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21. A Historical Evaluation of China’s India Policy: Lessons for India-China Relations

Author:
Vijay Gokhale
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The violent clash in the Galwan valley in eastern Ladakh in 2020 fundamentally altered the dynamics of the India-China relationship. China’s increasing transgressions and attempts at coercion in the border areas since 2008–2009 have put the boundary question to the center of the India-China relationship. The salience of this question has also increased because the geopolitical backlash to China’s actions in 2020 has been greater than in previous instances, and because India’s policymakers and strategic community are no longer willing to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt regarding its intentions and actions. This has prompted a comprehensive relook in India at the past, present, and future of the relationship. While much of this has focused on the relationship from the Indian perspective and on trying to understand India’s China policy, the current chill in ties has highlighted the necessity of understanding China’s India policy. Thus, using Chinese sources, this paper analyzes the drivers of that policy and the options available to Indian policymakers to engage with, adapt to, and mold it. This paper argues that from the time of Mao Zedong’s rise to the helm of the Chinese Communist Party and the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s India policy has been shaped by its view of the larger great power strategic triangle of China, the Soviet Union (later Russia), and the United States. As this triangle has evolved, this has had a direct effect on the India-China relationship. For much of the past seventy years, China was the weakest corner of the triangle and therefore driven by goals of security and status. In that context, it saw India—another large, developing country in Asia—as a competitor for security and status alike. As a result, China always looked at India through the lens of its own relations with the Soviet Union and the United States. It did not view India on its own merits, or credit it with agency, but as unequal as well as untrustworthy. China’s objective during the Cold War was to keep India as neutral as possible. In the post–Cold War period, the goal evolved to limit through containment and coercion India’s capacity to harm China’s strategic goal of hegemony. This paper analyzes China’s India policy in three phases. In the first phase between 1949 and 1962, China viewed the United States as its primary adversary and its core objective was to keep India neutral and away from the U.S. camp on matters of concern to Beijing. Flowing from this was the secondary objective of utilizing India’s influence in the developing world to build “Asian solidarity” to stem U.S. inroads into Asia.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, Territorial Disputes, and Military
Political Geography:
China, India, and Asia

22. Russia’s Wartime Cyber Operations in Ukraine: Military Impacts, Influences, and Implications

Author:
Jon Bateman
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
This paper examines the military effectiveness of Russia’s wartime cyber operations in Ukraine,1 the reasons why these operations have not had greater strategic impact, and the lessons applicable to other countries’ military cyber efforts. It builds on previous analyses by taking a more systematic and detailed approach that incorporates a wider range of publicly available data. A major purpose of this paper is to help bridge the divide between cyber-specific and general military analysis of the Russia-Ukraine war. Most analysis of Russian cyber operations in Ukraine has been produced by cyber specialists writing for their own field, with limited integration of non-cyber military sources and concepts. Conversely, leading accounts of the war as a whole include virtually no mention of cyber operations.2 To begin filling the gap, this paper places Russian cyber operations in Ukraine within the larger frame of Moscow’s military objectives, campaigns, and kinetic activities.
Topic:
Cybersecurity, Military, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

23. Africa’s Infrastructure-Led Growth Experiment Is Faltering. It Is Time to Focus on Agriculture

Author:
David Ndii
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Over the past few decades, several low- and middle-income economies in Africa and elsewhere have sought to turbocharge growth by adopting an export-led economic model premised on heavy investments in infrastructure and building up domestic manufacturing capacity. But this strategy has often not produced the economic gains that have been promised for a variety of reasons. The continued emphasis on infrastructure investment fails to account for the fact that even those African countries that have invested a great deal in infrastructure continue to lag other countries in Asia (like Bangladesh) in key manufacturing sectors like textiles regardless of infrastructure quality. In addition, this approach overlooks the fact that African countries do not have the same comparative advantages as the Asian Tigers that perfected and popularized the export-led growth model: while those Asian countries had an abundance of low-wage labor, wages in Africa are typically higher than those of other countries at comparable development levels. Instead of fixating on infrastructure, African countries should look to the experience of Latin American countries with similar resource endowments: a greater relative abundance of land than low-cost labor. As this experience shows, countries can make far more durable, sustainable economic gains by focusing on improving agricultural productivity with relatively low-cost improvements targeted at smallholder farmers for whom a boost in productivity would have the largest impact.
Topic:
Agriculture, Infrastructure, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Africa

24. Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic: Leveraging Biotechnology to Tackle Infectious Diseases in India

Author:
Shruti Sharma
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
In India, the coronavirus pandemic encouraged partnerships between academia and industry, fostered collaboration among competitor companies, and stimulated cooperation within different government departments to leverage biotechnology to develop new test kits, protective equipment, vaccines, and respiratory devices. Despite this collaborative ecosystem, a few stakeholders faced several challenges during different stages of product development including discovery, research and development (R&D), clinical trial, or commercialization of their products. Some of these challenges can be attributed to a lack of an ecosystem that encourages collaborative research in India, limited involvement of private funding entities, a gap between academia and industry where university researchers lack sufficient awareness of the imperatives of industry, and a lack of awareness regarding contemporary applications of biotechnology among the regulatory community. The goal of this paper is to provide all stakeholders and the Indian public an overview of the role that advancements in biotechnology can play in strengthening India’s public health capacity. While the pandemic offered significant opportunities to the scientific community and private players in India to develop medical countermeasures, this paper only illustrates examples that discuss strategies that were adopted to accelerate the development of diagnostics and vaccines in the country. It further elucidates the challenges, both regulatory and funding, that some stakeholders faced in introducing new diagnostics and vaccines into the market during the pandemic. The paper argues that it is important for India to adopt a systematic approach to sustain the collaborative ecosystem that was cultivated during the pandemic. It further provides a brief assessment of the policies that regulate vaccines and diagnostic kits in India and the scope of enhanced and better implementation in the future. The paper also suggests strategies to maintain a continuous flow of investment to sustain research, streamline the regulatory infrastructure to minimize ambiguities regarding product approvals, and foster multistakeholder collaboration to create a sustainable research and innovation ecosystem that can be leveraged during health emergencies in the future.
Topic:
Infectious Diseases, Public Health, COVID-19, and Biotechnology
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

