Regional Organizations

Explore the Qatar Digital Library, an archive featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and the wider region. Janet Basurto, writing for Egyptian Streets, explores the reasons behind Egypt’s intervention in Libya. Mark N. Katz examines the security worries of the GCC countries.

Next year, the long-awaited ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will come into effect, welcomed surely by fanfare both from the organization and from all of the ten member states. Long promised by ASEAN countries but repeatedly delayed in its launch, the AEC is supposed to be a single market for all ten member states, similar in some respects to the early days of the European Union’s single market. In theory, the AEC would provide a major boost to intra-regional trade, which lags behind its potential, and also would help woo foreign investment region-wide. But significant skepticism about the AEC is in order. The community will launch with many serious problems, and overall may do little to boost intra-Southeast Asian trade, which will continue to suffer from trade barriers and non-tariff protections, difficult permitting and customs challenges in many countries, and the region’s serious lack of physical infrastructure. As Filipino academic Eduardo Tadem has noted, about 20 percent of the AEC’s planned trade barrier reductions will not be in place by the beginning of next year, and indeed might never be put into place. Leading ASEAN nations, other than Singapore, simply never have been willing to make the most painful tariff cuts. Many of these missing trade barrier reductions are the hardest ones to get done, the ones that could prove vital to freer intra-regional trade but which could inflict some short-term pain on industries important to major countries like Indonesia and Thailand. The most important cuts in tariff barriers might never get accomplished in part since the regional economic agreement was not approved by referendum or other public polling in member states, and so any initial challenges with the AEC are more likely to cause public anger than if ASEAN publics had voted on the agreement or had some say in the matter. In fact, many of the AEC members are not even full democracies or democracies at all, including trade heavyweights like Malaysia and Thailand. Europe has faced intense public criticism about the aloofness and undemocratic ways of Brussels, but at least all the European Union member states are democracies and the Union has a European Parliament, allowing for some degree of public input into EU decisions. The freest nation in the region, Indonesia, is the one least likely to benefit from the AEC and the one where economic nationalism and protectionism has become a potent force. A recent joint study by the Asian Development Bank and the International Labor Organization found that, of all ten ASEAN countries, Indonesia’s economy will see the least added number of jobs from the AEC, in part because of the country’s lack of highly skilled labor, which will benefit the most from the AEC’s reductions in restrictions on labor movement.  (In the recent Indonesian presidential campaign, candidates Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto seemingly competed to offer the most nationalist and protectionist economic policies.) Since Indonesians are far freer than any other people in the region (except Filipinos) to express their opinions and change their government, since Indonesia may not benefit much from the AEC, and since economic nationalism is rising in Indonesia, Jakarta well could prove a major obstacle to complete implementation of the single market. Although president-elect Joko Widodo generally took a less nationalist approach to economic policy during the campaign season, he will have to court Prabowo voters and Prabowo supporters in parliament, many of whom strongly believed in Prabowo’s vision of protectionism and Indonesian economic nationalism. And without Jakarta taking the lead in pushing for implementation of the entire AEC plans, it is hard to imagine the economic community in Southeast Asia even approaching the inter-connectedness and seamless integration in western Europe. “The success of the ASEAN Economic Community lies on decisive actions taken by its member states,” said Arjun Goswami, the ADB’s director of regional economic integration at the launch of its study of the community’s economic impact. Don’t count on such decisive action.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is the most egregious effort since World War II to forcibly alter the borders of a sovereign European state. It is also the biggest test of Western resolve since the Cold War ended a quarter century ago. If history is any guide, at this week’s summit in Wales, President Obama and fellow NATO leaders are unlikely to extend significant assistance to Ukraine, and will probably instead focus on providing reassurance to the alliance’s own membership. NATO has already committed to deploying a limited rapid reaction force of perhaps 4,000 troops to its front-line members, including Poland and the Baltic States. Today in Estonia, President Obama promised that the allies would meet in Wales with Ukrainian president Petro O. Poroshenko “to show that our 28 nations are united in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and right to defend its territory.” He also endorsed “concrete commitments” by NATO to help Ukraine—as well as Georgia and Moldova—modernize their security forces. However, it’s unclear whether Obama will be able to get the alliance to deliver on his promise. Most NATO members would presumably endorse tighter economic sanctions on Russia, but these are unlikely to influence Russian president Vladimir Putin. When it comes to providing sophisticated arms and training to Ukrainian forces, NATO members are more divided: many fear that escalation could precipitate an open military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. The undecided within the alliance may well seize on President Putin’s “seven-point plan” for a ceasefire in Ukraine—announced just today—to plead for more time before taking bold steps. Meanwhile, the crisis has revealed how valuable NATO membership is—and shown how vulnerable are European nations like Ukraine that remain outside its protective embrace. A bit of history on NATO’s origins helps place Ukraine’s predicament in context. During World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had ambitious plans for a postwar world order. He envisioned a global system of collective security to anchor world peace, which would give a managerial role to the great powers. All the world’s countries would have a place to meet, in a universal assembly. But the peace would be guaranteed by the “Four Policemen”—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Nationalist China. With the addition of liberated France, these countries eventually became the five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council. Alas, FDR’s harmonious vision quickly collapsed. He had assumed that the big powers would exercise restraint in pursuing their interests. But the hoped-for great power concert broke down. First, territorial disputes in Central Europe (particularly over Germany’s future) sparked East-West tensions. Second, Moscow insisted on a regional sphere of influence and demanded political control over governments in neighboring countries. The bipolar division crystallized, paralyzing the UN Security Council. Except on rare occasions as in the early Korean War (when