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Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: Transnistria Approaches First Presidential Succession in a Decade
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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Transnistria Approaches First Presidential Succession in a Decade
Laurentiu Plesca
Executive Summary:
* Transnistria's December 13 presidential election is its first open contest since 2016, with term limits barring President Vadim Krasnoselsky after two mandates.
* Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Neagu, formerly head of the customs service, then interior minister, and previously a lawyer at Sheriff Holding, is the overwhelming favorite in a race ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Transnistria Approaches First Presidential Succession in a Decade Laurentiu Plesca Executive Summary: * Transnistria's December 13 presidential election is its first open contest since 2016, with term limits barring President Vadim Krasnoselsky after two mandates. * Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Neagu, formerly head of the customs service, then interior minister, and previously a lawyer at Sheriff Holding, is the overwhelming favorite in a racewith no meaningful competition.
* Turnout has fallen from 62 percent in 2016 to a record-low 26 percent in the 2025 parliamentary vote, weakening the legitimacy of a president whose term will run past the 2030 date when Transnistria's separate fiscal space is scheduled to disappear.
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Transnistria opened its presidential campaign on September 14. Candidates may be nominated until November 12 and must gather signatures from at least 2 percent of registered voters, about 8,000 people. Registration closes on November 21, campaigning runs to December 12, and early voting begins on December 7 at territorial commissions before moving to polling stations on December 11 (Interfax, September 14). The vote itself falls on December 13.
The incumbent is not on the ballot, a contrast to the previous two elections. President of Transnistria Vadim Krasnoselsky has served two consecutive five-year terms, and the region's constitution bars a third. He has said he supports rotating power and does not intend to change the rules, while predicting that Chisinau will try to obstruct the vote and fail (TASS, September 14). This will be Transnistria's eighth presidential election and the first genuinely open seat since 2016.
The favorite candidate is Vitaly Neagu, appointed deputy prime minister this January. Before that, he spent five years as Transnistria's interior minister, leaving with the rank of general. Before that, he headed the region's Customs Committee and served as a Supreme Court judge. Between 2008 and 2012, he worked as a consultant in the legal department of Sheriff Holding, a conglomerate that has effectively selected every Transnistrian leader since 2011. He is also publicly associated with the Russian world current, holding membership in the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, which awarded him its Primakov medal, along with a Russian Orthodox Church order and a Black Sea Cossack Host medal (NewsMaker, September 16).
The resume reads as a statement about what the job now requires. Yevgeny Shevchuk, Transnistria's second president, and Krasnoselsky both rose through the Interior Ministry, so the security pedigree signals continuity. The customs portfolio is not. Neagu ran the apparatus that collected revenue at the administrative boundary when that revenue underwrote the budget, and he is being promoted to the presidency just as Chisinau is legislating that apparatus out of existence. The value-added tax (VAT) and excise regime that took effect on September 1 extends to petroleum products and base metals in January 2027, to natural gas and electricity in April, and eliminates all remaining exemptions by January 2030 (Logos Press, August 26). Tiraspol's own outlets concede that full implementation could idle industrial enterprises.
The succession was managed almost immediately. On September 13, a Telegram channel appearing to belong to Neagu announced his candidacy and promised a program. Russian outlets, including RIA Novosti, carried it within hours (RIA Novosti, September 13). The Transnistrian government then stated the channel was fake (TASS, September 14). More than a week later, Neagu still had not formally declared, while attending every significant public event and commenting steadily on social and economic questions. Anatoly Dirun, a former deputy of the Supreme Council turned analyst, put it plainly. For anyone familiar with Transnistria, the nomination is obvious, because Neagu has passed through every stage and has been brought to this point both politically and technically. Dirun expects other candidates to be admitted as filler and notes that opposition aspirants are unlikely to be registered at all, though running would raise their profile. His summary of the exercise is that the vote will be arranged so that the candidate programmed to win does so (NewsMaker.md, September 16).
The constraint on all of this is participation. Krasnoselsky took 62 percent in the first round in 2016 and close to 80 percent in 2021, but turnout fell from 60 percent to 35.3 percent between those two contests. At the November 30, 2025 Supreme Council elections, it reached 26.01 percent, the lowest in the region's history and below the 27.7 percent recorded in 2020. Of the 49 nominated candidates, 45 were registered for 33 single-member districts. Obnovlenie (Renewal), created and funded by Sheriff Holding, took every seat with 83.8 percent; independents won none; and 9.7 percent of ballots were cast against all candidates (RIA Novosti, December 1, 2025; Central Electoral Commission for the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, December 8, 2025). A Russian analyst attributed the collapse to exhaustion, pressure from Chisinau, and far fewer people wanting to stand than in previous cycles, which he linked to the discouragement of political pluralism in the region (MK, December 1, 2025). With no turnout threshold in force, abstention cannot invalidate the result. It can only hollow it.
September offered a different kind of rehearsal. Around 220,000 Transnistrian residents hold Russian passports, and Tiraspol opened polling stations for Russia's September 18 to 20 State Duma elections (TASS, August 28). Chisinau authorized a single station at the Russian Embassy and lodged a protest with Russian Ambassador Oleg Ozerov over the rest. Moldova's Foreign Ministry said electoral processes conducted in the region by another state carry no legal consequences (Moldova1, September 20). In the 2021 Russian Duma vote, 27 stations in Transnistria produced more than 59,000 ballots, most of them for the ruling United Russia party (Moldova.org, September 19, 2021). At the 2024 Russian presidential election, 97 percent of Transnistrian voters backed Russian President Vladimir Putin, a higher share than in Russia itself (NewsMaker.md, March 18, 2024).
The pattern is the same across both ballots. Transnistria can still stage an election and produce a decisive number. It can no longer give voters a reason for the result to matter, or a budget that makes the office worth the contest it does not have.
The arithmetic of the term is the part worth keeping in view. A president elected on December 13 serves until December 2031. The 2030 deadline for abolishing Transnistria's separate tax and customs regime falls within that mandate, as does the horizon on which Chisinau intends to become an EU member state. Whoever takes the oath in Tiraspol this December will be the first Transnistrian leader whose term is scheduled to outlast the fiscal boundary the office exists to defend.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/transnistria-approaches-first-presidential-succession-in-a-decade/
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Transnistria Approaches First Presidential Succession in a Decade
Laurentiu Plesca
Executive Summary:
* Transnistria's December 13 presidential election is its first open contest since 2016, with term limits barring President Vadim Krasnoselsky after two mandates.
* Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Neagu, formerly head of the customs service, then interior minister, and previously a lawyer at Sheriff Holding, is the overwhelming favorite in a race ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Transnistria Approaches First Presidential Succession in a Decade Laurentiu Plesca Executive Summary: * Transnistria's December 13 presidential election is its first open contest since 2016, with term limits barring President Vadim Krasnoselsky after two mandates. * Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Neagu, formerly head of the customs service, then interior minister, and previously a lawyer at Sheriff Holding, is the overwhelming favorite in a racewith no meaningful competition.
* Turnout has fallen from 62 percent in 2016 to a record-low 26 percent in the 2025 parliamentary vote, weakening the legitimacy of a president whose term will run past the 2030 date when Transnistria's separate fiscal space is scheduled to disappear.
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Transnistria opened its presidential campaign on September 14. Candidates may be nominated until November 12 and must gather signatures from at least 2 percent of registered voters, about 8,000 people. Registration closes on November 21, campaigning runs to December 12, and early voting begins on December 7 at territorial commissions before moving to polling stations on December 11 (Interfax, September 14). The vote itself falls on December 13.
The incumbent is not on the ballot, a contrast to the previous two elections. President of Transnistria Vadim Krasnoselsky has served two consecutive five-year terms, and the region's constitution bars a third. He has said he supports rotating power and does not intend to change the rules, while predicting that Chisinau will try to obstruct the vote and fail (TASS, September 14). This will be Transnistria's eighth presidential election and the first genuinely open seat since 2016.
The favorite candidate is Vitaly Neagu, appointed deputy prime minister this January. Before that, he spent five years as Transnistria's interior minister, leaving with the rank of general. Before that, he headed the region's Customs Committee and served as a Supreme Court judge. Between 2008 and 2012, he worked as a consultant in the legal department of Sheriff Holding, a conglomerate that has effectively selected every Transnistrian leader since 2011. He is also publicly associated with the Russian world current, holding membership in the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, which awarded him its Primakov medal, along with a Russian Orthodox Church order and a Black Sea Cossack Host medal (NewsMaker, September 16).
The resume reads as a statement about what the job now requires. Yevgeny Shevchuk, Transnistria's second president, and Krasnoselsky both rose through the Interior Ministry, so the security pedigree signals continuity. The customs portfolio is not. Neagu ran the apparatus that collected revenue at the administrative boundary when that revenue underwrote the budget, and he is being promoted to the presidency just as Chisinau is legislating that apparatus out of existence. The value-added tax (VAT) and excise regime that took effect on September 1 extends to petroleum products and base metals in January 2027, to natural gas and electricity in April, and eliminates all remaining exemptions by January 2030 (Logos Press, August 26). Tiraspol's own outlets concede that full implementation could idle industrial enterprises.
The succession was managed almost immediately. On September 13, a Telegram channel appearing to belong to Neagu announced his candidacy and promised a program. Russian outlets, including RIA Novosti, carried it within hours (RIA Novosti, September 13). The Transnistrian government then stated the channel was fake (TASS, September 14). More than a week later, Neagu still had not formally declared, while attending every significant public event and commenting steadily on social and economic questions. Anatoly Dirun, a former deputy of the Supreme Council turned analyst, put it plainly. For anyone familiar with Transnistria, the nomination is obvious, because Neagu has passed through every stage and has been brought to this point both politically and technically. Dirun expects other candidates to be admitted as filler and notes that opposition aspirants are unlikely to be registered at all, though running would raise their profile. His summary of the exercise is that the vote will be arranged so that the candidate programmed to win does so (NewsMaker.md, September 16).
The constraint on all of this is participation. Krasnoselsky took 62 percent in the first round in 2016 and close to 80 percent in 2021, but turnout fell from 60 percent to 35.3 percent between those two contests. At the November 30, 2025 Supreme Council elections, it reached 26.01 percent, the lowest in the region's history and below the 27.7 percent recorded in 2020. Of the 49 nominated candidates, 45 were registered for 33 single-member districts. Obnovlenie (Renewal), created and funded by Sheriff Holding, took every seat with 83.8 percent; independents won none; and 9.7 percent of ballots were cast against all candidates (RIA Novosti, December 1, 2025; Central Electoral Commission for the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, December 8, 2025). A Russian analyst attributed the collapse to exhaustion, pressure from Chisinau, and far fewer people wanting to stand than in previous cycles, which he linked to the discouragement of political pluralism in the region (MK, December 1, 2025). With no turnout threshold in force, abstention cannot invalidate the result. It can only hollow it.
September offered a different kind of rehearsal. Around 220,000 Transnistrian residents hold Russian passports, and Tiraspol opened polling stations for Russia's September 18 to 20 State Duma elections (TASS, August 28). Chisinau authorized a single station at the Russian Embassy and lodged a protest with Russian Ambassador Oleg Ozerov over the rest. Moldova's Foreign Ministry said electoral processes conducted in the region by another state carry no legal consequences (Moldova1, September 20). In the 2021 Russian Duma vote, 27 stations in Transnistria produced more than 59,000 ballots, most of them for the ruling United Russia party (Moldova.org, September 19, 2021). At the 2024 Russian presidential election, 97 percent of Transnistrian voters backed Russian President Vladimir Putin, a higher share than in Russia itself (NewsMaker.md, March 18, 2024).
The pattern is the same across both ballots. Transnistria can still stage an election and produce a decisive number. It can no longer give voters a reason for the result to matter, or a budget that makes the office worth the contest it does not have.
The arithmetic of the term is the part worth keeping in view. A president elected on December 13 serves until December 2031. The 2030 deadline for abolishing Transnistria's separate tax and customs regime falls within that mandate, as does the horizon on which Chisinau intends to become an EU member state. Whoever takes the oath in Tiraspol this December will be the first Transnistrian leader whose term is scheduled to outlast the fiscal boundary the office exists to defend.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/transnistria-approaches-first-presidential-succession-in-a-decade/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports
John C. K. Daly
Executive Summary:
* On October 7, Kazakhstan renewed its oil supply agreement with Russia, binding itself more closely to Moscow while about 80 percent of its oil exports already flow through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
* Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has repeatedly hit CPC facilities and tankers, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports John C. K. Daly Executive Summary: * On October 7, Kazakhstan renewed its oil supply agreement with Russia, binding itself more closely to Moscow while about 80 percent of its oil exports already flow through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). * Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has repeatedly hit CPC facilities and tankers,and Kazakhstan expects to lose about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026, cutting its production plan.
* With no navy in the Black Sea, Kazakhstan must rely on diplomacy with Kyiv. Ukraine's assurance to Washington that it will spare CPC assets may not hold after U.S. President Donald Trump's diesel deal with Moscow.
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On October 7, Deputies of Kazakhstan's Kurultai ratified a protocol renewing the intergovernmental agreement with Russia on the supply of oil and petroleum products, extending its validity until January 1, 2028 (Vedomosti, October 7). The vote came a day after Ukraine launched more than 650 drones toward Moscow oblast, and hours after Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Ukraine (Fontanka, October 6; 5 Kanal, October 7). Kazakhstan is binding itself more closely to Russia's energy system just as Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine has turned the Russian ports that carry most Kazakh oil into targets.
The protocol revives a 2013 agreement that expired on January 1, 2024. It preserves annual coordination of supply balances and data exchanges, allows Kazakhstan to import Russian petroleum products duty-free, and provides for processing Russian oil at the Kondensat refinery in western Kazakhstan, which Russia co-owns and in which Kazakhstan keeps 30 percent of the output. Kazakh Vice Minister of Energy Kaiyrkhan Tutkyshbaev stressed that Russia remains Kazakhstan's strategic partner (Vedomosti, October 7).
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country and depends on other states' infrastructure to reach world markets. About 80 percent of its oil exports flow through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline (Kommersant, August 25). The pipeline runs more than 930 miles from Kazakhstan's Caspian oil fields to a terminal at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka, just southwest of Novorossiisk, Russia's main Black Sea port in Krasnodar krai (Forbes Kazakhstan, December 6, 2016). In 2025, the pipeline carried a record 70.52 million metric tons of oil, of which 62.8 million metric tons came from Kazakhstan's three largest fields--Tengiz (36.6 million metric tons), Kashagan (17 million metric tons), and Karachaganak (9.2 million metric tons), with Russian suppliers adding the remainder (Port News, February 26).
