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Jamestown Foundation Posts Commentary: Russia and Afghanistan Sign Military Cooperation Agreement
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Jamestown Foundation posted the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Syed Fazl-e-Haider, contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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Russia and Afghanistan Sign Military Cooperation Agreement
Executive Summary:
* Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 in Moscow, one year after the Kremlin removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations and became the first and only country to recognize the Taliban government.
* The undisclosed pact--framed ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Jamestown Foundation posted the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Syed Fazl-e-Haider, contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Russia and Afghanistan Sign Military Cooperation Agreement Executive Summary: * Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 in Moscow, one year after the Kremlin removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations and became the first and only country to recognize the Taliban government. * The undisclosed pact--framedby Moscow as covering the repair of Russian-made equipment--signals a broader strategy to integrate Afghanistan into Russia's sphere of influence as a transit hub linking Central Asia to the Indian Ocean.
* Deepening Russian-Taliban ties risk unsettling Pakistan, which is engaged in open conflict with the Taliban regime, alarming Central Asian states such as Tajikistan, and undermining the position of the People's Republic of China, Afghanistan's largest foreign investor.
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Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 at the International Security Forum in Moscow oblast. The agreement marked an expansion of ties between the Kremlin and the Taliban one year after Moscow removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations (see EDM, July 23, 2025; Interfax, May 27; TOLO News, May 28). Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqub said, "Interaction with Russia is important for us. Afghanistan and Russia have long-standing and historic relations, and we want to move forward in this direction." Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, after a meeting with Yaqub, stated, "We are convinced that Western countries must unfreeze frozen Afghan assets, fully acknowledge their full responsibility for their 20-year presence in Afghanistan, and assume the entire burden of post-conflict reconstruction of the country" (Interfax, May 27; TOLO News, May 28). On May 14, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Security Council Secretaries in Bishkek, Shoigu stated that Russia was establishing a full-fledged partnership with the Taliban, "from political and security contacts to trade, economic, cultural, and humanitarian cooperation. We are convinced that cooperation with Kabul meets the objectives of the region's security and economic development" (Interfax, May 27).
Russia is the first and only country to have recognized the Taliban government (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 28). Its signing of a defense cooperation agreement with the Taliban marks a strategic shift reflecting Moscow's broader strategy of expanding its influence in Central and South Asia. The relationship rests on an economic foundation as well, with bilateral trade exceeding $530 million in 2025 and Russian officials citing a further 2.6-fold increase in the first two months of 2026 (SpecialEurasia, June 1).
Moscow justified its recognition of the Taliban regime by citing its cooperation in combating terrorism and drug trafficking (TOLO News, July 5, 2025). In 2003, Russia designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization. In August 2021, Russia changed its stance toward the Taliban. It kept its embassy open in Kabul even after the Taliban's return to power to maintain ties with the group (see EDM, November 13, 2024). In 2024, Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov said, "The Taliban is ready to fight the most dangerous wing of the Islamic State, [the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP)] which is still getting material support from the West, which uses the terrorist group's capacity to carry out subversive false-flag operations on our soil" (TASS, October 4, 2024). ISKP claimed responsibility for an attack at a concert hall near Moscow in 2024 that killed 145 people (see EDM, March 26, 27, 2024; see Terrorism Monitor, May 6, 2024; Novaya Gazeta Europe, March 7, 2025). In 2025, Moscow cited security as the primary reason for recognizing the Taliban government, which the Kremlin had already declared an ally in counterterrorism efforts, particularly against ISKP (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 17, 2025).
The Russia-Afghanistan defense pact--the details of which have not been made public--comes at a time when Pakistan is engaged in an open war against the Taliban regime for harboring anti-Pakistan terrorist groups in Afghanistan (Dawn, February 27). The agreement could raise eyebrows not only in Islamabad but also in Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, which, similar to Pakistan, has been a victim of cross-border terrorism originating from Afghanistan. Since 2021, Dushanbe has been concerned about the infiltration of armed militants into the country. Tajikistan, which has opposed Taliban rule from the very beginning, has tense relations with the Taliban regime in Kabul. Under the four and a half years of Taliban government, several border clashes have broken out between Taliban fighters and Tajikistani border forces (Dawn, November 27, 2025).
Moscow released some details of the military cooperation pact days after signing it to avoid backlash from Pakistan and Central Asian states. Russia's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, called it a military-technical cooperation agreement primarily aimed at facilitating the repair and restoration of Russian and Soviet-made military equipment in Afghanistan. Kabulov described the document as a framework agreement that could open the door to broader military cooperation in the future (Ariana News, June 2). Experts caution that Russia's ability to deliver on any broader commitments is constrained by its war against Ukraine and the effects of Western sanctions on its defense industry, leading some to read the pact as a symbolic formalization of ties rather than the start of a deep military partnership. For the internationally isolated Taliban, the agreement's principal value may itself be symbolic, allowing Kabul to claim external legitimacy from a major power outside the West (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 28).
From a geographical perspective, Afghanistan is a key transit point for Russia that links Central Asia to South Asia, offering greater access to maritime trade through ports in Iran and Pakistan. A Trans-Afghan Railway, also referred to as the Kabul Corridor, which is connected to the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the People's Republic of China's (PRC) One Belt One Road initiative, could help Moscow bypass trade routes controlled and sanctioned by Western countries (see EDM, November 25, 2025, April 1, June 11). For Russia, Afghanistan holds value as a transit hub linking Central Asia to the Indian Ocean (SpecialEurasia, June 6, 2025). The railway ambition also tempers the military relationship, as the corridor is designed to run southward through Pakistan, giving Moscow an incentive to avoid alienating Islamabad even as it arms Islamabad's adversary (SpecialEurasia, June 1).
Russia's strategy of deepening ties with the Taliban marks the beginning of a new period in power dynamics in Afghanistan. Initially, the Kremlin will strengthen its diplomatic, defense, and trade relations with Afghanistan, laying the groundwork for joint infrastructure and security projects. Moscow's strategy signals Afghanistan's deeper integration into Russia's sphere of influence, an outcome that could upset global and regional players such as the United States and the PRC (The Khaama Press, July 4).
The PRC could have the most to lose, as the largest foreign investor and key foreign player in Afghanistan. Beijing continued to increase its investments in Afghanistan's mining and energy sectors following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war-torn country in 2021 (RTA, May 19). Similar to Russia, the PRC has been voicing concerns at the United Nations over illegal and unilateral sanctions imposed by the West on Afghanistan, recently calling for the lifting of sanctions and for facilitated access to Afghanistan's central bank assets for the benefit of the Afghan people (TOLO News, June 15). The PRC is also active in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan to the negotiating table. In April, it hosted talks between Taliban and Pakistani officials at Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to de-escalate the situation at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (Dawn, April 8).
Russia's strategic partnership with the Taliban could undermine the PRC's leverage and influence in Afghanistan. It could also encourage militant groups globally to pursue power through force, alarming both Islamabad and Beijing. Pakistan is currently targeting terrorist hideouts inside Afghanistan, and any Kremlin arming of the Afghan Taliban could raise tensions between Russia and Pakistan (Al Jazeera, June 29, 2026).
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Syed Fazl-e-Haider is a contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat. He is a freelance columnist and the author of several books, including the Economic Development of Balochistan (2004).
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/russia-and-afghanistan-sign-military-cooperation-agreement/
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Russia and Afghanistan Sign Military Cooperation Agreement
Executive Summary:
* Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 in Moscow, one year after the Kremlin removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations and became the first and only country to recognize the Taliban government.
* The undisclosed pact--framed ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Jamestown Foundation posted the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Syed Fazl-e-Haider, contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Russia and Afghanistan Sign Military Cooperation Agreement Executive Summary: * Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 in Moscow, one year after the Kremlin removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations and became the first and only country to recognize the Taliban government. * The undisclosed pact--framedby Moscow as covering the repair of Russian-made equipment--signals a broader strategy to integrate Afghanistan into Russia's sphere of influence as a transit hub linking Central Asia to the Indian Ocean.
* Deepening Russian-Taliban ties risk unsettling Pakistan, which is engaged in open conflict with the Taliban regime, alarming Central Asian states such as Tajikistan, and undermining the position of the People's Republic of China, Afghanistan's largest foreign investor.
-
Russia and Taliban-led Afghanistan signed a military cooperation agreement on May 27 at the International Security Forum in Moscow oblast. The agreement marked an expansion of ties between the Kremlin and the Taliban one year after Moscow removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations (see EDM, July 23, 2025; Interfax, May 27; TOLO News, May 28). Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqub said, "Interaction with Russia is important for us. Afghanistan and Russia have long-standing and historic relations, and we want to move forward in this direction." Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, after a meeting with Yaqub, stated, "We are convinced that Western countries must unfreeze frozen Afghan assets, fully acknowledge their full responsibility for their 20-year presence in Afghanistan, and assume the entire burden of post-conflict reconstruction of the country" (Interfax, May 27; TOLO News, May 28). On May 14, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Security Council Secretaries in Bishkek, Shoigu stated that Russia was establishing a full-fledged partnership with the Taliban, "from political and security contacts to trade, economic, cultural, and humanitarian cooperation. We are convinced that cooperation with Kabul meets the objectives of the region's security and economic development" (Interfax, May 27).
Russia is the first and only country to have recognized the Taliban government (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 28). Its signing of a defense cooperation agreement with the Taliban marks a strategic shift reflecting Moscow's broader strategy of expanding its influence in Central and South Asia. The relationship rests on an economic foundation as well, with bilateral trade exceeding $530 million in 2025 and Russian officials citing a further 2.6-fold increase in the first two months of 2026 (SpecialEurasia, June 1).
Moscow justified its recognition of the Taliban regime by citing its cooperation in combating terrorism and drug trafficking (TOLO News, July 5, 2025). In 2003, Russia designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization. In August 2021, Russia changed its stance toward the Taliban. It kept its embassy open in Kabul even after the Taliban's return to power to maintain ties with the group (see EDM, November 13, 2024). In 2024, Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov said, "The Taliban is ready to fight the most dangerous wing of the Islamic State, [the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP)] which is still getting material support from the West, which uses the terrorist group's capacity to carry out subversive false-flag operations on our soil" (TASS, October 4, 2024). ISKP claimed responsibility for an attack at a concert hall near Moscow in 2024 that killed 145 people (see EDM, March 26, 27, 2024; see Terrorism Monitor, May 6, 2024; Novaya Gazeta Europe, March 7, 2025). In 2025, Moscow cited security as the primary reason for recognizing the Taliban government, which the Kremlin had already declared an ally in counterterrorism efforts, particularly against ISKP (Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 17, 2025).
