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by ian bremmer
You might be wondering … what’s it like to be the graduation speaker on an American college campus these days? On Monday evening, I got the chance to find out.
Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a school where I teach a class on applied geopolitics, invited me to deliver this year’s commencement speech. It was a privilege – and a challenge – that I took very seriously.
I’ve reprinted my speech below, but first, let me describe the experience.
Yes, there were protesters – of course there were. A number of students in the audience wore the keffiyeh, the scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians, particularly those trapped by the war in Gaza. Many brought Palestinian flags on stage with them as they collected their diplomas. More still passed out “diplomas” calling on Columbia University to divest from Israel in protest against the continuing conflict.
But not a single student walked out. Not one turned their back. When I began speaking about the war, there were rumblings in the audience for me to go into more depth. I stopped the speech briefly to assure them I intended to do just that. And then I did.
At no time did anyone try to disrupt the event or to shout me down – or anyone else.
The protesters were visible, creative, constructive, and respectful of the importance of the event for the graduates. They made themselves seen and heard, but they allowed everyone else to be seen and heard too.
In short, it was a beautiful thing, and I was proud to see it, particularly for the reasons I laid out in my speech.
Here it is … in its entirety.
*****
Dean Yarhi-Milo, distinguished faculty, honored guests, SIPA class of 2024.
Congratulations! To the graduates, with thanks to your families that supported you in your studies to get here today. With appreciation for the faculty and staff that make SIPA such a unique and valuable experience.
You made it!
How, exactly, you should feel about that and what, exactly, you’ve made it to, may feel unsettling to you today.
You’ve come to SIPA from all over the world, and you’ve finished an intense and rigorous program in public affairs. You’ve explored how institutions can improve human societies, and how and why they fail. You’ve studied these things so that you can help guide the future in ways that will ultimately serve the public good. I’ve no doubt that doing good and solving problems are your goals.
And yet …
You’re leaving behind a campus that has been ripped apart by an intractable problem of societies in conflict. Here on this campus, in this tiny insignificant microcosm of that deadly, decades-long crisis in the Middle East, has progress been made? Demands have been issued by the powerless, and mostly ignored by the powerful. There have been chants and yelling, and not much listening. And now, the players in this drama, and all of you, depart for new jobs, internships, fellowships, and summer travel, boundless opportunities afforded by elite institutions and the constituencies they serve.
While the war rages on. The hostages remain. And death stalks the population of Gaza.
You might ask yourselves why this particular conflict in the Middle East has so captured our attention. It is not, of course, the only conflict out there.
The war in Ukraine still deserves more of our attention. No, not because they’re white people in Europe. Hundreds of thousands have died, and more will follow. And this war’s impact on global food and fuel supplies threatens to push tens of millions of the world’s poorest back into poverty and starvation. Of all the conflicts in the world through your time here at SIPA, the war in Ukraine has hurt the most people.
In Sudan, with far fewer journalists to tell the stories, we will never know how many have already been killed or how many face starvation.
A few hundred miles from the tip of Florida, violent gangs are consuming Haiti. The government of the United States has done nothing about it, except to send back the desperate refugees who make it to our shores.
In Armenia, where some of my family are from, 100,000 people were ethnically cleansed just a few months ago in Nagorno-Karabakh. An old friend of mine, who left a comfortable life to serve his people there, has been falsely imprisoned on charges of terrorism.
Why has Israel / Palestine taken such command of our attention? Is it because we believe this killing results from the sins of Western civilization? Is it that America bears greater responsibility for this conflict? Or has greater opportunity to influence the outcome?
Let me pose a different hypothesis. Perhaps it is because this conflict is easier to reduce to absolutes. One side is right. The other is always wrong. One is always a victim, the other a hotbed of terrorism, or a vindictive colonial oppressor. We identify with one side over the other. We share the greatest cultural or religious affinity with this side or the other one.
Wherever you come from, I’ve no doubt that you — SIPA graduates — know this conflict is deeply complex, with historical roots well beyond the fighting this year. And yet the nature of this conflict makes it useful to powerful interests in this country. Useful to generate clicks, to capture attention, to sell ad space, to secure political advantage in this instant — and in this election — without any attention to the long, slow slog of work and compromise that is the only path to peace.
There are so many political and commercial forces today that frustrate progress. They ignore history and reject evidence. They amplify bias. They push made-for-the-moment ideas that are more slogan than solution. “Build the wall.” “Defund the police.” “From the river to the sea.”
These slogans divide us from them.
We don’t need to find shadowy forces that come from some deep global conspiracy. These threats are the result of the political and economic systems we’ve built. In recent decades, we thought liberal democracy would be the bulwark against dictatorships and autocracy. But liberalism has been supplanted by corporatism, which lacks a moral compass and makes a mockery of the public good.
Our public institutions are in decline just when we need them the most.
When I say the word “institution,” what image do you see? An edifice of stone, solid and unyielding, built for the ages? Hamilton Hall?
As SIPA grads you know that institutions are more like gardens. Dynamic systems of diverse and competing interests, constantly growing and reacting to their environment. Capable of great beauty, but at constant risk of infestation and disease.
Your leaders and elites have failed to tend as they should to the institutions they inherited. We have taken for granted the benefits of globalization with no plan to pay the check. We have reached for short-term gains — in wealth, in power — and avoided the hard effort of tending the gardens that sustain us.
