctions, and Russia has reportedly constructed a global gold laundering system that reaps hard currency. Wagner and Russia have earned over an estimated $2.5 billion from African gold primarily from CAR and Sudan—an important revenue stream given Russia’s current economic hardship.[7]
After Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash August 2023 following his abortive march on Moscow earlier that summer, Russia’s Ministry of Defense took over most of Wagner’s operations in Africa, rebranding the organization as the “Africa Corps.” Moscow has largely continued Wagner’s operations, but no longer tries to maintain the fig leaf of deniability that Wagner provided. It instead openly runs the Africa Corps.
While the Kremlin managed the transition smoothly, some of the resulting operations face serious headwinds, particularly in the Sahel region. In July 2024, for instance, a combined terrorist and rebel force demolished a Wagner and Malian army convoy in northern Mali, likely killing over a hundred Malian soldiers and Wagner fighters, including several senior commanders. And this April, Africa Corps evacuated from the important northeastern city of Kidal in Mali during a nation-spanning offensive by insurgents.[8]
Meanwhile, the Africa Corps likely exacerbates local governance problems and heightens the appeal of terrorist ideology. Its brutal presence almost certainly deepens people’s disillusionment with their governments and makes terrorists’ claims that their interpretation of Islam is the key to order and renewal all the more compelling.
While Africa Corps is the best-known form of Russian security cooperation in Africa, it is hardly the only one. Between 2018 and 2022, Russia became the largest supplier of arms to Africa.[9] Several countries (such as Algeria, Angola, and Egypt) accounted for the lion’s share of imports, but a broad range of African nations have acquired Russian weapons because they are relatively cheap and easy to operate, and because some African militaries are familiar with Soviet-era arms.
However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 limited the number of weapons it could ship to the continent. China is now the top arms supplier to Africa, though Russia’s willingness to sell weapons to authoritarian and abusive regimes ensures continued sales to Africa, albeit at a reduced level.
Moscow has also formalized security partnerships with various African countries. The details are murky, but in 2023 President Putin claimed that Russia had such agreements with 40 different African states.[10] These agreements likely cover the military training that Russia regularly conducts in places such as Mali, Burkina Faso, CAR, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Republic of Congo, and Togo. And at least some of them include protection for the head of state or training for presidential guards.
Naval engagements make up a smaller part of Russia’s security cooperation with African states, but have followed the same pattern of growth. In the last few years alone, Moscow dispatched its navy for port visits to Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Kenya, Namibia, Sao Tome and Principe, and South Africa. The Russian navy also participated in joint or multilateral drills with Algeria, Egypt, Eritrea, and South Africa. The first such drills with Egypt, known as “The Bridge of Friendship,” have run routinely since 2015. In 2020, they for the first time included a visit to the Black Sea by the Egyptian navy.
Moscow likewise seems to covet a naval base in Africa, though some of its efforts in this regard may be designed at least partly to stir consternation in Western capitals. It already has the use of Tobruk in Libya, but in an unusually senior and powerful display for a typical African port call, a Russian delegation headed by the naval deputy commander in chief and featuring a modernized frigate visited Massawa, Eritrea, in 2024.
While nothing has materialized from that visit, Moscow has made more substantive progress with Sudan. Since at least 2017, Moscow has been discussing with Khartoum the possibility of establishing a naval base on the Red Sea. In 2025, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) reportedly granted Russia its wish, offering it basing rights in Port Sudan.[11] The agreement, however, must be ratified by the Sudanese parliament, which hasn’t met since 2019 and is unlikely to do so any time soon.
Given the strategic interests involved, however, Russia and Sudan could treat that matter as a mere formality and proceed anyway. How quickly that might develop depends on Russia’s difficult economic and political situation. But because a naval base would facilitate several key goals on the continent, it will likely remain on the wish list for Russian strategic planners for the foreseeable future.
Moscow can be counted on to continue prioritizing its security cooperation in Africa. But it is simultaneously also running a range of diplomatic, economic, and intelligence activities there, signaling its determination to regain broad and lasting influence.
Russian economic activity with Africa is minor, apart from a few industries where it has carved out a meaningful role. Russian oil and gas companies such as Lukoil, Gazprom, and Rosneft have been active, especially in North Africa, for several decades now, though they also operate in sub-Saharan Africa. While sanctions have forced Lukoil to begin selling off its African assets, other Russian energy companies are continuing or expanding their African operations.[12]
Following European efforts to diversify away from its oil and gas, Russia turned to Asia and Africa to make up some of the lost revenue. From 2022 to 2023, its oil sales to Africa jumped more than 140%.[13] According to one Russian university analysis, Africa now buys around 15%of Russia’s total oil, gas, and petroleum products exports.
Meanwhile, Russia’s state-owned atomic agency, Rosatom, is a major, perhaps even the dominant, player in Africa’s nascent nuclear energy industry. It has signed cooperation agreements with at least 20 African countries, including recently with Mali and Niger. However, only around 15 of those agreements appear to be currently active.[15] And only one, Egypt’s El Dabaa project, has actually broken ground. Nevertheless, support for Russia’s nuclear energy expansion in Africa goes all the way to the top of the Kremlin, so it will inevitably remain a priority.
Other products that prominently feature in the Russia-Africa relationship include grain and fertilizer. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine badly hurt numerous African states that relied on wheat exports from the region. Since then, Russia has tightened its grip on the global market and now supplies about 40% of Africa’s imported wheat.[16] Russia’s provision of fertilizer to Africa tells a similar story. Between 2021 and 2024, exports to Africa increased by 50% and Russia now provides about 20% of Africa’s fertilizer, according to Russian sources.[17]
While small compared to that of many other countries, Russia’s trade with Africa is so concentrated on critical commodities that it gives Moscow outsized influence there. Countries that are reliant on Russian wheat, fertilizer, and oil wish to maintain good relations with Moscow as they fear the potential consequences of a diplomatic falling out. The Kremlin, for its part, is well aware of the leverage it possesses.
Moscow clearly recognizes that there are diplomatic wins to be had in Africa. Well over half of the continent’s 54 countries voted against, abstained, or were absent on the most recent United Nations resolutions condemning Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. African leaders regularly visit Russia, including for the periodic Russia-Africa Summit that the Kremlin now hosts. The first, in Sochi in 2019, gathered more than 40 African heads of state. The second, in St. Petersburg in 2023, only brought together 17 due to diplomatic fallout from the Ukraine war. The third iteration of the event will probably be held in Moscow this October and is likely to draw more heads of state than the previous one. This sort of high-level and routine African diplomatic engagement is a valuable firebreak for Russia against international isolation.
While some of the hesitance by African states to condemn Russia, or their outright support for Moscow, stems from ideological affinity, Russia’s diplomatic surge might play a role as well. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been a frequent visitor to the continent and recently announced that Moscow will soon open 4 new embassies in Africa to complement the 45 already there.[18]
Russian diplomacy with Africa includes a variety of soft power initiatives, including sub-national engagements. According to Lavrov, 81 Russian regions cooperate in some form with African countries, though it is unclear how active these relationships are. Moscow has also built 25 “Russian Houses” on the continent. While these are purportedly centers for teaching Russian and promoting Russian culture, the country’s intelligence services also reportedly use them to identify potential recruits for the Russian military, to launch information operations, and to enroll intelligence assets.[19]
The presence of the Russian Orthodox Church, widely considered to be heavily influenced by the Kremlin, has also grown rapidly in Africa. The Church claims that at the end of 2021, there were only 4 priests in 4 countries operating in 5 parishes in all of Africa. But by August 2025, those numbers had risen to over 270 priests and deacons, in 36 countries and 32 parishes.[20] Critiques of the West as decadent and Godless by the Russian state and Orthodox Church likely appeal to Africans who are generally socially conservative, thereby making the Church a potentially valuable vector for Russian propaganda and image-burnishing. The Africa section of Russia’s official 2023 Foreign Policy Concept Paper, in fact, listed “protecting traditional spiritual and moral values” as one of its priorities for its Africa engagement.[21]
Moscow has also attacked Western influence in Africa with an array of influence operations. While the effectiveness of these is disputed, they are often tactically sophisticated, adaptable and tailored in nature. In the Sahel, for instance, Russian operatives have played upon anti-French and broader anti-Western sentiments to help drive Western counterterrorism forces from the region. Moscow likewise props up virulently pro-Russian and anti-Western African influencers. One, Kemi Séba, was recently arrested in South Africa for supporting a foiled coup in Benin. He attended the first Russia-Africa Summit and spoke at the second along with another prominent “pan-African” advocate, Swiss-Cameroonian Nathalie Yamb. The U.S. State Department links both to the Wagner Group’s network, and the EU sanctioned Yamb last year. And, just as Moscow subsumed the Wagner Group into its Ministry of Defense, its Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, inherited Wagner’s clandestine influence operations. A sister effort, the “African Initiative,” centralizes the public-facing Russian influence operations on the continent, from journalism training to cultural centers, as Moscow builds the infrastructure for long-term influence on the continent.[22]
Other elements of Russian intelligence operations in Africa occasionally emerge into public view. Recently, Russia’s Federal Security Service reportedly paid an Afrikaner separatist leader to try to help Kemi Séba escape into Zimbabwe.[23] Last year, South African police also opened an investigation into Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma, who in the 1970s trained on military intelligence in the USSR, for tricking South African men into joining the Russian military.[24]
Russia has funded African political parties as well. In 2022, South Africa’s ANC accepted a large donation from close Putin ally Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the United States. A trove of leaked documents collected by opposition outlet Forbidden Stories revealed as well that the ANC sought and received help from Russian agents to influence elections in South Africa.[25] Moscow also at times allegedly paid monthly stipends to various senior ANC officials.
The pro-Russian stance of some of these factions is likely still influenced by Soviet-era ties. Coupled with the ideological alignment many still share with Moscow, they need few inducements to act in solidarity with Russia. But newer parties, such as the “United Patriotic Awakening of Madagascar” (RPMU) party formed in March 2026, are so pro-Russian that Moscow likely had a hand in their creation. The RPMU was formed, in fact, soon after the new leader of Madagascar’s coup government visited Moscow for a friendly meeting with President Putin.
In all these cases, Russia’s information and intelligence operations focus on buttressing “non-aligned” or pro-Russian entities and attacking the West. Depending on the specific context of each situation, Russia’s activities may seek to undermine Western-friendly governments (such as that of Angola), drive out or diminish Western influence throughout the continent, secure beneficial economic arrangements (including sweetheart deals for Putin cronies), or sow discord and confusion of the type that opens opportunities for Moscow.
Russia’s activism reflects the importance of Africa to its foreign policy goals. But the Kremlin’s aggressive posture carries risks. Failures in security cooperation (like the Africa Corps’ recent rout in Mali) will inevitably dent its image, while the effectiveness of its propaganda activities appears mixed at best. Moscow’s double-dealing may catch up to it as well. The Kremlin’s claims of “anti-imperialist” solidarity surely appeal to many African elites. But first the Soviets and now the Russians have run aggressive covert operations in African countries against the political opposition and sitting governments alike, leading to the arrest of Russian operatives in some cases.
Moscow is likewise fueling regional conflicts. Russian entities, for instance, have supported both sides of the ruinous civil war in Sudan. As these types of activities increasingly come to light, they could breed disillusionment among African governments.
Still, corrupt and authoritarian regimes of the type that value Moscow’s services are common. Many African elites also share Russia’s distaste for a U.S.-led world order, and Soviet nostalgia lingers in some African circles. Its potency will fade as the liberation era generation leaves the political stage, but for now it is likely to remain meaningful—especially in Southern Africa, where many struggle-era parties remain in power.
The continent’s political terrain, in other words, is still hospitable for Moscow for the moment. The Kremlin is seeking to make the most of this state of affairs, and to extract outsized benefits from the limited means it can deploy on the continent. The nature of this engagement, moreover, will only change when there is meaningful political transformation in Russia itself. Until then, those seeking a less violent, more prosperous future for Africa will need to contend with a Russia that is driving the continent in the opposite direction.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) has maintained an adversarial relationship with the United States for over seven decades. Throughout its history, the DPRK has been a dissatisfied revisionist state that has actively challenged the liberal international order and regional security architecture established by the U.S. and its allies after World War II.
While the legacy of the Korean War has shaped the views of the North Korean leadership, those with direct personal memories of that conflict are passing away. Nevertheless, enmity toward the U.S. is sustained through the Kim regime’s ideological indoctrination and information control. North Korea’s worldview is heavily influenced by Lenin’s theory of capitalist imperialism and realist politics, which in turn affect Pyongyang’s posture and threats vis-à-vis Washington.
Although the DPRK does not cite Lenin or other theoreticians on capitalist imperialism, North Korean literature clearly depicts the international system as a menacing one in which imperialists seek to exploit Korea and enslave the Korean people.[1] North Koreans are depicted as innocent victims who have been forced to repel armed invasions for centuries.[2] According to Pyongyang, the Korean people have been fighting against Western imperialism since Christian missionaries arrived as “agents of imperialism” in the early 1800s.[3]
When the merchant ship General Sherman sailed up the Taedong River in 1866, North Korean historical accounts (though unsubstantiated) claim that Kim Ŭng-u, Kim Il-sung’s great grandfather, led the attack to destroy the “American pirate ship” and its crew. In the popular telling, this incident, and the subsequent arrival of American and other foreign missionaries in the 1880s, “proves” that Korea has been the target of American imperialism “generation after generation.”
Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are widely credited with coining the terms Juche (roughly, “self-reliance”) and Sŏngun (“military first”) as “revolutionary new ideas” for the unique circumstances of the Korean revolution. But these concepts are nothing more than an amalgamation of rehashed ideas to serve the interests of the Kim regime. North Korea’s strategic culture is imbued with elements of ethnic nationalism, neo-Confucianism, Christian religious symbols, fascism, and realism. Militarism and realism are important pillars of Pyongyang’s threat perceptions and its military posture, and they make up the foundations of North Korea’s strategic threats against the U.S.
From Pyongyang’s perspective, the international system is a self-help Hobbesian world whereby survival can only be guaranteed by military might. For North Koreans, the apocryphal legend of Kim Hyŏng-jik, Kim Il-sung’s father, resisting Japanese imperialism and leaving two pistols before his death for Kim Il-sung to continue fighting inculcates a timeless lesson: that force is the only way to achieve political objectives. That narrative, and similar ones, are as familiar to North Koreans as the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, or the legend of Paul Bunyan, are to Americans.
That helps to explain North Korea’s dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons, long-range delivery systems, and a vast array of conventional arms, despite the staggering costs of doing so. The North Korean leadership does not think in those terms; instead, the elites in Pyongyang view the Kim party-state with a nuclear arsenal as stronger and, therefore, more capable of pursuing other goals, including economic development. In other words, military power is viewed as a necessary condition not only for political survival, but also for economic prosperity.[5]
Still, given the balance of forces between Pyongyang and Washington, how could North Korea possibly pose a national security risk to the United States? The U.S. has almost thirteen times the DPRK’s population of 26.6 million, and about 960 times its economic output. America also possesses technologically superior and numerically larger military capabilities, including a robust nuclear arsenal. Furthermore, the North Korean leadership is rational, having demonstrated the ability to survive for decades despite extraordinary adversity, suggesting Pyongyang is clearly not interested in starting a conflict it almost certainly would lose.
Nevertheless, North Korea’s revisionist agenda has opposed a number of traditional American values grounded in the liberal rules-based international order, including the rule of law, the peaceful settlement of disputes, human rights, and the international institutions underpinning these values. And today, under the Trump administration, those traditional principles are receiving far less attention from the United States, thereby creating an international environment where authoritarian states like the DPRK can feel emboldened to act more aggressively to achieve their goals.
This shift in global political dynamics might be interpreted by Pyongyang as an opportunity to further its nuclear ambitions and conventional military build-up as it capitalizes on its emerging military cooperation with Moscow.[6] Meanwhile, shrinking American global leadership under Trump and the resulting weakening of global alliances could give the North Korean leadership greater confidence to engage in coercion and the use of force in Northeast Asia.
North Korea’s military capabilities are well-documented, with a significant emphasis on nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, long-range artillery, cyberwarfare, and special forces. But which of these capabilities pose a strategic threat, and which are more manageable? The former category is reserved for something that can cause significant harm to a state’s long-term security, sovereignty, or core national interests. In other words, it could affect a country’s military balance, political independence, critical infrastructure, national economy, or social stability. The difference is magnitude and scale.
In conventional military terms, Pyongyang’s forces are overmatched by Seoul and its allies across all relevant domains. As a result, in the case of conflict, North Korea would seek to employ asymmetric capabilities to gain an advantage. Here, North Korea has demonstrated advanced cyber warfare capabilities that could cause damage in the U.S. or potentially disrupt an allied response to North Korean military aggression in Northeast Asia.[7] However, North Korean cyber operations alone do not pose a strategic threat to the United States.
Rather, the primary strategic danger posed by Pyongyang derives from its increasingly sophisticated nuclear arsenal and associated delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. These capabilities complicate U.S. deterrence strategies, as well as Washington’s calculations in fulfilling its commitments under its bilateral security treaty with South Korea.
The DPRK’s strategic programs pose another problem as well. North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile technology, its domestic economic privation, and a fragmenting world order are creating the supply and demand conditions for North Korean nuclear proliferation. Authoritarian regimes like North Korea are plagued by commitment problems in both domestic and foreign transactions, but Pyongyang has been able to surmount those in the past. It began extensive ballistic missile cooperation with Iran in the 1980s,[8] and the two sides have maintained a long-term bilateral scientific cooperation agreement since 2012.[9] Pyongyang also acquired and provided nuclear technology and materials through the clandestine network of Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan,[10] and now is developing closer military ties with Russia.[11]
In the shadow of a fracturing global order and an apparent American retrenchment to the Western Hemisphere, Pyongyang could feel it has a free hand to market its nuclear technology to foreign customers. North Korea already has experience with such services, having contracted to provide a small nuclear reactor to Syria (which Israel bombed in 2007, while it was under construction).
International cooperation in the realms of export controls, intelligence sharing, and counter-proliferation is critical to prevent such a recurrence. But fading American commitment to alliances and international security cooperation increases the risk of Pyongyang transferring nuclear and missile technology. In turn, this could increase the likelihood of an accidental or deliberate use of nuclear weapons themselves, with catastrophic geopolitical, humanitarian, economic, and ecological effects. And, while a low probability event, this dynamic truly represents a strategic threat to the United States.
Over the decades, the North Korean leadership has amply demonstrated both its rationality and its survival instinct. Therefore, the possibility of a North Korean preventive nuclear strike “out of the blue” is practically zero, since it would assuredly amount to a suicidal move. Instead, the authorization for a nuclear strike, which is solely retained by Kim Jong-un himself, would most likely be issued in response to an imminent perceived threat to regime survival, or as a desperate attempt to alter the strategic calculus in a conventional conflict where Pyongyang faces imminent defeat.
Even so, geographic proximity, misperception, and cognitive biases in a crisis could result in nuclear use even if the U.S. and its allies signal that they will exercise restraint. The ruling Korean Workers Party maintains tight control of the North’s military through the party’s Korean People’s Army (KPA) Committee, which oversees the General Political Bureau and its political officers. The Military Security Bureau (also known as the Defense Security Bureau) is another channel of monitoring military units to ensure they follow the directives of the supreme commander.
North Korea’s centralized control and institutional design ensure that the leadership maintains firm negative controls of all military capabilities. The movement of troops or use of any weapons system during an exercise, for example, requires the approval and signatures of three separate channels to reduce the risk of a coup. This arrangement is good for coup proofing, but it can be problematic in a conflict with external adversaries.
All nuclear-armed states have had to struggle with command and control relating to those weapons. State leaders want to maintain negative controls to ensure that weapons are never used without their explicit authorization. However, they also need to maintain positive controls to ensure they will be launched by military commanders if ordered to do so. Positive controls are critical for the credibility of North Korea’s nuclear deterrent, but this could be tricky given that they contradict the robust negative controls designed for coup prevention.
While North Korea’s nuclear command and control system is opaque, there is evidence to suggest that its leadership maintains highly centralized authority over nuclear weapons to ensure their effective deployment and use under certain specified conditions. In the event of a crisis or conflict on the peninsula, U.S. efforts to degrade or eliminate Pyongyang’s ability to execute a nuclear strike would lead to pressure on North Korea’s leadership to “use or lose” their nuclear missiles. In this scenario, the risk of nuclear use is substantial, given that every KPA military officer has been indoctrinated with the story of the General Sherman, Kim Hong-jik’s two pistols, and the understanding that the American imperialists have sought to “enslave the Korean people, generation after generation.” Moreover, now that an American leader has blustered about destroying a civilization (as President Trump did with regard to Iran) a decision to launch would likely be even easier for North Korea’s leaders and subordinate commanders to make.
Writing back in 1918, the American radical Randolph Bourne wryly observed that war reflects the health of the state. Whatever its other demerits, Bourne’s dictum was an accurate description of Russia’s extensive and intimate relationship with conflict.
Throughout Russian history, the regime in power there has measured the health of its state by its capacity for warmaking. Over time, the intrinsic and enduring militarization of the Russian state has shaped how Russia’s rulers have perceived and governed their empire and their relations with the rest of the world. That, in turn, tells us a great deal about the state of Russia today, and what it is liable to look like tomorrow.
Since at least the time of Ivan the Terrible (1530–84), Russian reforms have been aimed primarily at enhancing the state’s capability for waging war. This system reached its apogee under Soviet power, with ruinous results. As historians have diligently chronicled, excessive militarization on the part of the USSR was instrumental to the ultimate breakdown of the Soviet system. Nevertheless, in the post-Soviet period, the ambition to mobilize the entire economy and eligible manpower for military purposes returned with a vengeance. And today, this impulse is driving both the foreign and domestic policies of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The Kremlin is understandably loath to order a general call-up for its current “special military operation” against Ukraine, given the political and reputational costs that doing so would entail. But a creeping mobilization is nonetheless underway, along with active recruitment from places like North Korea, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.[1] Moreover, there is growing talk of an involuntary draft as the war’s costs continue to increase.[2]
At the same time, we are seeing a large-scale mobilization of economy and society for martial purposes, or, as the Wall Street Journal put it in a headline last year, “Putin Has Retooled His Economy to Focus Only On War.”[3] One can make a strong case that this focus has distinctly personal reasons, with Putin militarizing the Russian state in order to preserve the criminalized system of governance he has built up over the past quarter-century. But the problem runs deeper than Putin’s misrule, and extends to the country’s larger strategic outlook.
Russia’s president and his inner circle have convinced themselves that the country faces permanent, ongoing, and existential threats from the West, and framed state policy accordingly. They voluntarily adopted the Bolshevik threat assessment that the West represents a permanent threat to Russia either directly via invasion, or by fomenting “color revolutions” to undermine the country at home and on its periphery.[4] Suffice it to say, such thinking is utterly groundless. That, however, has not stopped it from being influential in the Kremlin’s corridors of power.
Likewise, Russia’s elites have accepted the Soviet notion that states like Poland are hostile to Moscow, not because of their own agency and history but because they are the puppets of great powers. As such, Russia’s neighbors, without any evidence, are deemed to be intrinsic enemies as well.
Guided by such perspectives, Russia’s current government has been at war with the U.S. and the broader West for more than a generation.[5] As long ago as 2005, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the Russian Academy of Military Sciences: “Let us face it, there is a war against Russia under way, and it has been going on for quite a few years. No one declared war on us. There is not one country that would be in a state of war with Russia. But there are people and organizations in various countries, who take part in hostilities against the Russian Federation.”[6]
A decade later, Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment, confirmed that, for some time now, “the Kremlin has been de facto operating in a war mode.” One sign of this war footing was that, by 2007-08, European security services were reporting across the board an enormous expansion in Russian espionage, both traditional and economic, across Europe.[7]
Unfortunately, too many Western writers portray Russia’s “hybrid war” as something distinct from actual conflict. In doing so, they fail to realize that, as seen from Moscow, this sort of asymmetric action nonetheless reflects warfare, and Russia has effectively been at war with the West for at least twenty years.
Russian leaders do not attempt to hide this fact. Former President Dmitri Medvedev, now Putin’s bulldog as Secretary of the Security Council, has stated that “What is happening today is not a proxy war, but in fact, a fully-fledged war—launches of Western missiles, information from satellites [supplied to Ukraine], sanctions packages, loud statements about the militarization of Europe.”[8] In typical fashion, he also threatened missile strikes against Ukraine and the West. Putin and many others likewise depict the aggression against Ukraine as an existential war forced upon Russia by NATO.[9]
These remarks underscore the linkage in Russian strategic thinking between Moscow’s hybrid tactics against the West on the one hand, and Russia’s missile and nuclear arsenal on the other. This rhetoric, and much contemporary military writing, also conflates external and internal threats in a way strikingly similar to Soviet times. That shouldn’t be all that surprising, since the originators and purveyors of this assessment began their careers in the Soviet military and intelligence services (neither of which experienced meaningful post-Soviet reform). The resulting regression to the Soviet mean regarding threats and responses is therefore not surprising.
The results that follow are pronounced. Since Moscow conflates foreign and domestic threats, and is currently in no position to confront NATO, it must resort to a range of non-kinetic means.[10] These include subversion, information confrontation, the sabotage of infrastructure, assassinations, the operation of shadow fleets, and influence operations. Those tactics make up part of a larger hybrid campaign that is part of Russia’s generation-long global war for the recovery of its empire and global great power status.
Moreover, the linkage with nuclear power is intrinsic. Like its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia’s “hybrid war” against Europe is unsustainable unless protected by frequent recourse to nuclear threats as a means of intimidation, blackmail, and deterrence. Russia has used such threats in abundance; as of this writing, Moscow has made 126 nuclear threats relating to Ukraine alone.[11]
As the Major Amos C. Fox observes, “The nuclear component is an inseparable part of Russian operational art that cannot be analyzed as a stand-alone issue” because it abets Russian conventional threats and aggression deterring meaningful adversary responses.[12] Fox characterizes the result as “cross-domain coercion,” a form of integrated influence “waged across several domains: nuclear, conventional, sub-conventional, and nonmilitary.”
