China, The US And Russia’s Strategic Relations In A Shifting Geopolitical Landscape And The Economist Education’s Outlook

US-EUROPE, OMIKAMI-TV -The geopolitical landscape is shifting at a breakneck pace, raising urgent questions about how the China-Russia strategic relationship—both with each other and with the United States—might evolve, and what this means for the war in Ukraine and the broader global order. (10/3/2925).

In the conversation that follows, four experts—Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Angela Stent, Tara Varma, and Ali Wyne—join Patricia Kim to unpack these critical developments. They explore topics ranging from the consequences of a potential U.S.-Russia reset or a “reverse Nixon” strategy, to China’s evolving strategic calculus, the future of the China-Russia-North Korea-Iran “axis,” and Europe’s uncertain path forward. Join us as we delve into what’s at stake for Washington, Beijing, and the world.

PATRICIA KIM: Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Patricia Kim, and I’m a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Thank you for tuning in for our conversation on China and Russia’s evolving strategic relationship and its implications for the United States and the world.

I’m delighted to be joined today by four distinguished experts who bring a wealth of insight to this discussion. We have Aslı Aydıntaşbaş and Tara Varma, who are both visiting fellows at the Center on the U.S. and Europe at Brookings, Angela Stent, a nonresident fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, and Ali Wyne, a senior research and advocacy advisor on the U.S. and China at the International Crisis Group. 

The five of us co-authored a report last December on the China-Russia relationship and the challenges that this partnership presents to vital U.S. interests as part of the Brookings Project on the future of U.S.-China policy."

This recorded conversation is a follow-up to that paper to explore how recent developments are likely to shape the dynamics between the United States, China, and Russia.

To start things off, I’d like to turn first to Angela Stent. Angela, much has changed since we published our report, and even in just the past few days. Last Friday, we saw a striking breakdown in talks between President Trump and President Zelensky at the White House. 

Setting aside China for the moment, it appears that there’s been a fundamental shift in Washington’s relationship with Russia and Ukraine since Trump’s return to office. Given the administration’s recent direct engagement with Moscow, which seems to sideline and come at the expense of certainly Ukraine and the United States’ European allies, how do you see this affecting the trajectory of the war in Ukraine and, more broadly, Moscow’s strategic posture in the coming months?

ANGELA STENT: Yes, certainly events are occurring at a dizzying pace. So I think the short answer is the trajectory of the war is not going to change for the foreseeable future. What President Trump wants is a very quick ceasefire, and then he thinks he’s more or less done with this. What President Putin wants is no ceasefire. 

He wants what he’s getting, which is a normalization of relations with the United States, the possible lifting of sanctions, and the end of Western isolation of Russia as it continues to conduct this brutal war. 

The Russians have said they would only accept a ceasefire if Ukraine were to accept the loss of the four territories that Russia has annexed, none of which Russia fully controls. The Ukrainians are not willing to do this, and of course, this was one of the reasons for the spat that we saw in the White House.

So Russia’s strategic posture will continue to be the same, except I would expect Russia to be more assertive globally if it is able to secure this reset with the United States. I think the Russians never dreamt that this would happen so quickly and so fully in the last three years.

PATRICIA KIM: Angela, that is very helpful. Thank you. I’d like to turn to Ali next to bring in the China angle. Ali, Chinese leaders have been relatively quiet amid the rapid developments of the last few weeks.

Beijing has simply stated that it welcomes talks between Putin and Trump, and that it supports a quick end to the war in Ukraine. How do you think Beijing is really interpreting and responding to these developments that we’re seeing between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine?

ALI WYNE: Thanks very much, Pattie, for the question. And thank you for bringing us all together for a conversation that I think all of us would agree couldn’t be timelier. My sense is that Chinese officials are, I think, quite surprised, by the speed of developments and the extent to which the Trump administration wants to, it seems, normalize relations between Washington and Moscow. 

On balance, I don’t think that China is particularly concerned about the possibility of a real rapprochement. I think it’s important—especially amid speculation that we hear about the possibility of a kind of reverse Nixon gambit that the United States might orchestrate—to distinguish between a potentially a tactical de-escalation in U.S.-Russia relations and a fundamental recalibration of Russian policy towards the United States, and the latter, I don’t think, is realistically on the table.

I think on balance, China does discern a window of strategic opportunity, particularly when it comes to the rupture in the transatlantic alliance. And we already see that China is positioning itself vis-à-vis the European Union. China is encouraging the European Union to do more to assert its strategic autonomy. There is talk among many European countries about de-risking not only from China, but also from the United States. 