And so, graduates, you should face the future with concern about our ability to manage the forces that drive us apart. Are our institutions fit for today’s purpose? Information warfare is fought on all sides, and we are the civilian casualties. Algorithms — controlled by people and business models that don’t care about civil society — shape our perceptions of what is true.
Israel and its supporters don’t see and hear the same news that Palestinians and their supporters see. Russians don’t get the same information about their war as Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans do. In today’s America, the political information consumed by Biden and Trump voters comes from different planets.
I wish I was overstating that problem. But here at SIPA, you know that I’m not.
Our technological futures are being shaped by corporate leaders who don’t answer to elections, who will oversimplify the challenges we face and promote fixes only the technologists can provide. Techno-utopianism is a dangerous fantasy. Look at what it offers us: painless solutions to complex problems. Endless profits for its high priests. Civil society becomes an externality. The public good, a helpless bystander.
Disinformation, conspiracies, and performative outrage are the most dangerous rot in the gardens of our institutions. They will be impossible to eradicate if we huddle comfortably within our own bubbles, rejecting all the ideas and information that challenge us to question our assumptions, refusing to hear the other side.
How do we prevent these outcomes, and the violence that will inevitably ensue?
I have built my professional career on thoughtful analysis, but on these questions, I have no easy answers. We live in a world of complexity, where real evidence, critical thinking, and the dogged, persistent pursuit of practical solutions are so essential.
I am certain of a few things. First, it does not have to be this way. Humans created these problems, and humans can solve them.
Second, your generation — particularly you who have been so fortunate to study at this place and in this moment — YOU MUST find different paths from those who came before you.
I know that you have goals as varied as your backgrounds. Some of you are ready to change the world, you will pursue the heights of public service and government or found innovative startups to make a difference. Some of you have debts to pay, families to support, responsibilities too great to think about taking big risks. Some of you, like me over 30 years ago, have absolutely no idea what you really want to do. I’ll be honest, when I came to New York from Stanford so long ago, I just wanted a good job. But no one would hire me. They thought they didn’t need political scientists. I’ve spent the past three decades trying to show them they were wrong, and I’m looking forward to you doing the same.
Regardless of the path you choose, now or in the future, ALL of you have something to offer. All of you can make a difference. You know how to analyze problems, and you understand much of what makes societies stable, what brings countries into conflict. You can see where the choices that governments and institutions make can either help or hurt your fellow humans. You can help others to see clearly. You can choose to do the right thing.
In my own history, even when crammed into a borrowed cubicle, eating ramen under a leaky roof off West End Avenue, there were easy paths to financial success I would not follow. And later, when my company Eurasia Group finally became something more than Eurasia Guy, there were clients we would not take, governments we would not serve. That remains true today.
You may feel that your role today is small, that nothing you do will matter so much. Resist such feelings. Hard work is never a hopeless cause. Each step in the right direction matters.
You will make endless decisions over your careers in public affairs. Countless opportunities for small steps forward when you remain focused on doing right, with an eye toward the long term, toward repairing public confidence in our civic institutions.
This is what you have been trained for, and this is what our institutions need.
As you set off on the next phase of your lives, I hope that you will keep a few principles in mind, some themes to help us create a truly civil society:
1. Change your mind
The world never stops changing.
If you’re afraid to change your mind …
even about things you consider fundamentally important…
ESPECIALLY those things,
the more wrong you will become as the world around you changes. Having a fixed world view is the one thing that guarantees you’ll be wrong as the world changes.
2. Listen to the other side
Are you a tolerant person?
I’m really asking you.
If you’re a tolerant person, you can listen to people you disagree with, even strongly disagree with, and learn something you didn’t know.
Learn something that can help you do what you think you should do.
Make a list of people you respect…
…but with whom you disagree on questions you feel are truly important.
Listen to those people. Read what they write. Follow them on social media.
They may not shift your core convictions. It doesn’t matter.
Listening to them and considering FAIRLY, HONESTLY what they say will broaden and deepen your perspective.
3. Remember that your work is about helping people
If your work is on the problems of international and public affairs, your work is about people and their lives.
Don’t forget that.
It’s not mainly about ideas and principles.
It’s about creating opportunities for people alive today and others not yet born.
Opportunities to live securely. To learn. To realize potential. And to share.
When life gets in the way, as it surely will, remember what brought you here, to this place, to this field of study. Remember how fortunate you are, and never forget those whose most basic needs are constantly under pressure. Resist the gentle tug of fatalism. Resist the long slide into complacency.
And please remember, cynicism is toxic. It’s pure poison. Do not swallow it.
And last but not least (at least not for those of you that know me)
4. Take your work, but not yourself seriously
I was going to make this speech funny.
Because I’m generally a funny person.
But I take this moment seriously.
If you’re a generous person, your WORK will outlive you.
When we go, we can’t take anything with us.
Give what you have.
I believe this is a secret of happiness.
The happiness of those who will benefit because you shared what you had to give.
I believe that can make you happy too.
Class of 2024, today’s wars will grind on a while longer, and America’s election season will only get uglier.
We’re not going to kid ourselves.
None of us will change the world this week.
But each of us has a chance to use whatever talent and wisdom we have to learn what this world has to teach us … and to work with other people, especially those we disagree with, to build a more cooperative future.
I wish you, graduates, the very best.
And I thank you.
*****
So, there it is, GZERO readers.
My most sincere gratitude to Columbia University, to SIPA, and most especially to its graduates!