But regardless of the methods employed at any given moment, this cross-domain coercion aims to manipulate an adversary’s perceptions, to alter its decision-making process, and to influence its strategic behavior, all while minimizing the scale of kinetic force that is used. As the scholar Dimitry Adamsky explains, “Current Russian operational art thus has a nuclear dimension that can only be understood in the context of a holistic coercion campaign; an integrated whole, in which conventional, informational, nuclear, and nonmilitary capabilities can be used in the pursuit of deterrence and compellence.”[13]
Russia’s war is truly global in scope. Recently, Argentina’s State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) identified a Russian entity called “The Company” active in that country, allegedly with the aim of a group of individuals loyal to Russian interests to develop disinformation and influence campaigns against the Argentine state.[14] Russian fingerprints are all over a recent attempted coup in Armenia.[15] Moreover, Moscow has incited similar efforts in Moldova, Romania, and possibly Serbia in recent years, on top of other coups attempted years ago in Macedonia and Montenegro.[16] These efforts are all part of the huge expansion of Russian-backed arson, assassination, information operations, and other so-called “gray-zone” activities since 2022.
In other words, the resort to the use of force abroad, either in the form of outright war in Ukraine or as subversion elsewhere, pervades Russian policy. Some Russian military thinkers believe that proxy wars, where Russia incites natives to fight for its interests in their home countries, may be increasing in the future.[17] This is so for good reason; many Russian writers see such proxy wars as an apt description of what the West is waging against Russia.[18] That perception, in turn, reflects the abiding Russian view that its aggression against Ukraine was supposedly forced upon it by the West, consonant with the myth that Russia is a victim, never an aggressor.
War has arguably been inherent in Putin’s project from the beginning. Indeed, some analysts trace covert actions against Russia’s neighbors back to 1992 and the Russian interventions in Abkhazia and Moldova then. Autocracy, Putin’s legacy from the Tsars and Soviets, presupposes empire in Russia, and empire under any definition all but forces Russia into a constant state of threat, if not war, against its neighbors. This is so because the Kremlin remains consumed with projects that diminish their sovereignty if not their territorial integrity.
But the threat isn’t just external. As Russian civilian and military leaders became convinced that the West sought either to destabilize Russia or to deprive it of its influence as a great power (that is, as an empire) they began to argue that not only did Russia have to wage a counter or asymmetric war against the West, but that it also must become more autocratic and militaristic to save itself. Analysts like Lilia Shevtsova have argued that the state today inherently needs militarization in order to preserve itself. “In the Russian case the primacy of the state has been legitimized with reference to real (or more often) imagined threats, both internal and external,” she notes. “Those threats had to be severe enough to justify the militarization of everyday life in Russia and the subjugation of the very foundations of society to the militarist goals. In short, Russia developed a unique model for the survival and reproduction of power in a permanent state of war.”[19] Her conclusion is stark: “Russia has survived by annihilating the boundary between war and peace; its state simply could not exist in a peaceful environment.”
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that we find pervasive militarization across many areas of Russian domestic policy, especially in wartime. As a recent study of Russian military policy in Belarus notes, “The internal and external security environments are closely coupled concepts in the writings of Russian military experts who share a common view about the cause of their degradation, namely the Collective West.”[20]
For its part, the Russian government has embraced this outlook and enshrined it in a bevy of official documents. For instance, Russia’s 2021 National Security Strategy states up front that it “is based on the inextricable relationship and interdependence of the national security of the Russian Federation and the country’s socio-economic development.” It goes on to cite both internal and external threats to Russian security, emulating the military’s tendency to conflate them. It also underlines the West as a truly civilizational threat—one deliberately attempting to dilute traditional values, incite interethnic and interfaith conflict, distort world history, and redefine Russia’s role and place in it.[22]
Relevant, too, is a pervasive sense of imperial destiny among Russia’s current rulers. Here, militarization serves a distinct purpose. It is necessary not simply to preserve the state system, but to make possible the increasingly popular idea of Russia as a Eurasian empire. Since empire inherently connotes the diminished sovereignty of subordinate members, any effort to restore it intrinsically requires an emphasis on forceful means of coercion. This drive for imperial restoration takes many forms but the threat of force always lurks in the background.
Such a vision requires resources, and Putin’s government is allocating tremendous blood and treasure toward a truly national mobilization. The ballooning costs of Russia’s Ukraine war (measured at upward of $100 billion in 2025[23]) are significant enough. But Russian military spending might be even more egregious; Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) estimates that the Russian government is spending 2/3 more on its military than is being officially reported. If that estimate holds, it means that Russia’s military spending now equals 40% of the state’s $287.6 billion budget: approximately 10% of Russia’s overall GDP.[24]
Even that, however, isn’t sufficient. Putin is now reportedly requesting that oligarchs help fund the war in a modern version of Tsarist expropriation of nobles’ properties. And although the present war in Iran may offer Russia some relief in the form of higher global energy prices, the long-term trend is decidedly negative in terms of Russia’s ability to support this budget (made all the more so by successful Ukrainian strikes which have knocked out s significant portion of the country’s oil export capabilities.)
Manpower issues also increasingly reflect a regression to older forms of rule. Despite statements denying a general mobilization, all signs point to the fact that Moscow is now preparing involuntary reserve call-ups. This demonstrates that, despite active recruitment campaigns in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the dispatch of nearly 11,000 North Korean troops to Russia, the staggering losses that Russia’s military has suffered on the Ukraine front simply cannot be made up without some form of mobilization.
Likewise, militarization pervades education. Russian drone companies in which Putin’s daughter holds shares and the state are diverting all manner of education into training drone experts among the nation’s children. The government is also reportedly integrating students from local polytechnic institutes into factories making defense products.
All this serves a distinct purpose, and it isn’t just imperial ambition. There is ample cause to argue that Putin’s regime, when public support falters, incites a war, preferably a short, victorious one, in order to regenerate public support and strengthen its hold on power. This is the “diversionary war” thesis, and it posits that rulers start wars to divert public opinion away from a critical stance toward the regime.
To be sure, there are an ample number of other reasons for Putin and his coterie to seek a securitized state. But building the capabilities to prevent the departure of wayward territories, or to punish those that attempt to leave Moscow’s embrace, is intrinsic to the ethos of leadership that Russia’s president has embraced. And if it helps to intimidate any domestic opposition into passivity, so much the better.
For today’s Russia, then, war really is about the health of the state. That in turn makes it a permanent threat to international security. Paradoxically, however, this same militarization inevitably becomes a crushing burden on both the society and the state. Ultimately, the only way to remove the threat to international security, and to Russians themselves, is deterrence and ultimately defeat. Only this, history instructs us, has the ability to lead to the meaningful reform of the type that Russia so desperately needs.
The logic is compelling. If Russia is decisively defeated in Ukraine, it could lead to the diminution of the mystique of empire, and reduce the mechanisms of autocracy and militarization that now pervade the state. If, however, the West falls short of providing Ukraine with the support and assistance it needs to battle back, it risks entrenching the pervasive militarization now visible in Russian society, as well as setting the stage for Moscow’s imperial urges to propel it into conflict elsewhere.
All this may not be welcome policy advice for those seeking an easy solution to the challenge posed by Putin’s Russia. But it represents the only surefire way to, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s now-infamous t-shirt wryly counseled, “make Russia small again.”
Dr. Sebastian Gorka currently serves as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the U.S. National Security Council, a position he has held since January 2025. He is the author of three books on counterterrorism and U.S. foreign policy, including Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War (Regnery Publishing, 2016).
In April, Dr. Gorka sat down with Statecraft & Strategy Editor-in-Chief Ilan Berman to talk about the Trump administration’s approach to counterterrorism, its views on the threats posed by groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and how the conflict with Iran fits in.
Q: For the past year, you’ve served as the President’s pointman for counterterrorism. In that time, we’ve seen the U.S. carry out extensive counterterrorism operations in Africa and launch a new conflict in the Middle East that is at least partially about the Iranian regime’s persistent sponsorship of terrorism. Nevertheless, there’s clearly a change of priorities underway in U.S. foreign policy thinking, away from the old “Global War on Terror” and toward great power rivalry with the likes of China and Russia. How, then, do you characterize our approach to terrorism now?
We’ve moved away from the post-9/11 thinking that believed we could somehow social-engineer tribal societies with completely different values and civil societies into stable, Western-style democracies. That approach is not based in reality. We also reject the old Obama-era idea that terrorism basically comes from poverty or a lack of education. If that was the case, many more countries would be dealing with the problem. Moreover, the 9/11 hijackers, who were mostly educated and middle-class (as was Osama bin Laden himself) never would have done what they did. Those flawed assumptions led to a lot of dangerous passivity and bad counterterrorism policies on our part.
That’s not the case now. In our first twelve months, we brought justice to more than 700 members of the global jihadi movement. That steady tempo of precise, surgical strikes against the top terror groups threatening us is the heart of the Trump administration’s new counterterrorism approach. It rejects both endless “Forever Wars” and the previous reluctance to act decisively. We’re focused on the real, evolving nature of the threat, especially the global jihadi movements that emanate from both Sunni and Shi’a Islam.
Our mission is straightforward: protect innocent Americans and deliver justice to those who want to harm us. But we can only do that if we’re honest about the threat. We need to prioritize dangers to the homeland and hit those actors hard enough that they’re either destroyed or shift the burden and our local partners can keep them suppressed. Twenty-five years after 9/11, the question remains the same: Is America truly safe? President Trump is answering it with a reality-based approach to counterterrorism.
Q: Do we have the will to win this fight? I’m curious about how you frame the struggle, and what you think is required for us to persevere in it.
There’s no choice. Terrorism isn’t something you can totally “defeat” or wipe off the map because it’s a tactic, a method of warfare. But specific terrorist groups? Those absolutely can be eliminated. Real victory goes beyond simply containing these groups, however. We have to strike at their center of gravity: the thing that makes people want to join them, which justifies their violence, and what they use to intimidate everyone else. In this case, that center of gravity is jihadi ideology.
Whether we’re talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, ISIS, or a different group, they all share the same core belief: that Islam must return to its original 7th-century version as a martial faith that expands into a global theocratic caliphate ruled by strict sharia law. In that worldview, non-Muslims are either killed or forced into submission. These groups have been crystal clear about their goals. As President Trump said during his seminal speech in Warsaw back in 2017, the real question is whether we in the West have the will to defeat them.
Q: And how has America fared against this adversary in recent years? How would you assess our recent counterterrorism record?
We have to be intellectually honest here. Despite our massive conventional military power, our post-9/11 efforts haven’t delivered the strategic results we should have seen. Yes, there were some impressive early wins: the initial takedown of the Taliban in 2001, the raid that got bin Laden, the strikes on [IRGC General Qassem] Soleimani and [ISIS emir Abu Baker al] Baghdadi, and the destruction of ISIS’s physical caliphate. But we’ve also had major strategic failures: the missing weapons of mass destruction that served as the justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the $7 trillion we spent there and the more than 4,000 American lives lost, only to watch Iraq fall under heavy Iranian influence and Afghanistan slide back into a jihadist safe haven after Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Kabul.
What we need now is a full reset. That starts with an honest look at the actual terror threats facing us today. We have to rank and prioritize them properly so we can use our resources wisely and protect the American taxpayer. Without effective counterterrorism, we can’t keep our country safe or prevent another 9/11-style attack.
Q: So, to your mind, what needs to change in U.S. counterterrorism policy? And how does the Iran war fit into this frame?
Let’s be blunt: decades of the “Global War on Terror” haven’t made us safer. In many ways, endless foreign adventures and weak homeland security have actually made the threat worse. At the same time, real dangers still exist. These include ISIS franchises that are now spreading across the Middle East and Africa, and Iran’s indirect war against us through its proxies.
In the first couple of weeks of President Trump’s second term, our intelligence and Pentagon teams told us that during the Biden years, we had multiple clear opportunities to take out high-value jihadi targets, people responsible for killing Americans or actively plotting new attacks. Yet in most cases, the previous administration chose not to act. President Trump reversed that. We’re now going after the leaders who are planning, recruiting, and financing attacks against us and our partners, and using more aggressive rules of engagement to do so.
Then there’s Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The regime in Tehran has openly declared its desire to destroy both America and Israel. Instead of building a better future for its own people, it’s poured billions into arming and training terrorists and militias across the region. It has also built networks specifically targeting U.S. officials, including President Trump himself, in retaliation for the 2020 strike on Qassem Soleimani.
Given Iran’s explicit goals, its deadly track record, and its support for groups that have killed thousands, including American troops, the threat was undeniable. Through our actions, President Trump has sent a clear message: Tehran must dismantle its nuclear program and stop backing terrorist groups and jihadi militias.
Q: What allies and resources do we have in this fight?
Our Muslim partners in the Middle East and Asia are especially important, particularly on the ideological side. With our support, they’re in the best position to push back against the jihadi vision of Islam and make it much harder for these groups to recruit new fighters. Counter-ideology is something we need to invest in seriously.
Here at home, we’re also taking concrete steps. We’ve begun the process of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, starting with its founding Egyptian branch along with the Lebanese and Jordanian chapters of the organization. This should have happened years ago. The Brotherhood is the ideological root of the worst modern jihadist groups. Treating it as such is long overdue.
On February 4, 2022, just hours before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Russian President Vladimir Putin joined his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to publicly unveil a new era in bilateral relations between their two countries. In a lengthy joint statement, the two leaders declared that “friendship between the two States has no limits” and proclaimed that there were now “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” between Moscow and Beijing[1] It was a carefully choreographed moment of solidarity, and a public signal that the two powers planned to stand shoulder to shoulder against the West.