The CPC route is also a Western business interest. Russian companies own 36.5 percent of the consortium's shares, with an additional 3.825 percent partly held by Rosneft through Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited. Kazakhstan holds 20.75 percent. U.S. companies Chevron and ExxonMobil, through its subsidiary Mobil, hold 15 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively. The other shareholders include Russia's Lukoil, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures, and Eni (Interfax, December 1, 2025). Washington has exempted the CPC from U.S. sanctions on Russian oil (Neftegaz.ru, May 16, 2025). The pipeline carries about 2 percent of the world's daily crude supplies (Mirror of the Week, July 24).
Kazakh oil also leaves through a second Novorossiisk facility. The Sheskharis terminal is operated by Transneft subsidiary Chernomortransneft (Glavcom, November 15, 2025). It is Russia's largest crude-loading terminal on the Black Sea and ships Russian Urals and Siberian Light crude, as well as Kazakh oil (Kyiv Post, April 6). It can handle about 700,000 barrels per day (Censor.NET, August 14). In June 2022, Kazakh producers rebranded these exports as Kazakh Export Blend Crude Oil (KEBCO), after traders repeatedly mistook them for Russian Export Blend Crude Oil (REBCO), which Western sanctions had made difficult to sell (Neft i Kapital, June 6, 2022). In peacetime, Novorossiisk port facilities handled around 25-35 percent of all Russian crude oil exports, or about 3-3.2 million metric tons per month. In wartime, the site accounts for about 20 percent of Russia's crude oil exports (Kyiv Post, April 6). That makes the port too valuable for Kyiv to ignore.
While Kazakhstan has alternative export routes, they are not comparable in capacity. In 2025, about 11.1 million metric tons went through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline to Russia's Transneft network, 19.5 million metric tons through the Kazakhstan-China pipeline, including Russian oil in transit, and about 3.2 million metric tons through Kazakhstan's Caspian port of Aktau, partly for transshipment to Azerbaijan and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline (Forbes Kazakhstan, January 16). With more than 80 percent of the country's oil exports depending on a single terminal within range of Ukrainian drones, each new attack in the Black Sea rebounds on the Kazakh economy (Kommersant, August 25).
In August 2023, Kazakhstan's KazTransOil Deputy Director for Transportation Erik Sagiyev said that if the situation in the Black Sea worsened, volumes bound for Sheskharis would be redirected to Ust-Luga, a Russian Baltic port in Leningrad oblast (Mind, August 18, 2023). In March, however, Ukrainian drones struck Ust-Luga five times, forcing it to suspend exports, while the nearby port of Primorsk lost at least 40 percent of its storage (Ekonomichna Pravda, April 2). Drones hit Ust-Luga again on September 1 (Slovo i Dilo, September 1).
As Russia's war against Ukraine settled into a stalemate on land, Kyiv extended the war to Russia's energy exports, and the CPC was drawn in. Between February 2025 and July of this year, Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) attacked CPC facilities and the tankers loading at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka eight times despite Kazakh diplomatic entreaties to Kyiv to cease the assaults (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). On February 17, 2025, seven drones struck the CPC's Kropotkinskaia oil pumping station in Krasnodar krai, destroying its roof and damaging a closed switchgear unit, a gas turbine, cables, two transformers, and the fire suppression system. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak told Putin that oil flows from Kazakhstan fell by 30 to 40 percent (The Insider, February 18, 2025).
On November 14, 2025, the first significant drone attack on Sheskharis occurred. Russian Novorossiisk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko reported that drone debris damaged a Chernomortransneft storage tank and berth, as well as the Sheskharis oil depot (Telegram/@astrapress, November 14, 2025). On November 29, Ukrainian naval drones struck the CPC terminal itself, damaging one of its three moorings beyond repair. Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike "a targeted attack on critical infrastructure" (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). Kyiv replied that its actions were not directed against Kazakhstan (Interfax, December 1, 2025).
In February, then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Olha Stefanishyna confirmed that Kyiv had received a demarche from the U.S. State Department warning that attacks on the CPC terminal would cause tangible damage to U.S. economic interests in Kazakhstan. She stressed that the demarche did not require Ukraine to abandon strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, only on facilities tied to U.S. commercial interests (Exclusive, February 25). Kyiv kept Sheskharis in its sights. Drones attacked the terminal on March 2, and a strike overnight on April 5-6 damaged six of its seven oil-loading jetties (Exclusive, March 2; Ukrainska Pravda, April 6).
Over the summer, Ukraine's maritime campaign escalated sharply. On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had approved a 40-day Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) operation to push Russia toward ending the war (Ukrainska Pravda, June 25). Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck 35 vessels in the Sea of Azov over 96 hours, as well as two tankers in the Black Sea (The Maritime Executive, July 9). By July 14, SBS Commander Robert "Magyar" Brovdi reported 116 vessels hit in nine days under Operation "MoLoChKa." The operation targets Russia's small tankers, dry cargo ships, and tugs in the Sea of Azov, limiting fuel deliveries to Crimea (Interfax-Ukraine, July 14, 18). Tankers serving the CPC were caught in the escalation. On July 7, a drone struck the unladen, Chevron-chartered tanker Yasa Polaris near the terminal (Deniz Haber Ajansi, July 9). Further strikes on tankers followed on July 17, 19, 20, and 30, and Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called them "an unacceptable attack on Kazakhstan's economic interests" (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30).
This time, Washington intervened at a higher level. During a July 31 call, U.S. Vice President JD Vance asked Zelenskyy to halt the attacks. The U.S. was "alarmed that Ukraine was further destabilizing oil markets and harming U.S. companies by targeting tankers carrying crude piped from Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in the Russian port of Novorossiisk." Ukraine agreed not to strike CPC infrastructure or non-Russian vessels, provided they were not under Ukrainian sanctions and were not carrying Russian oil or cargo (Nur.kz, August 12).
On September 8, a drone incident near the CPC terminal forced the suspension of loading at two of its moorings, according to Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy (Interfax, September 9). The economic damage is already measurable. On August 25, Kazakh Energy Minister Erlan Akkenzhenov said the attacks would cost Kazakhstan about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026 and that the year's production plan had been cut to 96 million metric tons. "Initially, we had the idea to produce oil in the same volume as last year--99 million 550 thousand tons and actually increase it to 100 million tons," he said (Kommersant, August 25). The same day, Akkenzhenov also declared Kazakhstan's readiness to supply oil to Russia despite Western sanctions (Vedomosti, October 7).
Lacking a navy outside the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan cannot protect its tankers in the Black Sea and relies on diplomacy. In September, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in New York on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Tleuberdi said they discussed "the need to prevent future drone attacks on our vessels in the Black Sea" (RTVI, September 28). He also reiterated Kazakhstan's readiness to host negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (Dzen News, September 28).
On October 9, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets to help lower fuel prices (Fakty, October 10). Overnight on October 10, Ukrainian drones struck the oil-loading terminal of the Novoshakhtinsk Refinery, formerly known as Iug Rusi, in Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city on the Don River near the Sea of Azov. The terminal, with a capacity of about 2.5 million metric tons per year, was previously hit on July 9 (Militarnyi, October 10).
Kazakhstan does not use Iug Rusi, but the strike showed that Ukraine will not abandon its campaign against Russian energy infrastructure. The CPC's protection from Ukrainian strikes rests on a narrow U.S.-Ukrainian understanding that Trump's rapprochement with Moscow could erode. By renewing its energy ties with Russia while its main export route remains within range of Ukrainian drones, Kazakhstan could see more diplomatic demonstrations in Kyiv.
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Dr. John C. K. Daly is a Eurasian foreign affairs and defense policy expert for The Jamestown Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/kazakhstan-reaffirms-russian-energy-ties-as-ukrainian-drones-hit-oil-exports/
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports
John C. K. Daly
Executive Summary:
* On October 7, Kazakhstan renewed its oil supply agreement with Russia, binding itself more closely to Moscow while about 80 percent of its oil exports already flow through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
* Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has repeatedly hit CPC facilities and tankers, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 21, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports John C. K. Daly Executive Summary: * On October 7, Kazakhstan renewed its oil supply agreement with Russia, binding itself more closely to Moscow while about 80 percent of its oil exports already flow through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). * Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has repeatedly hit CPC facilities and tankers,and Kazakhstan expects to lose about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026, cutting its production plan.
* With no navy in the Black Sea, Kazakhstan must rely on diplomacy with Kyiv. Ukraine's assurance to Washington that it will spare CPC assets may not hold after U.S. President Donald Trump's diesel deal with Moscow.
-
On October 7, Deputies of Kazakhstan's Kurultai ratified a protocol renewing the intergovernmental agreement with Russia on the supply of oil and petroleum products, extending its validity until January 1, 2028 (Vedomosti, October 7). The vote came a day after Ukraine launched more than 650 drones toward Moscow oblast, and hours after Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Ukraine (Fontanka, October 6; 5 Kanal, October 7). Kazakhstan is binding itself more closely to Russia's energy system just as Russian President Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine has turned the Russian ports that carry most Kazakh oil into targets.
The protocol revives a 2013 agreement that expired on January 1, 2024. It preserves annual coordination of supply balances and data exchanges, allows Kazakhstan to import Russian petroleum products duty-free, and provides for processing Russian oil at the Kondensat refinery in western Kazakhstan, which Russia co-owns and in which Kazakhstan keeps 30 percent of the output. Kazakh Vice Minister of Energy Kaiyrkhan Tutkyshbaev stressed that Russia remains Kazakhstan's strategic partner (Vedomosti, October 7).
Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country and depends on other states' infrastructure to reach world markets. About 80 percent of its oil exports flow through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline (Kommersant, August 25). The pipeline runs more than 930 miles from Kazakhstan's Caspian oil fields to a terminal at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka, just southwest of Novorossiisk, Russia's main Black Sea port in Krasnodar krai (Forbes Kazakhstan, December 6, 2016). In 2025, the pipeline carried a record 70.52 million metric tons of oil, of which 62.8 million metric tons came from Kazakhstan's three largest fields--Tengiz (36.6 million metric tons), Kashagan (17 million metric tons), and Karachaganak (9.2 million metric tons), with Russian suppliers adding the remainder (Port News, February 26).
The CPC route is also a Western business interest. Russian companies own 36.5 percent of the consortium's shares, with an additional 3.825 percent partly held by Rosneft through Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited. Kazakhstan holds 20.75 percent. U.S. companies Chevron and ExxonMobil, through its subsidiary Mobil, hold 15 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively. The other shareholders include Russia's Lukoil, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures, and Eni (Interfax, December 1, 2025). Washington has exempted the CPC from U.S. sanctions on Russian oil (Neftegaz.ru, May 16, 2025). The pipeline carries about 2 percent of the world's daily crude supplies (Mirror of the Week, July 24).
Kazakh oil also leaves through a second Novorossiisk facility. The Sheskharis terminal is operated by Transneft subsidiary Chernomortransneft (Glavcom, November 15, 2025). It is Russia's largest crude-loading terminal on the Black Sea and ships Russian Urals and Siberian Light crude, as well as Kazakh oil (Kyiv Post, April 6). It can handle about 700,000 barrels per day (Censor.NET, August 14). In June 2022, Kazakh producers rebranded these exports as Kazakh Export Blend Crude Oil (KEBCO), after traders repeatedly mistook them for Russian Export Blend Crude Oil (REBCO), which Western sanctions had made difficult to sell (Neft i Kapital, June 6, 2022). In peacetime, Novorossiisk port facilities handled around 25-35 percent of all Russian crude oil exports, or about 3-3.2 million metric tons per month. In wartime, the site accounts for about 20 percent of Russia's crude oil exports (Kyiv Post, April 6). That makes the port too valuable for Kyiv to ignore.
While Kazakhstan has alternative export routes, they are not comparable in capacity. In 2025, about 11.1 million metric tons went through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline to Russia's Transneft network, 19.5 million metric tons through the Kazakhstan-China pipeline, including Russian oil in transit, and about 3.2 million metric tons through Kazakhstan's Caspian port of Aktau, partly for transshipment to Azerbaijan and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline (Forbes Kazakhstan, January 16). With more than 80 percent of the country's oil exports depending on a single terminal within range of Ukrainian drones, each new attack in the Black Sea rebounds on the Kazakh economy (Kommersant, August 25).
In August 2023, Kazakhstan's KazTransOil Deputy Director for Transportation Erik Sagiyev said that if the situation in the Black Sea worsened, volumes bound for Sheskharis would be redirected to Ust-Luga, a Russian Baltic port in Leningrad oblast (Mind, August 18, 2023). In March, however, Ukrainian drones struck Ust-Luga five times, forcing it to suspend exports, while the nearby port of Primorsk lost at least 40 percent of its storage (Ekonomichna Pravda, April 2). Drones hit Ust-Luga again on September 1 (Slovo i Dilo, September 1).
As Russia's war against Ukraine settled into a stalemate on land, Kyiv extended the war to Russia's energy exports, and the CPC was drawn in. Between February 2025 and July of this year, Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) attacked CPC facilities and the tankers loading at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka eight times despite Kazakh diplomatic entreaties to Kyiv to cease the assaults (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). On February 17, 2025, seven drones struck the CPC's Kropotkinskaia oil pumping station in Krasnodar krai, destroying its roof and damaging a closed switchgear unit, a gas turbine, cables, two transformers, and the fire suppression system. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak told Putin that oil flows from Kazakhstan fell by 30 to 40 percent (The Insider, February 18, 2025).
On November 14, 2025, the first significant drone attack on Sheskharis occurred. Russian Novorossiisk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko reported that drone debris damaged a Chernomortransneft storage tank and berth, as well as the Sheskharis oil depot (Telegram/@astrapress, November 14, 2025). On November 29, Ukrainian naval drones struck the CPC terminal itself, damaging one of its three moorings beyond repair. Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike "a targeted attack on critical infrastructure" (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). Kyiv replied that its actions were not directed against Kazakhstan (Interfax, December 1, 2025).
In February, then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Olha Stefanishyna confirmed that Kyiv had received a demarche from the U.S. State Department warning that attacks on the CPC terminal would cause tangible damage to U.S. economic interests in Kazakhstan. She stressed that the demarche did not require Ukraine to abandon strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, only on facilities tied to U.S. commercial interests (Exclusive, February 25). Kyiv kept Sheskharis in its sights. Drones attacked the terminal on March 2, and a strike overnight on April 5-6 damaged six of its seven oil-loading jetties (Exclusive, March 2; Ukrainska Pravda, April 6).
Over the summer, Ukraine's maritime campaign escalated sharply. On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had approved a 40-day Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) operation to push Russia toward ending the war (Ukrainska Pravda, June 25). Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck 35 vessels in the Sea of Azov over 96 hours, as well as two tankers in the Black Sea (The Maritime Executive, July 9). By July 14, SBS Commander Robert "Magyar" Brovdi reported 116 vessels hit in nine days under Operation "MoLoChKa." The operation targets Russia's small tankers, dry cargo ships, and tugs in the Sea of Azov, limiting fuel deliveries to Crimea (Interfax-Ukraine, July 14, 18). Tankers serving the CPC were caught in the escalation. On July 7, a drone struck the unladen, Chevron-chartered tanker Yasa Polaris near the terminal (Deniz Haber Ajansi, July 9). Further strikes on tankers followed on July 17, 19, 20, and 30, and Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called them "an unacceptable attack on Kazakhstan's economic interests" (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30).