What happens when a country with triple-digit inflation and chronic fiscal deficits elects a chainsaw-wielding populist with a dead dog for chief counsel as president?
Back in November, following the unexpected triumph of the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei in Argentina’s presidential election, I expected the economy would further collapse in short order.
Thankfully for the people of Argentina, that didn’t happen. In fact, since taking office in December, President Milei’s economic team has seemingly achieved what I (along with most political analysts and economists) thought impossible: Monthly inflation has come down every month for the past three months, from 25% in December to nearly 10% in March, with forecasters expecting the April figure to come in at single digits. The government did this by turning the 5.5% budget deficit it inherited into the country’s first surplus in over a decade, while boosting the central bank’s reserves, lowering its benchmark interest rates, and reducing the money supply – all without destabilizing currency and financial markets.
That’s not to say average Argentines are having a good time (more on this below). But this is a big deal nonetheless, and it’s one that I’m very happy to have been wrong about – just as I’ll be happy if I’m wrong about Ukraine eventually getting partitioned (although I’ll take the under on that).
Why didn’t the economy collapse?
One key reason is that President Milei turned out to be significantly more sensible and moderate than candidate Milei, to most everyone’s surprise.
Unlike Argentina’s last several administrations, which were known quantities to anyone who covered the country, Milei and his inner circle were completely untested outsiders with a reputation for intransigence and ideological dogmatism. Absent a better first-hand assessment of him and the people surrounding him, I was more willing to take his campaign promises and stated views at face value than I would have otherwise. And let me tell you, some of those were … pretty out there.
Upon taking office, however, Milei proved himself more willing to listen, engage, and compromise than I expected. Despite his combative rhetoric, the most institutionally weak president in modern Argentine history – with little support in Congress and among governors – went back on his promise never to negotiate with the so-called “political caste.” He quickly backed off the most outlandish/ambitious (depending on who you ask) libertarian economic policies he and his original advisors had run on – at least for now. The most notable of these were dollarization (aka replacing the peso with the greenback as the local currency), abolishing the central bank, and lifting currency controls, which if implemented on day 1 as pledged would have caused the sharp and immediate crisis that I predicted.
Instead, Milei appointed a strongly pragmatic economic team that has been well-received both by markets and the IMF – two essential players in Argentina’s economic stabilization. Led by the experienced ex-banker Luis Caputo, whom former president Mauricio Macrinicknamed “the Messi of finance,” the government embarked on a sweeping shock therapy agenda consisting of a 54% devaluation and draconian fiscal and monetary tightening. Wisely (but contrary to economic orthodoxy and Milei’s campaign rhetoric), they decided to keep currency and capital controls in place to prevent a disorderly run on the peso from wreaking havoc on markets. The gamble has paid off thus far, with investors, businesses, and the IMF all welcoming Milei’s steps with open arms.
Can it last?
While shock therapy has been successful at balancing the budget and slowing inflation, it has come at a great social cost. The fiscal and monetary austerity has caused a deep recession, with economic activity shrinking more than 10% year-on-year in March, unemployment rising, and real salaries hitting their lowest point since 2003. The government is hopeful that all the sacrifice will soon give way to a V-shaped recovery as output expands in the second quarter thanks to agricultural exports. However, most economists are skeptical, and it’s unclear how much more pain Argentines will be willing to take before they turn on the president’s policies.
Caputo’s original deficit reduction plan envisioned a mix of 60% spending cuts and 40% tax increases. That plan, however, was blocked by Congress earlier this year, leaving the government with no choice but to rely on unpopular spending cuts for the bulk of it. While Argentina's public sector is without a doubt excessively bloated and in need of a good trim, many of the real-term cuts (referred to as “blending” in Argentina) to social spending that the Milei administration is banking on to balance the budget are regressive, recessionary, and therefore socially and politically unsustainable.
Mass protests against budget cuts to public universities two weeks ago drew more than 400,000 people, and labor unions called for a nationwide general strike tomorrow. Public discontent can only intensify as the austerity measures cut deeper, further undermining the president’s ability to pass legislation and limiting his room to maneuver. With the president’s approval ratings starting to trend down (albeit from honeymoon-level highs) and opposition to his policies mounting both on the streets and in Congress, this is the greatest risk to Milei’s plan.
Will Milei and Argentines have what it takes to stick with the treatment until the patient is cured? Or will they let this painful fiscal adjustment and recession go to waste even though their best chance for success in decades could be right around the corner?
As a fan of Argentina (and, you know, people in general), I know what I’m hoping for. But as they say, hope is not a strategy.
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Paraphrasing a quote often misattributed to Winston Churchill, the United States Congress finally decided to do the right thing … but not a moment too soon, and only after trying everything else first.
Last Saturday, the House of Representatives overcame months-long opposition from the far-right wing of the Republican Party and okayed a fresh military assistance package for Ukraine. Totaling nearly $61 billion, this is the largest single aid package the besieged nation will have received since the war’s onset. The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday night and was signed into law by President Joe Biden a few hours ago. Some of the newly appropriated American weapons systems and ammunition will begin flowing into Ukraine and reaching the frontline within days.
Congress had last authorized Ukraine funding in December 2022, when Democrats still controlled both chambers. Since then, further aid had been blocked by MAGA Republicans aligned with former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. The legislative breakthrough came over the weekend when House Speaker Mike Johnson, alarmed by the intelligence briefings he’d received on the war’s outlook and the scope of Vladimir Putin’s aims (and spurred by Iran’s attack on Israel), ultimately decided to take up the bill on a bipartisan basis despite the threat of removal from within his own party. Once it was brought to the House floor, the bill sailed through 311 to 112.