Since then, the concept of a Sino-Russian alliance has dominated world headlines, and for good reason. Ties have warmed markedly over the past several years, as Moscow and Beijing have increasingly joined forces to oppose the perceived hegemony of the United States in world affairs. This rapport has been reinforced by the close personal ties between Putin and Xi; the two have met more than 60 times, and carried out nearly a dozen state visits to one another’s nation so far. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, moreover, has only accelerated this convergence, with China becoming a critical enabler of Moscow’s ongoing aggression against its western neighbor.
Yet for all of its warmth, the Sino-Russian partnership is far more fragile than its architects might care to admit. Longstanding historical grievances, profound ideological differences, simmering territorial disputes, glaring economic asymmetries, and pervasive distrust all persist. These factors suggest that, for all the public fanfare, the “no limits” partnership rests on decidedly rickety foundations.
For much of their shared history, Russia and China were adversaries. For centuries, both empires viewed the vast, sparsely populated regions stretching from Mongolia to the Pacific as strategic buffers critical to their security. The Romanov Empire, therefore, pushed eastward across Siberia, while the Qing Dynasty looked north and west, seeking to consolidate control over Manchuria and the Mongol territories. Clashes over the Amur River Valley in the 17th century underscored the inherent incompatibility of these agendas. China’s victory over Russian forces at the time culminated in the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk, which recognized Chinese sovereignty over large swaths of what is today the Russian Far East and parts of eastern Siberia, and at least temporarily checked Russia’s eastward expansion.[2]
But those boundaries did not hold indefinitely. In the 19th century, as the Qing Empire weakened as a result of the Opium Wars (1839-1860) and successive internal rebellions, Russia saw (and seized) the strategic opportunity. It applied diplomatic and military pressure along its common frontier with imperial China, rolling back Beijing’s territorial control. Through the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and the subsequent Treaty of Peking in 1860, Russia annexed vast stretches of territory north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri River. These lands, including what is now Vladivostok and much of Primorsky Krai, remain part of the Russian Federation to this day.
During the same timeframe, Russia was also pushing deep into Central Asia. This created an additional layer of friction to Russo-Chinese relations, because the Qings were striving to exert their own control over that general area. The result was a zone of overlapping imperial ambition and a Chinese perception that Russia was encroaching on a broader frontier it viewed as vital to both its security and prestige.
In Chinese historical memory, these events make up part of the so-called “century of shame and humiliation,” a period during which external powers imposed unequal treaties, seized territory, and subordinated China’s rightful sovereignty. China’s leaders, Xi Jinping foremost among them, are now attempting to correct these affronts.[3] That’s why public discourse, academic writing, and nationalist commentary in China today all regularly reference “lost territories,” underscoring that the memory of lands lost to Moscow remains alive, even if it is dormant for the moment.
But it won’t always be. A recent analysis by the Robert Lansing Institute has argued that the “reinvigoration” of China sought by Xi will invariably prompt the PRC to take a more assertive stance toward these territories, and heighten tensions with Russia in the process. “China currently claims, first of all, the Amur Region, the Jewish Autonomous Region, the south of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Primorsky Territory, the Republic of Tyva [sic], parts of the Trans-Baikal Territory and Buryatia,” the Institute’s analysis notes. That state of affairs, in turn, will lead to an inevitable revival of Chinese claims to those areas.[4]
Following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the two communist juggernauts initially entered a period of ideological solidarity. During this time, the Soviet Union provided extensive economic assistance, technical support, and military aid to the fledgling PRC.[5]
But the alignment quickly proved fragile. By the mid-1950s, personal, ideological, and geopolitical frictions had already begun to accumulate. China’s leadership resented Soviet attitudes, which portrayed China as a junior partner in world affairs, while Soviet leaders were uneasy with Mao Zedong’s rule, which they saw as unnecessarily radical and reckless. [6] Moreover, each side believed that it, rather than the other, possessed the correct interpretation of Marxism-Leninism and, therefore, was entitled to lead the forces of world communism.[7]
These tensions culminated in the Sino-Soviet split of 1961, one of the Cold War’s decisive geopolitical ruptures. Thereafter, the PRC and USSR engaged in a pitched competition for leadership of the global communist movement, one that occasionally broke out into confrontation. That was the case in 1969, when the two powers clashed along the Ussuri River over Damansky Island (known in China as Zhenbao Island).[8]
The frictions would persist for years, with both Moscow and Beijing fortifying their respective sides of the border and planning for the possibility of large-scale war with the other. It also prompted significant foreign policy shifts. Beijing cultivated ties with Washington as a strategic counterweight to Moscow, thereby enabling President Nixon’s famous “opening to China.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, began treating China as a significant security threat. And while relations thawed somewhat following Mao’s death in 1976, neither side fully trusted the other. As late as the 1980s, ties between the two countries were still tentative and superficial.
The 1991 Soviet collapse, however, profoundly transformed the global geopolitical landscape, and relations between Russia and China along with it. Both Beijing and Moscow were suddenly faced with a unipolar world dominated by Washington, leading them to gravitate to the idea that political alignment, however limited, had become a necessity. The result was a series of confidence-building measures, border demarcations, and increased diplomatic contacts during the 1990s. Both countries also embraced the idea of “multipolarity” in world affairs, thereby positioning themselves (both separately and together) as counterweights to U.S. power.
This thaw culminated in the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, signed in 2001 by Putin and then-Chinese Premier Jiang Zemin. That arrangement helped establish a new political framework for relations between Moscow and Beijing, entrenched military contacts between the two, and demarcated (albeit temporarily) their disputed border.[9] It represented an important symbolic shift, marking the formal end of decades of simmering hostility and laying the groundwork for what would become a new strategic partnership.
Geopolitics were also helping drive the two countries together. Russia had progressively turned away from the West, leading to deepening frictions with NATO and growing disputes with the United States over everything from arms control to regional policy in the Middle East. China, meanwhile, had expanded its global profile and its global ambitions. This convergence created the basis for the two countries to increase their joint military exercises, arms sales, and to coordinate diplomatic initiatives in multilateral forums such as the United Nations. Over time, the two also increased their security coordination in the Eurasian space, using the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the successor bloc of the China-led “Shanghai Five,” as a vehicle to do so.
Integration accelerated in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. More and more isolated from the West, Moscow turned to alternative partners for economic and political support. As a result, Beijing gained preferential access to Russian energy resources and expanded its footprint in Russia’s geopolitical “backyard” of Central Asia. The Kremlin, meanwhile, took pains to deconflict its vision for Eurasia with China’s emerging foreign policy project known as the Belt & Road Initiative.
The culmination was the declaration, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, of their “no limits” partnership. Though largely aspirational, that agreement represented a shared ambition to assume a larger role on the world stage, and to do so in opposition to the prevailing world order. In other words, it represented a “pledge to stand shoulder to shoulder against America and the West, ideologically as well as militarily,” the New Yorker noted at the time.[10]
Since then, Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine has served as a crucial test of the partnership. Despite China’s declared commitment to sovereignty and non-interference, Beijing has refused to condemn Russia’s ongoing aggression against its western neighbor, supplied the Kremlin with drone and missile technology, as well as battlefield intelligence and machine tools used for the manufacturing of ordinance. At the same time, Chinese companies have engaged in extensive gray market trade with Russia, selling it everything from restricted chips to critical minerals for high-tech electronics and precision-guided weaponry. In this way, Western officials say, the PRC has turned into a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war of aggression.[11]
Given this evolution, it would be easy to conclude that Russia and China, one-time imperial rivals, have now drifted into significant geopolitical alignment. Such an assessment, though, fails to account for the significant differences that still exist between the two sides.
Those differences begin with ideology. During the 1990s, Russia’s comparative weakness and China’s emphasis on a “peaceful rise” in global affairs led both countries to adopt essentially pragmatic foreign policies. Over the past dozen years, however, ideology has reemerged as a core driver in both Moscow and Beijing. And while their worldviews and activities are largely aligned for the moment, the underlying ideological frameworks are starkly different.
In Russia, the past few years have seen prominent thinkers articulate a worldview in which Russia represents a “civilizational state” distinct from both East and West. Alexander Dugin, the most visible and vocal champion of this ideology of “Eurasianism,” has argued that Russia “cannot exist outside of its essence as an empire, by its geographical situation, historical path and fate of the state.”[12] But Dugin is hardly alone. Sergei Karaganov, the dean of Russian foreign policy studies, has articulated a “Putin doctrine” that requires the “constructive destruction” of the Western-led order and the articulation of a separate civilizational mission.[13] And Fyodor Lukyanov, the Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs (Russia’s answer to Foreign Affairs), has laid out that the Kremlin needs to embrace its role as a “change agent” and reshape the world order according to its own preferences and prerogatives.[14]
In this conception, China isn’t some peripheral actor. Rather, it represents a central reference point against which Russia’s civilizational claims are defined. Scholarly articles caution against Russia being forced into a subordinate role via its alliance with China[15], while Russian public discourse is rife with fears of Chinese encroachment, whether by creeping “colonialization” or by the outright loss of territory to the PRC. All this bespeaks persistent, and pervasive, Russian distrust.
Meanwhile, Chinese ideology has evolved markedly since Xi Jinping assumed the Chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party in late 2012. For nearly four decades following Mao’s death in 1976, Chinese foreign policy had sought to follow the path laid out by Deng Xiaoping, who sought to deemphasize ideology to create a more technocratic, high-functioning authoritarian regime. However, since Xi’s rise to power in 2012, China has embarked upon a more overtly aggressive, expansionist, and imperial vision, one that posits the PRC as the centerpiece and most significant driver of an alternate world order.[16]
A 2018 analysis by the Finnish Institute for International Affairs (FIIA) laid out what this means, in practical terms. China under Xi, the study explained, is “aiming to construct a Tianxia-based global order.” That is, a hierarchical system similar to the one that existed during the imperial period, in which “other kingdoms could secure trade and peace with the Chinese empire in return for their symbolic obeisance.”[17] Clearly, in such a system, Russia would serve as little more than a supplicant, in spite of its own great power ambitions.
All this has set the stage for tension, or even outright conflict, between Moscow and Beijing in several concrete areas.
One is Central Asia. After centuries of imperial dominion and decades of formal control by the Soviet Union, Russia sees itself as the traditional guarantor of politics and security in the region. Russian media reports and analyses therefore often express concern about China’s growing inroads into the region, framing Beijing as a potential future challenger.[18] Numerous assessments, moreover, reflect worries among Russian experts and scholars regarding the strategic balance emerging in Russia’s historic “near abroad,” where, through investment and economic engagement, China today is advancing while Russia is receding.
Another is the Arctic. As part of its expanding global vision, China in recent years has positioned itself as a “near-Arctic state” and mapped out a “polar silk road” to pave the way for its economic and political entry into the region.[19] That has generated considerable unease in the Kremlin, which has long situated itself as the dominant player and “first mover” in Arctic affairs. As a result, official Russian documents and statements stress the need to exclude extra-regional actors from the Arctic, a description that implicitly encompasses the PRC.[20] Russia, in other words, already grasps the long-term incompatibility of Russian and Chinese designs over the Arctic. And while for the moment Moscow has welcomed Chinese interest (and investment) in the area, the stage is set for future competition.
A third is the inherent economic imbalance between Moscow and Beijing. Over the past dozen years, the increasingly authoritarian nature of Putin’s regime has profoundly chilled both investment and innovation, even as it has accelerated capital flight and “brain drain.” Since the start of the Ukraine war, the situation for Russia has gotten significantly worse, as Russia’s economy has been squeezed by successive rounds of Western sanctions and the exit of numerous Western firms and businesses. This has pushed Russia into an unprecedented economic dependency on China. It has also fanned fears in Moscow that growing weakness makes the country vulnerable to potential predation by an economically superior China.
Then, there are differences over technology and intelligence. Although Russia and China now regularly engage in joint military exercises and political coordination, there are clear signs of distance in these spheres. Russia, for instance, has refused to transfer certain categories of advanced defense materiel to China (including hypersonics and next generation aircraft), worried that China could reverse engineer them.[21] For its part, China (while assisting Russia both politically and economically in the Ukraine war) has been careful not to run afoul of Western “red lines” by giving the Kremlin lethal aid, something that has generated considerable frustration in Moscow. Similarly, Russia’s intelligence services harbor deep distrust of China, and fret over its espionage activities. A leaked 2025 FSB memo, for instance, outlines that China had been found to be spying on Russian military operations in Ukraine, and that Chinese intelligence agents are known to be carrying out espionage operations in the Arctic. The document outlines what has become a “tense and dynamically developing” espionage contest between the two countries.[22]
The most prominent potential point of friction between Russia and China, however, is centered on Siberia and the Russian Far East. Although ostensibly settled via the 2001 Treaty of Friendship and Good Neighborliness, persistent concerns remain that the issue could once again become a flashpoint in bilateral relations. Fanning those fears, in prior years, official Chinese maps depicted large swathes of the Russian Far East as being “Chinese territories invaded and occupied by Tsarist Russia.”[23] Worrisome as well is Russia’s protracted national demographic decline, which has helped to steadily depopulate the country’s eastern reaches over the past three decades.