The Russia-Afghanistan defense pact--the details of which have not been made public--comes at a time when Pakistan is engaged in an open war against the Taliban regime for harboring anti-Pakistan terrorist groups in Afghanistan (Dawn, February 27). The agreement could raise eyebrows not only in Islamabad but also in Central Asian countries such as Tajikistan, which, similar to Pakistan, has been a victim of cross-border terrorism originating from Afghanistan. Since 2021, Dushanbe has been concerned about the infiltration of armed militants into the country. Tajikistan, which has opposed Taliban rule from the very beginning, has tense relations with the Taliban regime in Kabul. Under the four and a half years of Taliban government, several border clashes have broken out between Taliban fighters and Tajikistani border forces (Dawn, November 27, 2025).
Moscow released some details of the military cooperation pact days after signing it to avoid backlash from Pakistan and Central Asian states. Russia's special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, called it a military-technical cooperation agreement primarily aimed at facilitating the repair and restoration of Russian and Soviet-made military equipment in Afghanistan. Kabulov described the document as a framework agreement that could open the door to broader military cooperation in the future (Ariana News, June 2). Experts caution that Russia's ability to deliver on any broader commitments is constrained by its war against Ukraine and the effects of Western sanctions on its defense industry, leading some to read the pact as a symbolic formalization of ties rather than the start of a deep military partnership. For the internationally isolated Taliban, the agreement's principal value may itself be symbolic, allowing Kabul to claim external legitimacy from a major power outside the West (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 28).
From a geographical perspective, Afghanistan is a key transit point for Russia that links Central Asia to South Asia, offering greater access to maritime trade through ports in Iran and Pakistan. A Trans-Afghan Railway, also referred to as the Kabul Corridor, which is connected to the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) and the People's Republic of China's (PRC) One Belt One Road initiative, could help Moscow bypass trade routes controlled and sanctioned by Western countries (see EDM, November 25, 2025, April 1, June 11). For Russia, Afghanistan holds value as a transit hub linking Central Asia to the Indian Ocean (SpecialEurasia, June 6, 2025). The railway ambition also tempers the military relationship, as the corridor is designed to run southward through Pakistan, giving Moscow an incentive to avoid alienating Islamabad even as it arms Islamabad's adversary (SpecialEurasia, June 1).
Russia's strategy of deepening ties with the Taliban marks the beginning of a new period in power dynamics in Afghanistan. Initially, the Kremlin will strengthen its diplomatic, defense, and trade relations with Afghanistan, laying the groundwork for joint infrastructure and security projects. Moscow's strategy signals Afghanistan's deeper integration into Russia's sphere of influence, an outcome that could upset global and regional players such as the United States and the PRC (The Khaama Press, July 4).
The PRC could have the most to lose, as the largest foreign investor and key foreign player in Afghanistan. Beijing continued to increase its investments in Afghanistan's mining and energy sectors following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war-torn country in 2021 (RTA, May 19). Similar to Russia, the PRC has been voicing concerns at the United Nations over illegal and unilateral sanctions imposed by the West on Afghanistan, recently calling for the lifting of sanctions and for facilitated access to Afghanistan's central bank assets for the benefit of the Afghan people (TOLO News, June 15). The PRC is also active in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan to the negotiating table. In April, it hosted talks between Taliban and Pakistani officials at Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to de-escalate the situation at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (Dawn, April 8).
Russia's strategic partnership with the Taliban could undermine the PRC's leverage and influence in Afghanistan. It could also encourage militant groups globally to pursue power through force, alarming both Islamabad and Beijing. Pakistan is currently targeting terrorist hideouts inside Afghanistan, and any Kremlin arming of the Afghan Taliban could raise tensions between Russia and Pakistan (Al Jazeera, June 29, 2026).
* * *
Syed Fazl-e-Haider is a contributing analyst at the South Asia desk of Wikistrat. He is a freelance columnist and the author of several books, including the Economic Development of Balochistan (2004).
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/russia-and-afghanistan-sign-military-cooperation-agreement/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Ifo Institute: Savings in Health Insurance in Germany May Increase Costs in Other Types of Insurance
MUNICH, Germany, July 16 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release:
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Savings in Health Insurance in Germany May Increase Costs in Other Types of Insurance
Although cuts to the statutory health insurance system (GKV) in Germany reduce spending there, they may at the same time increase costs in long-term care, pension, or unemployment insurance, and for private households. Economists at the ifo Institute and Stanford University warn against this. "Anyone looking solely at the contribution rate for health insurance sees, at best, only half the picture," says ifo researcher Roman Klimke. ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, July 16 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * Savings in Health Insurance in Germany May Increase Costs in Other Types of Insurance Although cuts to the statutory health insurance system (GKV) in Germany reduce spending there, they may at the same time increase costs in long-term care, pension, or unemployment insurance, and for private households. Economists at the ifo Institute and Stanford University warn against this. "Anyone looking solely at the contribution rate for health insurance sees, at best, only half the picture," says ifo researcher Roman Klimke."A benefit cut that saves money today may cost the ability to work tomorrow - and hence reduce contribution revenue and increase spending in other areas of the welfare state."
However, this should not be taken as a license to increase health care spending at any cost: Services without proven benefits have no place in solidarity-based financing. "It is crucial for costs and benefits to not be evaluated solely within the GKV budget," says Klimke.
The Health Finance Commission has quantified the need for immediate action in the GKV and recommended, in part, extensive cuts. Klimke and his co-author Maria Polyakova of Stanford University argue that health policy should also be judged by its long-term effects on ability to work, the need for long-term care, and public finance.
Over the course of their life, the same person will be a patient, an employee, a contributor, and later possibly in need of long-term care, so savings in one system may shift the burden to another.
Today, nearly half of those aged 55 to 64 already report having a long-term illness, which shows how closely health and the ability to work are linked in older age. "A reform that merely shifts spending from one coffer to another brings no real saving for the welfare state," says Klimke. The authors therefore propose a welfare state budget that evaluates costs and benefits across healthcare, long-term care, pension, and labor market institutions.
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2026 Article in Journal
Gesundheitspolitik als Sozialstaatsreform: Warum Deutschland Gesundheit, Rente und Arbeit gemeinsam denken muss
Roman Klimke, Maria Polyakova
ifo Schnelldienst, 2026, 79, Nr. 7 11-15
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/article-journal/gesundheitspolitik-als-sozialstaatsreform)
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2026 Journal (Complete Issue)
ifo Schnelldienst 07/2026: Patient Gesundheitssystem
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/journal-complete-issue/ifo-schnelldienst-072026-patient-gesundheitssystem)
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Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-07-16/savings-health-insurance-germany-may-increase-costs-other-types-insurance
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Savings in Health Insurance in Germany May Increase Costs in Other Types of Insurance
Although cuts to the statutory health insurance system (GKV) in Germany reduce spending there, they may at the same time increase costs in long-term care, pension, or unemployment insurance, and for private households. Economists at the ifo Institute and Stanford University warn against this. "Anyone looking solely at the contribution rate for health insurance sees, at best, only half the picture," says ifo researcher Roman Klimke. ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, July 16 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * Savings in Health Insurance in Germany May Increase Costs in Other Types of Insurance Although cuts to the statutory health insurance system (GKV) in Germany reduce spending there, they may at the same time increase costs in long-term care, pension, or unemployment insurance, and for private households. Economists at the ifo Institute and Stanford University warn against this. "Anyone looking solely at the contribution rate for health insurance sees, at best, only half the picture," says ifo researcher Roman Klimke."A benefit cut that saves money today may cost the ability to work tomorrow - and hence reduce contribution revenue and increase spending in other areas of the welfare state."
However, this should not be taken as a license to increase health care spending at any cost: Services without proven benefits have no place in solidarity-based financing. "It is crucial for costs and benefits to not be evaluated solely within the GKV budget," says Klimke.
The Health Finance Commission has quantified the need for immediate action in the GKV and recommended, in part, extensive cuts. Klimke and his co-author Maria Polyakova of Stanford University argue that health policy should also be judged by its long-term effects on ability to work, the need for long-term care, and public finance.
Over the course of their life, the same person will be a patient, an employee, a contributor, and later possibly in need of long-term care, so savings in one system may shift the burden to another.
Today, nearly half of those aged 55 to 64 already report having a long-term illness, which shows how closely health and the ability to work are linked in older age. "A reform that merely shifts spending from one coffer to another brings no real saving for the welfare state," says Klimke. The authors therefore propose a welfare state budget that evaluates costs and benefits across healthcare, long-term care, pension, and labor market institutions.
* * *
2026 Article in Journal
Gesundheitspolitik als Sozialstaatsreform: Warum Deutschland Gesundheit, Rente und Arbeit gemeinsam denken muss
Roman Klimke, Maria Polyakova
ifo Schnelldienst, 2026, 79, Nr. 7 11-15
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/article-journal/gesundheitspolitik-als-sozialstaatsreform)
-
2026 Journal (Complete Issue)
ifo Schnelldienst 07/2026: Patient Gesundheitssystem
Learn more (https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2026/journal-complete-issue/ifo-schnelldienst-072026-patient-gesundheitssystem)
* * *
Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-07-16/savings-health-insurance-germany-may-increase-costs-other-types-insurance
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Critical Questions Q&A: Protecting Human Rights at the World Cup - Progress on Paper, Gaps on the Ground
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on July 15, 2026, involving Human Rights Initiative Director and senior fellow Andrew Friedman and intern Gretchen Scott:
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Protecting Human Rights at the World Cup: Progress on Paper, Gaps on the Ground
When the World Cup comes around every four years, the world comes together to watch. The 2022 World Cup drew engagement from an estimated 5 billion people over the course of the tournament. The final match between France and Argentina became one of the most widely viewed ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on July 15, 2026, involving Human Rights Initiative Director and senior fellow Andrew Friedman and intern Gretchen Scott: * * * Protecting Human Rights at the World Cup: Progress on Paper, Gaps on the Ground When the World Cup comes around every four years, the world comes together to watch. The 2022 World Cup drew engagement from an estimated 5 billion people over the course of the tournament. The final match between France and Argentina became one of the most widely viewedsporting events in history, with almost 1.5 billion people tuning in. The 2026 edition is yet another colossal spectacle: 16 host cities across three countries, 48 teams, and 104 matches over 39 days.
Delivering a tournament of this size is a tremendous undertaking, requiring years of extensive planning, thousands of workers, and the movement of massive numbers of people both across and within borders. Considerations for the current World Cup, held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, go back to 2016. Once the tournament kicks off, these efforts are quickly overshadowed by the roaring of the crowd as goals start hitting the back of the net.