25. Will France’s Africa Policy Hold Up?

Author:
Corentin Cohen
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
During his first term, French President Emmanuel Macron sought to revitalize his country’s diplomatic outreach to countries throughout Africa. Some aspects of this pivot were designed to more directly address the legacy of French colonialism in Francophone countries. He also sensed that the growing stature of non-Western powers like China has given African counterparts greater latitude to pursue ties amid heightened diplomatic competition among a host of other countries both in Europe and elsewhere. In pursuing this strategy, Macron has sought to promote a vision of French diplomacy with Africa through greater foreign aid and more robust people-to-people ties grounded in a spirit of partnerships between equals. While Macron’s efforts have created an opening for renewed relationships, this pivot has not been as seamless as he had hoped. Bureaucratic inertia and stovepiping in French foreign policy circles have at times meant that implementation of these policies has lagged. In certain cases, Macron’s own nationalistic appeals during his recent reelection bid have appeared to undercut his attempts to make amends for France’s troubling colonial history. Meanwhile the French president’s attempts to deepen economic, people-to-people, and security ties in more equitable ways have fallen short of lofty expectations, with past practices proving harder than expected to jettison. For Macron’s ambitions for French relations with African countries to keep their momentum, the president and his team must take an earnest look at what has worked well and what can still be improved.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Agriculture, Diplomacy, Partnerships, Emmanuel Macron, and Degrowth
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and France

26. How Malaysian Politics Shaped Chinese Real Estate Deals and Economic Development

Author:
Guanie Lim
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Iskandar Malaysia is the oldest and by far the most prominent economic corridor in Malaysia. Located in the southernmost state of Johor, the corridor came to host several real estate developments (such as Princess Cove and Forest City) involving multinational corporations (MNCs) from China almost immediately after the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched in 2013. On one level, the infrastructure-spending spree associated with the BRI helped boost Malaysia’s economy as Chinese real estate MNCs invested in Iskandar Malaysia to grow their overseas portfolios. However, their involvement in the corridor disrupted the existing dynamics between Malaysia’s central and local governments. Although these Chinese projects offered an opening for Johor’s state government to counter Putrajaya’s dominance in the economic corridor, some swiftly became a magnet for divisive electoral campaigning and voter anger. Combined with several socioeconomic issues, the discontent generated by these Chinese real estate projects contributed to the unexpected defeat of the long-ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in Malaysia’s May 2018 general election. Chinese real estate MNCs have sought to adapt to these shifting dynamics, yet it is uncertain to what degree their adaptive strategies will bear fruit amid a looming real estate crisis back in China and other related issues. Ultimately, Chinese real estate investment has been both a tool and an enabler of efforts undertaken by various Malaysian stakeholders, rather than the all-powerful China-imposed juggernaut that some commentators on Malaysia’s development over the last two decades have tended to see. Despite the allure of lucrative real estate deals, it is equally important to recognize the potential pitfalls when local politics go awry. Events in Iskandar Malaysia demonstrate that it is politically unsustainable to push real estate projects that are too expensive for most local residents to afford.
Topic:
Politics, Entrepreneurship, Risk, Economic Development, and Real Estate
Political Geography:
China, Malaysia, and Asia