the Soviets were boycotting it) or the Congo crisis of the 1960s, the Security Council played only a marginal global role. The lesson was clear: when the P5 are divided on matters of national interest, collective security through the United Nations is impossible. This remains true today, as we have seen recently both in Syria and Ukraine. It was the failure of the UN that led to the birth of NATO. With America’s “One World” dreams dashed, the Truman administration set about in the late 1940s to consolidate a narrower “Free World” community, based initially on a core of likeminded, democratic states. The security pillar of the transatlantic community was and remains NATO. Unlike the UN, a universal but dysfunctional collective security organization, NATO would embody the principle of collective defense. There was and remains an important difference between these two concepts. Whereas the UN Charter treated international peace and security as a “public good” to be enjoyed in principle by all UN member states, NATO treated security as a “club good.” In signing the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT) of 1949, the twelve original members of NATO agreed under Article 5 “that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” In such a circumstance, each party would take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic Area.” For alliance members, it was all for one—and one for all. Outsiders were out of luck. Creating NATO was a revolutionary strategic commitment for the United States, which had generally avoided “entangling alliances” since Thomas Jefferson had warned against them. The NAT soon enmeshed the United States in a complex peacetime alliance, involving a continuous program of military assistance and forward deployment of U.S. military forces to Europe, all under a U.S. Supreme Allied Commander. Although NATO never fired a shot in hostilities during the Cold War, it served as an indispensable instrument of containment and a guarantee of extended deterrence to U.S. allies. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, transatlantic officials and defense intellectuals engaged in ferocious debates about whether NATO should expand. The United States and its allies ultimately decided to open NATO’s door—and extend its Article 5 guarantee—to any European country that met the requirements for membership. The Partnership for Peace, initially created as a stopgap measure to stabilize Eastern Europe and professionalize its militaries, soon became a waiting room for aspirants to full membership. Unfortunately for Ukraine, its aspirations for NATO membership have always inspired skepticism, being at once too big, too internally divided, and too close (geographically and culturally) to Mother Russia. When the Moscow-leaning Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010, the West placed Ukrainian membership on ice. In Wales, NATO leaders will be joined by his Western-leaning successor. But the most that Poroshenko can hope for is a doubling down on Western sanctions against Russia and limited military assistance, so that his country can survive intact in its unenviable no-man’s land.

Coauthored with Daniel Chardell, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program. When Western leaders gather for the NATO summit in Wales next week, they will be expected to answer calls to revive the old alliance in order to confront Russia’s gradual invasion of Ukraine. Despite this new clarity of purpose, however, the alliance remains profoundly divided. When NATO was founded in 1949, the alliance’s mission was obvious. In the words of its first secretary-general, Lord Ismay, NATO was designed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” From the moment the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, skeptics began predicting that NATO would disappear. Of course, the alliance didn’t disappear—it adapted. It (controversially) took on a dozen former Warsaw Pact countries as new members, growing to twenty-eight countries. It absorbed unprecedented missions in far-flung places from Kosovo to the Gulf of Aden, Afghanistan, and Estonia—including humanitarian intervention, nation-building, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, counter-piracy, and cyber defense. Rather than going out of business, Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier noted, NATO went global. And yet, the alliance has never effectively resolved deeper debates about its strategic rationale in the twenty-first century. The governments and electorates of NATO members often hold dramatically different opinions about the importance of threats, from terrorism to cyberwar. Similarly, they are not equally willing to risk military or civilian casualties, nor do they agree about whether they should shoulder risk to protect increasingly distant allies. And finally, there is extreme variation among NATO members’ willingness to invest in national defense, including expeditionary capabilities. In principle, Russian aggression in Ukraine should reinvigorate NATO, providing a renewed sense of purpose. For the first time in a quarter century, NATO members—notably the Baltic States—have legitimate cause to fear for their security. But in fact, the ongoing Ukraine crisis has highlighted NATO’s fissures. Rather than rejuvenating the transatlantic alliance, Russia’s aggression threatens to underscore NATO’s divisions and vulnerabilities. Disparate threat perceptions: All NATO members oppose Russia’s destabilizing role in Ukraine. But they don’t place the same priority on stopping it, nor have they agreed on a strategy to address it. The annexation of Crimea has sent tremors through the Baltics, and rightly so: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are all home to sizable ethnic Russian minorities. Eastern European leaders have called on NATO for assistance, but the allied response has been mixed. Before arriving in Wales, President Obama will visit Estonia to “reassure allies in Central and Eastern Europe” and “reaffirm our ironclad commitment to [Article 5] as the foundation of NATO.” Meanwhile, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that NATO would begin building up its military presence along its eastern borders. But Germany, Italy, Spain, and France—far less vulnerable than the Baltics—are reluctant to further antagonize Moscow. The burden-sharing debate continues: Debates over burden-sharing have been a fixture of transatlantic relations since the Treaty of Washington was signed. In the past two decades, most NATO members have decreased defense spending to historic lows, leaving the United States to foot the bill while alternately cajoling, browbeating, and shaming free-riders—with limited results. In 2013, the U.S. share of NATO defense spending was 70 percent, and only four NATO allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Estonia—hit the agreed defense spending target of at least 2 percent of GDP. Some argue that the Ukraine crisis should spur Europeans to boost their defense spending. While this may be true for NATO’s Eastern European members, a number of Western European countries—still reeling from the financial crisis, squeezed by tight budgets, and plagued by slow growth and high unemployment—may be unlikely to want to spend additional funds, particularly if they are reluctant to alienate Russia. The changing nature of warfare complicates NATO’s mission: NATO was designed to deter Soviet aggression by providing a collective defense guarantee to all its members. This principle is enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which decrees that an attack on one NATO member shall be considered an attack on all. This provision is often credited with maintaining relative peace on the European continent throughout the Cold War. In the twenty-first century, however, Article 5 has its limits. The treaty is predicated on the Cold War-era assumption that war takes place between nation-states—and that aggression will be unambiguous, in the form of rumbling tanks or bombs dropping from airplanes. But the war brewing in eastern Ukraine is unconventional, like many present-day conflicts. Russian special forces, devoid of military insignia, are masquerading as local pro-Russian separatists, helping rebels occupy government buildings, seize strategic assets, and intimidate local populations. Western powers accused Russia of backing these so-called “little green men,” a fact Putin himself would later admit. Because the rebels are not formally under Moscow’s command, however, Putin has evaded responsibility for their actions. In Wales, leaders need to decide whether they would invoke Article 5 if little green men were to sprout up in the Baltics. And if so, against whom would they retaliate? NATO’s expeditionary future is unclear: At the Wales summit, NATO originally planned to focus on determining NATO’s future engagement in Afghanistan (and presumably assess the alliance’s operations there), as the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission prepares to withdraw from the country by the end of 2014. Then, Russia annexed and proceeded to invade eastern Ukraine. Concerns about Afghanistan were quickly sidelined. An op-ed that Rasmussen coauthored with General Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s top military commander, fails to mention Afghanistan even once. It is unclear if the ISAF mission, which was NATO’s longest and largest operation ever, will even be discussed in Wales—or if the alliance simply wash its hands of that country. Nor is there any indication that the assembled leaders will discuss broader questions, such as when Article 5 should be invoked against threats from transnational terrorist groups or whether the Libya mission offers lessons for future NATO operations. Rasmussen has already announced that NATO will strengthen its presence in Eastern Europe, provide technical and financial assistance to Ukrainian forces, and adopt a robust “readiness action plan,” which will enable allied forces to react more rapidly. In Wales, leaders will invariably condemn Putin’s incursions in Ukraine, reaffirm the indivisibility of the transatlantic alliance, and voice their commitment to the security of their Eastern European allies. These are all encouraging signs. But shoring up the alliance will require more than projecting force and more than tough rhetoric. NATO faces challenges that are greater than Russia, urgent though it may be. Fortuitously, the Wales summit offers a timely opportunity for Western leaders to tackle these difficult questions and, if necessary, begin reevaluating the future of the alliance itself. They should not let this opportunity go to waste.

This is a guest post by Alex Dick-Godfrey, program coordinator, Studies administration for the Council on Foreign Relations Studies Program. Last month, in the wake of the kidnapping of the schoolgirls from Chibok in Nigeria by the Islamist organization Boko Haram, President Francois Hollande of France convened a security summit in Paris. Heads of state from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger attended. The main result was the creation of a “central intelligence platform,” which will serve as a place for West African nations to coordinate their responses to Boko Haram. The United States and its partners in the Horn of Africa should endeavor to copy a form of this strategy to counter al Shabaab in the Horn. Despite some insinuations to the contrary, al Shabaab remains a serious threat to stability in the Horn, and it has started to undertake a more international campaign, employing shocking attacks. These attacks began with the 2010 bombings in Uganda, continued with attempted bombings in Ethiopia, peaked with the audacious Westgate Mall attack in Kenya, and recently included a well-planned attack on the Somali Parliament building. Sensationalist attacks are likely to continue and will extend beyond Somalia, as they did to Djibouti last week. As previous al Shabaab strongholds in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region are continually lost to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces’ advance, the group will likely become even more desperate. The fight against al Shabaab is already an international effort, which includes AMISOM, the United Nations (UN), and U.S. assistance to the Somali Federal Government. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which is the Eastern Africa trading bloc, sent troops into Somalia in 2006 before a UN Security Council resolution replaced the IGAD force. The United Kingdom has also held several conferences focused on discussing stability in Somalia. But in its present form this international response to al Shabaab has been ineffective. The conflict continues to leak out of the operational jurisdiction of AMISOM, and into countries that will rightfully protect themselves. After a series of attacks by al Shabaab, Kenya started a draconian counterterrorism campaign called “Operation Usalama.” It includes forced internment, mass deportations, and other human rights abuses against Somali refugees and Kenyans that are ethnically Somali. At best this is counterproductive, and at worst it creates new recruits for al Shabaab within Kenya and Somalia. Similarly, Ethiopia has repeatedly intervened in Somalia to eradicate al Shabaab, which has exacerbated resentment among Somalis. The problem is that these countries’ domestic counterterrorism strategies are reactionary, nearsighted, and counterproductive to what is needed regionally to defeat what has become an international terror group. These countries do not operate in a vacuum, and should recognize that their domestic actions have consequences across the region. A new platform is needed to better coordinate responses and share intelligence. This is not a novel concept. Kenya and Somalia agreed to start sharing intelligence more effectively after the attack on Westgate, but the agreement didn’t include any of the other international partners involved in Somalia. Also, for whatever reason, it currently isn’t working. To assist, the United States might lead an international cooperation effort in East Africa to create a platform for intelligence sharing and the dissemination of best practices in tactics, similar to what was proposed to counter Boko Haram. Moreover, there should be greater emphasis on ensuring that domestic counterterrorism strategies are not driving greater support to al Shabaab. U.S. involvement would give the platform legitimacy and would allow the United States to share its own intelligence. It would also allow for increased cooperation across all actors currently operating in Somalia. This is, indeed, a tall order, and one that none of the countries are likely to enjoy as each have their own interests in Somalia. But the United States and Somalia’s neighbors should keep this in mind: large amounts of troops and material are not currently designated to counter al Shabaab, and the threat isn’t going away. To effectively counter al Shabaab, there needs to be better coordination and use of the resources currently available.