This time, Washington intervened at a higher level. During a July 31 call, U.S. Vice President JD Vance asked Zelenskyy to halt the attacks. The U.S. was "alarmed that Ukraine was further destabilizing oil markets and harming U.S. companies by targeting tankers carrying crude piped from Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in the Russian port of Novorossiisk." Ukraine agreed not to strike CPC infrastructure or non-Russian vessels, provided they were not under Ukrainian sanctions and were not carrying Russian oil or cargo (Nur.kz, August 12).
On September 8, a drone incident near the CPC terminal forced the suspension of loading at two of its moorings, according to Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy (Interfax, September 9). The economic damage is already measurable. On August 25, Kazakh Energy Minister Erlan Akkenzhenov said the attacks would cost Kazakhstan about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026 and that the year's production plan had been cut to 96 million metric tons. "Initially, we had the idea to produce oil in the same volume as last year--99 million 550 thousand tons and actually increase it to 100 million tons," he said (Kommersant, August 25). The same day, Akkenzhenov also declared Kazakhstan's readiness to supply oil to Russia despite Western sanctions (Vedomosti, October 7).
Lacking a navy outside the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan cannot protect its tankers in the Black Sea and relies on diplomacy. In September, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in New York on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Tleuberdi said they discussed "the need to prevent future drone attacks on our vessels in the Black Sea" (RTVI, September 28). He also reiterated Kazakhstan's readiness to host negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (Dzen News, September 28).
On October 9, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets to help lower fuel prices (Fakty, October 10). Overnight on October 10, Ukrainian drones struck the oil-loading terminal of the Novoshakhtinsk Refinery, formerly known as Iug Rusi, in Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city on the Don River near the Sea of Azov. The terminal, with a capacity of about 2.5 million metric tons per year, was previously hit on July 9 (Militarnyi, October 10).
Kazakhstan does not use Iug Rusi, but the strike showed that Ukraine will not abandon its campaign against Russian energy infrastructure. The CPC's protection from Ukrainian strikes rests on a narrow U.S.-Ukrainian understanding that Trump's rapprochement with Moscow could erode. By renewing its energy ties with Russia while its main export route remains within range of Ukrainian drones, Kazakhstan could see more diplomatic demonstrations in Kyiv.
* * *
Dr. John C. K. Daly is a Eurasian foreign affairs and defense policy expert for The Jamestown Foundation and a non-resident fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington DC.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/kazakhstan-reaffirms-russian-energy-ties-as-ukrainian-drones-hit-oil-exports/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Ifo Institute: Parental Allowance Reform Could Fall Far Short of Savings Target
MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 22 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release:
* * *
21 October 2026
Parental Allowance Reform Could Fall Far Short of Savings Target
The German government's planned parental allowance reform for 2027 could provide far less relief for the federal budget than hoped for, according to a new study by ifo Dresden. "The savings target and the goal of increasing fathers' participation in the planned parental allowance reform are at odds with each other. The higher the number of fathers who are motivated to participate by the reform, the less the government saves," says ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 22 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 21 October 2026 Parental Allowance Reform Could Fall Far Short of Savings Target The German government's planned parental allowance reform for 2027 could provide far less relief for the federal budget than hoped for, according to a new study by ifo Dresden. "The savings target and the goal of increasing fathers' participation in the planned parental allowance reform are at odds with each other. The higher the number of fathers who are motivated to participate by the reform, the less the government saves," saysifo researcher Kyra Puteanus.
That's because, on average, fathers receive more parental allowance than mothers. Depending on the number of fathers receiving parental allowance, the ifo study estimates savings of up to EUR 880 million from the reform for the period from November 2027 through the end of 2030. Germany's Ministry for Family Affairs aims to save around EUR 1.6 billion in the same period, with the deciding factor being how many fathers receive parental allowance in the future. Today, the figure is just under one in two fathers. If this share rises each year by one percentage point, the savings drop to around EUR 597 million. At two percentage points, only EUR 311 million remain. From an annual increase of around 3.1 percentage points in the number of fathers receiving parental allowance, the government no longer saves anything at all. Most recently, the share grew by just 0.2 percentage points per year. "Since 2010, however, the share of fathers receiving parental allowance has almost doubled. A rapid increase can therefore not be ruled out, especially if months are otherwise forfeited," says ifo researcher Franziska Nuernbergk.
The planned reform is scheduled to take effect on November 1, 2027. Parents will then receive a maximum of 12 instead of the current 14 months of parental allowance, three months of which are reserved exclusively only for the mother or the father, respectively. Parents are free to choose how they divide the remaining six months. At the same time, the minimum amount will increase from EUR 300 to EUR 330, and the maximum amount from EUR 1,800 to EUR 1,900. In the case of mothers, the government saves money due to the shorter duration. In the case of fathers, on the other hand, additional costs are incurred. Fathers receive an average of EUR 1,345 per month, while mothers receive just EUR 845. Almost 39 percent of fathers receive the maximum amount, while the figure for mothers is just under 17 percent.
The study compares the costs of parental allowance with and without the reform for November 2027 through the end of 2030, broken down by mothers and fathers. It is based on data from Germany's Federal Statistical Office on children born in 2023, and its forecast for birth rates. The parental allowance amounts are extrapolated on the basis of the growth rates from 2021 to 2025.
* * *
2026 Article in Journal
Die geplante Elterngeldreform 2027 und der Preis der Vatermonate
Franziska Nuernbergk, Kyra Puteanus, Georg Trebst
ifo Dresden berichtet, 2026, 33, Nr. 05 35-39
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/article-journal/geplante-elterngeldreform-2027-preis-vaetermonate)
* * *
2026 Journal (Complete Issue)
ifo Dresden berichtet 05/2026
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/journal-complete-issue/ifo-dresden-berichtet-052026)
* * *
Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-10-21/parental-allowance-reform-could-fall-far-short-savings-target
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
21 October 2026
Parental Allowance Reform Could Fall Far Short of Savings Target
The German government's planned parental allowance reform for 2027 could provide far less relief for the federal budget than hoped for, according to a new study by ifo Dresden. "The savings target and the goal of increasing fathers' participation in the planned parental allowance reform are at odds with each other. The higher the number of fathers who are motivated to participate by the reform, the less the government saves," says ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 22 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 21 October 2026 Parental Allowance Reform Could Fall Far Short of Savings Target The German government's planned parental allowance reform for 2027 could provide far less relief for the federal budget than hoped for, according to a new study by ifo Dresden. "The savings target and the goal of increasing fathers' participation in the planned parental allowance reform are at odds with each other. The higher the number of fathers who are motivated to participate by the reform, the less the government saves," saysifo researcher Kyra Puteanus.
That's because, on average, fathers receive more parental allowance than mothers. Depending on the number of fathers receiving parental allowance, the ifo study estimates savings of up to EUR 880 million from the reform for the period from November 2027 through the end of 2030. Germany's Ministry for Family Affairs aims to save around EUR 1.6 billion in the same period, with the deciding factor being how many fathers receive parental allowance in the future. Today, the figure is just under one in two fathers. If this share rises each year by one percentage point, the savings drop to around EUR 597 million. At two percentage points, only EUR 311 million remain. From an annual increase of around 3.1 percentage points in the number of fathers receiving parental allowance, the government no longer saves anything at all. Most recently, the share grew by just 0.2 percentage points per year. "Since 2010, however, the share of fathers receiving parental allowance has almost doubled. A rapid increase can therefore not be ruled out, especially if months are otherwise forfeited," says ifo researcher Franziska Nuernbergk.
The planned reform is scheduled to take effect on November 1, 2027. Parents will then receive a maximum of 12 instead of the current 14 months of parental allowance, three months of which are reserved exclusively only for the mother or the father, respectively. Parents are free to choose how they divide the remaining six months. At the same time, the minimum amount will increase from EUR 300 to EUR 330, and the maximum amount from EUR 1,800 to EUR 1,900. In the case of mothers, the government saves money due to the shorter duration. In the case of fathers, on the other hand, additional costs are incurred. Fathers receive an average of EUR 1,345 per month, while mothers receive just EUR 845. Almost 39 percent of fathers receive the maximum amount, while the figure for mothers is just under 17 percent.
The study compares the costs of parental allowance with and without the reform for November 2027 through the end of 2030, broken down by mothers and fathers. It is based on data from Germany's Federal Statistical Office on children born in 2023, and its forecast for birth rates. The parental allowance amounts are extrapolated on the basis of the growth rates from 2021 to 2025.
* * *
2026 Article in Journal
Die geplante Elterngeldreform 2027 und der Preis der Vatermonate
Franziska Nuernbergk, Kyra Puteanus, Georg Trebst
ifo Dresden berichtet, 2026, 33, Nr. 05 35-39
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/article-journal/geplante-elterngeldreform-2027-preis-vaetermonate)
* * *
2026 Journal (Complete Issue)
ifo Dresden berichtet 05/2026
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/journal-complete-issue/ifo-dresden-berichtet-052026)
* * *
Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-10-21/parental-allowance-reform-could-fall-far-short-savings-target
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: Ukraine Military Situation Report on Oct. 21, 2026
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary:
* * *
Ukraine Military Situation Report | October 21
Can Kasapoglu
Executive Summary
* Battlefield assessment. Russian strikes threatened Ukraine's critical infrastructure, while intense ground fighting failed to produce strategic shifts in territorial control.
* Ukraine's satellite internet disruptions. Restrictions on Ukraine's use of the SpaceX Starshield satellite internet network disrupted the country's drone warfare ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary: * * * Ukraine Military Situation Report | October 21 Can Kasapoglu Executive Summary * Battlefield assessment. Russian strikes threatened Ukraine's critical infrastructure, while intense ground fighting failed to produce strategic shifts in territorial control. * Ukraine's satellite internet disruptions. Restrictions on Ukraine's use of the SpaceX Starshield satellite internet network disrupted the country's drone warfareefforts, exposing Kyiv's and Europe's dependence on space-based capabilities provided by the United States.
* Fighting in Chechnya. Unconfirmed reports suggest clashes have occurred in Chechnya, which would have ramifications within Russia.
-
1. Battlefield Assessment
Last week, intensified Russian missile and drone raids targeted population centers and energy infrastructure across Ukraine. Kyiv bore the brunt of these attacks. Banderol missile-drone hybrids and jet-powered variants of the Russian-Iranian Shahed-Geran drone continued to pose a growing threat to Ukraine.
In response to Russian targeting, Ukraine's government expanded its use of emergency measures. On October 20, Kyiv formally extended its crisis management framework beyond electricity systems to encompass heating, water supply, wastewater management, transportation infrastructure, electronic communications networks, broadband internet, and data centers. This decision, formalized under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1292, is an organizational directive to streamline damage repair after Russian strikes. The move reflects the growing vulnerability of Ukraine's critical infrastructure to persistent Russian attacks on essential services.
Land warfare remained intense, with the two sides fighting more than 200 tactical engagements per day. Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, and Lyman remained the conflict's major flashpoints. Once again, this concentrated combat brought no strategic-level changes to the battlespace.
2. The Power to Disconnect: Ukraine's Starlink Crisis and Europe's Dependence on Space-Based Capabilities from the United States
Last week, Ukraine suffered a major operational setback when SpaceX, the US aerospace and satellite internet company, restricted the country's use of its military-grade Starshield satellite communications system, a derivative of the Starlink network. Across several frontline sectors in the theater of war, Starlink and Starshield terminals reportedly lost connectivity at speeds ranging from 80 to 100 miles per hour, disrupting military logistics, constraining Ukraine's offensive and defensive drone warfare operations, and causing widespread disruptions to Ukraine's strike and interceptor drone missions. Field reports from Ukrainian formations suggested that the limitations could be even more severe than those officially reported.
Speed-based restrictions on complex satellite networks are difficult to enforce consistently. Even brief or unpredictable interruptions to these systems, however, can produce non-linear consequences across interconnected reconnaissance, targeting, and drone-control systems. These disruptions can turn an ostensibly limited technical restriction into a disproportionate battlefield liability.
An investigation of the Starshield disruptions conducted by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX, had ordered the restrictions, and limited connectivity for terminals moving above certain speeds. The decision reportedly followed discussions between Musk and senior officials in President Donald Trump's administration. Accounts differ over whether President Trump authorized or was informed of SpaceX's move beforehand.
Kyiv suffered from disrupted offensive operations, reduced drone-interception capabilities, and uncertainty over the reliability of a communications network deeply embedded in its military architecture. Beyond Ukraine, the episode raised broader questions for European North Atlantic Treaty Organization members about their dependence on US commercial and military space-based infrastructure.
Many of these concerns centered on Starlink and its derivative systems. That network's growing low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of satellites offers high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity, and greater resilience against interference compared with conventional satellite communications architectures. With terminal uplink capacities of 10-30 megabits per second and latency of 25-60 milliseconds, Starlink provides rapid intelligence dissemination, battlefield situational awareness, and shorter sensor-to-shooter cycles than other systems.
In recent years, Starlink has evolved from an emergency communications solution to a critical pillar of Ukraine's military architecture, underpinning the country's distributed command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, artillery coordination, mid-range strike, and drone warfare operations. Between 2022 and 2025, Ukraine received more than 50,000 Starlink terminals through official channels. Poland provided more terminals than any other source, though Kyiv likely also received thousands more through private donations. Their strategic importance became evident in February 2022, when Russian cyber operations disabled thousands of satellite modems across Ukraine before Moscow launched its full-scale offensive.
In February 2026, Russia faced the operational consequences of losing access to Starlink when Ukraine and SpaceX introduced mandatory terminal verification to prevent unauthorized Russian access to the network. Before these restrictions, Russian forces had integrated commercially acquired Starlink terminals into their low-flying strike drones, giving their unmanned vehicles long-range, real-time operator control and strong resistance to conventional electronic-warfare measures. Kyiv subsequently worked with SpaceX to require military terminals to undergo authorization through Ukraine's DELTA battlefield management system. These restrictions reportedly disrupted Russian communications, drone coordination, and offensive activity across the battlespace. Now the vulnerability has resurfaced, this time on the Ukrainian side.
Ukraine's growing reliance on Starlink has exposed a critical vulnerability in its offensive and defensive operations. By September 2026, Ukrainian engineers had developed high-speed interceptor drones, some equipped with artificial-intelligence and autonomous-targeting capabilities, to counter Russian jet-powered attack drones that could travel at speeds up to 190 miles per hour. Recent speed restrictions SpaceX has placed on its satellite internet network have limited Ukraine's communications with these interceptors, forcing Kyiv to rely again on less capable radio links.