The economics there likewise cut in Beijing’s favor. By 2017, the PRC had already become the largest foreign investor in the Russian Far East.[24] Since then, Chinese investment in the area has surged further, and as of May 2023, Russian officials were confirming that the overwhelming majority of foreign direct investment into the region (over 90%) came from Chinese state firms.[25] For the moment, these changes have not precipitated significant changes. But in Russia, suspicions linger that Beijing still covets the Far East, and that the PRC is simply waiting for an opportune moment to reassert its claims (and perhaps even its control) over the area.[26]
As the foregoing suggests, the relationship between Russia and China is far more fragile than commonly understood. Historical grievances, emerging arenas of competition, economic asymmetry, and institutional distrust all suggest clear limits to today’s “no limits” partnership, whatever the outward warmth now visible between Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi.
Which, in turn, suggests that, as the United States fine-tunes its strategy for “Great Power Competition,” policymakers in Washington would do well to explore the faultlines that could enable them to fracture, or at least diminish, the contemporary partnership between Moscow and Beijing. They would do even better to act on them.
For decades, Georgia was one of America’s most reliable strategic partners in the Black Sea and South Caucasus, and a key reason the U.S. architecture in this critical region worked in the first place. It anchored pivotal energy and transit projects, strengthened East-West connectivity, supported American military operations, and demonstrated that a post-Soviet state could pursue democratic transformation and Euro-Atlantic integration. Underpinned by a shared commitment to democratic governance, political freedom, and a broadly Western civilizational outlook, partnership with Georgia became the backbone of Washington’s regional strategy, delivering tangible geopolitical results for the U.S. and its allies.
Today, however, those strategic gains are at risk. The current trajectory of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party is a direct challenge to a continued American stake in the region. In recent years, GD policy has been aimed at diminishing Washington’s influence in the country, undermining decades of U.S. investments and weakening its position by aligning with China, Iran, and Russia, while deviating from Georgia’s constitutionally mandated Euro-Atlantic course.
Situated at the intersection of Europe, the Caspian basin, and Central Asia, Georgia’s importance has never been abstract. It has been built through concrete projects that have helped to reshape Eurasian connectivity: projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) pipelines, along with the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway. These were not merely infrastructure projects. They were strategic instruments that anchored a Western-oriented transport and energy corridor bypassing both Russia and Iran, strengthening European energy security, and integrating the South Caucasus into global markets.
This is the architecture that made the American position in our strategic region, which has historically been dominated by Russia and Iran, both possible and profitable. And this significance has only grown.
As global trade patterns shift and Europe seeks alternatives to Russian energy, Georgia has emerged as a central node in the Middle Corridor (a transcontinental route linking Europe to Central Asia and China and bypassing both Russian and Iranian control). The potential of the Middle Corridor has been amplified by the efforts of the current Administration in Washington, which has midwifed the “Trump’s Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) project. However, without Georgia (home to key transport and energy infrastructure) this corridor would remain vulnerable and only partially functional, even after TRIPP is completed.
Given the region’s location, U.S.-Georgia cooperation has never been limited to economics. Georgia has been a security partner of exceptional reliability, actively engaged in counterterrorism, intelligence sharing, defense cooperation, and contributing to U.S. military operations. In fact, despite not being a NATO member, Georgia was among the largest troop contributors to U.S.-led missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a reflection of the Georgian view of the U.S. as both a strategic partner and the major security guarantor. This was not symbolic alignment; it was strategic solidarity.
Georgia has played an equally critical role at a regional level. Its Western trajectory has served as a model for others, offering a potent alternative to the Russia and China-centric foreign policy models on offer in the region. This approach, which led to EU candidate status, has resonated strongly in Armenia, where Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is now steering the country toward European integration and strategic partnership with the U.S. At the same time, Georgia’s participation in regional projects helped anchor Azerbaijan in cooperative frameworks with the West. In other words, Georgia was not just part of the U.S. strategy in the region, but also an enabler of it.
Today, however, that standing is at risk of unraveling. Under GD, Georgia’s shift from EU integration toward closer ties with Russia and Iran has transformed a strategic asset into a liability. Following the 2024 elections, GD’s suspension of the EU membership process triggered a suspension of the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership. Furthermore, allegations of sanctions evasion networks facilitating Russian and Iranian trade, which nearly led to sanctions by the EU, have directly undercut American efforts to constrain its strategic competitors and eroded decades of bilateral trust.
The danger is regional. A Georgia that is once again under growing Russian influence complicates Armenia’s Western pivot, and puts at risk not only the Middle Corridor but broader transregional energy and transport initiatives, including TRIPP. Without a reliable government in Tbilisi, the coherence of these projects, and the strategic logic behind them, begins to break down.
But a clear opening for strategic recalibration exists. Russia remains heavily preoccupied in Ukraine, limiting its ability to consolidate influence elsewhere. Iran’s regional posture is under massive pressure at present, constraining its capacity to project influence northward. At the same time, political shifts within the EU, combined with Ukraine’s resilience, are reinforcing the broader Western strategic posture in the Black Sea and South Caucasus.
These dynamics create conditions in which renewed American engagement can deliver outsized strategic returns. Washington, under the leadership of President Trump, has already taken significant steps by facilitating dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan and supporting the emergence of new regional frameworks such as TRIPP. The next logical step is to ensure Georgia’s full integration into the region’s new, evolving architecture, so that it remains coherent, viable, and aligned with U.S. interests.
Re-anchoring Georgia is not about imposing external preferences. It is about securing a strategic asset that is already in place. Moreover, it clearly aligns with the will of the Georgian people, reinforces the country’s constitutional commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration, and protects decades of American political, economic, and strategic investment in the region.
Here, a recalibrated American strategy can prove decisive. Restoring Georgia’s Western orientation would unlock significant regional gains, reinforcing the Middle Corridor and securing strategic access to the Caspian and Central Asia. In an era of great power competition, doing so provides the U.S. with a stronger economic presence and greater strategic reach while effectively reducing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence.
A re-anchored Georgia would also help consolidate a more cohesive regional order. With Armenia advancing toward Western integration and Azerbaijan pursuing pragmatic energy cooperation with Europe, the foundations for coordinated regional alignments are already in place. But Georgia’s role in this equation is critical; without it, the emerging regional structure remains incomplete and unstable.
Here, American policy needs to distinguish the Georgian government from its people, whose strong Western support offers a vital lever for reengagement. But such reengagement must be conditional. The U.S. needs a clear and principled stance toward the current Georgian government—one that demands a return to democratic principles, including the restoration of free speech and free and fair elections, and an end to political persecution, as well as the dismantlement of sanctions evasion and illicit financial networks.
These are not peripheral issues. The credibility of GD has eroded, both domestically and internationally, due to its corruption, authoritarian policies, and shift away from Euro-Atlantic integration toward Russia, China, and Iran. Without reform, engagement with Georgia’s ruling party would create merely a facade of partnership. But a proactive American policy grounded in conditional engagement can secure a decisive advantage for Washington, because a Western-oriented Georgia, bridging Armenia and Azerbaijan, would cement the region’s alignment with U.S. strategy.
The opportunity is real, and it remains within reach. The question is whether Washington is prepared to act to make it a reality.
For the countries of Central Asia, multi-vector diplomacy has become a necessity: a structural response to geography, history, economics, and security. The question now is not whether regional states should pursue diversified foreign policies. All five already do so, although with different priorities and capacities. It is, rather, how this approach is evolving.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, multi-vector diplomacy was largely a state-building and positioning exercise. For the nascent nations of Central Asia, it meant simultaneously maintaining relations with Russia, developing ties with China, engaging the West, and participating in international organizations. Today, however, this process is becoming more complex. It is no longer just about managing relations with external powers. Increasingly, it is also about using partnerships to support modernization, connectivity, economic diversification, institutional reform, and long-term resilience.
This shift should not be understood as a move away from any one partner, or as a zero-sum game. Fundamentally, a region with more routes and more diplomatic platforms can serve as a more stable and predictable partner for Russia, China, Europe, the United States, the Gulf countries, South Asia, and other nations besides. For the Central Asian states themselves, meanwhile, diversification is about strengthening strategic autonomy by expanding external markets, reducing dependence on any single trade partner, attracting investment from different sources, and building local and regional capacity.
This sort of stability matters, because the international environment has become less predictable. Instability in Eastern Europe has affected traditional northern routes. Tensions involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and the Persian Gulf have increased ambiguity around access to global markets and directly affected Central Asia’s logistical options. At the same time, global competition over energy, food security, critical minerals, and reliable transport links has focused new attention on the region.
Indeed, a multi-vector approach has already yielded concrete dividends for the countries of the region. Over the past eight years, the combined GDP of Central Asia has grown by 2.5 times, reaching around $520 billion, while trade with external partners has exceeded $270 billion.
China is now the region’s largest trading partner, with trade surpassing $100 billion last year and around $90 billion in investments and construction contracts over the past decade. The EU also plays a major role: over the past seven years, trade has quadrupled to €54 billion, while European investment has exceeded €100 billion. Russia remains important as well, with trade above $45 billion and cumulative investment exceeding $20 billion, as well as having deep links in migration, security, education, and infrastructure. GCC investment has nearly tripled since 2022, reaching $20 billion. At the same time, the Islamic Development Bank has invested $9.1 billion across the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), around 60% of it in Central Asia.
The U.S. trade footprint is smaller, around $7 billion, but it is steadily growing, especially after the C5+1 Summit, which brought all Central Asian leaders to the White House last year. Beyond trade, the United States has provided more than $9 billion in direct assistance to Central Asia, including humanitarian support, and has helped mobilize over $50 billion through international financial institutions in credit, loans, and technical assistance to support long-term development.
Connectivity, too, is an area where the logic of multi-vector diplomacy is clear. For landlocked states, sovereignty is not just a legal principle. It is also a logistical condition. A country with several reliable routes, ports, markets, and digital connections has more room for maneuver than one dependent on a limited number of them. That’s why Central Asian states are trying to turn their landlocked position into a land-linked advantage.
The Middle Corridor has become central to the discussion. It links Central Asia to Europe through the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye. The World Bank has estimated that, with the right investments and reforms, freight volumes could triple and travel times could be cut by half by 2030. But the route remains a work in progress; it is still expensive and capacity-constrained. Realizing the Corridor’s commercial potential will depend on infrastructure investment, customs reform, port modernization, and coordination across several jurisdictions.
The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) is also emerging as an important connectivity project. Made possible by recent progress in the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process, it could open a new link between Azerbaijan and Nakhichivan through Armenia, with wider implications for trade between Türkiye, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.
These, and a host of other promising initiatives, help illustrate why Uzbekistan is now pursuing diversification in all directions: westward through the Caspian, southward through Afghanistan and Pakistan, southwestward through Iran and the Persian Gulf, eastward through China, and northward through Kazakhstan and existing Eurasian routes. These efforts, as seen from Tashkent, are complementary rather than competing.
That approach, moreover, is part of a broader picture taking shape in the region. Ultimately, the strongest tool available to Central Asian states is regional cooperation. A single country can pursue multi-vector diplomacy, but only a more coordinated region can achieve real strategic autonomy.
The region’s governments understand this very well, which is why they have prioritized contacts and political coordination. Since 2018, Central Asian leaders have held seven Presidential Summits—the most recent of them in Tashkent last year. The inclusion of Azerbaijan into this regional format is particularly important because it points to a gradual expansion of the old “C5” framework as part of a wider logic that links Central Asia more closely with the South Caucasus, Türkiye, and Europe.
At its core is a clear imperative: Central Asia’s task is not to choose between major powers. It is to build up enough internal coordination, economic depth, and logistical flexibility to work productively with all of them. That is what the next, more mature, stage of Central Asian diplomacy will be all about.
No matter when and how the war in Ukraine ultimately ends, an aggressive Russia will remain a challenge for the United States and the broader West. In December 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said as much in his speech before the Munich Security Conference. “We are Russia’s next target,” he warned, “NATO’s own defenses can hold for now but with its economy dedicated to war, Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years.”[1]
Yet the challenge Russia poses is not confined to the European continent. Despite the mounting costs and international isolation incurred by its aggression against Ukraine, Russia’s government in recent years has articulated a global vision, and increasingly positioned itself as a major geopolitical player in various global theaters.
In this calculus, the Middle East figures prominently. Moscow’s approach to the region, centered on its ongoing strategic partnership with Iran, is designed to provide it with strategic options, and to enable Moscow to take advantage of any missteps Washington makes in the region.
This past April, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the spy academy of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s internal security agency, to be renamed in honor of Felix Dzerzhinsky.[2] Dzerzhinsky is a notorious figure in Russian history; he was the founder of the Cheka, the feared Soviet secret police, and the architect of the “Red Terror” that followed the 1917 Revolution and which brought the Bolsheviks to power in Moscow. During the Soviet era, the statue of Dzerzhinsky in front of the KGB headquarters in Moscow became a potent symbol of the torture, terror, and brutality of the era. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the toppling of the statue by pro-democracy protestors came to symbolize the fall of the Soviet system itself. As such, Putin’s rehabilitation of Dzerzhinsky’s name and likeness serve as an ominous indicator of his plans for Russia’s future.