For many years, the Nigerian military was regarded as the most proficient in West Africa. It was commonly seen as the guardian of the nation, and was remarkably free of the ethnic and religious divisions that have bedeviled Nigeria as a nation. The downside of this proficiency was that as “the guardian of the nation” the military was regularly involved in coups and ruled the country most of the time between 1966 and 1999. Subsequent to the restoration of civilian government in 1999, the Nigerian military performed credibly in numerous peacekeeping missions sponsored by the United Nations, African Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). But successive civilian governments starved the military for resources, reduced its size, and politicized its senior leadership, in part, at least, to preclude future coups. In private, senior military figures have said to me that the military now reflects many of the same ethnic and religious divisions as Nigeria as a whole. Of late, however, the military has suffered repeated blows to its prestige. There has been criticism of its peacekeeping performance in Darfur, and in Mali its contribution to the ECOWAS peacekeeping effort was very poor: there were credible reports that the Nigerian troops were so badly trained and so poorly equipped that they could be used only to man checkpoints. Even more serious, the military, in conjunction with the national police and the State Security Service, has been unable to counter the Boko Haram insurgency in north east Nigeria. There are reports of the Nigerian military being outgunned by Boko Haram and actively avoiding engagement with them. There has even been a mutiny, with troops firing on a general. The military response to the Chibok kidnapping of up to three hundred girls has been widely criticized within Nigeria and internationally. U.S. Department of Defense witnesses have profiled the shortcomings of the Nigerian military in Congressional testimony. It is no surprise that this criticism is getting under the skin of the Nigerian military leadership. The Nigerian chief of defense staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh told a Nigerian NGO, Citizen Initiative for Security Awareness, that the military now knows the locations of where the kidnapped girls are being held. The military is working on how to secure their rescue without endangering their lives. He then defended the military by recalling its role in the 1967-70 civil war and its peacekeeping deployments in Liberia and Sierra Leone. According to the media, he reaffirmed the military’s commitment to the constitution and to democracy. On Boko Haram, the Air Marshal’s comments were curious, at least as reported in the Nigerian press. He reiterated the now standard line that Boko Haram is a dimension of al Qaeda: “I know people from outside Nigeria are in this war. They are fighting us, they want to destabilize us. But this is our country and some people in this country are standing with the forces of darkness. We must salvage our country we must bring sanity back into our nation.” The war, he said could not be fought by the military alone, but by all Nigerians. He also acknowledged, however, the struggle against Boko Haram is something of a civil war, with the military fighting its fellow brothers: “We are not happy at all because we are killing our own and we are killing mostly youths. We cannot afford to eliminate our youths. Who are we going to handover Nigeria to? We can’t continue to kill them.” The Air Marshal’s remarks have a defensive quality. The international spotlight on Nigeria, and particularly the military, because of the kidnapping of the schoolgirls risks a backlash. On the other hand, international assistance might galvanize the security services to work together more energetically and effectively. International involvement can be a two-edged sword, especially in a country that prides itself as being the giant of Africa. As the U.S., British, Canadian, Israeli, and other governments seek to assist Nigeria, they must bear in mind the potential unintended consequences of their presence and participation. Initiatives by Nigeria’s friends should be governed by the principle of "first, do no harm.”