Restrictions affecting SpaceX's military-grade Starshield services have also disrupted Ukrainian drone operations. These restrictions have caused connectivity interruptions lasting up to 20 seconds and forced Ukraine to cancel some missions. Various Ukrainian drone units, including the 59th Separate Unmanned Systems Assault Brigade, report that certain Starlink-equipped strike drones have even lost connectivity while traveling at 50 miles per hour.
These restrictions have also affected Ukraine's campaign against Russian logistics. Starting in summer 2026, Ukrainian forces began to deploy medium-range strike drones with increasing frequency, operating at distances of 30-130 miles, sometimes launching more than 50 of these drones per day against fuel shipments, rail networks, and maritime traffic linking Russia with occupied Crimea. Ukrainian accounts claim that between July and September 2026 these medium-range strike drones damaged more than 300 Russian vessels, caused a 60 percent decline in Russian shipments over land, and brought Russian fuel deliveries to a near halt. In Black Sea naval warfare, high-capacity, two-way satellite links have enabled Ukrainian unmanned surface vessels to navigate and target with human-in-the-loop control.
Kyiv's Starlink disruptions will almost certainly worry America's European NATO allies as well. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has exposed Europe's strategic dependence on US space-based capabilities, and any potential confrontation between NATO and Russia would likely unfold in a contested orbital environment. The Russian military's operational counter-space arsenal--which includes cyber warfare and electronic warfare, direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons, and orbital-proximity capabilities--threatens the West's critical satellite communications, as well as its positioning, navigation, timing, Earth-observation, and supporting ground infrastructures. Some sources conclude that Russian operational planning for such contingencies could even involve using space-based nuclear capabilities to target Western space sensor networks.
Many European analysts also conclude with high confidence that NATO's European member states remain largely dependent on the United States for satellite launch capabilities, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, missile early-warning systems, and advanced space-based situational awareness. Replacing US satellite communications would require Europe to produce six protected geostationary satellites at $700 million each and 12 LEO satellites at $45 million each. These expenditures alone--before accounting for the added costs of hardened gateways, terminals, encryption, and terrestrial redundancy--would total about $4.7 billion.
Europe's dependency extends beyond hardware. Galileo, Europe's independent, civilian-controlled global navigation satellite system constellation, cannot replicate the integrated military architecture the US-based Global Positioning System provides, especially under overwhelming Russian pressure. Moreover, without US space-provided intelligence, Europe would lose critical surveillance, signals intelligence, geolocation, targeting, battle-damage assessment, and intelligence-fusion capabilities.
Missile-warfare awareness is another critical area in which Europe lacks independent capabilities. Space-based ballistic-missile early-warning intelligence from the US has emerged as a consequential issue in the war in Ukraine. On October 12, reports surfaced suggesting that the US may have suspended the provision of this critical early-warning data to Kyiv, potentially leaving Ukrainian cities exposed to ballistic missile strikes without advance notice. These reports raise questions not merely about intelligence sharing, but about Ukraine's continued dependence on US strategic capabilities for its air and missile defense.
Overall, Ukraine's Starlink crisis illustrates a strategic vulnerability that extends far beyond the battlefield. Modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on space-based infrastructure that is controlled by governments and private companies outside the operational chain of command. For Europe's NATO member states, this fact carries particularly serious implications.
3. What to Look For in the Coming Weeks
Reports have emerged of clashes in Chechnya, a constituent republic of the Russian Federation located in the North Caucasus region. Though the details remain unconfirmed, this fighting may involve the pro-Moscow Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Chechnya remains strategically sensitive for the Kremlin, and any renewed combat there could have broader security implications for Russia. These developments warrant close monitoring in the coming weeks.
* * *
Can Kasapoglu is a nonresident senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work at Hudson focuses on political-military affairs in the Middle East, North Africa, and former Soviet regions.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/ukraine-military-situation-report-october-21-can-kasapoglu
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Ukraine Military Situation Report | October 21
Can Kasapoglu
Executive Summary
* Battlefield assessment. Russian strikes threatened Ukraine's critical infrastructure, while intense ground fighting failed to produce strategic shifts in territorial control.
* Ukraine's satellite internet disruptions. Restrictions on Ukraine's use of the SpaceX Starshield satellite internet network disrupted the country's drone warfare ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary: * * * Ukraine Military Situation Report | October 21 Can Kasapoglu Executive Summary * Battlefield assessment. Russian strikes threatened Ukraine's critical infrastructure, while intense ground fighting failed to produce strategic shifts in territorial control. * Ukraine's satellite internet disruptions. Restrictions on Ukraine's use of the SpaceX Starshield satellite internet network disrupted the country's drone warfareefforts, exposing Kyiv's and Europe's dependence on space-based capabilities provided by the United States.
* Fighting in Chechnya. Unconfirmed reports suggest clashes have occurred in Chechnya, which would have ramifications within Russia.
-
1. Battlefield Assessment
Last week, intensified Russian missile and drone raids targeted population centers and energy infrastructure across Ukraine. Kyiv bore the brunt of these attacks. Banderol missile-drone hybrids and jet-powered variants of the Russian-Iranian Shahed-Geran drone continued to pose a growing threat to Ukraine.
In response to Russian targeting, Ukraine's government expanded its use of emergency measures. On October 20, Kyiv formally extended its crisis management framework beyond electricity systems to encompass heating, water supply, wastewater management, transportation infrastructure, electronic communications networks, broadband internet, and data centers. This decision, formalized under Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1292, is an organizational directive to streamline damage repair after Russian strikes. The move reflects the growing vulnerability of Ukraine's critical infrastructure to persistent Russian attacks on essential services.
Land warfare remained intense, with the two sides fighting more than 200 tactical engagements per day. Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, and Lyman remained the conflict's major flashpoints. Once again, this concentrated combat brought no strategic-level changes to the battlespace.
2. The Power to Disconnect: Ukraine's Starlink Crisis and Europe's Dependence on Space-Based Capabilities from the United States
Last week, Ukraine suffered a major operational setback when SpaceX, the US aerospace and satellite internet company, restricted the country's use of its military-grade Starshield satellite communications system, a derivative of the Starlink network. Across several frontline sectors in the theater of war, Starlink and Starshield terminals reportedly lost connectivity at speeds ranging from 80 to 100 miles per hour, disrupting military logistics, constraining Ukraine's offensive and defensive drone warfare operations, and causing widespread disruptions to Ukraine's strike and interceptor drone missions. Field reports from Ukrainian formations suggested that the limitations could be even more severe than those officially reported.
Speed-based restrictions on complex satellite networks are difficult to enforce consistently. Even brief or unpredictable interruptions to these systems, however, can produce non-linear consequences across interconnected reconnaissance, targeting, and drone-control systems. These disruptions can turn an ostensibly limited technical restriction into a disproportionate battlefield liability.
An investigation of the Starshield disruptions conducted by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX, had ordered the restrictions, and limited connectivity for terminals moving above certain speeds. The decision reportedly followed discussions between Musk and senior officials in President Donald Trump's administration. Accounts differ over whether President Trump authorized or was informed of SpaceX's move beforehand.
Kyiv suffered from disrupted offensive operations, reduced drone-interception capabilities, and uncertainty over the reliability of a communications network deeply embedded in its military architecture. Beyond Ukraine, the episode raised broader questions for European North Atlantic Treaty Organization members about their dependence on US commercial and military space-based infrastructure.
Many of these concerns centered on Starlink and its derivative systems. That network's growing low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of satellites offers high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity, and greater resilience against interference compared with conventional satellite communications architectures. With terminal uplink capacities of 10-30 megabits per second and latency of 25-60 milliseconds, Starlink provides rapid intelligence dissemination, battlefield situational awareness, and shorter sensor-to-shooter cycles than other systems.
In recent years, Starlink has evolved from an emergency communications solution to a critical pillar of Ukraine's military architecture, underpinning the country's distributed command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, artillery coordination, mid-range strike, and drone warfare operations. Between 2022 and 2025, Ukraine received more than 50,000 Starlink terminals through official channels. Poland provided more terminals than any other source, though Kyiv likely also received thousands more through private donations. Their strategic importance became evident in February 2022, when Russian cyber operations disabled thousands of satellite modems across Ukraine before Moscow launched its full-scale offensive.
In February 2026, Russia faced the operational consequences of losing access to Starlink when Ukraine and SpaceX introduced mandatory terminal verification to prevent unauthorized Russian access to the network. Before these restrictions, Russian forces had integrated commercially acquired Starlink terminals into their low-flying strike drones, giving their unmanned vehicles long-range, real-time operator control and strong resistance to conventional electronic-warfare measures. Kyiv subsequently worked with SpaceX to require military terminals to undergo authorization through Ukraine's DELTA battlefield management system. These restrictions reportedly disrupted Russian communications, drone coordination, and offensive activity across the battlespace. Now the vulnerability has resurfaced, this time on the Ukrainian side.
Ukraine's growing reliance on Starlink has exposed a critical vulnerability in its offensive and defensive operations. By September 2026, Ukrainian engineers had developed high-speed interceptor drones, some equipped with artificial-intelligence and autonomous-targeting capabilities, to counter Russian jet-powered attack drones that could travel at speeds up to 190 miles per hour. Recent speed restrictions SpaceX has placed on its satellite internet network have limited Ukraine's communications with these interceptors, forcing Kyiv to rely again on less capable radio links.
Restrictions affecting SpaceX's military-grade Starshield services have also disrupted Ukrainian drone operations. These restrictions have caused connectivity interruptions lasting up to 20 seconds and forced Ukraine to cancel some missions. Various Ukrainian drone units, including the 59th Separate Unmanned Systems Assault Brigade, report that certain Starlink-equipped strike drones have even lost connectivity while traveling at 50 miles per hour.
These restrictions have also affected Ukraine's campaign against Russian logistics. Starting in summer 2026, Ukrainian forces began to deploy medium-range strike drones with increasing frequency, operating at distances of 30-130 miles, sometimes launching more than 50 of these drones per day against fuel shipments, rail networks, and maritime traffic linking Russia with occupied Crimea. Ukrainian accounts claim that between July and September 2026 these medium-range strike drones damaged more than 300 Russian vessels, caused a 60 percent decline in Russian shipments over land, and brought Russian fuel deliveries to a near halt. In Black Sea naval warfare, high-capacity, two-way satellite links have enabled Ukrainian unmanned surface vessels to navigate and target with human-in-the-loop control.
Kyiv's Starlink disruptions will almost certainly worry America's European NATO allies as well. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has exposed Europe's strategic dependence on US space-based capabilities, and any potential confrontation between NATO and Russia would likely unfold in a contested orbital environment. The Russian military's operational counter-space arsenal--which includes cyber warfare and electronic warfare, direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons, and orbital-proximity capabilities--threatens the West's critical satellite communications, as well as its positioning, navigation, timing, Earth-observation, and supporting ground infrastructures. Some sources conclude that Russian operational planning for such contingencies could even involve using space-based nuclear capabilities to target Western space sensor networks.
Many European analysts also conclude with high confidence that NATO's European member states remain largely dependent on the United States for satellite launch capabilities, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, missile early-warning systems, and advanced space-based situational awareness. Replacing US satellite communications would require Europe to produce six protected geostationary satellites at $700 million each and 12 LEO satellites at $45 million each. These expenditures alone--before accounting for the added costs of hardened gateways, terminals, encryption, and terrestrial redundancy--would total about $4.7 billion.
Europe's dependency extends beyond hardware. Galileo, Europe's independent, civilian-controlled global navigation satellite system constellation, cannot replicate the integrated military architecture the US-based Global Positioning System provides, especially under overwhelming Russian pressure. Moreover, without US space-provided intelligence, Europe would lose critical surveillance, signals intelligence, geolocation, targeting, battle-damage assessment, and intelligence-fusion capabilities.
Missile-warfare awareness is another critical area in which Europe lacks independent capabilities. Space-based ballistic-missile early-warning intelligence from the US has emerged as a consequential issue in the war in Ukraine. On October 12, reports surfaced suggesting that the US may have suspended the provision of this critical early-warning data to Kyiv, potentially leaving Ukrainian cities exposed to ballistic missile strikes without advance notice. These reports raise questions not merely about intelligence sharing, but about Ukraine's continued dependence on US strategic capabilities for its air and missile defense.
Overall, Ukraine's Starlink crisis illustrates a strategic vulnerability that extends far beyond the battlefield. Modern military effectiveness increasingly depends on space-based infrastructure that is controlled by governments and private companies outside the operational chain of command. For Europe's NATO member states, this fact carries particularly serious implications.
3. What to Look For in the Coming Weeks
Reports have emerged of clashes in Chechnya, a constituent republic of the Russian Federation located in the North Caucasus region. Though the details remain unconfirmed, this fighting may involve the pro-Moscow Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov. Chechnya remains strategically sensitive for the Kremlin, and any renewed combat there could have broader security implications for Russia. These developments warrant close monitoring in the coming weeks.
* * *
Can Kasapoglu is a nonresident senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work at Hudson focuses on political-military affairs in the Middle East, North Africa, and former Soviet regions.
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/ukraine-military-situation-report-october-21-can-kasapoglu
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: America and Europe - Blueprint for the Next Chapter
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary:
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Oct 21, 2026
America and Europe: A Blueprint for the Next Chapter
Peter Rough & Ulrich Speck
Threatened by an Axis of Challengers, the United States and Europe Need to Reclaim the Initiative Together
The free and open global order is under attack. A new anti-Western axis, centered on China and Russia and reinforced by Iran and North Korea, is threatening the security and prosperity of the free world. While the West ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary: * * * Oct 21, 2026 America and Europe: A Blueprint for the Next Chapter Peter Rough & Ulrich Speck Threatened by an Axis of Challengers, the United States and Europe Need to Reclaim the Initiative Together The free and open global order is under attack. A new anti-Western axis, centered on China and Russia and reinforced by Iran and North Korea, is threatening the security and prosperity of the free world. While the Westhas treated China and Russia as partners and has long hoped to facilitate their integration into the United States-led international system, the ruling elites in Moscow and Beijing have instead used their access to amass vast power that they are now turning against the US, Europe, and their allies and partners.
Yet a strengthened, newly self-confident West, together with its Asian and other partners, still has every chance to prevail. Building on economic strength and technological genius, the West can chart the way into a new golden age of prosperity and freedom. The US, Europe, and their Asian allies can renew the promises of democracy, the market economy, and international cooperation that have led humanity toward progress for many decades. In doing so, the West can weaken the dangerous alternative that China and Russia have built.
To prevail in this struggle, the US and Europe need to focus--together--on the growing threat from what we hereby dub the axis of challengers. Only by joining forces can the West shift the balance of power in its favor.
Today, however, many voices in the US and Europe are pushing for a transatlantic divorce.
On the US side, restrainers regard alliances and partnerships not as assets to be leveraged but as burdens to be overcome through deals with the anti-Western challengers. On the European side, supporters of strategic autonomy believe that a united Europe can somehow rise as a major pole in world politics.