Indeed, Russia is now a country geared for war, both literally and figuratively. The Kremlin’s current, massive focus on investment in its military-industrial complex is a product of the Ukraine war in more ways than one. Just as the invasion of Ukraine was about more than Ukraine for the Kremlin, so is the current Kremlin drive for militarization. Putin portrays Russia as being under attack from the West, and argues that the West was using Ukraine to invade and undermine his country. As a result, militarization is about not only the current war in Ukraine, but, as Moscow sees it, in the service of a broader confrontation with the West.
In fact, there are signs that Russia’s defense-industrial base has learned from the country’s failures in Ukraine, and those lessons have informed its efforts to modernize Russian military capabilities.[3] That modernization, according to recent U.S. intelligence assessments, is impressive. It includes, among other initiatives, the development of hypersonic glide vehicles, nuclear powered cruise missiles, and nuclear-capable underwater platforms.[4] Analysts have also noted Russian advances in space sensing and maneuverability, suggesting major investments in that domain as well.[5]
All of this has been undergirded by major capital infusions. The country’s military spending now represents nearly 7.5% of its GDP, for a total of $190 billion. That represents the highest level of military expenditure ever recorded in Russia and Ukraine, according to Lorenzo Scarazzato of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.[6]
Those expenditures, moreover, are only expected to grow. Privately, Western officials have long acknowledged that Russia now produces more munitions than all of NATO combined. Just under 4 million Russian citizens are employed by the country’s defense-industrial complex, according to 2024 and 2025 statistics, which is a record for modern Russia.[7] Meanwhile, Russian elites profit handsomely from the war through lucrative military contracts, the exploitation of resources in Ukraine’s occupied territories, and either the outright seizure of assets from departing Western companies or their purchase at heavily discounted prices.[8] Indeed, since the invasion of Ukraine started, and despite a widening array of Western sanctions, the number of Russian billionaires has actually grown. In its annual tally of the world’s wealthiest people earlier this year, Forbes listed a record 155 Russians, marking the fourth consecutive year that the number has increased.[9]
That means Russian militarization ranks as a matter of domestic stability for the Kremlin. Any reduction of jobs in the country’s military sector is likely to cause civil unrest. In a manner of speaking, therefore, Putin simply cannot afford peace. In addition, Russia is now receiving an added influx of revenue from the Trump administration’s temporary lifting of sanctions, as Washington works to stabilize global markets against the backdrop of its conflict with Iran. Those resources, however, will inevitably go toward guns rather than butter, and will help Russia to reconstitute its military forces.
This martial focus naturally translates into an activist foreign policy, beginning with Moscow’s deep and longstanding strategic partnership with Iran.[10]
“Neither East nor West but Islamic Republic,” became a defining slogan of Iranian revolutionaries in 1979, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But with Khomeini’s death a decade later, some Iranian officials sought to improve ties with Moscow. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani even traveled to Moscow in June 1989 to explore rapprochement between Tehran and Moscow. By the late 1990s, Russia had emerged as Iran’s main conventional arms supplier and began assisting its nuclear program.
With Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power, the Russia-Iran relationship continued to grow. The arms trade between the two countries expanded further, and the Kremlin’s diplomats vocally supported Iran’s nuclear program as a peaceful endeavor and worked diligently to dilute Western sanctions on Tehran. By a decade ago, high-level meetings of the countries’ top officials became practically routine.
For Russia, this support carried a deeper and more strategic character than many acknowledged or understood. Moscow and Tehran both sought a new, multipolar world order in which Western influence would be diminished. Influential Russian thinkers and intellectuals, such as Eurasianist ideologue Alexander Dugin, came to see Iran as a key link in a Eurasian arc of influence that stretched all the way to China. Those views, moreover, were mirrored in Tehran.[11]
In January 2025, this relationship culminated in a strategic agreement that details cooperation on defense, intelligence sharing, energy and other trade, nuclear energy, as well as media/information and cultural exchanges. Perhaps most importantly, the bilateral agreement stipulates a shared commitment to refrain from aiding an aggressor if either country is attacked.[12]
Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Russia increased cooperation with Iran following the June 2025 “Twelve Day War,” and that it further stepped up its support to the Iranian regime after the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Tehran in March 2026. This assistance reportedly includes providing Iran with intelligence about the locations and movement of American troops, ships and aircraft.[13] Ukrainian intelligence, for its part, has said that Russia’s intelligence helped Tehran to strike Israel’s energy sites.[14]
Russia is also said to have sent drones to Iran—upgraded versions of the unmanned platforms that Iran originally provided Russia for its war machine in Ukraine, American and European officials say.[15] Analysts likewise observed that Iranian strike patterns appeared very similar to Russian operations, which suggests that Russia provided Iran with tactical advice as well.[16]
This support is hardly a departure from Russia’s previous assistance to Iran. It simply builds on the Kremlin’s longstanding backing for the Iranian regime. For years, Moscow has engaged in major military cooperation with Tehran, providing it with systems like the S-300, with trainer jets and attack helicopters, and with light arms.[17] Iran has likewise relied on Russia to launch satellites into orbit, providing the Islamic Republic with a space-based capability to surveil targets in the region and beyond.[18] Russia has also assisted Iran with domestic repression. For instance, Tehran reportedly used Russian Spartak armored vehicles to suppress protests in 2025, and Russian jamming technology to keep Iranian citizens offline during the course of the most recent war.[19]
That help is logical. Any weakening of the current regime in Iran would hurt Moscow’s interests, and Russian leaders have long feared a pro-Western turn in Tehran. This is not just because such a shift would take a strategic ally off the board for the Kremlin. It is also because Iran is an integral member of an axis of revanchist states that, together with Russia and China, support one another against the West. In other words, Iran is a core pillar of a multipolar (or, as the Russians describe it, “polycentric”) world order that Putin has pursued since coming to power more than a quarter-century ago.
This assistance, meanwhile, has paid dividends for Putin. Even as his government does everything short of intervening militarily to make sure the Iranian regime remains in power, Russia’s president is publicly positioning himself as a neutral mediator. The Kremlin, for instance, has repeatedly offered to play an active role in brokering a peace agreement between Iran and the U.S. by removing Iran’s highly enriched uranium.[20] U.S. officials have thus far ruled out turning to Russia to help secure Iran’s nuclear program. But Putin continues to repeat the offer in hopes that he might eventually be taken up on it.
Meanwhile, Moscow is clearly benefiting from the economic effects of the current conflict. Rising global energy prices, and a temporary lifting of U.S. sanctions, has sent fresh funds flowing into Russian coffers, with potentially transformative results.[21] At the same time, Iran’s closure of the Hormuz Strait helps Russia on another front as well, given its role as the world’s second largest exporter of fertilizer. Moscow is now well-positioned to earn additional revenue in this domain, as well as to improve its standing among many nations in the Middle East and Africa, which are deeply dependent on Russian wheat and fertilizer. All of which is likely to strengthen perceptions of Russia in the Global South as an indispensable actor in time of a global crisis.
Russia’s Mideast activism is not confined to partnership with Iran, however. It also entails an ongoing commitment to a presence in Syria. Early assessments assumed the fall of that country’s Kremlin-backed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in late 2024 would end up being a major blow to Russia. But while Russia did suffer a significant setback with the ouster of the Assad regime, it immediately began positioning itself for the future in the former Ba’athist state.
In doing so, Putin has astutely judged that Syria remains deeply reliant on Russian assistance. As both Syria’s current president, Ahmed al- Sharaa, and its Foreign Minister, Assad al-Shaibani, have said in public interviews, if the Kremlin let Assad fall (which it did), there would be a place for Russia in post-Assad Syria.[22]
That represents a significant turnaround. Moscow had bombed al Sharaa and his HTS forces in previous years as part of its backing for the beleaguered Assad. But al-Sharaa has shown no qualms making a practical deal with the Russian government to secure his position in power. This is so for practical reasons. Just as Russia’s promise to give up support for Assad was crucial to helping al-Sharaa secure his victory, Russia’s role in post-Assad Syria remains important for Damascus.
This is particularly the case in the country’s security sector, as recent episodes demonstrate. For instance, following the outbreak of sectarian violence in western Syria in March 2025, Russia let many families take refuge at its Kheimim airbase, an event that was widely publicized by the Russian foreign ministry at the time. As many as 8 thousand refugees sheltered in Khmeimim, according to official Russian sources.[23] Whether or not those numbers were exaggerated, the incident demonstrated to Damascus that Russia could serve as a stabilizing security force moving forward.
By the end of 2025, Russia had briefly redeployed its military police to southern Syria, ostensibly to act as a mediator and buffer between Israeli forces and Damascus. Reports in November 2025 indicated that Russia may play a role in supporting and developing Syria’s civil security and police sectors as well, possibly through joint security agreements.[24]
Indeed, Moscow has moved quickly to consolidate its position in Syria’s new order. Here, it has clear advantages. Given Syria’s decades-long dependence on Soviet and then Russian military equipment, Damascus will continue to remain reliant on Russian arms, especially in the absence of other alternatives.
Russia likewise remains Syria’s primary oil supplier and prints Syrian currency. Russian companies like Tatneft have been invited back into the country over the past year. Moreover, the Kremlin retains ties to all of the country’s political factions (SDF, Alawites, Druze) and, therefore, can exploit ethnic tensions to keep Syria weak and dependent while positioning itself as a protector of Syria’s minorities.
Putin has hosted al-Sharaa himself twice since Assad’s ouster: first in October 2025 and again in January 2026. These meetings aimed to improve ties between Moscow and Damascus. They not only ensured that Russia’s military bases in the country remained operational, but also preserved the energy and reconstruction contracts that the Assad regime had previously awarded to Russian companies. This outcome suggests that, rather than “redefining” the relationship with Russia, as Sharaa had previously pledged, many of the core elements of Syria’s dependence on Russia established during the Assad regime remain in place.
Meanwhile, Putin’s restraint on Iran serves a larger purpose in the rest of the Middle East. It allows Moscow to simultaneously retain good ties with the Arab states, Turkey, and Israel, even if those actors are unhappy with Russia’s support for Iran. Indeed, no country has taken steps to move away from Russia since the start of the Iran war, just as they didn’t when Russia invaded Ukraine several years earlier.
With the Gulf States, the Kremlin has engaged in extensive diplomacy to maintain its contacts. With the UAE, Putin has offered to serve as mediator, and to relay Abu Dhabi’s security signals directly to Tehran. [25] Similarly, with Bahrain, Putin has emphasized Russia’s diplomatic role in a solution to the conflict.[26] And with Saudi Arabia, there appears to be recognition that Russia could leverage its unique ties with both Iran and the Gulf states to play a stabilizing role in the crisis.
Moscow has also managed its relationship with Israel carefully. With the outbreak of hostilities this Spring, Moscow coordinated with the IDF to evacuate its personnel from Iranian nuclear sites[27], even as Putin used international platforms to pressure and criticize Israel publicly. Moscow’s nuanced engagement with the Jewish state has distinctly political dimensions, because Israel is home to a large Russian speaking population, a constituency which represents a significant factor in the Kremlin’s calculations about its regional policies.[28] That, in turn, has allowed policymakers in Jerusalem to remain relatively sanguine about Russia, and rebounded to Moscow’s benefit since it has muted Israeli moves toward closer partnership with Ukraine.
Beyond this general willingness to engage with Russia diplomatically, the region remains interested in engaging the Kremlin for another reason as well: weaponry.[29] Russia’s continued militarization and innovation, meanwhile, will ensure that it has more arms and technology to offer to weapons-hungry Mideast states.
Russia’s posture in the Middle East is often portrayed as a mere series of ad hoc responses to unfolding crises. That, however, significantly underestimates the extent of the Kremlin’s plans. In recent years, under Putin’s direction, Moscow has been pursuing a nuanced, consistent, and calibrated approach—one that does not seek direct confrontation with the United States, but which strives to erode Western influence, expand its own leverage, and shape outcomes across the region.
The stakes are high. If Iran eventually takes a pro-Western turn, it will hurt Russia’s interests in the Middle East,and by extension Moscow’s global ambitions. Even in that eventuality, however, Russia can be counted on to find a way to work with the new regime. For the time being, though, the conflict surrounding Iran is paying clear dividends for Russia while reinforcing to Iran’s remaining regime the importance of continued alignment with the Kremlin. Simply put, however the Iran crisis ends, Russia seems well positioned for the aftermath.
That, in turn, should be instructive to Western policymakers. Russia clearly sees its role in the region as structural, deliberate, and deeply intertwined with its own global ambitions. Accounting for it will be a necessity for Washington.
More than a quarter-century into his rule, Vladimir Putin’s grip on Russia has, for all intents and purposes, become absolute. But this unquestioned political dominance also means that Russia’s president bears full responsibility for the massive strategic losses caused by his disastrous 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The list of setbacks is long. In human terms, the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded as a result of the Kremlin’s “special military operation” now exceeds one million, making the Ukraine war more costly than all of the country’s post-World War II conflicts combined.[1] This loss, together with the exodus of between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Russians as a result of the war (including its most technically savvy and entrepreneurial inhabitants) has only served to deepen the country’s already-acute demographic crisis.[2]
The country’s military is deeply dysfunctional, riddled with low morale, inadequately trained and poorly resourced troops. Russia’s early stumbles, and its ongoing difficulties on the battlefield, have succeeded in shattering the post-Cold War mystique of its military prowess, the appeal of its weapons in the eyes of foreign consumers, and Moscow’s ability to help foreign allies such as Syria, Venezuela and Cuba. At the same time, its aggression against Ukraine has had a galvanizing effect on European governments, which at long last (thanks to prodding from the Trump administration) are spending significantly more on defense. European collective defense is expanding as well, and NATO’s most recent entrants include Finland, with its combined military force of 1.2 million people (larger than the combined forces of France, Germany and Great Britain). The cumulative effect has been a stronger and better resourced NATO, and one with an additional 830 miles of common border with the Russian Federation.