However, while the play on the pitch is front of mind, behind-the-scenes concerns do not vanish. An event on this scale carries serious risk of human rights abuses: labor violations in the construction of stadiums and supporting infrastructure, discrimination, and threats to the security of participants and attendees, just to name a few.
With billions watching in the stadium and at home, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has the potential to set a new standard for how human rights are protected in international sporting events. That same visibility, however, means a failure to protect human rights looms large.
Q1: How does FIFA approach human rights?
A1: Before 2016, FIFA took on no direct responsibility for the human rights conditions surrounding its events, leaving their treatment to host governments alone. That position began to erode in 2014 when the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and business and human rights scholar John Ruggie wrote to FIFA, urging the organization to make a commitment to human rights and develop a strategy for integrating protections into its operations.
FIFA did not take immediate action. Within a year, however, a scandal compounded the pressure: An FBI investigation resulted in the indictment of nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives over what the U.S. Department of Justice called "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted" corruption. In addition, the labor conditions tied to preparations for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar had already begun to draw independent reporting and criticism. Facing scrutiny on so many fronts, FIFA changed its position.
FIFA first enshrined human rights in its governing documents in April 2016, committing to respect and promote human rights. The May 2017 FIFA Human Rights Policy defined this further, naming five focus areas (labor rights, land acquisition and housing rights, discrimination, security, and players' rights) and a four-part approach (commit and embed, identify and address, protect and remedy, and engage and communicate).
The policy was initially operationalized in October 2017 during the bidding process for the 2026 World Cup. Bidding countries were required to commit to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a set of international standards for the protection of human rights in business operations, and to present strategies for their implementation. Further, host cities had to present Human Rights Action Plans, laying out how governments would work with other stakeholders to protect human rights during World Cup preparation and execution. Importantly, while this policy came online in 2017, it did not apply to previous bids, meaning the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar were not bound by the policy.
While FIFA has stated that all 16 host cities for the 2026 tournament have submitted the required action plans, including consultation with local stakeholders, there is no uniform standard for publication and public availability. This lack of transparency on actual steps being taken to protect human rights, coupled with ongoing controversy surrounding the right to protest and free speech, travel restrictions, mass deportations, labor rights, and housing displacement, has resulted in a World Cup that still has significant room to grow in the protection of human rights.
Q2: Why does FIFA need a human rights policy?
A2: As noted above, until 2016, FIFA left human rights protections up to the host nation. While host countries are subject to international human rights law, with no World Cup-specific requirements for due diligence or protections, abuses abounded. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, beautification projects and rental housing resulted in the forced displacement of several thousand people from their homes. Ahead of Brazil 2014, as many as 170,000 people were evicted to clear space for World Cup and 2016 Olympic construction. Brazil's tournament also coincided with nationwide protests against public spending on the World Cup, met by police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests.
Unfortunately, FIFA's post-2016 record on human rights at World Cups does not reflect the promising improvements in policy. The 2018 World Cup hosted by Russia and the 2022 World Cup hosted by Qatar were both marred by significant human rights abuses, with limited prevention efforts taken in advance and little done to respond when they occurred.
Russia's hosting included significant labor abuses in the construction of stadiums and infrastructure: At least 21 workers died during construction, many as a result of insufficient health and safety conditions and monitoring. In the construction of the Zenit Arena in St. Petersburg, investigators found evidence of at least 110 workers from North Korea being subjected to forced labor, one of whom was found dead in a storage container. Russian authorities prevented migrant workers from speaking out about their conditions, including detaining a Human Rights Watch researcher attempting to interview them and denying them contact with a FIFA delegation with whom they wanted to raise wage concerns.
Qatar's 2022 Cup faced similar challenges, beginning with the awarding of the tournament itself. FIFA's selection of Qatar was controversial well before human rights entered the conversation: The country had never previously participated in a World Cup, had a climate wholly unsuited to a tournament played in its traditional June-July window, and the bid process itself was dogged by allegations of corruption and bribery. Layered on top of this was Qatar's existing record of human rights violations, raising the question of why FIFA would award its flagship tournament to a country facing scrutiny on so many fronts simultaneously.
Qatar's bid took steps beyond those of Russia and introduced a formal Human Rights Grievance Mechanism and a Human Rights Volunteers program to monitor issues at venues during matches. Unfortunately, these mechanisms did little to prevent, respond to, or expose the breadth of abuses that occurred.
Many of the issues that arose mirror long-running human rights concerns in Qatar. The kafala labor system, which prevents migrant workings from changing jobs or leaving the country without their employer's permission, limits the agency of workers. Women's rights were a persistent concern throughout both preparations and execution of the tournament. Qatar's officially reported death toll tied to World Cup stadiums was 3 work-related and 37 non-work-related deaths, but independent estimates of deaths connected to World Cup preparations have run above 6,500.
The Women's World Cup in France constitutes a distinct contrast. Despite the bid taking place in 2015, also before FIFA's human rights policy took effect, it had a markedly better record on labor rights, women's rights, and migrant worker protections. It was not blemish-free, however: Like previous Women's World Cups, the gap between prize money for the women when compared with the men became a hot topic, prompting widespread conversation about gender-based discrimination in sport.
Q3: Why is FIFA taking action now?
A3: FIFA's new approach to human rights protections, along with the increased attention paid to human rights considerations in this World Cup, is owed to a variety of factors and stakeholders. A long running civil society-led effort to bring attention to human rights concerns of previous such events, including World Cups, Olympics, and other international sporting events that reached a fever pitch in Qatar and Russia, has been vital in providing sustained focus and attention. The pressure provided by such an effort also requires hosts that are influenced by criticism on human rights or are concerned about the loss of international prestige or sponsor revenue that may come with such criticism.
The combination of 2018 and 2022 World Cups, alongside the 2024 Olympics in Paris and the 2014 Olympics in Sochi that engendered extraordinary human rights concerns, played a significant role in the newfound prominence of human rights considerations in World Cup planning. This came alongside a 2026 World Cup held in countries with comparatively robust transparency and accountability, human rights, and public procurement laws.
This pressure stemmed both from civil society and media campaigns that have been a part of most modern sporting events, but also from FIFA in its own processes. Put differently, the international community was able to see just how bad international sporting events can be for human rights before an event was held in places with both means and motivation for protecting human rights, leading to a greater appetite and avenue for change than has existed in the past. It is important that this momentum continues when planning future tournaments.
Q4: What does this mean for the future?
A4: Multiple factors came together to increase attention on human rights and to ultimately improve human rights due diligence in the 2026 World Cup. Keeping up momentum for human rights in future World Cups and other international sporting events will require the implication of a multitude of stakeholders and factors. Three factors in particular will play a major role in determining what the future holds for human rights at the World Cup and similar events.
First, how much attention is paid to human rights violations in preparation for bidding and hosting such events? Media and civil society will continue to shine a light on human rights concerns and violations. International attention and coverage will continue regardless of host countries. Such awareness-raising campaigns are a key element of human rights advocacy and see increasing attention around major international events. Barring a fundamental shift in the viability of international human rights advocacy, that is unlikely to change.
However, closing civic space internationally and a willingness to host international sporting events in authoritarian settings makes the participation of local civil society, those best equipped to understand and investigate local happenings, ever more difficult. Organizations doing invaluable research and reporting may be based internationally, but local partners are central to their work. Russia paints a chilling example, where Human Rights Watch saw a Russian researcher, Semyon Simonov, do vital work on human and labor rights violations in advance of the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 World Cup, only to find himself in legal peril for his efforts.
Second, will FIFA put real pressure on host countries to make and abide by commitments? Promisingly, FIFA has announced that commitments to human rights and a proposal with actionable steps to protect them will become a permanent part of the bidding process. This is laudable, but details and implementation will be key. Real commitment to improvements in human rights will require such agreements to be transparent and have methods of accountability that amount to real costs for failures. Ultimately, countries make a cost-benefit analysis when determining whether to host the World Cup or another international sporting event. This includes economic and focus costs as well as benefits such as potential tourism and other economic growth, international prestige, or increased international attention. Transparent and enforceable commitments, along with real costs for violations, are the only way for human rights to play a part of that calculus.
Early evidence on such commitments is scant but troubling. FIFA commissioned a report on the human rights violations surrounding Qatar's hosting of the World Cup in 2016. This report, delivered to FIFA in 2023 but not published until 2024, noted the myriad ways in which workers were mistreated, resulting in death, injury, wage theft, and other maladies. It also concluded that workers who were entitled to remediation had not yet benefited from it, and that while the responsibility primarily fell with their employers and the Government of Qatar, it also fell on FIFA.
Despite this finding, the Qatar Legacy Fund, funded in part by the revenue of the 2022 World Cup, will be used for various international development projects in line with multilateral organizations, rather than to directly remediate laborers. This means that even though culpability and violations were established, real repercussions are limited.
Finally, how will host countries, who have ultimate authority over human rights protections, security forces, and the preparation for such events, respond to the above realities? Will they shrug off criticisms from civil society and the media, and brush off requirements from FIFA? Or will countries determine that protecting human rights in hosting these events is not only a moral imperative, but also a required part of the cost of hosting? Early evidence is limited, but does not inspire optimism.
The preparations for the 2026 World Cup brought local stakeholders into the process, creating greater accountability and transparency. This structure requires freedom of expression and an open civic space that is unlikely to repeat itself in more authoritarian states. In its early human rights due diligence efforts, FIFA has an opportunity to acknowledge this risk and provide support and attention to civil society organizations taking part in the planning process but has thus far declined to do so.
In accepting Saudi Arabia's bid, FIFA declared the state's human rights risk to be "medium," despite its diverse and well documented history of prominent human rights violations and regular presence near the bottom of country rankings on human rights and freedom. Acknowledging the human rights risk is an initial and necessary step towards combating it. If the risks are not acknowledged, there is little hope that there will be meaningful efforts to protect against them.
* * *
Gretchen Scott is an intern with the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Andrew Friedman is director and senior fellow in the Human Rights Initiative at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/protecting-human-rights-world-cup-progress-paper-gaps-ground
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Protecting Human Rights at the World Cup: Progress on Paper, Gaps on the Ground
When the World Cup comes around every four years, the world comes together to watch. The 2022 World Cup drew engagement from an estimated 5 billion people over the course of the tournament. The final match between France and Argentina became one of the most widely viewed ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following Critical Questions Q&A on July 15, 2026, involving Human Rights Initiative Director and senior fellow Andrew Friedman and intern Gretchen Scott: * * * Protecting Human Rights at the World Cup: Progress on Paper, Gaps on the Ground When the World Cup comes around every four years, the world comes together to watch. The 2022 World Cup drew engagement from an estimated 5 billion people over the course of the tournament. The final match between France and Argentina became one of the most widely viewedsporting events in history, with almost 1.5 billion people tuning in. The 2026 edition is yet another colossal spectacle: 16 host cities across three countries, 48 teams, and 104 matches over 39 days.