Over the past week, as Vietnam’s contentious South China Sea dispute with China has escalated into outright ship-to-ship conflict around China’s new rig in the South China Sea, protests in Vietnam have escalated into major attacks on Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam (as well as on some other foreign factories, in part because demonstrators thought these factories were owned by Chinese companies.) Over the weekend, Vietnam’s government worked hard to cool the unrest inside Vietnam, primarily because the authoritarian regime in Hanoi is uncomfortable with any public protest, since it never knows what direction the demonstrations could turn. But Hanoi has not turned down its rhetorical anger at Beijing, with Hanoi’s official news agency accusing Beijing of showing “its aggressiveness by sending more military ships” to the area surrounded the disputed oil rig. Chinese ships reportedly have attacked Vietnamese coast guard ships with water cannons and rammed Vietnamese ships as well. Noticeably absent in this latest South China Sea dispute has been the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Even though the current ASEAN secretary-general is a top former Vietnamese diplomat, and Vietnamese officials (and Philippine officials) have behind the scenes been putting pressure on other ASEAN nations to have ASEAN issue a strong joint statement condemning China’s actions. At ASEAN’s recent summit in Myanmar, the best the organization could do regarding the South China Sea was to issue a weak statement expressing “serious concern” about China’s actions. At the summit, ASEAN countries more favorably inclined to China and not involved in the Sea, including Cambodia and Vietnam, pressed to make sure that any statement on the South China Sea remained as weak as all the prior statements ASEAN has released. ASEAN has often been criticized for being unable to unite and for having virtually no power. ASEAN does have a purpose, but that purpose has not evolved effectively even as the region has become freer, more prosperous, more intertwined, and in some ways more dangerous. When there are no pressing regional issues to address, the organization can fulfill its function of smoothing intra-Southeast Asian relations and serving as a talk shop between Southeast Asia and major powers. But when major regional issues erupt,  ASEAN’s weaknesses are bared to the world. If the organization cannot offer a strong and united position on the South China Sea when an ASEAN member is seriously threatened by China and that member’s diplomat is the ASEAN secretary-general, ASEAN will never take a tougher stand on the Sea.

Last Friday, the online version of the Egyptian daily, Al Ahram, reported that Egypt is slowing down its payments for commodities, especially food.   Apparently, because the country’s foreign currency reserves are currently about $17 billion—which means the Egyptians are coming close to the minimum amounts of reserves needed to cover imports for 3-4 months—the Central Bank has become “particularly cautious” about allocating these funds.  Upon hearing the news, one former IMF and Treasury Department official wrote to me: “So it begins…central bank has a delicate balancing act…withhold too long and it gets blamed, but it needs to slow the drain…often see this in advance of em [emerging market] crisis.” There has been some happy talk recently, most notably from IMF chief Christine LaGarde, about the state of Egypt’s finances, but it seems clear that the Egyptians are going to need additional assistance.  Their likely patrons will be the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis who poured $12 billion in various forms into Egypt right after the July 3, 2013 coup and, in an implicit recognition that the Egyptian economy is in disastrous condition, the three Gulf states have committed an additional $8 billion.  The Gulfies may come to regret their investment in Egypt, but for now they remain unwavering in their support for Cairo.  It is true as some Emiratis have grumbled in private and stated publicly that they will not keep pouring money down a black hole, but for now at least  the assistance will continue to flow.  The funding from the Gulf is not just to keep the economy afloat but also to ensure that Egypt follows a particular political trajectory that does not pose a threat to the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis or their common strategic interests. The Egyptians find themselves in both a potentially awkward and possibly advantageous position as a result of the assistance from the Gulf.   Since Mubarak fell, Egypt’s leaders and potential leaders—whether servants of the old regime, Muslim Brothers, military officers, neo-Nasserists, business tycoons, or whoever—have desperately sought to tie themselves to the revolution.  It is rather stunning how many non-revolutionary figures have declared their desire “to protect the revolution,” but that’s politics.  No one in Egypt at least seems willing to call them out on this or point to the fact that as these figures wax eloquently (or not) about democracy and national empowerment, Egypt has become dependent on financing from countries that do not have a very good track record supporting more open political systems.  This seems awkward, no?  Or is it just me?  Less than a year after the July 3 coup and the major Saudi-Emirati-Kuwaiti commitment, Egypt’s interim government and presumptive president, Field Marshal (ret.) Abdel Fattah al Sisi, have not paid a political price for Cairo’s relationship with the major Gulf states. Even presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahy, an avowed follower of Gamal Abdel Nasser—who basically went to war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen in the 1960s— is on record praising Riyadh and Abu Dhabi for their support.  This is likely the result of a broad recognition of Egypt’s difficult economic circumstances and the importance of the assistance in keeping the Egyptian economy afloat.  Egyptians seem genuinely grateful for the assistance.  It may very well be that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait are next on the list of external powers that have financed Egypt’s pursuit of modernization and development.  It did not end well for the Brits, Soviets, and Americans.  Perhaps it will be different in the case of the Gulf states because they are, in the words of Sabahy, “brotherly,” but I suspect that it will not. At the moment, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait may have a confluence of interests, but those interests may change or views about how best to achieve these interests may diverge over time. Egyptians also bristle at the suggestion of dependency on the Gulf.  