27. Localization and China’s Tech Success in Indonesia

Author:
Gatra Priyandita, Dirk Van Der Kley, and Benjamin Herscovitch
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
On average, Indonesians distrust China and many Chinese firms. Yet Huawei and to a lesser extent ZTE have successfully positioned themselves as trusted cybersecurity providers to the Indonesian government and the Indonesian nation. This has been no easy feat given long-held Indonesian animosity toward China. Many Chinese companies have faced protests over concerns they were taking local jobs. Huawei and ZTE have suffered no such fate. Nor has there been a broad coalition of Indonesian voices against using Chinese technology in critical telecommunications infrastructure. In short, Indonesians care a lot more about Chinese cement plants than they do about Huawei involvement in 5G networks. Gatra Priyandita Gatra Priyandita is an analyst at the International Cyber Policy Centre at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, where he leads a project researching cyber-enabled intellectual property theft. He is a political scientist by training and specializes in the study of foreign policy and security in Southeast Asia. He holds a PhD in political science from the Australian National University. This is a vastly different conversation to those happening in rich liberal democracies. Huawei and ZTE have been able to achieve success in Indonesia, despite a sense of ambivalence among the Indonesian political and defense establishment about Chinese intentions and growing Western scrutiny over the use of Chinese technology in broadband networks. As other papers in this series have demonstrated, Huawei and ZTE needed to localize their strategies. Like elsewhere in the world, available evidence suggests that part of Huawei’s and ZTE’s value proposition is cheaper prices (compared to those of competitors) for high-quality technology. But that is only part of the story. Huawei has positioned itself as Indonesia’s cybersecurity provider of choice by offering enormous cybersecurity and other related training programs across the country for groups ranging from senior government officials to students in rural Indonesia. Much of this training is technically focused on practical vocational skills with a hope that students one day will become customers. In addition, the company offers an attractive maintenance and upkeep package. Since the mid-2000s, Chinese information and communications technology (ICT) firms have created training centers in partnership with local Indonesian telecoms companies and universities to train the next generation of Indonesian engineers and tech specialists. Government agencies are also increasingly targets of training and capacity-building programs, with Huawei claiming that 7,000 government officials have participated in its training programs. The Indonesian government, corporations, and ordinary citizens alike have welcomed Huawei and ZTE as essential partners in their efforts to build both the infrastructure and human capital necessary to prosper in the twenty-first century’s digital economy. What Huawei and ZTE offer is knowledge transfer, not technology transfer. The technology is still being built in China by Chinese firms. Huawei’s role in training relates instead to capacity building. Indonesians will install, maintain, and use the networks. China will build the hardware. There is also evidence that China has had some rhetorical success in pushing its version of cyberspace governance. Beijing’s preferred cyberspace governance language was inserted into a memorandum of understanding between Indonesia’s National Cyber and Crypto Agency and the Cybersecurity Administration of China. However, it is difficult to see how the memorandum has influenced Indonesia’s cybersecurity governance in practice. One of the concerns often leveled by rich liberal democracies is that reliance on Chinese tech will end up aligning the political interests of countries like Indonesia with those of China. Other key worries are China’s pervasive espionage and the enduring (though as yet unrealized) risk that Chinese companies with a dominant role in an ICT ecosystem could be used by Beijing to apply coercive political pressure. Despite Indonesia’s embrace of Huawei and ZTE, political leaders in Jakarta have not simply disregarded the hard security questions posed by upgrading ICT equipment, especially when foreign suppliers are involved. Indonesian officials simply rate the need for development and cybersecurity-related capacity building higher than the risk of using Chinese ICT hardware in their critical infrastructure systems. If rich liberal democracies are concerned about this trend, then they need to offer workable alternatives that place Indonesia’s enormous digital development needs at the heart of any value proposition. It is unlikely that Indonesia will stop using Chinese hardware in its infrastructure, but alternatives could prevent overreliance.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Telecommunications, and Localization
Political Geography:
China, Indonesia, and Asia

28. Halting the Kleptocratic Capture of Local Government in Nigeria

Author:
Matthew T. Page and Abdul H. Wando
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Too often viewed as a monolithic state, Nigeria has complex subnational governance systems that can have outsized impacts on its trajectory. The state is covered with a vibrant but frayed political quilt, consisting of three layers: the federal government in Abuja, thirty-six state governments, and 774 local governments. Frequently overlooked, Nigeria’s local governments are disproportionately important; if they functioned well, they would be best positioned to meet people’s basic needs and to build their resilience to cope with everyday challenges. Matthew T. Page Matthew T. Page is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In reality, however, “no local government [in Nigeria] works for the people.”1 Instead, “every household is its own local government,” sourcing its basic needs—water, electricity, education, and healthcare—however it can.2 Exhausted by local government kleptocracy—a system in which those who govern steal from the governed—Nigerians understand that they must fend for themselves. While local government corruption is a global problem not unique to Nigeria, it is nevertheless crucial to address. It fuels democratic backsliding, communal conflict, and poverty. By hurting governance outcomes at the subnational level, local government corruption is quietly hobbling Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous nation.
Topic:
Corruption, Government, Domestic Politics, and Kleptocracy
Political Geography:
Africa and Nigeria