Delivering a tournament of this size is a tremendous undertaking, requiring years of extensive planning, thousands of workers, and the movement of massive numbers of people both across and within borders. Considerations for the current World Cup, held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, go back to 2016. Once the tournament kicks off, these efforts are quickly overshadowed by the roaring of the crowd as goals start hitting the back of the net.
However, while the play on the pitch is front of mind, behind-the-scenes concerns do not vanish. An event on this scale carries serious risk of human rights abuses: labor violations in the construction of stadiums and supporting infrastructure, discrimination, and threats to the security of participants and attendees, just to name a few.
With billions watching in the stadium and at home, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) has the potential to set a new standard for how human rights are protected in international sporting events. That same visibility, however, means a failure to protect human rights looms large.
Q1: How does FIFA approach human rights?
A1: Before 2016, FIFA took on no direct responsibility for the human rights conditions surrounding its events, leaving their treatment to host governments alone. That position began to erode in 2014 when the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and business and human rights scholar John Ruggie wrote to FIFA, urging the organization to make a commitment to human rights and develop a strategy for integrating protections into its operations.
FIFA did not take immediate action. Within a year, however, a scandal compounded the pressure: An FBI investigation resulted in the indictment of nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives over what the U.S. Department of Justice called "rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted" corruption. In addition, the labor conditions tied to preparations for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar had already begun to draw independent reporting and criticism. Facing scrutiny on so many fronts, FIFA changed its position.
FIFA first enshrined human rights in its governing documents in April 2016, committing to respect and promote human rights. The May 2017 FIFA Human Rights Policy defined this further, naming five focus areas (labor rights, land acquisition and housing rights, discrimination, security, and players' rights) and a four-part approach (commit and embed, identify and address, protect and remedy, and engage and communicate).
The policy was initially operationalized in October 2017 during the bidding process for the 2026 World Cup. Bidding countries were required to commit to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, a set of international standards for the protection of human rights in business operations, and to present strategies for their implementation. Further, host cities had to present Human Rights Action Plans, laying out how governments would work with other stakeholders to protect human rights during World Cup preparation and execution. Importantly, while this policy came online in 2017, it did not apply to previous bids, meaning the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in Russia and Qatar were not bound by the policy.
While FIFA has stated that all 16 host cities for the 2026 tournament have submitted the required action plans, including consultation with local stakeholders, there is no uniform standard for publication and public availability. This lack of transparency on actual steps being taken to protect human rights, coupled with ongoing controversy surrounding the right to protest and free speech, travel restrictions, mass deportations, labor rights, and housing displacement, has resulted in a World Cup that still has significant room to grow in the protection of human rights.
Q2: Why does FIFA need a human rights policy?
A2: As noted above, until 2016, FIFA left human rights protections up to the host nation. While host countries are subject to international human rights law, with no World Cup-specific requirements for due diligence or protections, abuses abounded. During the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, beautification projects and rental housing resulted in the forced displacement of several thousand people from their homes. Ahead of Brazil 2014, as many as 170,000 people were evicted to clear space for World Cup and 2016 Olympic construction. Brazil's tournament also coincided with nationwide protests against public spending on the World Cup, met by police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and mass arrests.
Unfortunately, FIFA's post-2016 record on human rights at World Cups does not reflect the promising improvements in policy. The 2018 World Cup hosted by Russia and the 2022 World Cup hosted by Qatar were both marred by significant human rights abuses, with limited prevention efforts taken in advance and little done to respond when they occurred.
Russia's hosting included significant labor abuses in the construction of stadiums and infrastructure: At least 21 workers died during construction, many as a result of insufficient health and safety conditions and monitoring. In the construction of the Zenit Arena in St. Petersburg, investigators found evidence of at least 110 workers from North Korea being subjected to forced labor, one of whom was found dead in a storage container. Russian authorities prevented migrant workers from speaking out about their conditions, including detaining a Human Rights Watch researcher attempting to interview them and denying them contact with a FIFA delegation with whom they wanted to raise wage concerns.
Qatar's 2022 Cup faced similar challenges, beginning with the awarding of the tournament itself. FIFA's selection of Qatar was controversial well before human rights entered the conversation: The country had never previously participated in a World Cup, had a climate wholly unsuited to a tournament played in its traditional June-July window, and the bid process itself was dogged by allegations of corruption and bribery. Layered on top of this was Qatar's existing record of human rights violations, raising the question of why FIFA would award its flagship tournament to a country facing scrutiny on so many fronts simultaneously.
Qatar's bid took steps beyond those of Russia and introduced a formal Human Rights Grievance Mechanism and a Human Rights Volunteers program to monitor issues at venues during matches. Unfortunately, these mechanisms did little to prevent, respond to, or expose the breadth of abuses that occurred.
Many of the issues that arose mirror long-running human rights concerns in Qatar. The kafala labor system, which prevents migrant workings from changing jobs or leaving the country without their employer's permission, limits the agency of workers. Women's rights were a persistent concern throughout both preparations and execution of the tournament. Qatar's officially reported death toll tied to World Cup stadiums was 3 work-related and 37 non-work-related deaths, but independent estimates of deaths connected to World Cup preparations have run above 6,500.
The Women's World Cup in France constitutes a distinct contrast. Despite the bid taking place in 2015, also before FIFA's human rights policy took effect, it had a markedly better record on labor rights, women's rights, and migrant worker protections. It was not blemish-free, however: Like previous Women's World Cups, the gap between prize money for the women when compared with the men became a hot topic, prompting widespread conversation about gender-based discrimination in sport.
Q3: Why is FIFA taking action now?
A3: FIFA's new approach to human rights protections, along with the increased attention paid to human rights considerations in this World Cup, is owed to a variety of factors and stakeholders. A long running civil society-led effort to bring attention to human rights concerns of previous such events, including World Cups, Olympics, and other international sporting events that reached a fever pitch in Qatar and Russia, has been vital in providing sustained focus and attention. The pressure provided by such an effort also requires hosts that are influenced by criticism on human rights or are concerned about the loss of international prestige or sponsor revenue that may come with such criticism.
The combination of 2018 and 2022 World Cups, alongside the 2024 Olympics in Paris and the 2014 Olympics in Sochi that engendered extraordinary human rights concerns, played a significant role in the newfound prominence of human rights considerations in World Cup planning. This came alongside a 2026 World Cup held in countries with comparatively robust transparency and accountability, human rights, and public procurement laws.
This pressure stemmed both from civil society and media campaigns that have been a part of most modern sporting events, but also from FIFA in its own processes. Put differently, the international community was able to see just how bad international sporting events can be for human rights before an event was held in places with both means and motivation for protecting human rights, leading to a greater appetite and avenue for change than has existed in the past. It is important that this momentum continues when planning future tournaments.
Q4: What does this mean for the future?
A4: Multiple factors came together to increase attention on human rights and to ultimately improve human rights due diligence in the 2026 World Cup. Keeping up momentum for human rights in future World Cups and other international sporting events will require the implication of a multitude of stakeholders and factors. Three factors in particular will play a major role in determining what the future holds for human rights at the World Cup and similar events.
First, how much attention is paid to human rights violations in preparation for bidding and hosting such events? Media and civil society will continue to shine a light on human rights concerns and violations. International attention and coverage will continue regardless of host countries. Such awareness-raising campaigns are a key element of human rights advocacy and see increasing attention around major international events. Barring a fundamental shift in the viability of international human rights advocacy, that is unlikely to change.
However, closing civic space internationally and a willingness to host international sporting events in authoritarian settings makes the participation of local civil society, those best equipped to understand and investigate local happenings, ever more difficult. Organizations doing invaluable research and reporting may be based internationally, but local partners are central to their work. Russia paints a chilling example, where Human Rights Watch saw a Russian researcher, Semyon Simonov, do vital work on human and labor rights violations in advance of the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 World Cup, only to find himself in legal peril for his efforts.
Second, will FIFA put real pressure on host countries to make and abide by commitments? Promisingly, FIFA has announced that commitments to human rights and a proposal with actionable steps to protect them will become a permanent part of the bidding process. This is laudable, but details and implementation will be key. Real commitment to improvements in human rights will require such agreements to be transparent and have methods of accountability that amount to real costs for failures. Ultimately, countries make a cost-benefit analysis when determining whether to host the World Cup or another international sporting event. This includes economic and focus costs as well as benefits such as potential tourism and other economic growth, international prestige, or increased international attention. Transparent and enforceable commitments, along with real costs for violations, are the only way for human rights to play a part of that calculus.
Early evidence on such commitments is scant but troubling. FIFA commissioned a report on the human rights violations surrounding Qatar's hosting of the World Cup in 2016. This report, delivered to FIFA in 2023 but not published until 2024, noted the myriad ways in which workers were mistreated, resulting in death, injury, wage theft, and other maladies. It also concluded that workers who were entitled to remediation had not yet benefited from it, and that while the responsibility primarily fell with their employers and the Government of Qatar, it also fell on FIFA.
Despite this finding, the Qatar Legacy Fund, funded in part by the revenue of the 2022 World Cup, will be used for various international development projects in line with multilateral organizations, rather than to directly remediate laborers. This means that even though culpability and violations were established, real repercussions are limited.
Finally, how will host countries, who have ultimate authority over human rights protections, security forces, and the preparation for such events, respond to the above realities? Will they shrug off criticisms from civil society and the media, and brush off requirements from FIFA? Or will countries determine that protecting human rights in hosting these events is not only a moral imperative, but also a required part of the cost of hosting? Early evidence is limited, but does not inspire optimism.
The preparations for the 2026 World Cup brought local stakeholders into the process, creating greater accountability and transparency. This structure requires freedom of expression and an open civic space that is unlikely to repeat itself in more authoritarian states. In its early human rights due diligence efforts, FIFA has an opportunity to acknowledge this risk and provide support and attention to civil society organizations taking part in the planning process but has thus far declined to do so.
In accepting Saudi Arabia's bid, FIFA declared the state's human rights risk to be "medium," despite its diverse and well documented history of prominent human rights violations and regular presence near the bottom of country rankings on human rights and freedom. Acknowledging the human rights risk is an initial and necessary step towards combating it. If the risks are not acknowledged, there is little hope that there will be meaningful efforts to protect against them.