Thought leaders and politicians in both camps see transatlantic cooperation as a Cold War relic rather than a key element of a new strategy to push back against China, Russia, and their regional partners.
We, by contrast, believe that the axis of challengers poses a fundamental challenge to world order. China and Russia, together with their partners, aim to construct a hierarchical system of coercion that is antithetical to the American and European ways of life. At both the nation-state and international-system levels, this new order would dramatically diminish the global weight and influence of the US, Europe, and their partners. Over time, this could even spell the end of democracy and the market economy, the West's seminal achievements since the end of the eighteenth century.
Given the existential nature of this threat, the US and Europe need to overcome their many differences and forge a new pact for a new era. They should strive for nothing less than a renewal of the West.
The first requirement for building a stronger West is to establish a new division of labor in defense. Europeans can and should take responsibility for large parts of the continent's conventional defenses against Russia. Second, Americans and Europeans need to build a joint techno-economic space that is open to partners but guards against dependencies and technological leakage. Third, the US and Europe have to renew the transatlantic relationship with the understanding that the US-European relationship is only one dimension of a global system of alliances and partnerships. Given that China is the primary challenger to today's free and open order, key Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea should be equal stakeholders in a renewal of a West defined less by geography than by shared interests and values.
The Axis of Challengers Is Increasing the Pressure
Europe, the US, and their Asian partners face pressure from a new axis of challengers. This axis is led by the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Russia and supported by Iran and North Korea.
Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine is the most visible front line in this conflict. Iran and North Korea openly support Moscow's war effort with technology and weapons--and, in North Korea's case, even with combat troops. China is the war's key enabler, buying Russian oil and providing dual-use goods vital to the Russian arms industry. Beijing also supports Moscow diplomatically, shielding it from isolation.
In the war in the Middle East, Russia and China have provided important support to Tehran. Again, China plays the key economic role in this effort, buying almost all of Iran's oil despite a US-led sanctions regime arrayed against the Islamic Republic.
What might have been regional clashes in other areas have become front lines in a broader power struggle between the US-led camp and the axis of challengers.
A potentially more catastrophic war is on the horizon.
China's pressure on Taiwan increases almost daily. If Beijing decides to attack Taipei, a Third World War scenario becomes possible, if not likely: while China attacks Taiwan, Russia attacks the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Iran attacks Israel or the Gulf states. In such an eventuality, the US would likely be overwhelmed.
China clearly is preparing for war. Beijing has invested massively in its armed forces, turning them into peer or near-peer competitors of the US military. At the same time, China is working to reduce its dependence on the outside world and its exposure to economic pressure. The PRC has also invested in building its own economic weapon: a quasi-monopoly on the production of rare-earth elements on which the US and Europe depend, not only for civilian industrial production but also for weapons of war.
To Topple Pax Americana
The confluence of these conflicts is not accidental. Russia's war against Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, and China's saber-rattling over Taiwan are not rooted in misunderstandings that diplomacy could repair. Rather, these wars are part of a systematic effort to overturn the US-led global order. The axis of challengers considers the free and open West--and the powers that represent it--to be a threat. The leaders of the axis feel that they are gaining weight and power, and they smell what they identify as Western weakness.
What unites China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is the ambition to unmake the world that the US spent decades building. During the twentieth century, the US ended the absolute rule of kings, the primacy of colonial empires, and the terrors of Nazism and Communism. The American model of democracy and free-market economics became aspirational for many peoples around the globe, and turned oppressed citizenries against their autocratic rulers. At the same time, the US tried to establish an international order that would prevent major wars, build trust among nations, and enable free trade.
These efforts culminated in a vision of a new post-Cold War order: a world with levels of peace and prosperity unseen at any point in history.
China and Russia had the opportunity to join this new world order. But instead of liberalizing, the elites in Beijing and Moscow tightened their grip at home. Over time, they have built a bulwark against free societies and open economies, keeping the reins of political and economic power in their own hands.
And yet, throughout the Middle East and the post-Soviet space, citizens have advocated for greater participation in their own societies. The so-called color revolutions of the former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring saw democratic uprisings that kept autocratic leaders awake at night. When Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke to American leaders in the early 2010s, he would reportedly "talk all the time about color revolutions."[1]
This fear of democracy has mixed with an imperial sense of great-power entitlement, which has prevented China and Russia from becoming pillars of the existing order as Germany, France, Japan, or India have. Instead, Moscow and Beijing have turned increasingly against the international order. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have visited each other over 40 times and coordinate closely on a broad range of economic, political, and military questions. In March 2023, Xi, seemingly unaware that nearby microphones were picking up his remarks, told Vladimir Putin, "Right now there are changes--the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years--and we are the ones driving these changes together." The Russian leader responded, "I agree."[2]
What makes the present moment so dangerous is that the axis of challengers increasingly sense opportunity--and a potential path to victory. Both Xi and Putin believe that the West is declining and that their countries are the leading powers of the future. Just before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing and Moscow cosigned a manifesto that articulated their claim to global leadership.[3]
The Failure of Western Post-Cold War Strategy
The emergence of an anti-Western axis of challengers that the West faces has been driven primarily by developments within China and Russia. But the rise of these challengers also stems from the West's post-Cold War integration strategy. The West fully opened up to Russia and China and shared its scientific and technological know-how with both countries. This effort was meant as an advance payment on liberalization.
But that liberalization never took place. Instead of becoming more democratic and transforming their economies according to market principles, Russia's and China's ruling regimes turned more autocratic at home and more aggressive toward their neighbors. The West continued blithely down the path of openness, integration, and engagement.
Only in recent years, as concerns have grown about the emergence of an axis of challengers and its hostility toward the US and its partners, have Western leaders at least partially rethought the wisdom of this one-sided, post-Cold War orientation toward openness. But economic interdependence connecting the West with China has sharply raised the price of reversing course--making it even harder for the US and Europe to push back against China.
Yet the West is held back by more than economic constraints. For the West, it is hard to accept that its outstretched hand has been rejected, and that China and Russia are pursuing a project designed to end the US-led global order.
There are many reasons why the West has been slow to realize that its old strategy has failed: an unwillingness to abandon the optimistic beliefs of a bygone era, a widespread tendency to blame America first for disruptions in the relationship, and business interests' desire to stay deeply engaged with China. Russian and Chinese cognitive-warfare efforts to shape how the West thinks about itself have slowed many US and European leaders' reactions. The West's openness, especially online, only facilitates such insidious operations.
Once the new geopolitical reality has set in, different questions emerge: What can and what should the West do to push back against the axis of challengers? What is the right strategy--and what won't work?
Why Splitting the Axis of Challengers Won't Work
In some circles, the idea of splitting the axis of challengers with a strategy of divide-and-conquer has gained traction. It is indeed tempting to try a Kissinger reverse. Just as President Richard Nixon and his counselor Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s engaged with China to cleave it from the Soviet Union, today the West should engage Russia to isolate China. Yet such a strategy won't work. It worked for Nixon and Kissinger because the split between Beijing and Moscow already existed before they strove to widen it.
Today, however, China and Russia are intensifying their relationship with regular strategic consultations at the highest levels. Both Moscow and Beijing see more value in working with each other than in working with the US and Europe. Both want to redraw the geopolitical map and change the current international order to weaken the West.
Many issues divide China and Russia, but both countries' leaders are accustomed to reaching pragmatic compromises when necessary. Realizing their geopolitical ambitions matters most to Xi and Putin. Both men know that only by working together do they stand a chance of weakening US power and the US-led system of free markets and free peoples.
A Stronger West Is the Only Response
The West is under attack from the axis of challengers. Putin and Xi see the US and its allies as adversaries that stand in the way of their imperial dreams. Both see themselves as the guiding powers of the next world order. Leaders in both Beijing and Moscow want to enlarge their territory and subjugate their neighbors using force.
A weak Western response to this effort helps the axis of challengers advance its ambitions. Doing nothing is not an option as Russia and China work to enhance their relative power and strength. The status quo--still largely characterized by Western openness--allows China and Russia to operate relatively unrestricted to steal advanced Western technologies outright or through subterfuge.
Unfortunately, the status quo also reflects the West's relative military weakness. While the axis of challengers has invested in its armed forces, the West still hasn't done enough to gain the military superiority necessary to deter members of the axis from attacking. Moreover, the West has not developed the mindset necessary to contain the imperial ambitions of Russia, China, and their partners. Western leaders are often weakened by infighting when they should be concentrating their resources on the vital struggle with the axis of challengers.
The West needs to become strategically inclined once again. Each Western country's first task is to build up its own strengths: economically, militarily, and politically. But to overcome the axis of challengers, Western nations should work together.
A stronger, more united West is less dependent on its adversaries and more able to resist pressure from Russia and China. A more coherent West can pressure the axis and considerably weaken it. By working together, Americans and Europeans can decisively shift the balance of power and capacity to their favor in nearly every domain.
Despite their differences, Americans and Europeans remain part of the same political and economic family. Both sides often frustrate each other. Yet by working together, they have immense potential. With partners in Asia and elsewhere, the US and Europe can define the next chapter in the evolution of the world order. Most importantly, they can keep Russia's and China's destructive ambitions in check.
Yet building a stronger West requires a major strategic effort. Three main tasks are vital for building a new transatlantic alliance to counter the axis of challengers:
1. A better division of labor in defense
2. The creation of a common technological-economic space
3. The establishment of a geopolitical triangle with Asian partners
Task One: Establish a Forward-Looking Division of Labor in Defense
The current posture of the transatlantic alliance is a Cold War relic that does not reflect today's or tomorrow's strategic requirements. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has grown more powerful, Russia has weakened, and China has become the primary threat to the US. NATO's posture needs to reflect these changes.
For three decades after the end of the Cold War, the prospect of war among great powers seemed to have disappeared. Yet the expectation that Russia and China would integrate into the US-led order never materialized.
Instead, both Moscow and Beijing have emerged as military powers that threaten the US or its allies. Russia conducts an open war of aggression and conquest in Europe. China has built a military that is a peer or near-peer competitor of the US and is nearly every day increasing military pressure on Taiwan and its neighbors, namely the Philippines and Japan. The prospect of a three-front war involving China, Russia, and Iran against the US and its allies keeps military planners and political decision-makers awake at night.
Europeans and Americans have to rearm to hold Russia and China in check. The US and Europe also need to establish a new burden-sharing balance within the alliance: the US can no longer focus on Europe, but has to shift its resources to Asia and maintain a presence in the Middle East. As a result of this shift, and to gain more agency, Europeans need to take responsibility for large parts of conventional defense against Russia. To advance these changes, Elbridge Colby, the US under secretary of war for policy, is working to implement NATO 3.0.
At its core, NATO 3.0 transfers the primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense from the US to its European allies. This plan requires the Europeans to undertake a major effort. Rearmament is costly and requires massive political engagement, as military spending competes with social spending in the budgets of Europe's nations and the minds of its people.
During this transition phase, Washington ought to maintain a meaningful troop presence in Europe to ensure credible defense. This American presence matters because Russia respects only the US military. Replacing American units with European ones will tempt the Kremlin to test the alliance.
Additionally, the US nuclear umbrella cannot be replaced in the foreseeable future. A dramatic drawdown in conventional forces could limit American options in a conflict and potentially undermine the credibility of America's extended deterrent in Europe and around the world.
The paradox of NATO 3.0, therefore, is that it will require US leadership, capabilities, and troops to succeed. The purpose of that American presence, however, should be to enable Europe to assume greater responsibility--not to make it permanently dependent on the US.
Task Two: Create a Common Technological-Economic Space
Today, rapid technological development, particularly in artificial intelligence, affects almost every dimension of the economy. AI will also shape the future of warfare and society writ large in ways that are hard to predict. The winner of the AI arms race will gain a major advantage in the competition for global leadership. The West urgently needs to win this race--not only on the technological frontier but also in the areas of implementation in the economy and across society.
The ability to turn technological knowledge into industrial capacity will be one decisive factor in the battle between the US-led camp and the axis of challengers. This ability encompasses many skills, including producing weapons and ammunition at the necessary scale, which will require switching quickly from civilian to military production in the event of a major war. The West also needs to become largely independent of the axis's supply chains, especially for military goods. It should ease China's chokehold over the world's supply of critical minerals.
To solve those problems, the US and Europe have to work together to create a common technological-economic space in which people, capital, goods, and expertise can move relatively freely.
The US leads in key categories of next-generation technologies, but Europe has major assets that can drive technological breakthroughs and enable large-scale production: significant pools of talent, major research and development centers, and the world's largest single market. In addition, Germany and other European countries feature world-leading hidden champions well positioned to integrate AI and robotics and spearhead AI's industrial application.
A collaborative venture that spans the Atlantic and includes Asian partners would give the West a decisive advantage. Along the way, it will be crucial that any lead the West maintains is protected against the illegal transfer of knowledge to, and unfair competition from, the axis of challengers.
In building such a space, the US, Europe, and their partners would gain massive technological and economic advantages in the competition with China and its partners. With this broader vision in mind, Americans and Europeans should expand existing efforts to build elements of such a joint space. These include an overhauled and functional European Union-US Trade and Technology Council, Pax Silica, the Minerals Security Partnership, and the US-EU Action Plan on Critical Minerals.
The Group of Seven also provides an important framework to advance such ideas and projects, and it already includes a vital Asian partner for both the US and Europe: Japan. India, another key Asian partner for the West, has been invited as a guest to the last five G7 summits, while South Korea has been invited three times and Australia twice.
Task Three: Build a Geopolitical Triangle with Asian Partners
To push back successfully against the axis of challengers, the West should be strong, capable, and united. But despite the enormous economic, technological, and military power of the US and Europe, including Asian partners ready to work with it is vital.
In combination, countries such as Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and the Philippines bring enormous economic power to an enlarged West defined more by shared principles than geography. These countries may have differences but are fundamentally like-minded: they all share concerns about China's growing power and its imperialist, hegemonically inclined mindset.
Including these countries in a geopolitical triangle connecting Asia, Europe, and the US would bring important economic and technological dynamism into the Western camp. Japan has abundant experience in securing supply chains against Chinese blackmail. All of the West's key Asian partners have worked to limit Chinese expansionism. They all understand the connection between military and economic security and have launched their own initiatives in these fields.
To form or deepen such a triangle is a geopolitical imperative because the European and the Asian theaters are increasingly merging. As China and Russia have built a coherent autocratic axis, they have turned Eurasia into a more unitary geopolitical space. The response to their revisionist attempts to fundamentally change the current US-led order needs to be Eurasian in scope.
These Asian partners should become stakeholders in the new technological-economic space that the pro-Western alliance has to build. Together, such a triangular configuration could better resist China's economic pressure and blackmail, maintain or build an edge in key future technologies, and cultivate the industrial mass necessary to outcompete China's production of cheap weapons.