The decision couldn’t have come at a more critical time for Ukraine’s defense. Congressional inaction had rendered the outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian military desperately short of the artillery and air defense ammunition it needed to fend off both Russian advances on the frontline as well as drone and missile strikes against its cities and power infrastructure. This allowed Moscow to seize more than 135 square miles of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2024, especially in the eastern Donetsk region, including most notably the strategic city of Avdiivka in February.
Indeed, up until last weekend, Ukraine was in danger of suffering a major setback later this spring or summer, when Russia is expected to conduct a major offensive in Donetsk. A territorial breakthrough there could have put Ukraine on course to lose the war as soon as 2025.
The influx of fresh American aid will have an immediate impact on the battlefield, helping the Ukrainians to close the artillery gap with Russia (10-to-1 earlier this month, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky), increasing the odds that they can hold their ground in Donetsk against Russia’s upcoming offensive, and making a return to 2023’s stalemate more likely through at least the end of the year. In that sense, US funding is a meaningful near-term stabilizer.
That said, closing the ammunition gap alone won’t be enough for Ukraine to stabilize the frontline. To do that, Kyiv also needs to address its military’s other big challenge: a manpower shortage. The hard-fought and politically unpopular but much-needed law lowering the mobilization age from 27 to 25, reducing service exemptions, and extending conscripts’ terms of service signed by Zelensky earlier this month should help – provided that new troops are properly trained and deployed. Ukraine also has to build up fortifications along the frontline and secure enough air defense systems to protect its cities and infrastructure amid strained supplies due to the Middle East war. If they manage to do all these things, the Ukrainians will be on a stronger military footing going into 2025 than they are now.
Alas, none of this will be enough for Ukraine to turn the tide of the war. The aid package will not give Kyiv any offensive capability this year, and it is likely to be the last major one the US approves in 2024 – and possibly ever if Trump wins the US election in November or Republicans take the Senate. Even if Biden wins a second term, there’s little domestic political support for America to continue to provide $60 billion a year every year until Russia runs out of men to throw at the “meat grinder” and accepts defeat.
Rather than a silver bullet or a turning point, the US aid package is a lifeline that will keep the Ukrainians in the fight for another year, buy the Europeans precious time to step up their defense-industrial production game, and strengthen Kyiv’s negotiating position so that when the time comes to accept the unacceptable yet inevitable outcome of a partitioned Ukraine, it is able to extract the best terms it possible can.
You don’t have to like it. I sure don’t. That doesn’t mean it ain’t happening.
On April 13, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles from its own territory in its first-ever direct, attributable attack against Israel, thrusting the long-simmering shadow war between the two regional foes into the light.
This show of force reflects a dramatic shift in strategy from Tehran, which had previously relied exclusively on its proxies to target Israel. The inflection point was Israel’s bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1, which killed the senior-most Iranian military leader in Syria and was compared to an attack “on Iranian soil” – a bright red line for the Islamic Republic. So from Iran’s perspective, it was Israel that crossed the rubicon first. Last weekend’s attack was a proportional response in that view – and a measured one at that.
Does that hold up? What comes next? And what does it all mean?
Iran’s not-so-escalatory escalation
On one hand, last weekend’s attack was dangerous and provocative, posing the first serious external threat to Israel’s security since Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at the Jewish state in 1991 and heightening the deep sense of existential insecurity Israelis have felt since Oct. 7. Had any sensitive military targets been hit or Israelis killed, we would now be looking at direct war between Iran and Israel, likely also involving the United States. Not World War III, but a major regional war.
On the other hand, the fact that we aren’t currently in that scenario means that the attack could have been a heck of a lot worse. That it wasn’t was mostly by design (the other bit was luck): Iran telegraphed its attack well in advance both publicly and through backchannels with several regional powers to minimize the damage and prevent an escalatory response. The heads-up given to the United States via Iraq and Turkey – and the use of low-altitude, slow-moving drones that could be seen coming from literally 1,000 miles away – allowed Israel and its partners ample time to pre-position their military assets and intercept nearly all Iranian projectiles (as well as get Israeli citizens into bomb shelters, out of harm’s way). As a result, of the roughly 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles that Iran launched, 99% were shot down, most before they could reach Israeli airspace. All of them were aimed at military rather than civilian targets.
The advance notice, as well as the choice of targets and weaponry, suggest that Iran deliberately calibrated the strike to limit casualties and keep a lid on potential retaliation. That’s why Iran refrained from using Hezbollah and attacking US forces throughout the region. It’s also why it announced that no further (direct) attacks would be forthcoming and it considered the matter closed as long as the Israelis took it on the chin.
Incidentally, this is exactly the same playbook the US used to respond to the Iranian proxy attacks that killed three American servicemembers in Jordan at the end of January. The Biden administration didn’t want to start a shooting war with Iran (for obvious reasons), so they waited four days to hit back and gave a heads-up to Tehran via Iraq so the Iranians could get their forces out of the area, while cautioning them that next time there would be direct consequences and no such forewarning.
In both cases, if the US and Iran had wanted to seriously escalate, they could have. But the goal wasn’t to escalate – it was to reset the bar on deterrence and relieve domestic pressure in response to a provocation while preventing damage that would bring the conflict into a wide-scale regional war.