* * *
Gretchen Scott is an intern with the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Andrew Friedman is director and senior fellow in the Human Rights Initiative at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/protecting-human-rights-world-cup-progress-paper-gaps-ground
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: What the Iran War Is Costing Joint Gulf-U.S. Ambitions for AI
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Joseph A. Farsakh, senior associate (non-resident) with the Middle East Program:
* * *
What the Iran War Is Costing Joint Gulf-U.S. Ambitions for AI
A Partnership Built on More Than Oil
For decades, Gulf states invested trillions into the U.S. economy, tied their security to Washington, and bet that alignment was the price of protection. The Iran war raised a clear question: Was alignment the cause of the threat, rather than the cure for it? Gulf governments did not ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Joseph A. Farsakh, senior associate (non-resident) with the Middle East Program: * * * What the Iran War Is Costing Joint Gulf-U.S. Ambitions for AI A Partnership Built on More Than Oil For decades, Gulf states invested trillions into the U.S. economy, tied their security to Washington, and bet that alignment was the price of protection. The Iran war raised a clear question: Was alignment the cause of the threat, rather than the cure for it? Gulf governments did notstart this war, but are clearly paying for it, and they are asking why.
By early 2026, the relationship between the United States and the Gulf states had moved well beyond the old oil-for-security bargain. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had collectively committed roughly $2.5 trillion to U.S.-linked technology investments. Amazon had committed $5.3 billion to an AI hub in Riyadh. Nvidia was supplying up to 600,000 GPUs through its partnership with Saudi Arabia's Humain. The UAE's MGX had become a founding partner in the Stargate Project alongside OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE were collectively targeting 8-10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity across announced projects, a buildout that would position the Gulf as a principal architect of the computational substrate of the twenty-first century. The architecture was elegant, ambitious, and historic.
The war has likely changed the calculus.
A Generation-Defining Transformation, Interrupted
Through Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, Qatar's sovereign capital deployments, the UAE's AI strategy, and others, Gulf governments had been executing long-term development strategies centered on AI, advanced computing, and digital infrastructure. These are serious, institutionally backed bets on long-term economic resilience. The stakes extend beyond national balance sheets: AI ecosystems anchored in the Gulf have the potential to lower barriers for firms, researchers, and governments across the broader Arab world, enabling participation in advanced digital industries that might otherwise remain out of reach. That ambition is now under threat.
Iranian strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure, ports, aviation networks, and major cities challenged the basic premise behind the region's transformation agenda. For years, foreign investors treated the Gulf as an unusually stable platform; the attacks shattered that assumption. Goldman Sachs projected that a prolonged conflict could shrink Kuwait's and Qatar's GDP by as much as 14 percent each, while reducing Saudi Arabia's and the UAE's by roughly 3 and 5 percent, respectively. Human capital risk compounds the economic damage: When airspace closes, insurance costs rise, and drones target major cities, expatriate executives and engineers begin to reassess the bargain. The effect is gradual but real. Over time it weakens the institutional depth these reform agendas require.
The Cost of Alignment
The more damaging long-term consequences may not be physical, but rather strategic and psychological. Gulf governments did not initiate this conflict, and yet some absorbed its consequences far more directly than others. The UAE made the most explicit bet by signing the Abraham Accords and integrating substantively with the Israeli intelligence and security apparatus. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait maintained more hedged postures, and were targeted accordingly with less ferocity. That distinction is not lost on anyone in the region.
Inside Gulf governments and royal courts, analysts and senior advisers are now asking questions that would have been heretical two years ago: Did alignment purchase security, or did it paint a target on Gulf infrastructure and populations? The question is not rhetorical. The same Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure hosting Gulf banking and civil services was simultaneously processing targeting data for U.S. military operations, which Gulf governments were not meaningfully consulted about before the strikes began. Gulf states sought data sovereignty; what they got was closer to its inverse. Iran concluded that datacenters were fair game, publishing a list of 29 tech targets across Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and Israel--AWS, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Oracle, and Palantir facilities--framing them as legitimate military infrastructure.
Gulf sovereign wealth funds represent some of the largest concentrations of deployable capital outside of the United States. When Gulf governments begin to question whether U.S. partnerships are worth the security exposure they entail, that capital slows or redirects.
When Datacenters Are in the Crosshairs
The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas trade. When Iran closed it after the February strikes, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait together lost an estimated 6.7 million barrels per day of export capacity. Strikes on QatarEnergy facilities at Ras Laffan halted liquefied natural gas production and pushed European gas prices to a four-year high. For the Gulf states, higher prices offered no consolation. The shock struck the very infrastructure that allows them to profit from rising crude. Bahrain's credit outlook was downgraded by Moody's, illustrating how quickly a regional security shock becomes a sovereign risk problem.
The technology damage may prove more lasting. Iranian drone strikes hit three AWS datacenters, two in the UAE and one in Bahrain, disrupting banking, payments, and consumer services across a region of 50 million people and prompting AWS to advise clients to consider migrating workloads out of the Middle East. The subsea cables connecting Gulf facilities to Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia pass through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, which are both vulnerable in the conflict. Companies poised to break ground on new datacenter projects are confronting questions that did not appear in January's due diligence frameworks: What does war risk insurance look like at scale? By what fiduciary logic does a board ratify 10-year infrastructure commitments in a theater under active ballistic and drone threat? That said, Brookfield Asset Management has confirmed its $20 billion datacenter partnership with the Qatar Investment Authority will go ahead, a signal that sovereign, long-horizon capital is not retreating.
Buyers' Remorse: What the Gulf Wants and Why That Helps Americans
The likeliest outcome of this reckoning is a deliberate recalibration toward greater strategic autonomy, not a dramatic rupture in policy. The political and military costs of deep alignment have become too visible to ignore, particularly for the states that went furthest. Qatar and Kuwait, which preserved more independent foreign policy postures, offer a model: robust economic engagement globally, without the full strategic exposure that comes from explicit political and military aggression. A more balanced posture across the Gulf, preserving economic partnerships while refusing to absorb the full consequences of decisions made without meaningful input, is the rational response to a situation in which alignment demonstrably increased vulnerability rather than reduced it.
That recalibration is unlikely to redirect Gulf technology investment. What Gulf governments want, at a basic level, is to build, to diversify, to invest in their people, and to create the conditions under which a young, growing Arab population can participate in the industries shaping the twenty-first century. What they do not want is the constant instability that drains the capital, talent, and institutional energy that would otherwise go toward long-term diversification. That aspiration is consistent with U.S. interests. The United States would be well served to reconceptualize Gulf stability not as a concession to regional partners but as a structural prerequisite for the economic architecture both parties spent years building together. Washington should recognize that Gulf leaders who invested trillions of dollars into the United States over decades and feel endangered by U.S. partnership will look for better terms elsewhere.
* * *
Joseph A. Farsakh is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-iran-war-costing-joint-gulf-us-ambitions-ai
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
What the Iran War Is Costing Joint Gulf-U.S. Ambitions for AI
A Partnership Built on More Than Oil
For decades, Gulf states invested trillions into the U.S. economy, tied their security to Washington, and bet that alignment was the price of protection. The Iran war raised a clear question: Was alignment the cause of the threat, rather than the cure for it? Gulf governments did not ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Joseph A. Farsakh, senior associate (non-resident) with the Middle East Program: * * * What the Iran War Is Costing Joint Gulf-U.S. Ambitions for AI A Partnership Built on More Than Oil For decades, Gulf states invested trillions into the U.S. economy, tied their security to Washington, and bet that alignment was the price of protection. The Iran war raised a clear question: Was alignment the cause of the threat, rather than the cure for it? Gulf governments did notstart this war, but are clearly paying for it, and they are asking why.
By early 2026, the relationship between the United States and the Gulf states had moved well beyond the old oil-for-security bargain. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had collectively committed roughly $2.5 trillion to U.S.-linked technology investments. Amazon had committed $5.3 billion to an AI hub in Riyadh. Nvidia was supplying up to 600,000 GPUs through its partnership with Saudi Arabia's Humain. The UAE's MGX had become a founding partner in the Stargate Project alongside OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE were collectively targeting 8-10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity across announced projects, a buildout that would position the Gulf as a principal architect of the computational substrate of the twenty-first century. The architecture was elegant, ambitious, and historic.
The war has likely changed the calculus.
A Generation-Defining Transformation, Interrupted
Through Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, Qatar's sovereign capital deployments, the UAE's AI strategy, and others, Gulf governments had been executing long-term development strategies centered on AI, advanced computing, and digital infrastructure. These are serious, institutionally backed bets on long-term economic resilience. The stakes extend beyond national balance sheets: AI ecosystems anchored in the Gulf have the potential to lower barriers for firms, researchers, and governments across the broader Arab world, enabling participation in advanced digital industries that might otherwise remain out of reach. That ambition is now under threat.
Iranian strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure, ports, aviation networks, and major cities challenged the basic premise behind the region's transformation agenda. For years, foreign investors treated the Gulf as an unusually stable platform; the attacks shattered that assumption. Goldman Sachs projected that a prolonged conflict could shrink Kuwait's and Qatar's GDP by as much as 14 percent each, while reducing Saudi Arabia's and the UAE's by roughly 3 and 5 percent, respectively. Human capital risk compounds the economic damage: When airspace closes, insurance costs rise, and drones target major cities, expatriate executives and engineers begin to reassess the bargain. The effect is gradual but real. Over time it weakens the institutional depth these reform agendas require.
The Cost of Alignment
The more damaging long-term consequences may not be physical, but rather strategic and psychological. Gulf governments did not initiate this conflict, and yet some absorbed its consequences far more directly than others. The UAE made the most explicit bet by signing the Abraham Accords and integrating substantively with the Israeli intelligence and security apparatus. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait maintained more hedged postures, and were targeted accordingly with less ferocity. That distinction is not lost on anyone in the region.
Inside Gulf governments and royal courts, analysts and senior advisers are now asking questions that would have been heretical two years ago: Did alignment purchase security, or did it paint a target on Gulf infrastructure and populations? The question is not rhetorical. The same Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure hosting Gulf banking and civil services was simultaneously processing targeting data for U.S. military operations, which Gulf governments were not meaningfully consulted about before the strikes began. Gulf states sought data sovereignty; what they got was closer to its inverse. Iran concluded that datacenters were fair game, publishing a list of 29 tech targets across Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and Israel--AWS, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Oracle, and Palantir facilities--framing them as legitimate military infrastructure.