Outlook: Seizing the Initiative from China and Russia
In recent years, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have worked to turn their global vision into a reality, actively seeking to undermine US power and the US-led global order on many fronts. In some areas, they have made progress; in others, they have met resistance.
Yet Xi and Putin remain convinced that the future is theirs because they possess the willpower the West lacks.
Only if the axis of challengers meets solid, credible resistance will the West succeed in keeping the peace and enjoying the fruits of its past victories: the preservation of the sovereign rights of smaller countries, the maintenance of largely secure borders, and the coherence of the international marketplace.
As long as they are convinced that the West is rotten to its core, weak, and unable to resist, the axis of challengers is going to double down on its current efforts. But every effort the West undertakes to strengthen its power and demonstrate its resolve discourages Xi and Putin from taking the axe to the US-led world order.
The West possesses almost unlimited potential. But it needs to put its house in order to more effectively safeguard the free and open world system that allows democracy and the market economy to thrive. By correcting the balance of burden-sharing between Europe and the US, creating a common technological-economic space, and building a triangular relationship connecting the US, Asia, and Europe, the West would not only deter Putin and Xi from following their worst instincts. The US, Europe, and their Asian partners would also unchain the productive forces that could lead humanity into a new golden age.
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Endnotes
1. Chris Buckley and Steven L. Myers, "In Turbulent Times, Xi Builds a Security Fortress for China, and Himself," New York Times, August 6, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/06/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-security.html.
2. "China's Xi Tells Putin of 'Changes Not Seen for 100 Years,'" Al Jazeera, March 22, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/22/xi-tells-putin-of-changes-not-seen-for-100.
3. "Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development," President of Russia, February 4, 2022, http://www.en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770.
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Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute, which he launched in December 2022.
Ulrich Speck is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute. His research focuses on transatlantic relations, European security, German foreign policy, and the evolving global order. He also writes a column on geopolitics for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ).
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/america-europe-blueprint-next-chapter-peter-rough-ulrich-speck
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Oct 21, 2026
America and Europe: A Blueprint for the Next Chapter
Peter Rough & Ulrich Speck
Threatened by an Axis of Challengers, the United States and Europe Need to Reclaim the Initiative Together
The free and open global order is under attack. A new anti-Western axis, centered on China and Russia and reinforced by Iran and North Korea, is threatening the security and prosperity of the free world. While the West ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary: * * * Oct 21, 2026 America and Europe: A Blueprint for the Next Chapter Peter Rough & Ulrich Speck Threatened by an Axis of Challengers, the United States and Europe Need to Reclaim the Initiative Together The free and open global order is under attack. A new anti-Western axis, centered on China and Russia and reinforced by Iran and North Korea, is threatening the security and prosperity of the free world. While the Westhas treated China and Russia as partners and has long hoped to facilitate their integration into the United States-led international system, the ruling elites in Moscow and Beijing have instead used their access to amass vast power that they are now turning against the US, Europe, and their allies and partners.
Yet a strengthened, newly self-confident West, together with its Asian and other partners, still has every chance to prevail. Building on economic strength and technological genius, the West can chart the way into a new golden age of prosperity and freedom. The US, Europe, and their Asian allies can renew the promises of democracy, the market economy, and international cooperation that have led humanity toward progress for many decades. In doing so, the West can weaken the dangerous alternative that China and Russia have built.
To prevail in this struggle, the US and Europe need to focus--together--on the growing threat from what we hereby dub the axis of challengers. Only by joining forces can the West shift the balance of power in its favor.
Today, however, many voices in the US and Europe are pushing for a transatlantic divorce.
On the US side, restrainers regard alliances and partnerships not as assets to be leveraged but as burdens to be overcome through deals with the anti-Western challengers. On the European side, supporters of strategic autonomy believe that a united Europe can somehow rise as a major pole in world politics.
Thought leaders and politicians in both camps see transatlantic cooperation as a Cold War relic rather than a key element of a new strategy to push back against China, Russia, and their regional partners.
We, by contrast, believe that the axis of challengers poses a fundamental challenge to world order. China and Russia, together with their partners, aim to construct a hierarchical system of coercion that is antithetical to the American and European ways of life. At both the nation-state and international-system levels, this new order would dramatically diminish the global weight and influence of the US, Europe, and their partners. Over time, this could even spell the end of democracy and the market economy, the West's seminal achievements since the end of the eighteenth century.
Given the existential nature of this threat, the US and Europe need to overcome their many differences and forge a new pact for a new era. They should strive for nothing less than a renewal of the West.
The first requirement for building a stronger West is to establish a new division of labor in defense. Europeans can and should take responsibility for large parts of the continent's conventional defenses against Russia. Second, Americans and Europeans need to build a joint techno-economic space that is open to partners but guards against dependencies and technological leakage. Third, the US and Europe have to renew the transatlantic relationship with the understanding that the US-European relationship is only one dimension of a global system of alliances and partnerships. Given that China is the primary challenger to today's free and open order, key Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea should be equal stakeholders in a renewal of a West defined less by geography than by shared interests and values.
The Axis of Challengers Is Increasing the Pressure
Europe, the US, and their Asian partners face pressure from a new axis of challengers. This axis is led by the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Russia and supported by Iran and North Korea.
Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine is the most visible front line in this conflict. Iran and North Korea openly support Moscow's war effort with technology and weapons--and, in North Korea's case, even with combat troops. China is the war's key enabler, buying Russian oil and providing dual-use goods vital to the Russian arms industry. Beijing also supports Moscow diplomatically, shielding it from isolation.
In the war in the Middle East, Russia and China have provided important support to Tehran. Again, China plays the key economic role in this effort, buying almost all of Iran's oil despite a US-led sanctions regime arrayed against the Islamic Republic.
What might have been regional clashes in other areas have become front lines in a broader power struggle between the US-led camp and the axis of challengers.
A potentially more catastrophic war is on the horizon.
China's pressure on Taiwan increases almost daily. If Beijing decides to attack Taipei, a Third World War scenario becomes possible, if not likely: while China attacks Taiwan, Russia attacks the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Iran attacks Israel or the Gulf states. In such an eventuality, the US would likely be overwhelmed.
China clearly is preparing for war. Beijing has invested massively in its armed forces, turning them into peer or near-peer competitors of the US military. At the same time, China is working to reduce its dependence on the outside world and its exposure to economic pressure. The PRC has also invested in building its own economic weapon: a quasi-monopoly on the production of rare-earth elements on which the US and Europe depend, not only for civilian industrial production but also for weapons of war.
To Topple Pax Americana
The confluence of these conflicts is not accidental. Russia's war against Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, and China's saber-rattling over Taiwan are not rooted in misunderstandings that diplomacy could repair. Rather, these wars are part of a systematic effort to overturn the US-led global order. The axis of challengers considers the free and open West--and the powers that represent it--to be a threat. The leaders of the axis feel that they are gaining weight and power, and they smell what they identify as Western weakness.
What unites China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea is the ambition to unmake the world that the US spent decades building. During the twentieth century, the US ended the absolute rule of kings, the primacy of colonial empires, and the terrors of Nazism and Communism. The American model of democracy and free-market economics became aspirational for many peoples around the globe, and turned oppressed citizenries against their autocratic rulers. At the same time, the US tried to establish an international order that would prevent major wars, build trust among nations, and enable free trade.
These efforts culminated in a vision of a new post-Cold War order: a world with levels of peace and prosperity unseen at any point in history.
China and Russia had the opportunity to join this new world order. But instead of liberalizing, the elites in Beijing and Moscow tightened their grip at home. Over time, they have built a bulwark against free societies and open economies, keeping the reins of political and economic power in their own hands.
And yet, throughout the Middle East and the post-Soviet space, citizens have advocated for greater participation in their own societies. The so-called color revolutions of the former Soviet republics and the Arab Spring saw democratic uprisings that kept autocratic leaders awake at night. When Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke to American leaders in the early 2010s, he would reportedly "talk all the time about color revolutions."[1]
This fear of democracy has mixed with an imperial sense of great-power entitlement, which has prevented China and Russia from becoming pillars of the existing order as Germany, France, Japan, or India have. Instead, Moscow and Beijing have turned increasingly against the international order. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have visited each other over 40 times and coordinate closely on a broad range of economic, political, and military questions. In March 2023, Xi, seemingly unaware that nearby microphones were picking up his remarks, told Vladimir Putin, "Right now there are changes--the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years--and we are the ones driving these changes together." The Russian leader responded, "I agree."[2]
What makes the present moment so dangerous is that the axis of challengers increasingly sense opportunity--and a potential path to victory. Both Xi and Putin believe that the West is declining and that their countries are the leading powers of the future. Just before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing and Moscow cosigned a manifesto that articulated their claim to global leadership.[3]
The Failure of Western Post-Cold War Strategy
The emergence of an anti-Western axis of challengers that the West faces has been driven primarily by developments within China and Russia. But the rise of these challengers also stems from the West's post-Cold War integration strategy. The West fully opened up to Russia and China and shared its scientific and technological know-how with both countries. This effort was meant as an advance payment on liberalization.
But that liberalization never took place. Instead of becoming more democratic and transforming their economies according to market principles, Russia's and China's ruling regimes turned more autocratic at home and more aggressive toward their neighbors. The West continued blithely down the path of openness, integration, and engagement.
Only in recent years, as concerns have grown about the emergence of an axis of challengers and its hostility toward the US and its partners, have Western leaders at least partially rethought the wisdom of this one-sided, post-Cold War orientation toward openness. But economic interdependence connecting the West with China has sharply raised the price of reversing course--making it even harder for the US and Europe to push back against China.
Yet the West is held back by more than economic constraints. For the West, it is hard to accept that its outstretched hand has been rejected, and that China and Russia are pursuing a project designed to end the US-led global order.
There are many reasons why the West has been slow to realize that its old strategy has failed: an unwillingness to abandon the optimistic beliefs of a bygone era, a widespread tendency to blame America first for disruptions in the relationship, and business interests' desire to stay deeply engaged with China. Russian and Chinese cognitive-warfare efforts to shape how the West thinks about itself have slowed many US and European leaders' reactions. The West's openness, especially online, only facilitates such insidious operations.
Once the new geopolitical reality has set in, different questions emerge: What can and what should the West do to push back against the axis of challengers? What is the right strategy--and what won't work?
Why Splitting the Axis of Challengers Won't Work
In some circles, the idea of splitting the axis of challengers with a strategy of divide-and-conquer has gained traction. It is indeed tempting to try a Kissinger reverse. Just as President Richard Nixon and his counselor Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s engaged with China to cleave it from the Soviet Union, today the West should engage Russia to isolate China. Yet such a strategy won't work. It worked for Nixon and Kissinger because the split between Beijing and Moscow already existed before they strove to widen it.
Today, however, China and Russia are intensifying their relationship with regular strategic consultations at the highest levels. Both Moscow and Beijing see more value in working with each other than in working with the US and Europe. Both want to redraw the geopolitical map and change the current international order to weaken the West.
Many issues divide China and Russia, but both countries' leaders are accustomed to reaching pragmatic compromises when necessary. Realizing their geopolitical ambitions matters most to Xi and Putin. Both men know that only by working together do they stand a chance of weakening US power and the US-led system of free markets and free peoples.
A Stronger West Is the Only Response
The West is under attack from the axis of challengers. Putin and Xi see the US and its allies as adversaries that stand in the way of their imperial dreams. Both see themselves as the guiding powers of the next world order. Leaders in both Beijing and Moscow want to enlarge their territory and subjugate their neighbors using force.
A weak Western response to this effort helps the axis of challengers advance its ambitions. Doing nothing is not an option as Russia and China work to enhance their relative power and strength. The status quo--still largely characterized by Western openness--allows China and Russia to operate relatively unrestricted to steal advanced Western technologies outright or through subterfuge.
Unfortunately, the status quo also reflects the West's relative military weakness. While the axis of challengers has invested in its armed forces, the West still hasn't done enough to gain the military superiority necessary to deter members of the axis from attacking. Moreover, the West has not developed the mindset necessary to contain the imperial ambitions of Russia, China, and their partners. Western leaders are often weakened by infighting when they should be concentrating their resources on the vital struggle with the axis of challengers.
The West needs to become strategically inclined once again. Each Western country's first task is to build up its own strengths: economically, militarily, and politically. But to overcome the axis of challengers, Western nations should work together.
A stronger, more united West is less dependent on its adversaries and more able to resist pressure from Russia and China. A more coherent West can pressure the axis and considerably weaken it. By working together, Americans and Europeans can decisively shift the balance of power and capacity to their favor in nearly every domain.
Despite their differences, Americans and Europeans remain part of the same political and economic family. Both sides often frustrate each other. Yet by working together, they have immense potential. With partners in Asia and elsewhere, the US and Europe can define the next chapter in the evolution of the world order. Most importantly, they can keep Russia's and China's destructive ambitions in check.
Yet building a stronger West requires a major strategic effort. Three main tasks are vital for building a new transatlantic alliance to counter the axis of challengers:
1. A better division of labor in defense
2. The creation of a common technological-economic space
3. The establishment of a geopolitical triangle with Asian partners
Task One: Establish a Forward-Looking Division of Labor in Defense
The current posture of the transatlantic alliance is a Cold War relic that does not reflect today's or tomorrow's strategic requirements. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has grown more powerful, Russia has weakened, and China has become the primary threat to the US. NATO's posture needs to reflect these changes.
For three decades after the end of the Cold War, the prospect of war among great powers seemed to have disappeared. Yet the expectation that Russia and China would integrate into the US-led order never materialized.
Instead, both Moscow and Beijing have emerged as military powers that threaten the US or its allies. Russia conducts an open war of aggression and conquest in Europe. China has built a military that is a peer or near-peer competitor of the US and is nearly every day increasing military pressure on Taiwan and its neighbors, namely the Philippines and Japan. The prospect of a three-front war involving China, Russia, and Iran against the US and its allies keeps military planners and political decision-makers awake at night.
Europeans and Americans have to rearm to hold Russia and China in check. The US and Europe also need to establish a new burden-sharing balance within the alliance: the US can no longer focus on Europe, but has to shift its resources to Asia and maintain a presence in the Middle East. As a result of this shift, and to gain more agency, Europeans need to take responsibility for large parts of conventional defense against Russia. To advance these changes, Elbridge Colby, the US under secretary of war for policy, is working to implement NATO 3.0.
At its core, NATO 3.0 transfers the primary responsibility for Europe's conventional defense from the US to its European allies. This plan requires the Europeans to undertake a major effort. Rearmament is costly and requires massive political engagement, as military spending competes with social spending in the budgets of Europe's nations and the minds of its people.
During this transition phase, Washington ought to maintain a meaningful troop presence in Europe to ensure credible defense. This American presence matters because Russia respects only the US military. Replacing American units with European ones will tempt the Kremlin to test the alliance.