None of this means that this was an easy balance for Tehran to strike (no pun intended) in practice. Despite all the calibration and telegraphing that went into the attack, it was still a risky gamble, with lots of room for accidents and miscalculation. Some drones or missiles could have evaded defenses and found their targets. Israeli soldiers or civilians could have died. The US would have treated a successful Iranian strike on Israeli soil as an attack on itself and responded accordingly. The risk of a shooting war with America was not zero, and the Iranians were willing to live with that.
What will Israel do next?
The ball is now in Israel’s court. Israel needs to respond somehow to signal that this type of attack won’t be tolerated in the future, but it is up to war cabinet members Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz to decide exactly when, where, and how to strike back, weighing the benefits of retaliation against the risk of provoking further escalation and alienating Israel’s allies.
Domestic views are currently split between revenge and restraint. The far right is pushing for a strong, immediate, and direct strike on Iranian soil that would likely require US cooperation but that Washington wants nothing to do with, as it would compel Tehran to counterattack and dramatically expand the conflict. Netanyahu wouldn’t mind a war with Iran that draws the US in and extends his time in office, but Gantz and Gallant prefer a more calibrated and strategic response that the US can get behind – one that allows Israel to build a strong anti-Iran alliance and maintain robust US defense support without precipitating a regionwide conflict.
For its part, the Biden administration is working overtime to persuade the Israeli government to opt for a more muted response. Here, the critical role the US played in helping Israel counter the Iranian attack will probably give it enough leverage to succeed where it has previously failed in Gaza.
My bet is that the Israelis will give in to US influence, take the win, and refrain from an escalatory response at this time – meaning no major direct strikes on Iranian territory (for now at least). Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ll sit on their hands. At a minimum, they will hit Iranian proxies and Iranian assets outside Iran. They might even carry out covert and non-kinetic attacks within Iran, such as cyber or sabotage, on an opportunistic basis. These are the kinds of responses that Tehran will be willing to absorb without derailing the current de-escalatory path.
The danger: I could be wrong and the Israelis could overreact as they have consistently since Oct. 7, choosing to directly and overtly strike the Iranian homeland or take out high-value IRGC targets against America’s advice and their own best interests. Such actions would likely cross the Islamic Republic’s red lines and trigger an immediate escalatory response that could quickly spiral into a major war.
What it means
Even assuming cooler heads prevail in Jerusalem and Iran-Israel tensions stay in a de-escalatory phase, last weekend’s attack will have long-lasting implications.
First, Netanyahu’s domestic standing has improved on the back of Israel’s successful defense against an unprecedented Iranian threat in a united front with the US and other allies. This increases the embattled prime minister’s political breathing room and will prolong his time in office. Classic Bibi.
Second, the attack has pushed the war in Gaza off the front pages, as international focus has shifted toward averting regional war and away from the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. As a result, there is less pressure for Israel to compromise with Hamas on a cease-fire deal. At the same time, an Israeli ground operation in Rafah has become more likely, as the Biden administration is now principally focused on getting Israel to limit its escalation against Iran. The biggest losers, as always, will be Palestinian civilians.
Third, the attack is a political liability for US President Joe Biden, who will pay the price for any further escalation of the conflict but now lacks domestic political space to publicly criticize Israel’s actions and can only offer “ironclad” support going forward. Biden’s best hope going into the November election is to dissuade Netanyahu from expanding the conflict, lest he be blamed for presiding over yet another major war. But if he pushes too far in trying to constrain Israel, he’ll be blamed for abandoning a key US ally most voters still support (despite Gaza). Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.
Finally, Israeli and Iranian deterrence has eroded as both sides have crossed each other’s red lines, dropped long-standing strategic restraint policies, and raised the threshold for future responses. Iran has no plans to stop supporting its proxies in the region, and Israel has no plans to stop targeting said proxies (including Hamas in Gaza). So while Israel and Iran may have narrowly avoided major war over the weekend, the likelihood that further tit-for-tat strikes spiral into a broader regional war is increasing. The longer-term trajectory of this conflict is still expansionary. Sorry about that.
The most geopolitically important relationship in the world is fundamentally adversarial and devoid of trust. Its long-term trajectory remains negative, with no prospect of substantial improvement.
And yet, ever since US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Woodside, Calif., last November, US-China relations have looked comparatively stable amid a sea of chaos.
In the months that have followed, both sides have continued to seek steadier ties through frequent high-level engagement as well as new dialogue channels on a wide range of policy areas. In January, the US and China resumed military-to-military talks for the first time in nearly two years. On April 2, Biden and Xi spoke by telephone and ratified their ongoing commitment to manage tensions. The presidential call came after the third in-person meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in less than a year on Jan. 16-17. It set the stage for US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s trip to China this past week – where she met with senior Chinese officials, local and provincial leaders, and top economists – as well as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's upcoming visit. Both militaries are currently in the final stages of preparation for a maritime dialogue and a likely ministerial meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June.
However, while better managed than they have been historically, US-China relations are coming under stress from a number of flashpoints that threaten to disrupt the relative calm that has prevailed since Woodside.
Second Thomas Shoal. This is the most likely, imminent, and dangerous tripwire for US-China military conflict, following an incident on March 23 in which Chinese Coast Guard ships fired high-pressure water cannons on a Philippine vessel attempting to deliver construction materials to the rusting BRP Sierra Madre – a symbolic Philippine warship, home to a small detachment of Philippine marines, that was intentionally grounded by Manila in the South China Sea’s Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to assert Philippine sovereignty over the disputed territory.