29. Reducing Pernicious Polarization: A Comparative Historical Analysis of Depolarization

Author:
Jennifer McCoy, Benjamin Press, Murat Somer, and Ozlem Tuncel
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The global rise of political polarization has fueled concerns about its detrimental impact on politics and society. From an increase in political violence to a decrease in the quality of democracy and governance, the threats posed by pernicious polarization—the division of society into two mutually antagonistic political camps—are diverse and acute. Determining how to reduce these tensions is therefore an urgent challenge. Using data on political polarization from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) data set, this working paper assesses various instances of depolarization around the globe since 1900 and analyzes their long-term sustainability. Polarization is increasing worldwide. When broken down by region, V-Dem data suggest that every region except Oceania has seen polarization levels rise since 2005. Africa has had the smallest increase during this period, although it has long had high levels of polarization. Rising polarization in Europe is being driven by deepening political divisions in Eastern and Central Europe, Southern Europe, and the Balkans. In the Western Hemisphere, the largest democracies—Brazil, Mexico, and the United States—are all experiencing extreme levels of polarization. East Asia’s polarization levels have traditionally been low, though increasing political tensions in places like South Korea and Taiwan are driving up the region’s score. And in South Asia, India’s polarization has skyrocketed since 2014. Jennifer McCoy Jennifer McCoy is a nonresident scholar in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, where she focuses on political polarization and democratic resilience in the U.S. and around the world. To better understand the various paths by which polarized societies might overcome or reduce their political divisions, this working paper examines perniciously polarized countries that have successfully depolarized, at least for a time. Through a quantitative analysis of the V-Dem data set, this study identifies 105 episodes from 1900 to 2020 where countries were able to reduce polarization from pernicious levels for at least five years. These 105 episodes represent roughly half of the total episodes of pernicious polarization during the time period, thus indicating a fairly robust capacity of countries to depolarize. If considered in terms of country experiences rather than episodes (because many countries have experienced multiple episodes in a cycle of polarization and depolarization), then the data indicate that two-thirds of the 178 countries for which V-Dem provides polarization data have experienced one or more episodes of pernicious polarization, but only thirty-five countries (20 percent) have failed to experience any depolarization to below-pernicious levels. Given this apparent capacity among the majority of the world’s countries to depolarize from pernicious levels at least some of the time, this analysis seeks to identify the contexts and sustainability of those experiences and to encourage further research into their causal mechanisms and outcomes for democracies. The analysis offers a preliminary discussion of the potential meaning and normative implications of depolarization as a concept and policy goal. It then uses qualitative analysis to identify patterns in the contexts of various depolarization cases and gauge the sustainability of these trends. Most of these depolarization episodes were associated with dramatic changes in a country’s political life. An analysis of contextual factors showed that almost three-quarters of the cases came after major systemic shocks: a foreign intervention, independence struggle, violent conflict, or regime change (primarily in a democratizing direction). In the remainder of cases, countries depolarized within a given regime structure, whether democratic or autocratic. Tellingly, the authors identified no cases of depolarization from pernicious levels among liberal democracies. This is because very few countries classified as full liberal democracies have ever reached pernicious levels; the United States stands out today as the only wealthy Western democracy with persistent levels of pernicious polarization. Just under half of all depolarizing cases were able to sustain depolarization for a decade or longer. In a second sizeable group of cases, countries managed polarization to some degree, either living with chronic near-pernicious levels after depolarizing, or else repolarizing to near-pernicious levels within ten years. Finally, 15 percent of the cases returned to pernicious levels within the first decade. Troublingly, when the authors analyzed the entire time period from 1900 to 2020, nearly half of the countries that had sustained depolarization or managed polarization for at least a decade later returned to pernicious levels of polarization. These outcomes illustrate the difficulty of sustaining low levels of polarization, and they indicate that a cyclical pattern of polarization, depolarization, and repolarization may be a characteristic feature of political life in many places. Only a fraction (14 percent) of cases resulted in sustained depolarization over the long term.The mechanisms and strategies that enable such sustained depolarization in democracies will be the subject of future research. But given the small number of democracies (eleven) able to accomplish this feat amid the larger pattern of cyclical polarization and depolarization, it will be crucial to also understand strategies of managing polarization at moderately high levels while avoiding democratic erosion, government dysfunction, or returns to pernicious polarization and potential violence.
Topic:
Politics, History, Polarization, and Society
Political Geography:
Global Focus

30. Russia’s National Security Narrative: All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Author:
Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The two defining features of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy have been an increasingly adversarial relationship with the West and an increasingly close partnership with China. These drivers have been the salient feature of official Russian national security documents for the past three decades. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. national security community has viewed Russian strategic thinking as misguided because it failed to see China as the real threat to Russia. This view ignores the Kremlin’s preoccupation with Europe as the most important strategic theater where its interests are at stake, and where they are threatened by the West’s superior capabilities and ambitions. This view also ignores how unimportant—relative to Europe—the Asia-Pacific is for Russia. Russia’s partnership with China is secured, however, by a set of coherent and complementary strategic rationales, which supersede frequent concerns in the Russian strategic community at large about China and its growing capabilities and intentions vis-à-vis Russia. Those concerns appear to have little impact on Russian policy. Notwithstanding those concerns in Russia’s unofficial national security discourse, China’s footprint on its foundational national security and foreign policy documents is invisible—and China, as a source of military threat to Russia, does not appear to be part of the Kremlin’s calculus. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has long been the pacing challenge of Russian military modernization, and the main contingency for which it has been preparing has been future conflict in the European theater. For the Putin regime, there is no alternative to Russia’s “no limits” partnership with China. Moreover, even if Putin were no longer on the scene, a successor regime would have powerful economic, geopolitical, demographic, and military-strategic incentives to maintain this partnership. An adversarial relationship with China would pit Russia against two superior powers in two widely separated geographic theaters. The war in Ukraine has cemented the Russian-Chinese partnership for the foreseeable future.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Ukraine