I think that on balance, China sees a window of strategic opportunity, and China doesn’t stand to lose in any way from saying that it welcomes talks between Trump and Putin. It doesn’t stand to lose anything by saying that it welcomes a quick resolution to the war for reasons that Angela mentioned in her remarks. 

I think it’s unrealistic, despite the wishes that the Trump administration has, to imagine that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which now just passed a really bloody three-year anniversary, is going to reach a resolution any time soon.
 
PATRICIA KIM: Ali, President Trump has also said that he wants China to help with ending the war in Ukraine. Given the current dynamics, what kind of role could Beijing play in this process as U.S. and Russia negotiations move forward?

ALI WYNE: It isn’t clear to me what China could realistically offer, or I should say, it isn’t clear to me what China might be prepared to offer that might that might ratchet down tensions between Russia and Ukraine for a couple of reasons. Number one, ever since the beginning of this conflict now over three years ago, China has consistently declined to identify Russia as the aggressor in this war. And number two, China has continued to provide economic support for Russia’s continued aggression.

Having said so, I think that [with] the recent rupture—and I would call it a rupture, not just perhaps a run-of-the-mill divergence in perspectives between Washington and Brussels, but a real rupture in transatlantic relations—I do think that China sees an opportunity to present itself, at relatively low cost to its own national interest, as a potential intermediary between Russia and Ukraine. 

And I think that it’s notable that on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that took place last month, both the Ukrainian Foreign Minister and the head of President Zelenskyy’s office met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, and they spoke quite favorably about their interaction.

So I think that China sees the opportunity to burnish its diplomatic credentials, to burnish its conflict-mediation credentials without really having to expend much in the way they would undermine its own national interests or they would fundamentally alter its relationship with Russia.

PATRICIA KIM: Tara, how is the EU positioning itself amid the Trump administration’s about-face on Ukraine and its general posture towards Europe and NATO? 

Would you say that European states are preparing to fundamentally shift their relationship with the United States? And if so, Ali talked sort of about how China is viewing all this, but how might the Europeans be viewing their approach to China given these dynamics?

TARA VARMA: Thanks, Pattie. Happy to be taking part in this important conversation at such a changing moment as well. I think the Europeans really were under shock in the past few days, basically since the Trump administration took office, [with] the announcements of higher tariffs against Canada, Mexico and the European Union than on China. 

So that was also interesting. And President Trump said very clearly last week that he thinks the EU was built to, and I apologize for the rude language, “screw over” the United States. So he really, you know, in his first term, he said that the EU was a foe to the U.S., worse than China. So these are ideas that he’s had for a long time.

We know that he really despises multilateralism and international cooperation, and he’s demonstrating it today with the administration of loyalists that surround him. And I think we’ve been, as Europeans, hoping that this was just a posture, that this was just for show, that what matters to President Trump is in the end to have a deal, and so that there might be a way to negotiate our way through crises.

I think what we’re seeing now is this is, of course, this runs much deeper than what we had expected. Kaja Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister and the head of EU diplomacy now, was in Washington, D.C., last week. 

She was supposed to meet with Marco Rubio, who canceled on her last minute for no apparent reason, I think, except to show that the new administration is really going to see the EU as a foe, as an enemy to work against. And of course, the EU finds itself in a pretty dramatic situation because it doesn’t deal with collective security. 

The EU is an economic and political regional entity. It has grown with U.S. acquiescence throughout the past decades. And even if we’ve had a number of rifts in the past, particularly when it comes to trade, there was never the idea that the U.S. was set against the EU growing.

What we’re seeing now with this new administration and with Elon Musk in particular is an antagonism vis-à-vis the EU, which is being demonstrated on a daily basis. And a number of key administration leaders, they resent the EU for its digital and climate regulatory power, and this is what they’re going to work against. 

And so the Europeans find themselves in a situation not only of having to deal with the withdrawal of the U.S. from key collective security agreements or arrangements—or at least putting into question the credibility of the U.S. security guarantee—but they actually even find themselves with a U.S. that’s going to work actively against them.

So we’ve seen in the past few days a flurry of visits from European leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron was in Washington, D.C., last week to meet with President Trump. He had called, prior to his visit, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and a number of European leaders, Viktor Orbán, Giorgia Meloni, the German chancellor. 