Beijing refuses to allow any construction materials to reach the Sierra Madre, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos feels he must continue sending materials to prevent it from sinking lest he renounce Manila’s claim. The latest run-in injured several Filipino sailors but stopped short of causing fatalities. US defense officials believe that if a Philippine sailor were to get killed, Manila would invoke its Mutual Defense Treaty with Washington, prompting the US to send military escorts for Philippine resupply ships. Chinese contacts say that if that happened, Beijing would consider towing the Sierra Madre off the reef, setting up a showdown between the US and Chinese navies.
Tech competition. Xi views Washington’s ever-expanding restrictions on China’s advanced semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries – and its pressure on US allies like Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, and South Korea to follow suit – as an effort to curb his country’s technological and economic development. More than ordinary trade barriers, tech restrictions get under Xi’s skin because they hit at the heart of his strategy to shift the sources of Chinese growth away from real estate and infrastructure investment toward “new productive forces.” Insofar as the US containment policy persists – and it will, as it is driven by a bipartisan national security consensus to “de-risk” – Beijing will eventually be compelled to retaliate.
Trade. A sticking point for labor unions in an election year, Chinese industrial “overcapacity” was a central theme of both Biden’s call with Xi and Yellen’s China trip. Washington’s core contention is that China accounts for a third of global production but only a sixth of global consumption. As a result, China’s heavily subsidized (or outright state-owned) firms are flooding Western and global markets with low-cost goods, especially in key sectors such as electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, and solar photovoltaics, benefiting consumers worldwide through lower prices – and reducing emissions by increasing the adoption of renewables – but hurting the less competitive American manufacturers.
American accusations ring hollow in Beijing when the US is simultaneously granting TSMC, the world’s leading producer of semiconductors, billions of dollars in subsidies to expand chip manufacturing in America. Separate but related, the irony of the US (and Europe) complaining about China making the global energy transition cheaper while at the same time chastising the country for not doing enough to decarbonize their economy is not lost on the Chinese and many in the global South. But I digress.
From Washington’s perspective, overcapacity is a problem at the core of China’s industrial policy model that will be made worse by Xi's aversion to boosting domestic consumption. Given the election-year politics of the issue for Democrats, at least some market access barriers before November are likely – whether through the Section 301 review of China’s steel industry, the Chinese EV data security probe, and/or the likely realignment of Trump-era tariffs on EVs and other imports. Still, anything Biden might do on trade pales in comparison to the risk of major tariff escalation that Beijing will face if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Taiwan. China’s leadership has concluded that Taiwanese President-elect William Lai is an irredeemable separatist, and Lai sees little upside in trying to persuade Beijing otherwise. Xi’s embrace of Lai’s Kuomintang predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, in a high-profile meeting on April 8 didn’t help defuse tensions. Lai’s inaugural address on May 20 will accordingly set the stage for a gradual erosion of cross-strait ties over the next four years. The pressure will start as soon as this summer when China begins to regularly enter Taiwan’s contiguous zone, “erasing” the island’s territorial waters and airspace. While these moves will be calibrated and telegraphed to Washington through backchannels to limit retaliation, Lai could escalate and force Biden to respond with a show of resolve in support for Taipei that risks a dangerous cycle of escalation.
But while these irritants will strain the bilateral relationship, there are still plenty of reasons for both leaders to want to maintain relatively stable ties, at least through the US elections.
Biden can’t afford to start a new war when he’s already managing two abroad – one in Ukraine, one in the Middle East – and fighting another at home. Xi continues to face major domestic economic challenges that require him to be much more geopolitically cautious than he would otherwise. Tensions are further constrained from spiraling out of control by enduring interdependence between the world’s two largest economies, neither of which would benefit from faster decoupling let alone military conflict.
Of course, as we saw both in 2022 with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and in 2023 with the Chinese surveillance balloon incident, accidents and miscalculations can easily overwhelm leaders’ ability to manage the tensions. But the communications channels established since November make such flare-ups less likely.
Neither the US nor China want a free-fall in their relationship this year, and thanks to Woodside, they now have the tools to avoid one. The Woodside truce may bend, but it won’t break.
I’ll say it again and again: The 2024 presidential election will be a very close race.
Head-to-head national polling averages currently have President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump – the two major parties’ presumptive nominees – in a statistical dead heat. Some averages show Trump with a slight lead, but one that lies within most polls’ margins of error.
While the polls will no doubt seesaw back and forth over the next seven months, don’t get fooled by the noise. Because of the Electoral College and America’s growing political polarization, the outcome of US elections is determined not by the national popular vote but by the states – and, increasingly, by just tens of thousands of voters in a handful of swing states.
Trump carried most of these in 2016, and Biden flipped most in 2020. The former was decided by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The latter, by about 44,000 votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. Something similar will happen this upcoming November, with the winner virtually guaranteed to have a narrow path to the White House.
Polls consistently show that most Americans dislike both Biden and Trump and want neither to lead the nation again. The unprecedented unpopularity of both nominees makes 2024 the most favorable environment in a generation for third-party candidates, three of whom are currently in the running: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein.
But could they have an impact on the election’s outcome? And if so, to whose benefit?
Polls show third parties hurt Biden more on net
First, let’s dispense with the obvious. Third-party candidates have no chance of winning any states in 2024. Not even Ross Perot’s 19% of the nationwide popular vote in 1992 was enough to win him more than a few counties.