31. Governance for Resilience: How Can States Prepare for the Next Crisis?

Author:
Frances Brown
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The pandemic has presented policymakers with daunting, interlinked, and often unprecedented challenges. From health emergencies that also upend economies to trade disruptions that also pose new multilateral diplomatic dilemmas, the pandemic has generated challenges that seem exceptional in both scale and degree of interconnection. Although the coronavirus pandemic has generated a dizzying series of harsh social, political, and economic firsts, such dilemmas will not be the last. Trend lines around a series of domestic and multinational governance issues, including climate change, migration, rising geopolitical tensions, and citizen alienation from governing institutions, suggest that complex, interlinked crises will be features of the future. While national and multilateral policymakers should work to alleviate the drivers of such crises, they must also strive to prepare their countries to adapt and recover from complex shocks. In short, they must try to build resilience. The need for resilience will be especially acute in developing and fragile states. These countries will need to respond to compounding shocks across multiple domains, without the head start that their developed-world counterparts enjoy. Equally, donors and policymakers from the Global North must also elevate resilience and adaptation as key components of their approaches to supporting fragile states. This call to bolster countries’ resilience is hardly new. Even before the pandemic, the policy arena featured increasing calls for resilience; now, the chorus has become almost deafening. Recent seminal policy and analytic documents—including the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s flagship report,1 the UK’s Integrated Review,2 and the U.S. Interim National Security Strategy3—have underscored that states’ resilience and capacity for adaptation will be key to their future success in the geopolitical arena. In donors’ peacebuilding and development policies, high-level emphasis on resilience has also swelled over the past few years, including in official communications from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,4 the United States government,5 and the European Union.6 In some development practitioner and civil society circles, the need for resilience is so frequently invoked that it sometimes borders on cliché.7 The increasingly ubiquitous recommendation to “bolster resilience” is valuable for at least two related reasons. First, it offers a more specific strategic objective than conversations around “state fragility” writ large, which have often been too broad to generate concrete policy responses. Second, recent, failed international statebuilding projects have underscored that state fragility is not to be “fixed”—instead, it is to be managed and mitigated.8 The emphasis on resilience thus marks a helpful shift away from maximalist policy framing and toward a more attainable one. But concrete insights on how developing or fragile countries actually achieve resilience are less clear and less common. Given the broad consensus that state fragility is deeply linked to governance, for many policymakers, good governance is central. To be sure, many other factors beyond governance—including demographic, geographic, military, and economic ones—affect a state’s resilience. But a country’s governance and political institutions generally undergird all other dynamics in determining how effectively that state can bounce back from setbacks. What exactly does the concept of “good governance for resilience” entail in practice? This paper surveys the evidence. Below, it reviews the governance-related characteristics and capabilities that affect a country’s resilience. For the purposes of this paper, resilience at the national level can be understood as a country’s capacity to respond to, adapt to, and grow from stresses and shocks.9 Resilience focuses on bolstering the overall performance of a system in the face of unpredictable and often interconnected hazards, making it different from risk management, which relates to specific hazards.10 A country’s resilience depends on the internal characteristics that allow for states and their institutions to navigate a variety of disruptions.11 An overarching insight from the evidence is that governance for resilience is complex and often multidirectional. Several characteristics, such as decentralization, have an ambiguous effect on resilience: they enable a country to withstand some setbacks but leave it more vulnerable in other ways. Still other characteristics—including whether a country is a democracy or an authoritarian political system—do not appear have a clear-cut effect on resilience. In contrast, a few governance “super-factors”—such as control of corruption, societal trust, and high quality political leadership—are exceptionally powerful in enabling a country to augment its resilience through multiple pathways. Finally, this paper considers the broader implications of governance for resilience as a policy agenda. The framing of bolstering countries’ resilience is a valuable one, but it also raises several vexing trade-offs and dilemmas. In particular, it prompts the question of whose resilience, in specific, it refers to, since resilience of state institutions does not always mean resilience of all parts of the population. Looking ahead, the policy refrain of “building resilience” in fragile and developing states, appealing though it is, should be refined to encompass these thorny realities.
Topic:
Governance, Crisis Management, Resilience, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

32. My Country, Right or Wrong: Russian Public Opinion on Ukraine

Author:
Denis Volkov and Andrei Kolesnikov
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Western governments, including the United States, immediately condemned what they described as “Vladimir Putin’s war.”1 Surely, this formulation was no accident. It was aimed, first and foremost, at drawing a distinction between the actions of the Kremlin and the attitudes of ordinary Russians. There was optimism that ordinary Russians would not countenance a war against a neighboring country.2 But hopes of Russian grassroots opposition to the war were swiftly dashed. Indeed, public opinion polls have consistently shown overwhelming support (70 percent or higher) for what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Contrary to expectations, Putin’s popularity has also seen a boost, similar to what happened in the immediate wake of the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Partly in response to these indicators, figures like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have called for a visa ban for all Russian passport holders, with an exception for people whose safety is at risk or who are vulnerable to political persecution.3 According to Zelenskyy, “[T]he most important sanctions are to close the borders—because the Russians are taking away someone else’s land” and Russians should “live in their own world until they change their philosophy.” He added, “The population picked this government and they’re not fighting it, not arguing with it, not shouting at it.” Such sentiments are echoed in calls by some European politicians, such as Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, for an EU ban on tourist visas. “It’s not right that at the same time as Russia is waging an aggressive, brutal war of aggression in Europe, Russians can live a normal life, travel in Europe, be tourists. It’s not right,” Marin said in mid-August.4 At the same time, a careful reading of popular Russian attitudes toward the war reveals important nuances that all too often are overlooked. First and foremost is the fact that rather than consolidating Russian society, the conflict has exacerbated existing divisions on a diverse array of issues, including support for the regime. Put another way, the impression that Putin now has the full support of the Russian public is simply incorrect. A more careful reading of sociological data, including conversations with focus group participants and quantitative research, presents a far more complex picture of Russian society.
Topic:
Public Opinion, Conflict, Vladimir Putin, Society, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