They are quick to point out that the Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis need Egypt for their security. In an interview with Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper, Sabahy declared: “We appreciate this [financial] assistance, but I don’t call them gifts. What pushed the Gulf to Egypt is an expression of these countries’ interests, because Egypt … by confronting the Muslim Brotherhood has reduced the danger not only to the Egyptian state but also to Arab regimes, including those in the Gulf.” These are the same sentiments that one hears from government representatives and others within the ambit of Egypt’s elite, but apparently it is not just what Egypt is doing at home that is important.   Word in Cairo is that there have been some preliminary discussions among Egyptian and Gulf leaders about how to bring Egypt into Gulf security arrangements. There is precedent for this type of thing, sort of.  In 2011 after Zine al Abdine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak were pushed from power, the Gulf states invited Jordan and Morocco to become part of the Gulf Cooperation Council sometime in the future and previously, the Gulfies sought to purchase Egyptian and Syrian military support and cooperation through the Damascus Declaration (March 1991).  The Gulf states backed away from the agreement, preferring instead to entrust their security exclusively to the United States.  It is unclear whether the Egyptians and the Gulf states are actually interested in some type of Damascus Declaration redux, but either way Egypt’s dependence on the Gulf carries considerable risk for Cairo’s foreign and security policy. There may be no explicit conditions on the financing from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Kuwait, but there is surely an expectation that Egypt’s positions on important regional issues align closely with those of the Gulf.  On the issues of primary importance to the Gulf states, there nevertheless seems to be an implicit understanding that inflows of assistance are dependent on a crackdown on the Brotherhood and help countering the Iranian threat.  This is the natural inclination of those currently in power in Cairo, which diminishes the potential for political pressures and strains from even unarticulated conditionality, but it is clear that the Gulf states expect something in return for their generosity.  The existence of informal conditions poses an additional risk to Egypt.  With the exception of a statement Hosni Mubarak made in 2006 about Arab Shi’a being more loyal to Iran than to their own countries during an interview on al Arabiya, Egypt has never approached regional problems and conflicts in the explicitly sectarian way that informs Saudi foreign and national security policy, in particular.  Financing from and tight strategic coordination with the Gulf may drag the Egyptians into Saudi Arabia’s seemingly pathological and one-dimensional Sunni-versus-Shi’a view of the world. This cannot be good for Egypt. The Egyptians surely confront daunting and even scary economic problems, which have driven them into the arms of Gulf states for assistance.   The United States cannot help—it has few resources and extending additional aid to Egypt is political freight that Washington cannot bear. The Egyptians nevertheless need to be cautious.  Signing up for the Saudi/Emirati/Kuwaiti team only compromises Cairo’s desire to pursue an independent foreign policy that one day will restore what many in Egypt believe to be its natural place leading the region.  

This is a guest post by Alex Dick-Godfrey, program coordinator, Studies administration for the Council on Foreign Relations Studies Program. In a recent article on the Daily Maverick, Simon Allison identifies the “surprisingly perceptive” core message of al Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane’s recent propaganda audio message. In his message, Godane urges his Somali comrades to throw out their Kenyan and Ethiopian occupiers. Allison notes that, although unsettling, Godane is, in certain respects, correct and tapping into widespread sentiments. Despite operating in Somalia under the authority of an African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to rid the country of al Shabaab, Kenyan and Ethiopian troops are, in fact, occupying Somalia. Their goals are not altruistic, and are largely informed by their own national security and political considerations. Thus, instead of celebrating the foreign troops’ efforts to stem al Shabaab, Somalis are worried about the outsized influence being wielded by foreign powers in their country. Although troubled by these developments, the United States and its partners have other goals in the region that will prevent any intrusion into Kenyan or Ethiopian plans. Godane’s message is particularly striking when considering the formation of federal states in Somalia. In the absence of strong leadership from the Somali Federal Government (SFG), Kenya and Ethiopia have assumed leadership positions as state builders and negotiators in southern Somalia. In practice, this means that Kenya and Ethiopia have been able to influence the formation of new federal states, and create governments that will benefit their own national security concerns. As an example of this influence, Kenya and Ethiopia had an important role in the creation of the Interim Jubba Administration (IJA), a new federal state consisting of the Somali regions (Gedo, South Juba, and Middle Juba) bordering Kenya. Effectively, the IJA acts as a buffer state between Kenya and the threat posed by al Shabaab in Somalia. Ethiopia is involved as a negotiator for the creation of the IJA because it wants to maintain involvement and influence in the region as it deals with its own ethnic Somali population. Despite disagreements regarding the proposed make-up of this federal state from other regions and conferences in southern Somalia, the SFG has endorsed the IJA because it must maintain Ethiopian and Kenyan support as it battles al Shabaab. This competition for influence over land in Southern Somalia is not likely to lead to a sustainable governance model for Somalia moving forward, and is already causing regional strife. Somalia would be wise to ensure that whatever governance plan, or federal state organization, is put in place is durable enough to last after AMISOM forces have left, regardless of current security concerns. Due to AMISOM’s recent successes against al Shabaab forces, proxy states and vigorous counter terrorism operations by foreign forces seems likely to continue. Unfortunately this means the pattern of Kenyan and Ethiopian meddling in Somalian political affairs is likely to continue. Godane’s message is dangerous because it taps into that fact. The U.S. is interested in long term stability of Somalia, but the immediate concerns are to stabilize the Horn of Africa and to exterminate al Shabaab. Therefore, despite feeding al Shabaab’s propaganda machine and potentially destabilizing Somalia in the future, the United States will likely turn a blind eye to Kenyan and Ethiopian influence in Somalia.