But third parties don’t need to win any states or even significant numbers of votes to influence the 2024 result. Even single-digit vote shares could be enough to shift margins in the closely contested swing states that will decide the election, as they have in several recent contests. Indeed, third-party candidates picked up more votes than the eventual winner’s margin of victory in 75% of swing states in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Insofar as the 2024 race is close, it won’t take many third-party votes in the right places to spoil it.
The strongest third-party candidate in decades courtesy of his family’s name recognition, independent RFK Jr. is easily the best-performing of the three, currently registering 10.4% in the RealClearPolitics five-way national polling average. The far-left West and Stein are each polling at around 1.9% on average. In the six swing states that matter most (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), RFK Jr. is polling at 8.8% on average, while West is polling at 1.8% and Stein at 1.5%.
Whereas polls last year showed RFK Jr. siphoning more votes from Trump than Biden in a three-way race, more recent polling finds him drawing roughly equal support from both candidates, with some even showing him hurting Biden slightly more. But the margins are small, and the data is far from conclusive.
On the one hand, RFK Jr. bears the most famous name in Democratic politics and is the scion of legendary Democratic leaders such as former President John F. Kennedy and former Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. An environmental lawyer and activist, Kennedy himself was a lifelong Democrat and competed in the Democratic primary until last October, so it’s not a stretch to assume that most voters who recognize and react favorably to him are likely to be … Democrats. Crucially, Democrats (especially young, progressive, and minority voters) report being less enthusiastic about Biden as their nominee than Republicans are about Trump, suggesting the former would be more open to voting for an alternative candidate such as RFK Jr.
On the other hand, the No. 1 reason to think RFK Jr. could hurt Trump more than Biden is that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents like him much more than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents do. While the exact numbers vary from poll to poll, Kennedy’s average net favorability is positive among Republicans and negative among Democrats. This trend has grown over time as voters have gotten to know RFK Jr. better and realized his anti-establishment views put him closer to the Republican base than the Democratic one. To name just a few, he is a vocal anti-vaxxer, opposes gun control and Ukraine aid, and has a knack for conspiratorial thinking. All these positions are right-wing coded, appealing more to the reactionary populism of Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Alex Jones than the suburban, college-educated liberals who make up the base of the Democratic Party.
Whether he hurts Biden or Trump more will remain an open question for months to come, but what is clear is that Kennedy appeals to disaffected voters on both sides of the aisle who are skeptical of elites and have little commitment to either major-party candidate. It’s also possible that he ends up taking about even support from both of them in the “tipping point” states, in which case he wouldn’t ultimately matter much at all.
By contrast, the far-left campaigns of West and Stein pose a problem for Biden, despite their much smaller vote shares. Biden’s margin against Trump in national and swing state polls is consistently worse with these candidates included than without. Neither West nor Stein will attract any voters who would otherwise support Trump; their appeal is limited almost exclusively to progressives (especially young and non-white Americans) who would either vote for the president or stay home if they weren’t on the ballot. While votes they gain from those who’d otherwise not vote won’t sway the election, siphoning votes from Biden in swing states while taking none from Trump certainly could.
On balance, then, third parties’ continued presence in the race is a bigger threat to Biden and one of the reasons why I believe Trump is slightly favored to win the race at the moment.
Ballot access remains the key obstacle
Polling aside, third-party candidates will have no impact in November if they can’t qualify for the presidential ballot in key swing states.
Gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures necessary to appear on all 50 state ballots costs millions – possibly tens of millions – of dollars and is usually an impossibly tall order for independent candidates running ballot-qualification campaigns from scratch on shoestring budgets. That’s why the sole independent candidate in the 2020 election qualified for the ballot in only 13 states, none of them swing states. Third-party candidates running under an established minor-party label – such as the Green Party or Libertarian Party – have an easier time with ballot qualification, as most states have lower ballot qualification standards for established minor parties than for true independents.
RFK Jr. has made significant progress on this front in recent weeks, having reportedly amassed enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, and New Hampshire, as well as in several non-swing states. The financial backing of his newly picked running mate, wealthy Bay Area lawyer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, makes it all the more likely that he will qualify for more key state ballots. Should Kennedy manage to secure the nomination of the Libertarian Party at the party’s convention in May, which seems reasonably likely, he would have a straightforward path to appearing on nearly all of them.
The story for the far-left candidates is more mixed. Stein will appear on the ballot in most states by virtue of running under the Green Party label. West, on the other hand, has neither the organizational apparatus nor the funding to mount a nationwide qualification drive. He seems to have secured a place on the ballot only in Utah and South Carolina – two non-swing states – thus far; the considerable challenges he faces to qualify in swing states could render his campaign dead in the water by the end of the summer.
The deadlines for ballot access run from June to August. This means that we are still months away from knowing which states third-party candidates will qualify in – and how exactly they might shake up the 2024 race.
What we do know is that they could.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been on quite the journey over the past two years.
In the days leading up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022, Macron took on the role of chief peacemaker in a bid to avert conflict. Once the war began, he cautioned against Russia’s humiliation, offered Putin countless off-ramps, and pressed Ukraine to engage in peace talks. Fast forward to today, though, and Macron has become arguably the transatlantic alliance’s leading Russia hawk, even going as far as openly discussing the prospect of deploying French troops to Ukraine’s front lines.