33. Assessing U.S. Options for the Future of the ICBM Force

Author:
Toby Dalton, Megan Dubois, Natalie Montoya, Ankit Panda, and George Perkovich
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Our task was to consider the relative risks and benefits of options for the future U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. Our task was not to assess whether the United States should deploy ICBMs at all or change its nuclear strategy and doctrine. In our work, we engaged former officials from Democratic and Republican administrations, nuclear policy specialists from universities and defense and arms control think tanks, and senior military officers, as well as other representatives of combatant commands and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The current policy, established following a 2014 Analysis of Alternatives (AOA), is to replace the Minuteman III system with a new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) system, now named the LGM-35A Sentinel. Some observers, including members of Congress, have urged reassessing whether deterrence and other requirements could be met more cost-effectively by extending the life of the current Minuteman III missiles and their supporting infrastructure. Department of Defense (DOD) officials note that upgrades that otherwise would have been necessary to sustain the Minuteman III system to 2043 were not undertaken once the decision was made in 2015 to proceed with GBSD. Therefore, they insist, there is no realistic option today to pursue a life extension program for Minuteman III missiles beyond 2030, when they are due to be replaced by GBSD. Although we received considerable data from DOD officials on these topics, the iterative process through which we received information, the unclassified nature of our study, and the limited time available for investigating DOD conclusions left us unable to assess the DOD’s position regarding the technical and cost feasibility of an extended Minuteman III alternative to GBSD. To strengthen public confidence in its decisionmaking on the future ICBM, we believe the DOD should commission an independent, classified technical study (with an unclassified version) to address outstanding questions relating to the options and timelines in the 2014 Analysis of Alternatives, cost estimates, procurement decisions, and adversary threats to future silo-based ICBMs. One of the most salient issues that surfaced in our study is the projected medium-term increase in the vulnerability of silo-based ICBMs to attack by precision conventional weapons. A non-nuclear attack on U.S. nuclear-armed ICBMs would confront the president with the choice of initiating in response what could be a large-scale nuclear attack on adversary homelands (either by launching U.S. ICBMs before they were destroyed or by using other nuclear forces). This threat is likely to materialize well before the notional GBSD service life expiration in 2075. We believe this issue deserves more debate, as it may raise questions about the declining strategic value of a long-term commitment to silo-based nuclear-armed ICBMs inherent in the decision to proceed with GBSD. Our discussions and research also explored issues that senior leaders, including the president, should consider regarding any silo-based ICBM system that the United States would deploy, today and in the future. These include allocating forces to simultaneously deter Russia (possibly in the absence of nuclear arms control, if occurring after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, expires in 2026) and a more nuclear-capable China from escalating regional conflicts; confronting possible risks posed by ICBMs overflying Russia to target China; building allies’ confidence in U.S. extended nuclear deterrence; mitigating risks of launch under attack scenarios; and facilitating the negotiation of verifiable nuclear arms control agreements with Russia and China. Consideration of these challenges and issues will be especially important in fashioning the Employment Guidance that will follow from the Nuclear Posture Review.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Weapons, and ICBM
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

34. Reckless Abandon: Why Tunisia Can No Longer Delay a Border Free Trade Zone

Author:
Hamza Meddeb
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
In 2012, Tunisia announced the establishment of a free trade and logistics zone (FTZ) in Ben Guerdane, near the Libyan border. The aim is to develop marginalized southeastern border regions and formalize informal economic actors. However, the plan has stalled due to institutional resistance, political divisions, and an incapacity to exploit international geopolitical rivalries. If this persists, the project may become irrelevant because of emerging FTZs in Libya, denying Tunisia revenues its ailing economy needs.
Topic:
Geopolitics, Economy, Borders, and Free Trade
Political Geography:
Libya, North Africa, and Tunisia

35. Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy

Author:
Rachel Kleinfeld
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
American democracy is at a dangerous inflection point. The moment requires a step-change in strategy and support. Without such momentum, the country faces a democratic setback potentially as serious as the ones already occurring in India and Hungary (both now ranked only “partially free” by Freedom House) and the nearly one-hundred-year reversal that occurred following America’s Reconstruction era. Many Americans view this moment with concern, but their worry is measured: America’s system is creaky, but the world’s oldest democracy has strong institutions and will pull through. However, since the end of the Cold War, most democratic failure globally has been caused by elected governments using legal methods, such as gerrymandering and technical rule changes, to derail democracy. Their destructions of their own democracies have been supported by pluralities or majorities of their citizenries, whose polarization leads them to back policies that harm democracy to ensure their side prevails. America is on precisely this path. The age and consolidation of U.S. democracy provides resilience—but Americans should not expect too much from the country’s historical strength. Many of the laws that form institutional guardrails were written poorly in the aftermath of the Civil War, with loopholes that are easily challenged given a lack of precedent. Moreover, the country’s age means that much of what are presumed to be laws and institutions are, in fact, simply norms. These norms are eroding quickly. Other organizations and philanthropists already understand the danger America is in. They are pouring time and money into getting more people to vote, particularly minorities and swing voters, to win back democracy. These efforts are necessary—but not sufficient. America’s democratic decline has accelerated despite record numbers of people, minorities, and swing voters voting. And for those on both sides of the aisle for whom these voting measures are proxies for partisan preferences they believe will save U.S. democracy, democratic decline in many states has accelerated despite Democratic control of both chambers of Congress and the presidency at the national level. The community supporting U.S. democracy needs a better strategy.
Topic:
Democracy, Domestic Politics, and Democratic Backsliding
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