Gulf sovereign wealth funds represent some of the largest concentrations of deployable capital outside of the United States. When Gulf governments begin to question whether U.S. partnerships are worth the security exposure they entail, that capital slows or redirects.
When Datacenters Are in the Crosshairs
The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas trade. When Iran closed it after the February strikes, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait together lost an estimated 6.7 million barrels per day of export capacity. Strikes on QatarEnergy facilities at Ras Laffan halted liquefied natural gas production and pushed European gas prices to a four-year high. For the Gulf states, higher prices offered no consolation. The shock struck the very infrastructure that allows them to profit from rising crude. Bahrain's credit outlook was downgraded by Moody's, illustrating how quickly a regional security shock becomes a sovereign risk problem.
The technology damage may prove more lasting. Iranian drone strikes hit three AWS datacenters, two in the UAE and one in Bahrain, disrupting banking, payments, and consumer services across a region of 50 million people and prompting AWS to advise clients to consider migrating workloads out of the Middle East. The subsea cables connecting Gulf facilities to Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia pass through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, which are both vulnerable in the conflict. Companies poised to break ground on new datacenter projects are confronting questions that did not appear in January's due diligence frameworks: What does war risk insurance look like at scale? By what fiduciary logic does a board ratify 10-year infrastructure commitments in a theater under active ballistic and drone threat? That said, Brookfield Asset Management has confirmed its $20 billion datacenter partnership with the Qatar Investment Authority will go ahead, a signal that sovereign, long-horizon capital is not retreating.
Buyers' Remorse: What the Gulf Wants and Why That Helps Americans
The likeliest outcome of this reckoning is a deliberate recalibration toward greater strategic autonomy, not a dramatic rupture in policy. The political and military costs of deep alignment have become too visible to ignore, particularly for the states that went furthest. Qatar and Kuwait, which preserved more independent foreign policy postures, offer a model: robust economic engagement globally, without the full strategic exposure that comes from explicit political and military aggression. A more balanced posture across the Gulf, preserving economic partnerships while refusing to absorb the full consequences of decisions made without meaningful input, is the rational response to a situation in which alignment demonstrably increased vulnerability rather than reduced it.
That recalibration is unlikely to redirect Gulf technology investment. What Gulf governments want, at a basic level, is to build, to diversify, to invest in their people, and to create the conditions under which a young, growing Arab population can participate in the industries shaping the twenty-first century. What they do not want is the constant instability that drains the capital, talent, and institutional energy that would otherwise go toward long-term diversification. That aspiration is consistent with U.S. interests. The United States would be well served to reconceptualize Gulf stability not as a concession to regional partners but as a structural prerequisite for the economic architecture both parties spent years building together. Washington should recognize that Gulf leaders who invested trillions of dollars into the United States over decades and feel endangered by U.S. partnership will look for better terms elsewhere.
* * *
Joseph A. Farsakh is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-iran-war-costing-joint-gulf-us-ambitions-ai
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Tale of Two Strategic Attacks - Race to End the War in Ukraine
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Director Benjamin Jensen and Deputy Director and data fellow Yasir Atalan, both of the Futures Lab.
Jensen is also a senior fellow at the CSIS Defense and Security Department.
* * *
A Tale of Two Strategic Attacks: Race to End the War in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is now a race between two competing, attritional theories of victory. Ukraine is focused on maximizing drone production alongside novel use of AI and low-cost, high payoff deep strikes integrated with cyber ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Director Benjamin Jensen and Deputy Director and data fellow Yasir Atalan, both of the Futures Lab. Jensen is also a senior fellow at the CSIS Defense and Security Department. * * * A Tale of Two Strategic Attacks: Race to End the War in Ukraine The war in Ukraine is now a race between two competing, attritional theories of victory. Ukraine is focused on maximizing drone production alongside novel use of AI and low-cost, high payoff deep strikes integrated with cyberand electronic warfare designed to hold Russia's oil and gas, and by proxy its economy, at risk. Russia is trying to increase its punishment campaign, targeting critical infrastructure and major political and economic centers like Kyiv to force a negotiation that favors the Kremlin's interests. While the battlefield still matters, these dueling deep strike campaigns are the lines of effort most likely to force a settlement over the next six months.
Ukraine's Energy Blitz
Ukraine is executing strategic attacks against Russian energy infrastructure designed to impose economic costs and fracture elite support for the Kremlin. The campaign targets the financial engine of the state by striking refineries, export terminals, and storage facilities well beyond the front line. This operational design bypasses the stalemate on the ground to threaten the revenue streams funding the war effort. As oil profits decline and domestic fuel shortages rise, the strikes compel Russian power brokers to absorb the physical consequences of the conflict. By holding these critical economic nodes at risk, Kyiv seeks to alter the decision calculus of regime insiders and create political friction within the capital.
Ukraine's launches of air and drone strikes in Russia have increased significantly over the war, according to data from ACLED. In 2023, there were around 580 strikes or strike events; this number increased to 7,244 in 2024. Of these events, 901 aimed at energy infrastructure, such as fuel storage, oil depots, refineries, and pipelines. The data ends in June 2025, but in the first half of 2025 alone, there were 6,176 air and drone strikes, suggesting that the total number of attacks in 2025 may have nearly doubled the 2024 total. Russia suffers from these attacks due to its dependence on oil and gas: Just before the full-scale invasion, taxes and export tariffs related to oil and gas comprised 45 percent of Russia's federal budget revenues.
Ukraine has also extended its campaign from fixed infrastructure to maritime energy logistics. Aerial and Sea Baby drones have been actively used against tankers in Russia's shadow fleet. Ukraine drone strikes also recently attacked 90 Russian vessels, which led to the suspension of shipping in the Sea of Azov.
Russia's Punishment Campaign
Russia's firepower strike strategy operates as a deliberate punishment campaign designed to substitute for stagnant ground offensives by breaking the political resolve of both Kyiv and its international backers. By launching large salvos of ballistic missiles and drones against critical infrastructure, Russia seeks to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses and inflict paralyzing psychological strain on the civilian populace. This pressure creates a cruel mathematical reality where sheer munitions volume overcomes interception capabilities to directly shape the strategic environment. The Kremlin calibrates these bombardments to attempt to force Ukrainian leadership into premature concessions and secure a negotiated settlement that cements Russian interests regardless of localized battlefield realities.
While Ukraine has proved agile in fielding new classes of long-range strike drones and cruise missiles, the key variable to watch in these dueling strike campaigns is ballistic missiles. As documented in the CSIS Russian Firepower Strike Tracker, Ukraine has successfully intercepted drones and cruise missiles since the start of the war: Ukraine often intercepts long-range one-way attack drones like the Shahed over 85 percent of the time. However, ballistic missiles are another story. Between 2023 and 2025, Russia increased the number of ballistic missiles it fired at Ukraine, and by extension its production capacity, by over 700 percent. However, the share of ballistic missiles Ukraine was able to intercept and neutralize dropped by 36 percent. Worse still, the current interception rate in 2026 is only 10.2 percent, a drop of over 200 percent from the beginning of the war. This coercion drives increasing pressure on the Ukrainian president and his supporters to find an off-ramp to the war despite recent battlefield gains.
* * *
Figure 1: Success of Russian Ballistic Missile Launches
* * *
The trend of decreasing success of intercepting ballistic missiles appears to be getting worse in 2026. To date, since January 1, 2026, Russia has fired 167 ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Yet, the past trend shows that Russia generally ramps up its ballistic launches toward the end of the year. If this trend holds, Moscow is on track to fire up to 840 ballistic missiles in 2026 (Figure 2).
* * *
Figure 2: Ballistic Missile Launches by Year
* * *
For Ukraine to successfully defend against Russian attacks, it must increase the rate at which air defenses intercept ballistic missiles. If only 10.2 percent of 840 ballistic missiles are intercepted, that leaves 754 devastating strikes that could alter the balance of resolve. Kyiv needs to limit the number of ballistic missile strikes that reach their target and buy time for its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure to change the decision calculus in Moscow.
How Ukraine's International Backers Can Help
Ukraine's international partners can address the increased use of Russian ballistic missile strikes to support the Ukrainian deep strike campaign along three lines of effort: revisiting sanctions evasion, increasing intelligence support, and accelerating coproduction.
* Revisit Sanctions Evasion: Since the start of the war, Russia has found ways to bypass sanctions and acquire important electronic components that support its long-range strike campaign. Recent reporting documents how Russia uses a special military intelligence unit, the 20th Directorate, to buy foreign electronics and evade sanctions.
To choke off the supply of foreign electronics feeding the Russian war machine, the United States and its allies must aggressively target the global networks orchestrating parallel trade. Russian military intelligence units like the 20th Directorate continually exploit gaps in customs enforcement, lax jurisdictions and shell companies to procure critical dual-use components. Washington should combat this illicit pipeline by rapidly declassifying and passing actionable intelligence on these front operations directly to partner enforcement agencies. Armed with this precise targeting data, the Treasury Department can then expand secondary sanctions against the specific third-country intermediaries and foreign financial institutions facilitating these covert supply chains. Synchronizing active intelligence sharing with expanded economic coercion will fracture the procurement hubs enabling Moscow and steadily degrade the sustainment capacity of the Russian defense industrial base.
* Increase Intelligence Support: International partners can blunt the lethal math of the Russian salvo campaign by expanding intelligence sharing to support Ukrainian deep strikes. Western agencies should provide actionable targeting packages that support attacking the ballistic missile threat at its source. High-priority target sets include mobile Iskander launchers, manufacturing plants deep inside Russian territory, and critical supply chain vulnerabilities like rocket motor production facilities. Disrupting these nodes before missiles enter the logistical pipeline reduces the immediate burden on Ukraine's strained air defense network. Shifting a portion of Kyiv's long-range strike capacity toward active ballistic missile launch platforms and component bottlenecks creates operational friction, forces Moscow to pull assets further back, and slows the overall generation of Russian firepower.
* Accelerate Coproduction: In 2024, Germany, Spain, Romania, and the Netherlands signed an almost $6 billion contract to manufacture Patriot interceptors (PAC-2) at a new facility run by defense company MBDA in southern Germany. During the July NATO summit, Under Secretary of Defense Michael Duffey signaled a willingness to explore additional coproduction in Europe outside of Germany. These efforts are in addition to calls to license Patriot production in Ukraine, an effort which, while crucial, could take years to materialize.
Therefore, European states should tap European Investment Bank Group funding for additional production lines, both at the MBDA plant and in other areas. Accelerating PAC-2 production would allow European states to transfer additional Patriot interceptors to Ukraine without incurring significant long-term risk.