What caused such a remarkable transformation? French officials close to the president claim that as the facts on the ground changed, so did Macron's strategic thinking. But as my Eurasia Group colleague Mujtaba Rahman teased last week, that explanation doesn’t fully hold up. Let’s see why.
Macron's shuttle diplomacy began with the widely publicized “long-table talks” in Moscow on Feb. 7, 2022, when Putin agreed to refrain from invading Ukraine in exchange for “security guarantees.” Then, on Feb. 20, the two leaders spoke on the phone, and Macron went to sleep believing he had convinced Putin to consider peace talks with US President Joe Biden. The rest is history: Putin reneged on both promises, and on Feb. 24, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Macron’s critics dismiss those early talks as futile, arguing the president was never in a position to deter a Putin hellbent on achieving his imperial dreams (fact check: true).
Macron’s thinking, however, was – and still is – that engagement was justified despite having little chance of success. Otherwise, the Kremlin could have claimed that the West was uninterested in diplomacy and had left it with no choice but war. Trying was valuable insofar as it allowed the West to retain the moral and narrative high ground … whatever that turned out to be worth.
A few months later, in May, Macron gave a speech at the European Parliament where he called on the West not to “humiliate” Russia. This was no slip of the tongue; he reiterated the position a month later in an interview with the French media when he said that helping Putin save face was necessary “so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.”
The statements drew ire from Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States, outraged by calls to give in to an invader that was mercilessly shelling civilians amid then-fresh revelations of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere.
What was Macron thinking then? At the time, the French leader believed that Russia was going to lose the war – even if at that particular moment it was winning the battle. He was under the impression that Putin knew this and was accordingly open to diplomacy. The hope was that by keeping him onside, Macron could eventually broker a peace deal that would both preserve Kyiv’s interests and pave the way for a new, more “strategic” European security architecture – one where Europe would finally take its future into its own hands and be less dependent militarily on the United States.
But that illusion would not last long.
In the weeks that followed, a series of phone calls with Putin led Macron to the realization that the Russian president had been making a fool out of him all along, hardening the president’s attitude toward Moscow. It was a rude awakening, but the facts didn’t change on him – Macron just caught up to them.
As this reality dawned, Macron’s strategic focus shifted to Eastern European countries, whose support he realized was key to keeping his dream of a “strategic Europe” alive. The problem was that France had historically had tepid relations with this part of the world, starting with Paris’ reluctance to embrace eastern enlargement after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Macron’s direct diplomacy with Putin in 2022 had only made things worse. Ties needed mending, and these countries needed convincing that the European Union could replace the United States as the guarantor of European security – especially in light of Germany’s increasingly apparent geopolitical timidity and the growing odds of a Trump 2.0 pullback from NATO scenario.
So Macron went to work. At the GLOBSEC security conference in Bratislava in June 2023, the French president called for Russia's outright “defeat” for the first time, after previously speaking only of “preventing a Russian victory.” He also apologized to Eastern European countries for “missing an opportunity” to heed their concerns about Russia’s imperial ambitions, pleaded for a European defense pillar within NATO in the face of Washington’s wavering commitment to the transatlantic alliance, and – crucially – opened the door to possible Ukrainian NATO membership.
The Bratislava remarks were made at a time when the West was cautiously optimistic that Ukraine could reprise the success of its 2022 counteroffensive. The military and political outlook has since darkened for Kyiv. And Macron has grown anxious that – far from bolstering European security, unity, and democracy – the war may end in a Russian victory, which would discredit the European Union and destroy its economy. This concern is what prompted the president to publicly weigh the possibility of deploying French and other NATO troops to Ukraine for the first time in late February, when he replied to a journalist’s question about potential Western troop deployments by saying that “nothing should be ruled out” because “Russia cannot [be allowed] to win this war.”
While French ministers have claimed that he was referring only to support troops and not frontline fighters, Macron has refused to accept that distinction. Indeed, despite earning strong rebukes from the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he doubled down recently when he said he would not “initiate” such an escalation but it might become necessary.
So what is Macron trying to achieve now? The first-order reasoning is that he wants to create “strategic ambiguity” – in other words, keep Putin guessing about his intentions to deter further aggression and persuade him to back off Ukraine. But the president also wants to prepare French and Western public opinion for the difficult decisions that may lie ahead in the event that such deterrence fails.
Beyond strategic considerations, there is the question of what role Macron’s ambitions have played in his rhetorical escalation. The French president is often accused of wanting to seize the “leadership” of the European Union, but with just three years remaining in office, he is probably thinking more about legacy than leadership now. And Macron's legacy stakes are certainly high. In 2017, he promised to leave France and the EU stronger than he found them. Seven years later, he faces the rising tides of far-right nationalism and the possibility that a Russian victory in Ukraine could destroy the credibility of the union.
Macron realizes that his ambition of a more “strategic Europe” is a long-term project requiring strong backing from the United Kingdom and Germany. But he is also aware that Berlin is unwilling to face up to this new geostrategic landscape in which cheap Russian gas and unconditional US protection are no longer guaranteed. He is therefore hoping that his “boots on the ground” rhetoric can force Europe to confront existential questions about the continent’s security destiny that leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would prefer to avoid.
Whether his new position ultimately helps or hurts Ukraine remains to be seen. It’s also unclear whether the French leader will finally put his money where his mouth is. After all, France has been a laggard when it comes to arming Ukraine. But one thing is for sure – the Russia dove of 2022 is now one of the West’s most implacable hawks. Putin no longer has an open line to Emmanuel Macron.