Moscow, meanwhile, has been unable to defend itself even against Ukrainian retaliatory strikes, which have wreaked havoc on vital infrastructure like refineries, pipelines and ports. As a result of those attacks, by April 2026 Russia was estimated to have lost one-fifth or more of its total oil export capacity. The attacks also disrupted supply lines to such an extent that Moscow service stations are expected to be forced to ration gas, as is now already being done in Crimea.[4] These problems, moreover, are sure to increase as Ukraine attacks continue.
Other economic costs have mounted as well. Western sanctions levied on Russia over the past half-decade have erased many of the gains made by the country since the end of the Cold War, while the war’s mounting costs have pushed Russia into economic stagnation.[5] Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, traditionally used to cover the national budget deficit, stood at $210 billion in June of 2022.[6] By early 2026, the readily usable portion of it had shrunk to $53 billion, a serious problem, given that Russia’s estimated 2026 budget deficit is $72 billion.[7] Even worse, the remainder of Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund is largely composed of gold or Chinese yuan, thereby limiting how it can be used. At the same time, the closure of European markets to Russia has left the Kremlin with little choice but to sell its wares (and its energy) to a dwindling number of trading partners at bargain-basement prices.
Moreover, the worst economic news may be yet to come. Whenever the war ultimately ends, there will be no money on hand to retool factories that have been converted to the unneeded production of war materiel. And there will be no money to repair an increasingly frail system of bridges, sewers, and other critical infrastructure. That, in turn, will mean no jobs for soldiers coming home with guns and tales of the real situation on the front, something that will invariably raise the likelihood of anti-government ferment.
Under any other system, the person responsible for such a comprehensive list of failures would have been removed long ago, or at a minimum prevented from doubling down on his errors. Democracies vote their leaders out. Communist systems remove theirs by committee. But dictators like Putin, who rule overwhelmingly through force and terror, are more likely to be removed involuntarily, via assassinations or coups.
Indeed, Putin’s longevity can be attributed largely to effective repression. For years, political opponents and dissidents, whether inside Russia or abroad, have met untimely ends. Some have fallen from open windows or died in some other “accident.” Still others have been killed in more exotic fashion or gunned down in public places (as in the case of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, who was shot to death steps from the Kremlin).
Regardless of the method, everyone has absorbed the message: opposing Putin’s regime is extremely dangerous to your health. As a result, even those who think the current Russian president should be removed are loath to share such thoughts, because they simply don’t know who can be trusted. And without such communication, it becomes very difficult to organize such an ouster.
Nevertheless, history teaches us that most dictators do eventually leave the scene ignominiously. Of the 127 dictatorships that have existed since 1950 in countries with populations of 10 million or more, nearly half (42%) were removed by coups while in more than a fifth (21%), power changed hands as a result of assassination.[8] One or the other tends to happen when the proper people decide that a coup, or an assassination, is less dangerous than continued inaction.
Of course, it is simply not possible to tell when such a calculation could be made in Russia. Putin may stay in power until he dies a natural death. Alternatively, unforeseen events could trigger his removal. But if Putin’s ultimate fate is an open question, it’s still possible to identify the conditions that would make his ouster more probable.
Here, public opinion matters, but not in the way most people think. In authoritarian societies, consensus is manufactured and diligently curated to the point that polling becomes unreliable. That is why even the findings of the most credible Russian pollsters (such as the historically well-regarded Levada Center) need to be viewed with some caution.
Even so, there are always senior officials and public personalities who are so prominent that they have a degree of latitude not enjoyed by the rest of the population. When consensus among this cohort begins to shift, it is indicative of a deeper (and potentially transformative) trend.
That is happening in Russia now, as more and more of these elites make their displeasure with the war and domestic conditions known. One such individual is Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the current head of the All Russia Officers Assembly, and the closest thing that Russia has to a national military hero. In a December 2025 interview, Ivashov offered up a litany of domestic failures, from corruption to military underperformance, that he put at the feet of the Kremlin.[9] Increasingly vocal critiques likewise can now be heard from propagandists, media personalities and assorted other corners of the Russian political scene, as my colleague S. Frederick Starr has documented.[10]
The fact that these individuals are now speaking out publicly in opposition to the Kremlin speaks volumes. In Russia’s rigid, tightly controlled political system, doing so without reprisal from entrenched organs of the state is simply impossible without a degree of political protection. Quite simply, absent the backing of key power brokers, critics are liable to end up in jail at best. At worst, they can meet fates like the one that befell anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony from what was determined to be poisoning.[11]
The current level of criticism is thus notable. It suggests that those opposition views are sanctioned by another part of the Russian system.
Whatever the reason, the volume of criticism in Russia is getting louder and it is being taken seriously enough by Putin and his cohort that the government is intensifying domestic repression. In recent months, this has included all manner of restrictions and curbs, most prominent among them severe limitations on the Russian population’s use of the internet (an extremely unpopular move, especially among the country’s youth).
Through these steps, Putin has managed to establish an uneasy modus vivendi that has permitted him to continue to rule. But he will not do so forever. A deterioration of his health, forced retirement, or even an assassination could abruptly bring new leadership to Moscow.
What might such change look like? While the name of Putin’s successor is not yet known, the forces that will shape his rise to power are.
History teaches us that attaining political power in Russia requires the mobilization of key institutions and the elites who control them. As in the past, the military, intelligence services, oligarchs, regional elites, and political office holders will all play roles in determining both the process and the outcome of a change in the country’s leadership. Understanding their interests, and the ways in which they interact, offers us the best available guide to how Russia’s post-Putin future may unfold.
The military, if it chooses to involve itself, will be decisive, because it is the state organ that has the most guns. The Russian army commands immense force, but its intervention in politics is not necessarily a given. It has historically been a cautious institution, often waiting to see which side of a political contest will prevail. In this context, the abortive coup launched in 2023 by the late Wagner head (and Putin confidante) Yevgeny Prigozhin was deeply troubling for Russia’s president, because it seemed, at least for a time, that Prighozhin was capable of harnessing Russia’s military for his own ends. Yet if the military commits decisively, it can determine the outcome of any struggle.
This is likely why Putin has, in recent years, invested so heavily in the Rosgvardiya, a pretorian guard of sorts headed by his personal friend, General Viktor Zolotov, the loyalty of which he can more readily command. (Indeed, Putin has become increasingly reliant on this force in the face of mounting domestic unrest; in early 2026, he expanded the Rosgvardiya in terms of both its organization and power.[12]) However, the Rosgvardiya also presents an inherent danger; its members are privy to Putin’s movements and are frequently in the same physical location. They are, therefore, prime recruits for any coup or assassination attempt.
Russia’s contemporary intelligence services (including the GRU, SVR, and FSB) operate alongside the armed forces, possessing capabilities that range from intelligence collection to covert action and political influence. Among them, the FSB stands out as a central pillar of the current system, deeply embedded in both political and economic life (just like its predecessor, the KGB, during Soviet times).
Other institutions add further complexity. The Ministry of Interior possesses extensive files (kompromat) on individuals across the political and economic spectrum, creating opportunities for leverage and blackmail. The Federal Protection Service controls elite security and communications, giving it unique insight into the intentions of competing factions. Each, of course, has its own interests, and each can be depended on to protect those interests during any transition.
Beyond formal institutions, significant power resides in the country’s entrenched networks of elites. Regional leaders possess influence that is rooted in economic and political ties, and their support (or opposition) can shape outcomes in moments of uncertainty. Russia’s infamous oligarchs wield significant financial resources, but they are not a coherent group per se. Their actions will be guided by pragmatic considerations: the protection of assets, the preservation of influence, and the avoidance of risk. Political office holders, meanwhile, are the pool from which a successor is most likely to emerge.
These actors are far from unified. Their interests diverge, and their alliances are fluid, all of which will shape dynamics of succession. In the absence of clear rules, competition among elites is inevitable.
Once that happens, recent history suggests that whoever follows Putin will need time to fully consolidate authority. After Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, Josef Stalin required 14 years to establish uncontested rule. It took his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, four years to do the same, while Leonid Brezhnev subsequently took nine years to fully vanquish his political enemies. Putin himself required more than a decade to bring oligarchs, regional officials, the media, and other institutions to heel after he assumed power in the last days of 1999. These precedents suggest that any future transition in Moscow will be prolonged, contested, and deeply shaped by institutional competition.
Naturally, U.S. policy options for a post-Putin Russia will be, in part, determined by how Putin himself leaves power.
If he does so voluntarily, the transition may be more orderly, but it will still naturally involve at least some degree of competition. A successor selected from the existing system may seek to preserve stability while adjusting his policies so as to reduce external pressure. Yet even a managed transition would not eliminate the underlying tensions among Russia’s assorted institutions and elites.
If Putin leaves involuntarily, though, the risks will be significantly greater. A sudden departure could lead to a prolonged struggle for power, potentially one involving violence and repression, as political factions compete for control.
In turn, whoever emerges from this process will face immediate challenges. Consolidating power will require managing rival factions and ensuring loyalty among key institutions. Maintaining national cohesion will be critical, particularly in regions with strong identities and grievances. Economic stabilization will be essential, especially under the weight of Western sanctions and the structural weaknesses of the existing system. Decisions about accountability will pose difficult dilemmas as well, as new leaders balance the need for stability with pressures for justice. (Europe, meanwhile, has complicated matters considerably through its proposal for a tribunal to hold Putin and other top Russian officials to account for the war.[13])
These challenges may prove overwhelming. If the new leadership fails to consolidate authority and address them, Russia could face prolonged instability. In the most extreme case, the modern Russian state could begin to fragment, as regions like Chechnya and Dagestan seek greater autonomy or even independence. While such outcomes are difficult to predict, they cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Russia’s foreign policy will also be shaped by the outcome of its internal transition. Continuity is one possibility, with a successor maintaining the Kremlin’s current policies and continuing its confrontation with the West. Adjustment is another, accompanied by efforts to reduce tensions. However, it’s hard to imagine that, after a half-decade of grinding conflict, sanctions would be removed without significant concessions from Moscow. One is the return of the nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children that have been kidnapped by the Russian military.[14] Another is the surrender of Russians charged and convicted by Ukrainian courts (most likely in absentia) of the most heinous of war crimes. A third is agreement to use frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine, something that Ukraine has demanded and Russia has so far refused.
For the United States, Russia’s impending political transition holds out both risks and opportunities.
A weaker Russia may reduce the political pressure it exerts on nations on its periphery (most directly in the Caucasus and Central Asia), where the Kremlin currently seeks to retain a measure of dominion. But such a retraction would not be without risk, because a rollback of Russian power could create an opening for other powers (such as China) to seek to expand their influence.
A reform-oriented leadership in Moscow, meanwhile, could enable improved relations with the West. This would not necessarily mean that Russia would take a pro-Western turn, as it did in the immediate post-Soviet period.[15] However, lessening sanctions on those oligarchs central to the new regime’s consolidation of power may prompt a more pragmatic and conciliatory foreign policy course.
On the other hand, a nationalist successor could choose a more confrontational path, either for ideological reasons or for strategic ones. In time-tested Russian fashion, such a posture could include expanded cyber-attacks or acts of sabotage in Europe—disruptions that the Kremlin could then offer to stop, for a price. Moreover, probing incursions into territory on NATO’s “eastern flank” could help Moscow to confirm the hollowness of European resolve, if there turns out to be no will on the continent to repel them.
However, the sheer scope of the internal problems that will inevitably be faced by a new Russian government, whether a reformist or a nationalist one, suggests that its grip on power will be less than absolute. That, in turn, may set the stage for a protracted struggle for power in Moscow, and perhaps further political changes thereafter.
This ongoing turmoil could have significant consequences. A lack of attention from Russia’s “federal center,” coupled with bleak local political and economic conditions, could foster separatist tendencies among the Russian Federation’s constituent parts, especially in restive republics in places such as the North Caucasus. At the same time, a Russia locked in protracted political upheaval could become an inviting target for foreign powers seeking territorial or economic advantage, chief among them China.
Policymakers in Washington need to prepare for multiple scenarios, recognizing that the trajectory of post-Putin Russia will not be preordained. Such preparation, however, requires a clear understanding of the internal dynamics of Russian power. It also requires strategic patience and flexibility. The period following Putin’s exit may offer a window of opportunity to improve relations between Moscow and Washington, but that window is likely to be both brief and uncertain. Taking advantage of it will depend on the ability of the United States and its partners to respond quickly and effectively to changing conditions in Moscow.
Is North Korea a strategic threat to the United States? For the time being, probably not.
To be sure, North Korea is an adversary—one that is hostile, heavily armed, and prone to inflammatory rhetoric. It possesses both nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yet to describe North Korea as a real danger to the American homeland in peacetime is to misunderstand both the logic of the North Korean regime and the nature of its strategic behavior.