* * *
Benjamin Jensen is director of the Futures Lab and senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Yasir Atalan is deputy director and data fellow in the Futures Lab at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/tale-two-strategic-attacks-race-end-war-ukraine
[Category: ThinkTank]
Jensen is also a senior fellow at the CSIS Defense and Security Department.
* * *
A Tale of Two Strategic Attacks: Race to End the War in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine is now a race between two competing, attritional theories of victory. Ukraine is focused on maximizing drone production alongside novel use of AI and low-cost, high payoff deep strikes integrated with cyber ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by Director Benjamin Jensen and Deputy Director and data fellow Yasir Atalan, both of the Futures Lab. Jensen is also a senior fellow at the CSIS Defense and Security Department. * * * A Tale of Two Strategic Attacks: Race to End the War in Ukraine The war in Ukraine is now a race between two competing, attritional theories of victory. Ukraine is focused on maximizing drone production alongside novel use of AI and low-cost, high payoff deep strikes integrated with cyberand electronic warfare designed to hold Russia's oil and gas, and by proxy its economy, at risk. Russia is trying to increase its punishment campaign, targeting critical infrastructure and major political and economic centers like Kyiv to force a negotiation that favors the Kremlin's interests. While the battlefield still matters, these dueling deep strike campaigns are the lines of effort most likely to force a settlement over the next six months.
Ukraine's Energy Blitz
Ukraine is executing strategic attacks against Russian energy infrastructure designed to impose economic costs and fracture elite support for the Kremlin. The campaign targets the financial engine of the state by striking refineries, export terminals, and storage facilities well beyond the front line. This operational design bypasses the stalemate on the ground to threaten the revenue streams funding the war effort. As oil profits decline and domestic fuel shortages rise, the strikes compel Russian power brokers to absorb the physical consequences of the conflict. By holding these critical economic nodes at risk, Kyiv seeks to alter the decision calculus of regime insiders and create political friction within the capital.
Ukraine's launches of air and drone strikes in Russia have increased significantly over the war, according to data from ACLED. In 2023, there were around 580 strikes or strike events; this number increased to 7,244 in 2024. Of these events, 901 aimed at energy infrastructure, such as fuel storage, oil depots, refineries, and pipelines. The data ends in June 2025, but in the first half of 2025 alone, there were 6,176 air and drone strikes, suggesting that the total number of attacks in 2025 may have nearly doubled the 2024 total. Russia suffers from these attacks due to its dependence on oil and gas: Just before the full-scale invasion, taxes and export tariffs related to oil and gas comprised 45 percent of Russia's federal budget revenues.
Ukraine has also extended its campaign from fixed infrastructure to maritime energy logistics. Aerial and Sea Baby drones have been actively used against tankers in Russia's shadow fleet. Ukraine drone strikes also recently attacked 90 Russian vessels, which led to the suspension of shipping in the Sea of Azov.
Russia's Punishment Campaign
Russia's firepower strike strategy operates as a deliberate punishment campaign designed to substitute for stagnant ground offensives by breaking the political resolve of both Kyiv and its international backers. By launching large salvos of ballistic missiles and drones against critical infrastructure, Russia seeks to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses and inflict paralyzing psychological strain on the civilian populace. This pressure creates a cruel mathematical reality where sheer munitions volume overcomes interception capabilities to directly shape the strategic environment. The Kremlin calibrates these bombardments to attempt to force Ukrainian leadership into premature concessions and secure a negotiated settlement that cements Russian interests regardless of localized battlefield realities.
While Ukraine has proved agile in fielding new classes of long-range strike drones and cruise missiles, the key variable to watch in these dueling strike campaigns is ballistic missiles. As documented in the CSIS Russian Firepower Strike Tracker, Ukraine has successfully intercepted drones and cruise missiles since the start of the war: Ukraine often intercepts long-range one-way attack drones like the Shahed over 85 percent of the time. However, ballistic missiles are another story. Between 2023 and 2025, Russia increased the number of ballistic missiles it fired at Ukraine, and by extension its production capacity, by over 700 percent. However, the share of ballistic missiles Ukraine was able to intercept and neutralize dropped by 36 percent. Worse still, the current interception rate in 2026 is only 10.2 percent, a drop of over 200 percent from the beginning of the war. This coercion drives increasing pressure on the Ukrainian president and his supporters to find an off-ramp to the war despite recent battlefield gains.
* * *
Figure 1: Success of Russian Ballistic Missile Launches
* * *
The trend of decreasing success of intercepting ballistic missiles appears to be getting worse in 2026. To date, since January 1, 2026, Russia has fired 167 ballistic missiles at Ukraine. Yet, the past trend shows that Russia generally ramps up its ballistic launches toward the end of the year. If this trend holds, Moscow is on track to fire up to 840 ballistic missiles in 2026 (Figure 2).
* * *
Figure 2: Ballistic Missile Launches by Year
* * *
For Ukraine to successfully defend against Russian attacks, it must increase the rate at which air defenses intercept ballistic missiles. If only 10.2 percent of 840 ballistic missiles are intercepted, that leaves 754 devastating strikes that could alter the balance of resolve. Kyiv needs to limit the number of ballistic missile strikes that reach their target and buy time for its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure to change the decision calculus in Moscow.
How Ukraine's International Backers Can Help
Ukraine's international partners can address the increased use of Russian ballistic missile strikes to support the Ukrainian deep strike campaign along three lines of effort: revisiting sanctions evasion, increasing intelligence support, and accelerating coproduction.
* Revisit Sanctions Evasion: Since the start of the war, Russia has found ways to bypass sanctions and acquire important electronic components that support its long-range strike campaign. Recent reporting documents how Russia uses a special military intelligence unit, the 20th Directorate, to buy foreign electronics and evade sanctions.
To choke off the supply of foreign electronics feeding the Russian war machine, the United States and its allies must aggressively target the global networks orchestrating parallel trade. Russian military intelligence units like the 20th Directorate continually exploit gaps in customs enforcement, lax jurisdictions and shell companies to procure critical dual-use components. Washington should combat this illicit pipeline by rapidly declassifying and passing actionable intelligence on these front operations directly to partner enforcement agencies. Armed with this precise targeting data, the Treasury Department can then expand secondary sanctions against the specific third-country intermediaries and foreign financial institutions facilitating these covert supply chains. Synchronizing active intelligence sharing with expanded economic coercion will fracture the procurement hubs enabling Moscow and steadily degrade the sustainment capacity of the Russian defense industrial base.
* Increase Intelligence Support: International partners can blunt the lethal math of the Russian salvo campaign by expanding intelligence sharing to support Ukrainian deep strikes. Western agencies should provide actionable targeting packages that support attacking the ballistic missile threat at its source. High-priority target sets include mobile Iskander launchers, manufacturing plants deep inside Russian territory, and critical supply chain vulnerabilities like rocket motor production facilities. Disrupting these nodes before missiles enter the logistical pipeline reduces the immediate burden on Ukraine's strained air defense network. Shifting a portion of Kyiv's long-range strike capacity toward active ballistic missile launch platforms and component bottlenecks creates operational friction, forces Moscow to pull assets further back, and slows the overall generation of Russian firepower.
* Accelerate Coproduction: In 2024, Germany, Spain, Romania, and the Netherlands signed an almost $6 billion contract to manufacture Patriot interceptors (PAC-2) at a new facility run by defense company MBDA in southern Germany. During the July NATO summit, Under Secretary of Defense Michael Duffey signaled a willingness to explore additional coproduction in Europe outside of Germany. These efforts are in addition to calls to license Patriot production in Ukraine, an effort which, while crucial, could take years to materialize.
Therefore, European states should tap European Investment Bank Group funding for additional production lines, both at the MBDA plant and in other areas. Accelerating PAC-2 production would allow European states to transfer additional Patriot interceptors to Ukraine without incurring significant long-term risk.
* * *
Benjamin Jensen is director of the Futures Lab and senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Yasir Atalan is deputy director and data fellow in the Futures Lab at CSIS.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/tale-two-strategic-attacks-race-end-war-ukraine
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Rewriting the Rules of Modern Trade
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by William Alan Reinsch:
* * *
The Trade Transparency Challenge
Credit for this week's column idea goes to loyal reader Chad Henry, who told me about the innovations in trade recordkeeping that I will be mentioning. Back in antediluvian days, trade recordkeeping was not complicated. Items arrived by ship at ports of entry or at land border entry points by truck or rail, where the goods and their accompanying documentation would be examined by government authorities and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by William Alan Reinsch: * * * The Trade Transparency Challenge Credit for this week's column idea goes to loyal reader Chad Henry, who told me about the innovations in trade recordkeeping that I will be mentioning. Back in antediluvian days, trade recordkeeping was not complicated. Items arrived by ship at ports of entry or at land border entry points by truck or rail, where the goods and their accompanying documentation would be examined by government authorities andany duties assessed. Today, everything is more complicated.
First, of course, the volume of trade has increased markedly, facilitated by the invention of containerization more than 50 years ago. There is simply more stuff moving now than ever before. Conveniently, the digitization of the economy has helped customs brokers and government authorities keep up with the increase in volume, and AI may help more. Most "paperwork" these days is electronic, and much of it is filed in advance before a ship reaches port. Physical inspection of goods has gone the way of the dodo, occurring only around 3 percent of the time in the United States. If nothing else had changed, the increased workload would have been manageable, but three other elements have made the picture more complicated.
The first is the growing complexity of supply chains. Trade used to be simple: You made it here and shipped it there and called it an export. In the contemporary supply chain world, everything is made everywhere--parts and components come from all over the world to be combined into an end product in yet another location. That makes determining a product's origin more complicated, while the multiplication of regional trade agreements makes it more important, since tariffs vary depending on a product's origin. In addition, the Trump administration's emphasis on reshoring manufacturing and increasing the amount of U.S. content in its end products is leading it to demand changes in rules of origin, particularly in the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, adding to the complications of the system. These developments force companies to spend more time and resources tracing the origin of their products' components.
The second element comes from national security hawks in both political parties: the emphasis on resilience and the elimination of U.S. dependence on unreliable foreign sources, particularly China. Accomplishing that requires knowing where parts come from, a burden that falls first on manufacturers to scrutinize their supply chains and then on customs authorities to determine and certify origin. There is now discussion about how to reform rules of origin to make sure Chinese parts do not end up in essential U.S. products. One idea is to determine origin not by content, which is the current approach, but by ownership of the producing company. In that method, a product made by a Chinese-owned company would be considered Chinese, whether it was made in China, the United States, or a third country. This concept would also address the growing problem of circumvention--items entering the country with false country of origin designations in order to avoid dumping or subsidy duties.