Additionally, the US nuclear umbrella cannot be replaced in the foreseeable future. A dramatic drawdown in conventional forces could limit American options in a conflict and potentially undermine the credibility of America's extended deterrent in Europe and around the world.
The paradox of NATO 3.0, therefore, is that it will require US leadership, capabilities, and troops to succeed. The purpose of that American presence, however, should be to enable Europe to assume greater responsibility--not to make it permanently dependent on the US.
Task Two: Create a Common Technological-Economic Space
Today, rapid technological development, particularly in artificial intelligence, affects almost every dimension of the economy. AI will also shape the future of warfare and society writ large in ways that are hard to predict. The winner of the AI arms race will gain a major advantage in the competition for global leadership. The West urgently needs to win this race--not only on the technological frontier but also in the areas of implementation in the economy and across society.
The ability to turn technological knowledge into industrial capacity will be one decisive factor in the battle between the US-led camp and the axis of challengers. This ability encompasses many skills, including producing weapons and ammunition at the necessary scale, which will require switching quickly from civilian to military production in the event of a major war. The West also needs to become largely independent of the axis's supply chains, especially for military goods. It should ease China's chokehold over the world's supply of critical minerals.
To solve those problems, the US and Europe have to work together to create a common technological-economic space in which people, capital, goods, and expertise can move relatively freely.
The US leads in key categories of next-generation technologies, but Europe has major assets that can drive technological breakthroughs and enable large-scale production: significant pools of talent, major research and development centers, and the world's largest single market. In addition, Germany and other European countries feature world-leading hidden champions well positioned to integrate AI and robotics and spearhead AI's industrial application.
A collaborative venture that spans the Atlantic and includes Asian partners would give the West a decisive advantage. Along the way, it will be crucial that any lead the West maintains is protected against the illegal transfer of knowledge to, and unfair competition from, the axis of challengers.
In building such a space, the US, Europe, and their partners would gain massive technological and economic advantages in the competition with China and its partners. With this broader vision in mind, Americans and Europeans should expand existing efforts to build elements of such a joint space. These include an overhauled and functional European Union-US Trade and Technology Council, Pax Silica, the Minerals Security Partnership, and the US-EU Action Plan on Critical Minerals.
The Group of Seven also provides an important framework to advance such ideas and projects, and it already includes a vital Asian partner for both the US and Europe: Japan. India, another key Asian partner for the West, has been invited as a guest to the last five G7 summits, while South Korea has been invited three times and Australia twice.
Task Three: Build a Geopolitical Triangle with Asian Partners
To push back successfully against the axis of challengers, the West should be strong, capable, and united. But despite the enormous economic, technological, and military power of the US and Europe, including Asian partners ready to work with it is vital.
In combination, countries such as Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, and the Philippines bring enormous economic power to an enlarged West defined more by shared principles than geography. These countries may have differences but are fundamentally like-minded: they all share concerns about China's growing power and its imperialist, hegemonically inclined mindset.
Including these countries in a geopolitical triangle connecting Asia, Europe, and the US would bring important economic and technological dynamism into the Western camp. Japan has abundant experience in securing supply chains against Chinese blackmail. All of the West's key Asian partners have worked to limit Chinese expansionism. They all understand the connection between military and economic security and have launched their own initiatives in these fields.
To form or deepen such a triangle is a geopolitical imperative because the European and the Asian theaters are increasingly merging. As China and Russia have built a coherent autocratic axis, they have turned Eurasia into a more unitary geopolitical space. The response to their revisionist attempts to fundamentally change the current US-led order needs to be Eurasian in scope.
These Asian partners should become stakeholders in the new technological-economic space that the pro-Western alliance has to build. Together, such a triangular configuration could better resist China's economic pressure and blackmail, maintain or build an edge in key future technologies, and cultivate the industrial mass necessary to outcompete China's production of cheap weapons.
Outlook: Seizing the Initiative from China and Russia
In recent years, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have worked to turn their global vision into a reality, actively seeking to undermine US power and the US-led global order on many fronts. In some areas, they have made progress; in others, they have met resistance.
Yet Xi and Putin remain convinced that the future is theirs because they possess the willpower the West lacks.
Only if the axis of challengers meets solid, credible resistance will the West succeed in keeping the peace and enjoying the fruits of its past victories: the preservation of the sovereign rights of smaller countries, the maintenance of largely secure borders, and the coherence of the international marketplace.
As long as they are convinced that the West is rotten to its core, weak, and unable to resist, the axis of challengers is going to double down on its current efforts. But every effort the West undertakes to strengthen its power and demonstrate its resolve discourages Xi and Putin from taking the axe to the US-led world order.
The West possesses almost unlimited potential. But it needs to put its house in order to more effectively safeguard the free and open world system that allows democracy and the market economy to thrive. By correcting the balance of burden-sharing between Europe and the US, creating a common technological-economic space, and building a triangular relationship connecting the US, Asia, and Europe, the West would not only deter Putin and Xi from following their worst instincts. The US, Europe, and their Asian partners would also unchain the productive forces that could lead humanity into a new golden age.
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Endnotes
1. Chris Buckley and Steven L. Myers, "In Turbulent Times, Xi Builds a Security Fortress for China, and Himself," New York Times, August 6, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/06/world/asia/xi-jinping-china-security.html.
2. "China's Xi Tells Putin of 'Changes Not Seen for 100 Years,'" Al Jazeera, March 22, 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/22/xi-tells-putin-of-changes-not-seen-for-100.
3. "Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development," President of Russia, February 4, 2022, http://www.en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770.
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Peter Rough is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute, which he launched in December 2022.
Ulrich Speck is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute. His research focuses on transatlantic relations, European security, German foreign policy, and the evolving global order. He also writes a column on geopolitics for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ).
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/america-europe-blueprint-next-chapter-peter-rough-ulrich-speck
[Category: ThinkTank]
Empire Center: What They Make 2026 - Mohawk Valley
ALBANY, New York, Oct. 22 (TNSrep) -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release:
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What They Make 2026: Mohawk Valley
October 21, 2026
Eight local government employees in the Mohawk Valley had gross pensionable earnings of more than $200,000 in fiscal year 2025-26, according to payroll data submitted to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Four were county elected officials and three were Oneida County correction officers. The highest paid was Christina Pearson, a Montgomery County elected official, at $231,709.
Statewide, the 179,222 ... Show Full Article ALBANY, New York, Oct. 22 (TNSrep) -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release: * * * What They Make 2026: Mohawk Valley October 21, 2026 Eight local government employees in the Mohawk Valley had gross pensionable earnings of more than $200,000 in fiscal year 2025-26, according to payroll data submitted to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Four were county elected officials and three were Oneida County correction officers. The highest paid was Christina Pearson, a Montgomery County elected official, at $231,709. Statewide, the 179,222employees of New York's counties, cities, towns and villages outside New York City were paid a total of $12.0 billion in fiscal year 2025-26, an average of $67,037, according to the Empire Center's annual What They Make 2026 report. The Mohawk Valley's 7,676 employees averaged $49,987, eighth among the state's nine regions outside New York City. Its general employees, who averaged $46,180, were the lowest paid of any region.
Local governments in Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Montgomery, Oneida and Schoharie counties paid a total of $384 million. A total of 8.9 percent of their employees were paid $100,000 or more, compared with about one in five statewide.
Among the findings:
* County elected officials held four of the region's five highest-paid positions. Oneida County correction officers held five of the top ten and 11 of the top 25.
* Oneida County's 1,542 employees averaged $65,929, the highest of any county in the region and tenth in the state, and 18.2 percent were paid $100,000 or more. Herkimer County's employees averaged $33,199, the lowest of any county in the state.
* Utica had the highest city average in the region, at $76,551. Its 276 police and fire employees averaged $100,808, the highest in the region, followed by the Town of New Hartford ($93,970) and Johnstown ($88,658).
* New Hartford's 117 town employees averaged $48,179, the highest of any town in the region with at least 25 employees.
* Local government payrolls cost $892 per resident in the Mohawk Valley, the lowest of any region. Hamilton County, the state's least populous, was the exception: its county, town and village payrolls came to $3,025 per resident, the highest of any county in the state. The Town of Webb, home to the Old Forge resort area, spent $1,943 per year-round resident, the second-highest of any town in the state.
* * *
Ten Highest-Paid Local Government Employees - Mohawk Valley
Name ... Employer ... Classification ... Pay
Pearson, Christina ... Montgomery County ... General Employee ... $231,709
Poulin, Michael J ... Fulton County ... General Employee ... $221,100
Carville, Todd C ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $220,990
Chapman, Bradlee M ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $217,282
Carpenter, Jeffrey S ... Herkimer County ... General Employee ... $216,017
Magee, James R ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $212,301
Scaramuzzino, John V ... City of Utica ... Police/Fire ... $203,549
Roman, Luis E ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $203,294
Gondek, Jason K ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $195,233
Hodzic, Bahrija ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $193,426
* * *
Pay at every local government in the Mohawk Valley
Counties, cities, towns and villages, 2025-26. Pick a type, or search by name or county; click a column heading to sort.
[View table in the link at bottom.]
County correction officers and deputy sheriffs are classified as general employees in the NYSLRS data. The amounts listed do not include fringe benefits such as health insurance and employer pension contributions. A Town of Warren employee reported at $350,000, far above the prior year's pay in records matching his name and hire date, is excluded from these figures; NYSLRS referred questions about the figure to the employer.
Payroll records for every Mohawk Valley county, city, town, village and special district can be searched at the Empire Center's transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. The full statewide report, What They Make 2026, includes searchable pay figures for every local government outside New York City.
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The Empire Center is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank based in Albany.
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Original text here: https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/what-they-make-2026-mohawk-valley/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
What They Make 2026: Mohawk Valley
October 21, 2026
Eight local government employees in the Mohawk Valley had gross pensionable earnings of more than $200,000 in fiscal year 2025-26, according to payroll data submitted to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Four were county elected officials and three were Oneida County correction officers. The highest paid was Christina Pearson, a Montgomery County elected official, at $231,709.
Statewide, the 179,222 ... Show Full Article ALBANY, New York, Oct. 22 (TNSrep) -- Empire Center, a non-profit think tank, issued the following news release: * * * What They Make 2026: Mohawk Valley October 21, 2026 Eight local government employees in the Mohawk Valley had gross pensionable earnings of more than $200,000 in fiscal year 2025-26, according to payroll data submitted to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Four were county elected officials and three were Oneida County correction officers. The highest paid was Christina Pearson, a Montgomery County elected official, at $231,709. Statewide, the 179,222employees of New York's counties, cities, towns and villages outside New York City were paid a total of $12.0 billion in fiscal year 2025-26, an average of $67,037, according to the Empire Center's annual What They Make 2026 report. The Mohawk Valley's 7,676 employees averaged $49,987, eighth among the state's nine regions outside New York City. Its general employees, who averaged $46,180, were the lowest paid of any region.
Local governments in Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Montgomery, Oneida and Schoharie counties paid a total of $384 million. A total of 8.9 percent of their employees were paid $100,000 or more, compared with about one in five statewide.
Among the findings:
* County elected officials held four of the region's five highest-paid positions. Oneida County correction officers held five of the top ten and 11 of the top 25.
* Oneida County's 1,542 employees averaged $65,929, the highest of any county in the region and tenth in the state, and 18.2 percent were paid $100,000 or more. Herkimer County's employees averaged $33,199, the lowest of any county in the state.
* Utica had the highest city average in the region, at $76,551. Its 276 police and fire employees averaged $100,808, the highest in the region, followed by the Town of New Hartford ($93,970) and Johnstown ($88,658).
* New Hartford's 117 town employees averaged $48,179, the highest of any town in the region with at least 25 employees.
* Local government payrolls cost $892 per resident in the Mohawk Valley, the lowest of any region. Hamilton County, the state's least populous, was the exception: its county, town and village payrolls came to $3,025 per resident, the highest of any county in the state. The Town of Webb, home to the Old Forge resort area, spent $1,943 per year-round resident, the second-highest of any town in the state.
* * *
Ten Highest-Paid Local Government Employees - Mohawk Valley
Name ... Employer ... Classification ... Pay
Pearson, Christina ... Montgomery County ... General Employee ... $231,709
Poulin, Michael J ... Fulton County ... General Employee ... $221,100
Carville, Todd C ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $220,990
Chapman, Bradlee M ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $217,282
Carpenter, Jeffrey S ... Herkimer County ... General Employee ... $216,017
Magee, James R ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $212,301
Scaramuzzino, John V ... City of Utica ... Police/Fire ... $203,549
Roman, Luis E ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $203,294
Gondek, Jason K ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $195,233
Hodzic, Bahrija ... Oneida County ... General Employee ... $193,426
* * *
Pay at every local government in the Mohawk Valley
Counties, cities, towns and villages, 2025-26. Pick a type, or search by name or county; click a column heading to sort.
[View table in the link at bottom.]
County correction officers and deputy sheriffs are classified as general employees in the NYSLRS data. The amounts listed do not include fringe benefits such as health insurance and employer pension contributions. A Town of Warren employee reported at $350,000, far above the prior year's pay in records matching his name and hire date, is excluded from these figures; NYSLRS referred questions about the figure to the employer.
Payroll records for every Mohawk Valley county, city, town, village and special district can be searched at the Empire Center's transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. The full statewide report, What They Make 2026, includes searchable pay figures for every local government outside New York City.
* * *
The Empire Center is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank based in Albany.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/what-they-make-2026-mohawk-valley/
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Newsletter: Human Rights Initiative Director's Note - October 2026 Edition
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following newsletter:
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Human Rights Initiative Director's Note: October 2026 Edition
by Andrew Friedman
October 21, 2026
Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Human Rights Initiative Director's Note. I'm Andrew Friedman, director and senior fellow of the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I produce this outlet monthly to talk through human rights and democracy issues that have been occupying significant space in my mind, highlight some of what ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following newsletter: * * * Human Rights Initiative Director's Note: October 2026 Edition by Andrew Friedman October 21, 2026 Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Human Rights Initiative Director's Note. I'm Andrew Friedman, director and senior fellow of the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I produce this outlet monthly to talk through human rights and democracy issues that have been occupying significant space in my mind, highlight some of whatwe've been doing at HRI, and present a few articles, books, podcasts, and videos that have particularly struck me over the last few weeks.
What I'm Thinking About
As is the case for nearly all of Washington, and much of the United States, elections are on my mind. I can't watch a baseball game without seeing a half dozen election-related advertisements that range from bland to inspiring to downright creepy. The styles of the commercials aside, the U.S. midterms and other elections raise important questions about a country's democratic standing, its resilience and how it handles polarization and disagreement.
Before I get into it, let me say one thing. Vote. Vote because it's the easiest way to have a voice on the decisions that will most impact your life. Vote because much of the world, and much of the country, can't. Vote because voting is important and democracy is not a spectator sport. Vote.