36. Russia and India: A New Chapter

Author:
Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Russian-Indian relations are undergoing a major change. Throughout the Cold War, the relationship rested on three pillars: Soviet arms sales to India; shared public-sector-heavy economic philosophy and extensive Soviet aid; and the Soviet Union–India vs. United States–Pakistan–China geopolitical alignment. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of India and China, the U.S.-China tensions, the deepening of U.S.-India ties, and the Russian-Chinese partnership intensified by Russia’s break with the West and the war against Ukraine have had a profound effect on Russian-Indian relations. Of the three pillars of the Moscow–New Delhi relationship, only one remains: the arms trade. Russia remains a major supplier of weapons to India, and Russian equipment still makes up a vast portion of Indian Armed Forces’ force structure; but Russia is facing competition in the Indian arms market. India’s desire to diversify its supply of weapons and develop its own defense industry has resulted in declining Russian arms deliveries to India in recent years. Russia’s break with the West because of its war against Ukraine has accelerated its pivot toward China. Against the backdrop of U.S.-China and China-India tensions, Russia’s position as China’s junior partner will make it harder for Russia to preserve partnership with India. Moscow’s leverage versus both New Delhi and Beijing is shrinking as they have greater capabilities of their own than they had previously and have new partners that offer more than Russia. Still, the Russian-Indian partnership will continue. For India, Russia remains an important supplier of weapons and, most recently, oil. India has not joined the West’s sanctions on Russia. By doing so, it has demonstrated its independent foreign policy. For Russia, India is an important market for arms and oil. The Indian-U.S. security relationship is relatively new, whereas India-Russia ties have endured for over two generations. India has no reason to forsake the benefits of this relationship. Nor does Russia. It has been said that Moscow plays a weak hand well, but sustaining strong security ties with both China and India will become more difficult for it. The question is how China will react to Russian arms sales to India, and what Russia will do if pressed by China to curtail them. For reasons of geographic proximity, economic ties, and personal relations between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the odds favor Beijing over New Delhi to have a bigger say in Moscow.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, History, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, Geopolitics, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, South Asia, Eurasia, Ukraine, India, and United States of America

37. The Pitfalls of Saudi Arabia’s Security-Centric Strategy in Yemen

Author:
Ahmed Nagi
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Saudi Arabia’s security-oriented approach to Yemen has foundered. The Saudi-led coalition has failed to defeat the Houthis militarily or to restore the government the group toppled. Moreover, Saudi militarization of the border with Yemen has damaged the Yemeni economy—with negative consequences for Saudi Arabia. Crucially, Saudi Arabia’s security is contingent on Yemen’s stability and economic prosperity. As such, Riyadh should contribute to reviving Yemen’s moribund economy, both in the borderlands and in the inland agricultural sector.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Economy, Conflict, and Instability
Political Geography:
Middle East, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia

38. Engaging China on Strategic Stability and Mutual Vulnerability

Author:
George Perkovich
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The United States and Chinese governments, for the foreseeable future, will have the resources to keep each other’s societies vulnerable to nuclear mass destruction. If these governments are not self-destructive, they will want to keep their competition from escalating into armed conflict that could lead to nuclear war. The constructs of strategic stability and mutual vulnerability can help significantly if both governments embrace them and interpret them similarly or even if the leaders of the two countries accurately understand how they differ in their perspectives on them. Unfortunately, to date, on these issues the United States and China are like a quarrelling married couple who tried therapy for one or two appointments, found it dissatisfying, and then alternated in making excuses for not trying again, perhaps with a different therapist or format. Each says they have tried and the other doesn’t listen or understand. Both suspect that the other isn’t saying what they really feel or want; what they really feel is hostility and distrust and what they really want is to get richer and more powerful without being hassled or attacked. It would be easier if they could just go their separate ways, but the property and wealth they depend on will be lost (or at least severely diminished) if they split up or do each other harm. This paper suggests that U.S. and allied interests require persistence in inviting China to dialogue on strategic stability; to demonstrate goodwill, the United States should acknowledge mutual vulnerability as a fact and necessary policy. The need for both moves is reflected in the fact that neither government has defined what it might mean by stability or mutual vulnerability. To help test intentions and prompt harder thinking, the paper plays the role of therapist and offers definitions of both concepts—strategic stability and mutual vulnerability—so that the two sides can critique them more freely and without recrimination. These definitions are broader and deeper than usual, reflecting the growing problem of managing escalation of conventional conflict to nuclear war, the scenario that drives U.S. and Chinese concerns and military posturing. Further, broader definitions are necessary to comprehend the dangers stemming from the entanglement of conventional, cyber, and nuclear weapons and command and control systems. The paper then sketches four benefits of declaring mutual vulnerability, contrary to opponents of the idea, before discussing steps that the United States and China could subsequently take to reflect and build each other’s confidence in such a policy. Finally, if perceived U.S. requirements in the future will be greater than the arsenal needed to deter or defeat Russia or China alone, how will Russia and China be persuaded not to try to build up to balance the additional U.S. force? In other words, if the United States is in two separate but interacting arms races (and deterrence relationships), how could each opponent (China and Russia) be persuaded to negotiate limits on their arsenal lower than the total the United States would insist on possessing to deter two nuclear opponents? Answers to these questions will affect strategic stability and mutual vulnerability of all parties but will take a long time to develop. To begin the process, the paper suggests asking Chinese leaders whether their silence on Putin’s nuclear first-use threats means that China has changed its own policy on nuclear use or that it never took a no-first-use policy seriously in the first place. Is China concerned that the capabilities that the United States and its allies may develop to strengthen defenses against Russia could be used against China too, and if so, might arms control be a wiser approach? Ultimately, the paper suggests that if China and the United States can sustain a process of serious dialogue, they will keep their relationship from worsening even if they cannot formally restrain their competition. And if dialogue leads one to ask the other for deeds to demonstrate goodwill, the paper has suggested some such deeds that could be undertaken with no security hazard and only slight political risk. No one should have the illusion that happiness is in this couple’s future. All this work would be to allow a nonviolent cohabitation that is better than the alternative of destitute divorce or murder-suicide.
Topic:
Government, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Stability, and Vulnerability
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