This post is one of a three-part Asia Unbound series on the implications for Asia of the crisis in Ukraine. See related posts from my colleagues Elizabeth Economy and Sheila Smith. The most significant international crisis in recent years—Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine—has left global and western institutions scrambling to respond. What lessons do these events offer thus far for Asia? First, at a time when a focus of the U.S. strategy toward Asia has emphasized strengthening regional institutions to deal with differences—establishing strong “rules of the road”—the crisis in Ukraine shows the capabilities as well as limits of such rules. In the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Europe has strong economic and security institutions, with decades of experience working together, managing differences, facilitating shared security burdens, and coordinating the continent’s trade approaches to the world. In many ways the system worked; there has been no Russian move into alliance members like Latvia or Lithuania, which also have Russian-speaking minorities. Ukraine, at the EU frontier and outside of NATO, is much more vulnerable by comparison. But the crisis also reveals the limits of rules and norms. Moscow seemed unconcerned that NATO members might view an invasion of neighboring Ukraine as a direct threat. Nor did fear of possible alienation from the G8, or condemnation from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), dissuade Russia from an invasion in the name of protecting Russian speakers. The other side of the rules of the road argument would be their limited power. So as the United States focuses in its Asia policy on shoring up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus—all of which now include ASEAN, the United States, India, China, Japan, Russia, and others—the argument that establishing shared rules will enhance regional security has frayed a little at the edges. Second, the Ukraine events illustrate the woeful failings of the UN Security Council (UNSC). Its vulnerability to veto power renders the UNSC in an awkwardly limited position. This is why Europe and the United States are examining persuasive and punitive responses centered elsewhere: on a “contact group,” national visa policies, economic fora like the G8, and possibilities of coordinated sanctions. The UNSC’s vulnerabilities matter in Asia because of the possibility of conflict in several places, compounded by the more limited institutional mechanisms available for dealing with one, should it erupt. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action released its 2014 Global Conflict Tracker in January, and the places which global experts feared might be flashpoints in 2014 are instructive. Across South Asia, post-2014 stability in Afghanistan, instability in Pakistan, Indo-Pakistan conflict, and Sino-Indian border conflict all made the list. Of these, Sino-Indian border conflict was ranked below the others in terms of likelihood. Yet that is also the one potential conflict where a permanent member of the UNSC (China) moved troops to the border with India last May, and about thirty Chinese soldiers pitched tents nineteen kilometers inside Indian territory. That episode lasted for more than three weeks before India and China defused the situation. In addition, in recent years China has become increasingly more assertive in its claim to the Tawang area of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which lies just below the “line of actual control” between the two countries in place since the two countries’ 1962 border war. Chinese authorities have refused to issue Indian citizens from that state visas in their Indian passports, offering only “stapled visas” instead, and have issued maps that depict the territory as part of China. In India, people view these Chinese claims with an increasingly wary eye; last May’s tent-pitching was just the most expansive demonstration of territorial claim in recent years. Last week one of India’s leading politicians, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for prime minister, Narendra Modi, gave a speech in India’s northeast in which he called for China to end its “expansionist mindset.” But back to Ukraine: the Indian government has not taken a strong public position on the crisis, walking a tightrope between its deep historic ties to Russia, and its commitment to the inviolability of national sovereignty. The only indication of India’s position so far, despite a reported request from the government of Ukraine for India to support it against Russia’s claims, has been a response to a question on Twitter from the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson: “We are closely watching fast evolving situation and hope for a peaceful resolution.” How this crisis unfurls in the coming days will matter greatly for Asia. If the combination of NATO, EU, OSCE, G7, and coordinated national responses effectively manage the crisis, then the lesson will be that violating international norms result in costs too steep to bear. But a prolonged period of indeterminate impact, with Russian troops digging in further in Crimea against all appeals otherwise, may lead to the conclusion that the most institutionalized region of the world has few arrows in the policy quiver to respond to territorial aggression—the worst possible lesson. Follow me on Twitter: @AyresAlyssa 

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has aptly labeled Ukraine the “biggest crisis in Europe in the twenty-first century.” Indeed, he could have gone further. The Russian intervention will reverberate beyond the continent, since it challenges the very principles of a stable world order.  How this crisis plays out may determine whether the twenty-first century remains a time of great power comity, where patterns of cooperation dominate, or deteriorates into a bare-knuckled era of geopolitical competition. Moscow’s intervention is testing several fundamental norms of world politics: It challenges established principles of sovereignty and nonintervention, it raises the specter of a return to great power spheres of influence, and it elevates the principle of nationality over citizenship. Moreover, it has already exposed, yet again, the weakness of collective security in the face of destabilizing action by a great power.  