Back in the early 1990s, North Korea lost both its primary economic sponsor (the Soviet Union) and its major military protector when China established diplomatic relations with South Korea. At the time, the DPRK’s “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, famously told the country’s top elite that “if North Korea disappears, we’ll take the rest of the world with us.”[1]
This was and remains the fundamental logic of the North Korean nuclear program. And while it might sound scary, it’s less so than it first appears. North Korea’s nuclear weapons are often portrayed as proof of the threat to the U.S. Potentially, they are. But other considerations are also at play.
From the outset, North Korea’s nuclear program has been a multipurpose undertaking. It was designed to serve a number of goals whose relative importance has changed over time. However, its principal objective is to serve as a deterrent.
Recent history has confirmed this priority. The country’s decisionmakers saw what happened to Iraq, whose nuclear program had been destroyed in its early stages by an Israeli airstrike in 1981. They also took note of Libya, whose decision to abandon its nuclear program eventually made possible NATO’s intervention in the civil war that ended with the fall of the Gaddafi regime. North Korean scientists likewise were believed to be in the Syrian desert when the Assad regime’s military nuclear reactor was destroyed by the Israeli air force in 2007. Regardless of what they said officially, officials in Pyongyang likewise have not failed to notice what happened to Ukraine, which, after signing the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that it would receive meaningful protection from the U.S., and which has paid the heavy price for this illusion. Finally, they are watching what is happening to Iran right now.
The conclusions that North Korea’s leaders have arrived at are easy to reconstruct: in the modern world, for small and medium-sized powers, going nuclear is one of the most reliable ways to ensure security.
Admittedly, the North Korean nuclear program has other purposes as well. For instance, it has served as a highly effective tool of diplomatic extortion. Without it, the Kim dynasty would have had considerably more difficulty surviving in the face of hostile global politics. In addition, the nuclear program has proven useful for building the DPRK’s prestige, both domestically and internationally. Its existence also provides a plausible justification when the country’s propagandists have to explain to common folk why their lives are so difficult, and the country so poor.
Nuclear weapons thus provide much-needed deterrence and serve a number of other goals. None of them, however, would require attacking the U.S.
All this matters because a country represents a true threat to the United States only when there is a serious possibility that it might deliberately and preemptively attack. That is not the case here; North Korean officials understand all too well that any direct attack on the United States, especially a nuclear one, would trigger massive retaliation and very likely result in the destruction of the North Korean state and the death of its ruling class.
For their part, North Korean leaders have never been suicidal ideologues. Unlike Islamists or “classical” communists, they do not dream of converting all of humanity to their creed or bestowing a supposed paradise upon a suffering world. Their aims are far more modest, and largely limited to their national borders. Unlike Iran, with its declared goal of destroying Israel, they do not have clocks counting down to the destruction of South Korea, the U.S., or any other nation.
The DPRK is also a secular state. Neither Kim Jong Un nor any other North Korean leader has ever claimed a religious duty to embrace self-sacrifice in order to cleanse the world of “evil forces” (such as U.S. imperialism). Indeed, Kim Jong Un has repeatedly asserted that if the U.S. were to rescind its “hostile policy,” there is no reason why the two countries cannot get along. (In practice, of course, such a change would require Washington to abandon South Korea as a military ally, potentially leaving it open to nuclear coercion or worse.)
Nonetheless, nothing in North Korean ideology, whether in its officially declared form or in the views of the elite (to the extent these are known to us) indicates that North Korea harbors any kind of irrational offensive designs. The country’s semi-hereditary elites live a life of modest luxury and hope to remain in control of their state until their physical death and, with some luck, to pass that control on to their children and eventually grandchildren.[2]
That brings us back to Kim Jong Il’s formulation. The only scenario in which a North Korean nuclear attack against the outside world, including the United States, can plausibly be imagined is one in which North Korea has been invaded, is on the brink of defeat, and its top leadership is being targeted by decapitation operations while being denied any possibility of escape to China or another friendly country. The likelihood of such a scenario is low, and in any case the United States has full control over whether such a circumstance would arise in the first place.
To be sure, North Korean leaders likely also still harbor at least some ambitions of subduing South Korea, whose extraordinary economic and social success represents a major threat to North Korean political stability in the long run. The per capita income gap between North and South Korea is estimated at roughly 1:29, the largest between any two neighboring countries in the world.[3] The North Korean ruling class has so far protected itself by keeping the country as isolated from the outside world as possible. In the longer run, however, eliminating South Korea as a point of comparison might appear to them a better way of mitigating this problem.
This goal might be achieved by persuading the North Korean public that the South, contrary to what has been claimed for so long, is not really a country populated by the same nation of people. The DPRK has already embarked on this path; in 2023, Kim Jong Un asserted that North and South Korea are two different states and should be seen as such.[4] As such, a military strike against the South, or nuclear coercion short of actual use, is doubtless tempting for Pyongyang.
At present, however, the DPRK is not ready for such an undertaking, especially given the continued presence of a large U.S. military force south of the DMZ. It appears to lack reliable tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield and theater use, and North Korea’s conventional armed forces are significantly inferior to those of the South. Hence, the regime would only be able to attack cities or other large targets in South Korea, which could easily provoke a massive retaliatory intervention from other nuclear powers not willing to let large-scale nuclear use go without a response. Fundamentally, a North prepared to use nuclear weapons in a large-scale preemptive attack on South Korea would be intolerable to regional and international security.
This is well understood in Pyongyang, which is why the DPRK is trying to alter the current balance of power on the peninsula by developing low-yield tactical nuclear weapons and long-range strike capabilities (principally precision-strike cruise and short-range ballistic missiles). These are weapons that could potentially be used against South Korea to offset Seoul’s current strategic superiority.
To be sure, the North is also developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could be used not only for deterrence but also as a tool to blackmail the United States into reneging on its alliance commitments to the South if and when Pyongyang decides to attack. But such blackmail would be highly risky and, if invoked, would create a precedent in which Washington would likely be forced to respond (given the implications for America’s other alliance commitments if it fails to do so).
For now, however, North Korea’s nuclear weapons are better understood not as a sword intended to enable the eventual subjugation of South Korea, but rather as a shield protecting the regime. It is still possible to ensure that these weapons remain such. The North Korean nuclear problem cannot be “solved,” but it can be managed. That is why negotiations with North Korea remain necessary.
The basic outline of a possible solution was already visible in the discussions that surrounded the U.S.-DPRK summit in Hanoi, Vietnam back in 2019. There, the two sides considered a possible compromise under which North Korea would dismantle most of its nuclear facilities in exchange for substantial sanctions relief.[5] It would have been implicitly understood, of course, that North Korea would retain a limited number of weapons and some associated facilities, sufficient for it to carry out successful deterrence. There are some indications that Pyongyang may still be interested in such a deal.
There is no question that such an agreement, if it does materialize, would be far from perfect. Among other things, North Korea would almost certainly cheat. Yet if it were deprived of a substantial part of its nuclear research and production infrastructure, the pace of its nuclear development would likely slow considerably. Pyongyang would thus probably continue to produce some nuclear weapons in secret, but in much smaller numbers and perhaps with more limited capabilities than would otherwise be the case.
On the other hand, sanctions relief would give North Korea renewed access to international markets. That, in turn, could encourage the regime to resume the economic reforms that it pursued with some success between 2012 and 2018. And, if such reforms produced meaningful economic gains, it is possible that the North Korean leadership might gradually lose interest in further accelerating their nuclear buildup.
New talks are necessary, but must be built around a clear objective: not to neutralize a major threat, but to make sure such a threat does not emerge eventually.
Portraying North Korea as an imminent and direct threat to the United States can be harmful. It narrows diplomatic space and pushes U.S. policy toward unrealistic goals. Illusions are dangerous. A clearer understanding of North Korea as a regime driven, above all, by survival supports a more prudent approach grounded in deterrence, containment, pressure (where necessary), and diplomacy (where possible).
There is a tendency in Washington foreign policy circles to treat the Balkans as a problem to be managed, rather than an asset to be cultivated. This is a strategic mistake, and one that grows more costly by the day.
The Western Balkans sit at the crossroads of Europe, bridging NATO’s eastern and southern flanks, threaded through by energy corridors, migration routes, and supply chains that matter to the entire transatlantic community. Stability here is not a regional nicety. It is a prerequisite for European security. But when attention drifts elsewhere, that stability comes under strain.
In Bosnia, efforts to centralize political authority well beyond what the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords envisioned have fueled dangerous tensions. It is worth remembering what Dayton actually was: the agreement that stopped a war. Its carefully balanced architecture, imperfect as any compromise must be, is not a relic to be discarded, but a foundation to be respected. Attempts to override it risk reopening wounds that took a generation to close.
In Kosovo, the situation remains unresolved in ways that demand honesty rather than diplomatic euphemism. Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2008 remains unrecognized by more than half the world’s countries, including five EU member states. Serbia cannot and will not recognize that declaration. This is not intransigence on our part; it is a position grounded both in international law and in the sovereignty of our state. At the same time, however, Belgrade seeks normalized relations with the authorities in Pristina. We want functional coexistence. And we want people on both sides to live better lives.
For nearly a decade, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama have led the most consequential reconciliation process in history between Serbs and Albanians. Two neighbors whose relationship has been defined for too long by rivalry and mistrust are now choosing dialogue over hostility. Their partnership recently culminated in a joint op-ed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung arguing that the EU should admit Serbia, Albania, and the rest of the Western Balkans without the veto mechanisms that too often have paralyzed the continent’s decision-making.
It was a bold proposal, and one that was attacked by political opponents on both sides. That was predictable. Leaders who take risks for peace rarely receive thanks in the short term. History, on the other hand, tends to be more generous.
For Serbia, EU membership remains a strategic objective. Progress, however, has stalled, although not primarily because of rule of law deficiencies, as Serbia’s detractors claim. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, they did so under standards the Western Balkans have long since surpassed in many measurable respects. The bar has been raised, selectively and significantly, for our region. The EU’s own internal divisions and enlargement fatigue are the primary impediments to Serbia’s accession. We know this, and we are patient. But we will not pretend that the obstacle is entirely on our side.
In the meantime, Serbia is not standing still. Non-membership means flexibility, and we are using it. Serbia offers American companies something increasingly rare in Europe: a friend-shoring destination with deep transatlantic ties, a highly skilled workforce, and a regulatory environment that is business-friendly without the red tape that has accumulated over decades inside the EU. The results speak for themselves. Our technology sector now accounts for nearly 10% of national GDP, among the highest ratios in all of Europe, and it is growing fast.
But Serbia’s independence of action is not just an economic advantage. It is a moral one as well. Nowhere is this clearer than in our relationship with Israel.
On the evening of October 8, 2023, the day after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Serbia received a message from Israel: it needed military materiel, and needed it quickly. President Vučić responded, and within four days Serbia delivered. “I am the only one in Europe today dealing in military ammunition with Israel,” Vučić has said plainly. “And it is why I am often criticized by colleagues.”
He is right on both counts. Serbia has provided security assistance to Israel at a moment when European solidarity with the Jewish state has been conspicuously lacking. When Israeli sports teams needed a home away from home, driven out of their own venues by security concerns and the creeping boycott culture infecting European football, they chose Belgrade. They knew they would be welcomed there, and they were right. Not a single antisemitic slogan was heard. Instead, the yellow flag recalling the badge Jews were forced to wear under Nazi occupation was flown alongside the Serbian flag over our presidential palace, an act of memory and of moral clarity.
That memory runs deep in Serbia. According to Yad Vashem, the Ustasha, the Croatian fascist movement that ruled a Nazi puppet state during World War II and carried out the extermination of Croatian Jews as part of the broader Holocaust, also exterminated over 500,000 Serbs, expelled another 250,000, and forced 250,000 more to convert from Orthodox Christianity to Catholicism. We know what it means to be targeted for who you are. It is why our solidarity with Israel is not a policy position, but a moral reflex.
Some European capitals hold Serbia’s position on Israel against us. Let them. We consider it to be one of our finest hours.
This brings me to something too many American policymakers seem to have forgotten. For most of the history of relations between our two countries, Serbia and the United States were allies, and close ones at that. During the First World War, the Serbian flag was flown over the White House, one of only two foreign flags ever granted that distinction. Our nations bled together against the same enemies.
Subsequently, during the Second World War, that alliance was highlighted in individual acts of extraordinary courage. Operation Halyard, the largest rescue operation of American airmen in history, saw ordinary Serbian villagers shelter, feed, and protect hundreds of downed U.S. pilots at great personal risk from Nazi reprisals. These were farmers and shepherds who had nothing to gain and everything to lose. A memorial now stands in Serbia shaped like the C-47 transport plane that eventually carried those airmen to safety.
Serbia wants to see the transatlantic relationship thrive. We are a European country (and in a meaningful sense so is the United States) because it has been shaped by European civilization, thought, and sacrifice. Neither of us is in the European Union, but both of us have a stake in its success and in the stability of the continent it is meant to anchor.
Washington should see the Balkans not as a post-conflict waiting room but as a region of strategic consequence, one where a reliable, growing, independent-minded Serbia is a genuine partner. We have shown that we stand by our friends, even when it costs us. And we have demonstrated that we can drive reconciliation, even at political risk. That is not the profile of a problem. That is the profile of an ally.
The United States and Serbia have been on the right side of history together before, and the foundation of that alliance has never gone away. It is time to build on it.