39. Why Brazil Sought Chinese Investments to Diversify Its Manufacturing Economy

Author:
Celo Hiratuka
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, economic relations between Brazil and China have grown significantly. The main driver of this process has been China’s enormous demand for agricultural, energy, and mineral commodities. On the one hand, Brazil’s strong competitiveness in these products has helped the country consolidate its role as an important supplier to China, increasing exports and turning China into the main destination for Brazilian exports since 2009.1 On the other hand, China, by virtue of its status as the “factory of the world,” has established itself as the main supplier of manufactured products to Brazil.2 Nonetheless, Brazilian scholars, think tanks, and private manufacturing firms have raised concerns. They have done so despite the great boost in bilateral trade flows; the favorable trade balance for Brazil; and the leveraging of businesses in several Brazilian sectors such as soybeans, iron ore, and oil. These concerns are related to the excessive concentration of Brazilian exports in a few products, the environmental impacts of these exporting activities, and the effects of strong Chinese manufacturing competition on Brazil’s domestic market. These worries have become more significant when one considers the growing importance of manufacturing changes with the diffusion of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and the search for new renewable energy sources and environmental sustainability. For Brazil, this matter reflects a need to advance bilateral relations beyond existing export trade volumes and toward new drivers of more diversified economic growth that will help the country escape a specialization in commodities. The fortunes of the Chinese company BYD in Brazil are highly relevant to these trends. BYD is a company that has diversified from the production of batteries into different innovative industrial sectors, such as renewable energy and electric vehicles. BYD has also been expanding rapidly in international markets, and in that process it chose Brazil as an important market, where it has built factories to produce electric bus chassis, photovoltaic panels, and batteries for electric buses. BYD’s trajectory in Brazil certainly has not been smooth. On the contrary, the firm has had to adapt to market fluctuations and, above all, to changes in the Brazilian government’s economic policies, which have made the company’s experience in the country quite turbulent. Despite this, BYD survived its first years in Brazil and more recently has been showing signs of continuing to invest in the Brazilian market. Analysis of BYD’s experience in Brazil shows, on the one hand, that there are important possibilities for new economic relations with China that go beyond trade in commodities, with productive investments that can potentially help Brazil simultaneously incorporate more knowledge-intensive activities and drive positive environmental impacts by generating renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions. On the other hand, the story of BYD also shows that the transformation of these possibilities into effective benefits requires coordinated actions on the part of Brazilian policymakers to offer a long-term horizon for Chinese investments. In that spirit, Brazil must craft a long-term strategy for its economic relationship with China to increase the odds that bilateral engagement can advance in a new and more sustainable, mutually beneficial direction.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Economy, Investment, Manufacturing, and Engagement
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Brazil, and South America

40. Innovation and New Directions: Searching for Novel Paths in Arab Education Reform

Author:
Wafa Al-Khadra, Shaikha Jabor Al-Thani, Nathan J. Brown, Heba El-Deghaidy, Rima Karami-Akkary, Marwan Muasher, and Christina Zacharia
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
In October 2018, Carnegie published a report calling for fundamental educational reform in the Arab world and arguing for the need for that reform to move “from schooling to learning” in order to “serve the needs of pluralistic societies and foster the development of active, responsible citizens who are empowered to deal with complexity and advance constructive change.”1 The report gave a number of recommendations encompassing the different fields within which education takes place: the school, the state, and the society at large. This paper, with many of the authors of the first report participating again, attempts to go in further depth about the findings of the first report. It is evident that Arab governments still see education reform as a top-down effort that continues to perpetuate power relations and authoritarian thinking, sidelining critical and creative thinking among students. The paper places special emphasis on several reform efforts that are being implemented across the Arab region, many in a bottom-up approach that attempts a collaborative approach with governments but is not held hostage to old authoritarian thinking. Rather than simply admiring the problem, the paper attempts to highlight several experiences taking place within different Arab educational systems, not so much because these experiences are necessarily transportable but rather to point out that together with the challenges, there are also successes that can be built on. Consistent with Carnegie’s strategy of working with experts from the region, the paper has once again drawn on the practical experiences of experts from the Qatari, Jordanian, and Egyptian educational systems as well as from the regional, bottom-up experience of the TAMAM project, led by the Arab Thought Foundation and the American University of Beirut and spanning eight different countries. Under the able coordination and facilitation of Nathan J. Brown, these experts have authored a document that I hope will further contribute to the debate on education reform in the region—and help push it forward. I want to acknowledge the Asfari Foundation for their generous financing of this project, and hope that policy recommendations in this paper will help guide future education policies in the Arab world.
Topic:
Education, Reform, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arab Countries