Sovereignty and the sanctity of borders: Most obviously, Russia’s insertion of troops into Ukraine’s Crimea region and effective seizure of the peninsula constitutes a blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and of the nonintervention provisions contained in Article 2.7 of the United Nations Charter. While Russia has long maintained military installations in Sevastopol, home of its Black Sea Fleet, the Crimean peninsula has been part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory since its 1954 transfer from Russia by then Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. Ukraine has denounced Russia’s actions as a breach of the bilateral status of forces agreement between the two governments, and the United States concurs that international law has been violated. Beyond infringing on Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity, Russia has challenged the most fundamental aspect of its sovereignty: monopoly on the legitimate use of armed force. Moscow’s “brazen act of aggression,” as Secretary of State Kerry has termed it, may be the clearest unilateral violation of another nation’s sovereignty since Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It is not without precedent, however: In 2008, Russian troops invaded Georgia to assist two breakaway republics—and has since reneged on its promise to remove its troops. Allowing Russian actions in Ukraine to stand now would gravely undermine the doctrine of state sovereignty, which remains—for all its limitations—a force for global stability. The resurgence of spheres of influence: Moscow’s intervention in Crimea cannot be viewed in isolation. It is part of a broader post-Cold War effort to consolidate control over Russia’s “near abroad.” Putin, who famously called the dissolution of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century, has never sought to disguise this aim. To pull former Soviet republics into Moscow’s orbit, he has deployed numerous instruments, such as creating a “Eurasian Union” intended to rival the EU and selling subsidized natural gas to friendly neighboring countries. Provided its regional hegemony was secure, Moscow has generally conformed with international norms. But it has been willing to resort to force when challenged, as in Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine today. Spheres of influence are nothing new, of course. During the nineteenth century, they were often explicit arrangements that helped avoid collisions and smooth frictions between the great powers. Later, during World War II, British prime minister Winston Churchill and Russian leader Joseph Stalin in 1944 worked out an infamous “percentages agreement,” which secretly outlined the respective influence that the United Kingdom and Russia might enjoy in postwar Eastern Europe. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who learned of these plans, would have none of it. The UN Charter, by enshrining the principle of sovereign equality, was intended to end such arrangements forever. Returning from Yalta, where the Big Three had met in February 1945, Roosevelt proudly told a joint session of Congress: “The conference in the Crimea was a turning point—I hope in our history and the history of the world. It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliance, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed.” Ironically, of course, spheres of influence indeed survived into the Cold War in the form of tacit agreements between the superpowers. In Eastern Europe and the Caribbean Basin, respectively, the Soviet Union and the United States reserved the right to intervene to counter perceived threats to their respective strategic and political interests.  (To be sure, the Soviet sphere was far more closed than the U.S. one). With the end of the Cold War, many hoped spheres of influence would become a thing of the past. But Russia’s recent moves—as well as Chinese assertiveness in the South and East China Seas—suggest not. Reasserting the nationality principle. Putin and his hand-picked  parliament have justified his seizure of Crimea as a move to protect not only Russian nationals but “compatriots”—that  is, Russian-speaking inhabitants of Ukraine. In advancing this right, Putin has essentially elevated (Russian) ethnicity above (Ukrainian) citizenship. Like Czar Nicholas I, who claimed responsibility to protect co-religionists in the Ottoman Empire, he is asserting Moscow’s inherent right to defend a wider Russian diaspora in neighboring countries, including the estimated 58 percent of Crimeans who are ethnically Russian. By suggesting that the nationality principle trumps state sovereignty, Putin has opened a Pandora’s box. All  the former Soviet republics, from the Baltic to Central Asia, contain sizeable Russian minorities. Nor is Russia the only country in Eastern Europe  or Central Asia with large diaspora populations: consider that more than one million Hungarians live in Romania, or that a quarter of the inhabitants in Tajikistan are Uzbek. Farther afield, not least in Africa, the frequent incongruity between ethnicity and citizenship becomes even starker—and devotion only to nationality invites anarchy. Putin has recently disavowed any intent to annex the Crimean peninsula. But his actions have empowered local Russian nationalists who may seek to take matters into their own hands, threatening a bloody civil war in Ukraine. Undermining international organizations: The crisis has exposed once again the limitations of collective security when vital great power interests are at stake. The UN Security Council, so feckless in stopping violence in Syria, is even more hamstrung in resolving the Crimea crisis, thanks to the Russian veto. Given P5 divisions, the most that the UN can offer is mediation by senior UN officials. With the UNSC  unable to pass a strenuous resolution, attention has turned to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has played an occasionally valuable role in defusing other Eurasian conflicts, as in mediation efforts in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. The United States and European Union have proposed that the OSCE provide observers to monitor the safety of Ukraine’s Russian population, thus removing Russia’s ostensible justification for intervention and perhaps providing Moscow with a face-saving “off-ramp” from the crisis. But OSCE decisions typically require consensus among the 57 members of the organization. And there seems little prospect that Putin, riding high, will feel much pressure to go along. Consequently, Western multilateral institutions will need to unite behind an approach. The  United States should press its G7 partners, particularly a reluctant Germany, to eject Russia from the G8. This step would have both symbolic and substantive benefits, ostracizing Russia from the high table of advanced market democracies, where it never truly belonged, and consolidating a Western forum united by shared interests and values. Simultaneously, the United States should ensure a solid front among its NATO allies. The alliance is under no obligation to come to the aid of Ukraine (a non-NATO country) and should avoid provocative actions, such as naval patrols near Crimea or mobilization on Russia’s borders. At the same time, it should provide unmistakable reassurances of support, as well as military assets, to its East European members, including the Baltic States, while indefinitely suspending any joint exercises with Russia. These steps are not likely, by themselves, to reverse Russian aggression. But they will at least provide a symbol of Western solidarity.