The third element comes from the political left: environmental, social, and governance principles (ESG). These include a variety of standards assessing a company's environmental stewardship, such as the amount of carbon emissions in its production processes; its relationship with workers and communities on issues such as labor practices, diversity, and human rights; and how the company manages itself in terms of ethical conduct, executive pay, diversity, and transparency. While companies are responsible for keeping track of most of these requirements, some of them, such as determining that products are made in an energy-efficient and low-carbon-emitting way or that forced labor was not used in their production, also end up with customs authorities having to make decisions on whether the requisite standard has been met.
These elements push the customs process toward greater transparency by piling on additional recordkeeping requirements where products are increasingly broken down into component parts, with each one scrutinized to make sure it is consistent with government policy, whether it relates to country of origin, composition, or method of production. One current example of this is the European Union's Digital Product Passport (DPP), which was developed to implement the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. The DPP is a cloud-based digital record that tracks product identity, which, depending on the product, includes manufacturer details and any required conformity certificates, the raw materials used, and information on the product's carbon footprint, recyclability, and environmental impact.
A DPP will not appear in the United States during the Trump administration; it embodies the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideas that Trump has vigorously attacked. But the government's desire to know more about the origin and composition of imports for security reasons is leading to additional transparency requirements. This will mean a greater due diligence burden on manufacturers and importers, who will be challenged to detail and certify the provenance of their products. It will also mean increased work and potential liability for the customs brokers and freight forwarders who handle so much of this reporting. What does that mean for the rest of us? For the lawyers, as always, more business as country of origin decisions are inevitably contested--and for consumers, of course, higher prices.
* * *
Author's note: I retired from CSIS on March 29, 2026. I plan to continue writing this column and participating in The Trade Guys podcast, so please continue to read and listen. However, my CSIS email address will no longer be working, so if readers or podcast listeners want to contact me directly, they should do so at wreinsch7@gmail.com.
* * *
William A. Reinsch is a senior adviser (non-resident) and Scholl Chair emeritus with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/trade-transparency-challenge
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
The Trade Transparency Challenge
Credit for this week's column idea goes to loyal reader Chad Henry, who told me about the innovations in trade recordkeeping that I will be mentioning. Back in antediluvian days, trade recordkeeping was not complicated. Items arrived by ship at ports of entry or at land border entry points by truck or rail, where the goods and their accompanying documentation would be examined by government authorities and ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary on July 15, 2026, by William Alan Reinsch: * * * The Trade Transparency Challenge Credit for this week's column idea goes to loyal reader Chad Henry, who told me about the innovations in trade recordkeeping that I will be mentioning. Back in antediluvian days, trade recordkeeping was not complicated. Items arrived by ship at ports of entry or at land border entry points by truck or rail, where the goods and their accompanying documentation would be examined by government authorities andany duties assessed. Today, everything is more complicated.
First, of course, the volume of trade has increased markedly, facilitated by the invention of containerization more than 50 years ago. There is simply more stuff moving now than ever before. Conveniently, the digitization of the economy has helped customs brokers and government authorities keep up with the increase in volume, and AI may help more. Most "paperwork" these days is electronic, and much of it is filed in advance before a ship reaches port. Physical inspection of goods has gone the way of the dodo, occurring only around 3 percent of the time in the United States. If nothing else had changed, the increased workload would have been manageable, but three other elements have made the picture more complicated.
The first is the growing complexity of supply chains. Trade used to be simple: You made it here and shipped it there and called it an export. In the contemporary supply chain world, everything is made everywhere--parts and components come from all over the world to be combined into an end product in yet another location. That makes determining a product's origin more complicated, while the multiplication of regional trade agreements makes it more important, since tariffs vary depending on a product's origin. In addition, the Trump administration's emphasis on reshoring manufacturing and increasing the amount of U.S. content in its end products is leading it to demand changes in rules of origin, particularly in the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement, adding to the complications of the system. These developments force companies to spend more time and resources tracing the origin of their products' components.
The second element comes from national security hawks in both political parties: the emphasis on resilience and the elimination of U.S. dependence on unreliable foreign sources, particularly China. Accomplishing that requires knowing where parts come from, a burden that falls first on manufacturers to scrutinize their supply chains and then on customs authorities to determine and certify origin. There is now discussion about how to reform rules of origin to make sure Chinese parts do not end up in essential U.S. products. One idea is to determine origin not by content, which is the current approach, but by ownership of the producing company. In that method, a product made by a Chinese-owned company would be considered Chinese, whether it was made in China, the United States, or a third country. This concept would also address the growing problem of circumvention--items entering the country with false country of origin designations in order to avoid dumping or subsidy duties.
The third element comes from the political left: environmental, social, and governance principles (ESG). These include a variety of standards assessing a company's environmental stewardship, such as the amount of carbon emissions in its production processes; its relationship with workers and communities on issues such as labor practices, diversity, and human rights; and how the company manages itself in terms of ethical conduct, executive pay, diversity, and transparency. While companies are responsible for keeping track of most of these requirements, some of them, such as determining that products are made in an energy-efficient and low-carbon-emitting way or that forced labor was not used in their production, also end up with customs authorities having to make decisions on whether the requisite standard has been met.
These elements push the customs process toward greater transparency by piling on additional recordkeeping requirements where products are increasingly broken down into component parts, with each one scrutinized to make sure it is consistent with government policy, whether it relates to country of origin, composition, or method of production. One current example of this is the European Union's Digital Product Passport (DPP), which was developed to implement the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. The DPP is a cloud-based digital record that tracks product identity, which, depending on the product, includes manufacturer details and any required conformity certificates, the raw materials used, and information on the product's carbon footprint, recyclability, and environmental impact.
A DPP will not appear in the United States during the Trump administration; it embodies the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideas that Trump has vigorously attacked. But the government's desire to know more about the origin and composition of imports for security reasons is leading to additional transparency requirements. This will mean a greater due diligence burden on manufacturers and importers, who will be challenged to detail and certify the provenance of their products. It will also mean increased work and potential liability for the customs brokers and freight forwarders who handle so much of this reporting. What does that mean for the rest of us? For the lawyers, as always, more business as country of origin decisions are inevitably contested--and for consumers, of course, higher prices.
* * *
Author's note: I retired from CSIS on March 29, 2026. I plan to continue writing this column and participating in The Trade Guys podcast, so please continue to read and listen. However, my CSIS email address will no longer be working, so if readers or podcast listeners want to contact me directly, they should do so at wreinsch7@gmail.com.
* * *
William A. Reinsch is a senior adviser (non-resident) and Scholl Chair emeritus with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/trade-transparency-challenge
[Category: ThinkTank]
AFPI Commends New National K-12 Initiative to Protect Students From Adult Sexual Predators in Schools
WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following statement on July 15, 2026:
* * *
AFPI Commends New National K-12 Initiative to Protect Students from Adult Sexual Predators in Schools
The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released the following statements from its experts in response to the U.S. Department of Education's announcement that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will ensure that K-12 schools that are federally funded will protect their students from sexual exploitation.
Erika Donalds, chair of Education Opportunity at AFPI, welcomed this announcement ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following statement on July 15, 2026: * * * AFPI Commends New National K-12 Initiative to Protect Students from Adult Sexual Predators in Schools The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released the following statements from its experts in response to the U.S. Department of Education's announcement that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will ensure that K-12 schools that are federally funded will protect their students from sexual exploitation. Erika Donalds, chair of Education Opportunity at AFPI, welcomed this announcementand highlighted the importance of protecting students:
"I thank Secretary McMahon and the Department of Education for addressing this issue head on and ensuring students can attend school and focus on what's important: getting an education. Schools across the country have failed to keep students safe from sexual predators, and this new initiative demonstrates the Administration's commitment to holding these schools, and their administrators, accountable. Families should be focused on their child's academic outcomes, not potential victimization by sexual predators lurking on school grounds."
Kayleigh Kozak, AFPI senior manager of the America Combats Child Exploitation Initiative, shared her personal experience as a victim of sexual exploitation by her teacher in middle school:
"For two years, I was repeatedly sexually assaulted on school grounds by my PE teacher. I know firsthand the devastating impact of the failures of school administrators to protect the children who are in their care for over 1,000 hours each year. Many school districts have failed to protect their students and chose to instead protect staff that they should be holding accountable. Nearly 5 million K-12 students have been sexually abused by a teacher--this is a national crisis. I applaud Secretary McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education for tackling this issue head on. Our students deserve to feel and be safe, especially at school."
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-commends-new-national-k-12-initiative-to-protect-students-from-adult-sexual-predators-in-schools
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
AFPI Commends New National K-12 Initiative to Protect Students from Adult Sexual Predators in Schools
The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released the following statements from its experts in response to the U.S. Department of Education's announcement that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will ensure that K-12 schools that are federally funded will protect their students from sexual exploitation.
Erika Donalds, chair of Education Opportunity at AFPI, welcomed this announcement ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, July 16 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following statement on July 15, 2026: * * * AFPI Commends New National K-12 Initiative to Protect Students from Adult Sexual Predators in Schools The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has released the following statements from its experts in response to the U.S. Department of Education's announcement that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will ensure that K-12 schools that are federally funded will protect their students from sexual exploitation. Erika Donalds, chair of Education Opportunity at AFPI, welcomed this announcementand highlighted the importance of protecting students:
"I thank Secretary McMahon and the Department of Education for addressing this issue head on and ensuring students can attend school and focus on what's important: getting an education. Schools across the country have failed to keep students safe from sexual predators, and this new initiative demonstrates the Administration's commitment to holding these schools, and their administrators, accountable. Families should be focused on their child's academic outcomes, not potential victimization by sexual predators lurking on school grounds."
Kayleigh Kozak, AFPI senior manager of the America Combats Child Exploitation Initiative, shared her personal experience as a victim of sexual exploitation by her teacher in middle school:
"For two years, I was repeatedly sexually assaulted on school grounds by my PE teacher. I know firsthand the devastating impact of the failures of school administrators to protect the children who are in their care for over 1,000 hours each year. Many school districts have failed to protect their students and chose to instead protect staff that they should be holding accountable. Nearly 5 million K-12 students have been sexually abused by a teacher--this is a national crisis. I applaud Secretary McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education for tackling this issue head on. Our students deserve to feel and be safe, especially at school."
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-commends-new-national-k-12-initiative-to-protect-students-from-adult-sexual-predators-in-schools
[Category: ThinkTank]