On elections:
Elections are possibly the most visible exercise of democratic governance both internationally and domestically. In the United States, the electoral season is all encompassing, including the advertisements one sees on every type of media and the constant barrage of requests for money. Other electoral democracies see similar levels of coverage, though the season is often much shorter.
This exercise is deeply ingrained in popular history. Harry Truman holding up a newspaper errantly calling the election for his opponent ("Dewey Defeats Truman") is among the United States' most iconic political images. On the other side of the coin, the photograph of Michael Dukakis in a tank can still cause a snicker in much of the U.S. population decades after its relevance. Nelson Mandela, hand raised, taking the oath of office after his electoral victory in a newly democratic South Africa can still bring a tear to the eyes of those yearning for a freer world.
One of my earliest memories thinking about the world around me is in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when my older sister had a school assignment to take a map of the U.S. and color the states red and blue as they were called. My class was too young for the assignment, but she let me help. We got to stay up late coloring and watching TV, and maybe learned a little in the process. It was a great night.
That reality belies the fact that they are also moments of deep collective anxiety and uncertainty about the future. They are also immensely complicated processes. This cocktail means they can also be moments of instability and, too often, violence. The United States is not immune to this reality.
I want to touch on one particular aspect of this period: the information space. Years ago, I was serving as an election observer for a presidential election in a large country in the Global South. That election had many logistical and structural challenges, but ultimately, according to the country's brilliant civil society, who conducted a large-scale observation mission and a parallel vote tabulation, the results announced reflected the will of the electorate.
Unfortunately, what followed was an utter failure of the country's electoral management body in strategic communications. In the immediate wake of the voting, there were no concerted efforts to explain what happened, any issues or how they were being remedied. This allowed rumor to fill the space. I vividly remember radio call-ins from people who had "heard from somebody who knows" that votes were stolen and faked in ways befitting a political crime novel. Some of those tales persist unverified (often actively disproven) to this day.
Some of this is no doubt done with malintent. Mis- and disinformation, meant to sow disharmony and cast doubt on the objective nature of verifiable fact, are a part of the world we live in and only getting worse. But some is from people simply searching for answers, and in the absence of real, verifiable information, they look elsewhere.
As we think about elections, both in our own country and in others, it's important to remember this. There is a lot of time between when voting stops and when results are known. This is a dangerous period. Twenty-four-hour news networks are awash with stories trying to fill the time, and flashy graphics (the CNN map is really just the map my sister and I colored in in crayon for the digital era, though Steve Kornacki is a lot more knowledgeable than I was or ever will be) continue to press on what's at stake and the urgency of the matter. This goes double for social media. The bodies holding elections need to be sure that this period is filled with real, verifiable facts rather than unsubstantiated commentary meant to inflame.
Yes, elections are a singular manifestation of republican democracy, of the ability of ordinary citizens to have an equal voice in the future of their country. But they are also stressful and difficult. They are moments where little new information is available but lots of information is shared through a wide array of sources, some real and verifiable, some "heard from somebody."
It's best to remember this as we observe and take part in elections. The amount of information available is not always the same as the amount of good information available. Processes take time because they're done with care and with fail-safes. Breathe, and enjoy the fact that what you're looking at and taking part in is democracy in action.
What We're Doing
Sarasota World Affairs Council: Earlier this month I was invited by the Sarasota World Affairs Council to come down and speak to them about some of the work we do. It was a tremendous time and I'm deeply appreciative for the invite. The conversation was enlightening, and incorporated a wide array of different perspectives. One thing that has been made clear over the last two years is that the foreign affairs conversation in Washington can be quite distant from what it's like in other parts of the country and across the globe. For a future with sustainable support for human rights and democracy, we have to make sure we're doing more to marry those conversations, with a lot of listening on both sides. I look forward to taking part in many more of those types of events.
Trump-Xi Summit: I don't normally use this section to highlight individual writings we've done out of HRI, but whenever there's a large-scale effort across CSIS that we take part in I find myself struck by the depth and breadth of knowledge of many of my colleagues. The Trump-Xi Summit was an example where folks from across the Center came together to think through what it meant for the relationship and the world. I contributed a layer of existential fear that there is currently no major power standing up for human rights, but others spoke to wide ranging elements, from a yawn at the outcomes (with my all-time favorite CSIS article title) to cautious optimism surrounding Washington-Beijing health cooperation.
What I'm Reading (and Watching)
"Is Everyone a Doomer Now?" (Jasmine Sun): "September 2026 was the month that AI safety went mainstream." I was recently introduced to Jasmine Sun's writing by a colleague in the philanthropy space, and she is incredible. The work she is doing at the intersection of technology, politics, culture, and popular opinion is unparalleled. This piece delves into open questions about the growing concern in the United States about AI's direction, safety, and overall value, and the way it will map onto U.S. politics and political participation. Here at HRI we're always on the lookout for issues that seem to be creating new coalitions and invigorating the democratic process both domestically and globally, and what lessons can be learned for wider democratic participation. Sun's writing looks into some of those same vital issues.
"Cubans Are Leading from the Inside" (Alina B. Lopez Hernandez): I am truly elated at the Journal of Democracy's new monthly column "The Frontline." These columns center a singular situation in the context of broader conversations about democracy and democratization. This piece, by a Cuban historian and essayist, discusses both the unique history of Cuba and its commonalities with other states looking toward transition. The need for a broad coalition, and to overcome tensions and jealousies for a movement to succeed, are international truisms, however the Island's relationship with and focus from the United States put it in a singularly difficult situation.
"The Authoritarian Future Is Already Here" (Megan K. Stack): In another new series, the New York Times is highlighting "The New World Disorder" looking at "the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside." Needless to say, this is an interest we share here at HRI. What struck me most about this piece was how it demonstrates what authoritarian collaboration looks like from the ground level. Looking at Uganda, the essay shows how Chinese, Russian, and Israeli technologies shore up the surveillance state and disrupt the work of ordinary, freedom-seeking Ugandans. It also demonstrates how the United States reducing its funding and diplomatic support for human rights has emboldened these actors. In one representative anecdote, a human rights lawyer was given an award by the State Department as an "international woman of courage" in 2024, and in 2025, when she called the Embassy to report violence she had documented, "the message was different. Washington had told the embassy it didn't give a damn, her friend said, using a harsher expletive."
We'll be back in November, but until then, keep up with our goings-on on the HRI homepage and on LinkedIn. If you have thoughts or questions, please feel free to reach out at afriedman@csis.org, and if you were forwarded this and enjoyed it, please sign up via the homepage here (https://pardot.csis.org/e/906722/ograms-human-rights-initiative/3tbgqn/4082720440/h/XZlFVEApvbNwNESATpj_F050bBi4ha9s_3JPkz6TRF4).
* * *
Andrew Friedman
Director and Senior Fellow, Human Rights Initiative
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/human-rights-initiative-directors-note-october-2026-edition
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Human Rights Initiative Director's Note: October 2026 Edition
by Andrew Friedman
October 21, 2026
Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Human Rights Initiative Director's Note. I'm Andrew Friedman, director and senior fellow of the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I produce this outlet monthly to talk through human rights and democracy issues that have been occupying significant space in my mind, highlight some of what ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following newsletter: * * * Human Rights Initiative Director's Note: October 2026 Edition by Andrew Friedman October 21, 2026 Welcome to the October 2026 edition of the Human Rights Initiative Director's Note. I'm Andrew Friedman, director and senior fellow of the Human Rights Initiative (HRI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I produce this outlet monthly to talk through human rights and democracy issues that have been occupying significant space in my mind, highlight some of whatwe've been doing at HRI, and present a few articles, books, podcasts, and videos that have particularly struck me over the last few weeks.
What I'm Thinking About
As is the case for nearly all of Washington, and much of the United States, elections are on my mind. I can't watch a baseball game without seeing a half dozen election-related advertisements that range from bland to inspiring to downright creepy. The styles of the commercials aside, the U.S. midterms and other elections raise important questions about a country's democratic standing, its resilience and how it handles polarization and disagreement.
Before I get into it, let me say one thing. Vote. Vote because it's the easiest way to have a voice on the decisions that will most impact your life. Vote because much of the world, and much of the country, can't. Vote because voting is important and democracy is not a spectator sport. Vote.
On elections:
Elections are possibly the most visible exercise of democratic governance both internationally and domestically. In the United States, the electoral season is all encompassing, including the advertisements one sees on every type of media and the constant barrage of requests for money. Other electoral democracies see similar levels of coverage, though the season is often much shorter.
This exercise is deeply ingrained in popular history. Harry Truman holding up a newspaper errantly calling the election for his opponent ("Dewey Defeats Truman") is among the United States' most iconic political images. On the other side of the coin, the photograph of Michael Dukakis in a tank can still cause a snicker in much of the U.S. population decades after its relevance. Nelson Mandela, hand raised, taking the oath of office after his electoral victory in a newly democratic South Africa can still bring a tear to the eyes of those yearning for a freer world.
One of my earliest memories thinking about the world around me is in the 1992 U.S. presidential election, when my older sister had a school assignment to take a map of the U.S. and color the states red and blue as they were called. My class was too young for the assignment, but she let me help. We got to stay up late coloring and watching TV, and maybe learned a little in the process. It was a great night.
That reality belies the fact that they are also moments of deep collective anxiety and uncertainty about the future. They are also immensely complicated processes. This cocktail means they can also be moments of instability and, too often, violence. The United States is not immune to this reality.
I want to touch on one particular aspect of this period: the information space. Years ago, I was serving as an election observer for a presidential election in a large country in the Global South. That election had many logistical and structural challenges, but ultimately, according to the country's brilliant civil society, who conducted a large-scale observation mission and a parallel vote tabulation, the results announced reflected the will of the electorate.
Unfortunately, what followed was an utter failure of the country's electoral management body in strategic communications. In the immediate wake of the voting, there were no concerted efforts to explain what happened, any issues or how they were being remedied. This allowed rumor to fill the space. I vividly remember radio call-ins from people who had "heard from somebody who knows" that votes were stolen and faked in ways befitting a political crime novel. Some of those tales persist unverified (often actively disproven) to this day.
Some of this is no doubt done with malintent. Mis- and disinformation, meant to sow disharmony and cast doubt on the objective nature of verifiable fact, are a part of the world we live in and only getting worse. But some is from people simply searching for answers, and in the absence of real, verifiable information, they look elsewhere.
As we think about elections, both in our own country and in others, it's important to remember this. There is a lot of time between when voting stops and when results are known. This is a dangerous period. Twenty-four-hour news networks are awash with stories trying to fill the time, and flashy graphics (the CNN map is really just the map my sister and I colored in in crayon for the digital era, though Steve Kornacki is a lot more knowledgeable than I was or ever will be) continue to press on what's at stake and the urgency of the matter. This goes double for social media. The bodies holding elections need to be sure that this period is filled with real, verifiable facts rather than unsubstantiated commentary meant to inflame.
Yes, elections are a singular manifestation of republican democracy, of the ability of ordinary citizens to have an equal voice in the future of their country. But they are also stressful and difficult. They are moments where little new information is available but lots of information is shared through a wide array of sources, some real and verifiable, some "heard from somebody."
It's best to remember this as we observe and take part in elections. The amount of information available is not always the same as the amount of good information available. Processes take time because they're done with care and with fail-safes. Breathe, and enjoy the fact that what you're looking at and taking part in is democracy in action.
What We're Doing
Sarasota World Affairs Council: Earlier this month I was invited by the Sarasota World Affairs Council to come down and speak to them about some of the work we do. It was a tremendous time and I'm deeply appreciative for the invite. The conversation was enlightening, and incorporated a wide array of different perspectives. One thing that has been made clear over the last two years is that the foreign affairs conversation in Washington can be quite distant from what it's like in other parts of the country and across the globe. For a future with sustainable support for human rights and democracy, we have to make sure we're doing more to marry those conversations, with a lot of listening on both sides. I look forward to taking part in many more of those types of events.
Trump-Xi Summit: I don't normally use this section to highlight individual writings we've done out of HRI, but whenever there's a large-scale effort across CSIS that we take part in I find myself struck by the depth and breadth of knowledge of many of my colleagues. The Trump-Xi Summit was an example where folks from across the Center came together to think through what it meant for the relationship and the world. I contributed a layer of existential fear that there is currently no major power standing up for human rights, but others spoke to wide ranging elements, from a yawn at the outcomes (with my all-time favorite CSIS article title) to cautious optimism surrounding Washington-Beijing health cooperation.
What I'm Reading (and Watching)
"Is Everyone a Doomer Now?" (Jasmine Sun): "September 2026 was the month that AI safety went mainstream." I was recently introduced to Jasmine Sun's writing by a colleague in the philanthropy space, and she is incredible. The work she is doing at the intersection of technology, politics, culture, and popular opinion is unparalleled. This piece delves into open questions about the growing concern in the United States about AI's direction, safety, and overall value, and the way it will map onto U.S. politics and political participation. Here at HRI we're always on the lookout for issues that seem to be creating new coalitions and invigorating the democratic process both domestically and globally, and what lessons can be learned for wider democratic participation. Sun's writing looks into some of those same vital issues.
"Cubans Are Leading from the Inside" (Alina B. Lopez Hernandez): I am truly elated at the Journal of Democracy's new monthly column "The Frontline." These columns center a singular situation in the context of broader conversations about democracy and democratization. This piece, by a Cuban historian and essayist, discusses both the unique history of Cuba and its commonalities with other states looking toward transition. The need for a broad coalition, and to overcome tensions and jealousies for a movement to succeed, are international truisms, however the Island's relationship with and focus from the United States put it in a singularly difficult situation.
"The Authoritarian Future Is Already Here" (Megan K. Stack): In another new series, the New York Times is highlighting "The New World Disorder" looking at "the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside." Needless to say, this is an interest we share here at HRI. What struck me most about this piece was how it demonstrates what authoritarian collaboration looks like from the ground level. Looking at Uganda, the essay shows how Chinese, Russian, and Israeli technologies shore up the surveillance state and disrupt the work of ordinary, freedom-seeking Ugandans. It also demonstrates how the United States reducing its funding and diplomatic support for human rights has emboldened these actors. In one representative anecdote, a human rights lawyer was given an award by the State Department as an "international woman of courage" in 2024, and in 2025, when she called the Embassy to report violence she had documented, "the message was different. Washington had told the embassy it didn't give a damn, her friend said, using a harsher expletive."
We'll be back in November, but until then, keep up with our goings-on on the HRI homepage and on LinkedIn. If you have thoughts or questions, please feel free to reach out at afriedman@csis.org, and if you were forwarded this and enjoyed it, please sign up via the homepage here (https://pardot.csis.org/e/906722/ograms-human-rights-initiative/3tbgqn/4082720440/h/XZlFVEApvbNwNESATpj_F050bBi4ha9s_3JPkz6TRF4).
* * *
Andrew Friedman
Director and Senior Fellow, Human Rights Initiative
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/human-rights-initiative-directors-note-october-2026-edition
[Category: ThinkTank]