A few days later, the U.K. prime minister, Keir Starmer, also came. And of course, we witnessed the following day, the pretty horrific and dramatic meeting between the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and President Trump and Vice President Vance.

So what we’ve seen now is a meeting of European leaders in London Sunday, March the 2nd, where they agreed that they were actually going to provide a special fund to help Ukraine. But they’re doing this in crisis mode, I think, realizing that the Europeans cannot count on the U.S. anymore, which is a pretty big shock, I would say.

And in terms about the relationship to China and the EU’s approach to China, I think what we’re seeing is a number of European leaders who are saying that they’ve turned their backs on Russia and on Russian gas and that they can’t really afford to turn away from all of their major partners, so that in the event of the U.S. formally withdrawing from European security, they might want to turn to Beijing. 

As Ali said, we’ve heard from the PRC support for European strategic autonomy, and I think a satisfaction coming out of Beijing that actually the Europeans might fall even more into their arms, which I think might be against U.S. interests.

And so we might find ourselves in a situation where Beijing has a lot to gain from this and the Europeans basically have no choice but to dive even more into the EU-China relationship, which they had qualified five years ago as a triptych of partnership, competition, and systemic rivalry. So let’s see how this evolves.

PATRICIA KIM: Aslı, we talk about the EU, but we know that not all European states share the exact same views on China or Russia. Turkey, for instance, has taken a relatively distinct approach, opting not to sanction Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and instead trying to balance a range of competing interests. 

Turkey has also expressed interest in joining both the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa grouping), where China and Russia play leading roles. So could you tell us about how Turkey is interpreting the developments we’re seeing at this time, and how might this shape its relationships with Beijing and Moscow in the coming months and years ahead?
 
ASLI AYDINTAŞBAŞ: Pattie, Turkey is not alone in not fully joining the Western consensus on the war in Ukraine. It [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] certainly was seen as a huge violation of international law and a dangerous move on the part of Russia. 

On the other hand, I think Turkey, like India, like many countries in the Middle East and powerful players in the Global South, wanted to pursue some type of a balancing act. In the case of Turkey, this is driven by economic needs, but also centuries of warfare between the Ottoman and Russian empires, and also a sense of cynicism about the world order and where it was heading. 

Long before the advent of the Trump administration, Turks had started seeing the world as a more transactional space and sort of a multipolar order and the cynicism also included U.S. intentions on the war in Ukraine and the attitudes towards Ukraine, as was said to me again and again, and we could disagree with this assertion, but just to tell how Turks saw it. Turkish officials often said United States would give Ukraine enough support to stay in the war, but not enough to win.

So, from the get-go, they seemed to see this as an unwinnable war, and therefore called for ceasefire negotiations from early on, an end to the war, hosting talks. 

In fact, the first substantial negotiations between Ukraine and Russia took place in Istanbul in 2022, followed by a grain deal, prisoner exchanges, Black Sea talks, et cetera. So they do welcome prospects of an end to the war, which is a huge risk for countries on Russia’s periphery.

But they are worried, of course. They’re worried about a number of things, including a speedy Russia -U.S. normalization that’s worrisome for two reasons, maybe, for countries like Turkey and countries in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, in Eastern Europe. 

It does leave potentially a triumphant Russia. Of course, it’s not the end of the war that people worry about. It’s how it ends, how it leaves Russia, how it leaves Vladimir Putin and his understanding of the world order. And if Russia ends this war feeling on top, feeling triumphant, I think that’s really bad news not just for Turkey, but for, you know, countries on the eastern flank of Europe, but also in the Caucasus, Central Asia.

They’re also worried now about a lawless world. So great power competition worked for middle powers because it provided opportunities for many of them to play off great powers against one another. But a great power condominium in which the United States decides to triangulate relations with Russia and China, and perhaps allow for zones of influence, that is very, very bad news. 

So Turkey will do what many European countries do and try to hedge against what they think is a very sort of unpredictable U.S. behavior, [and] politically try to get closer to Europeans. But economically I think, I say this without knowing anything, but I think economically they’ll also do what a lot of European countries will try to do, that is, develop economic relations with China.

PATRICIA KIM: Angela, Aslı talked about Turkish anxiety about a potential U.S.-Russia reset. there’s been talk about Trump trying to do a reverse Nixon, that is pulling the Russians away from the Chinese and closer to the U.S. in order to shore up the United States position as it looks at intense competition with China in the years ahead. 

Would you say that a U.S.-Russia reset is possible, and if such a reset were to occur alongside a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, how might this influence Moscow’s strategic calculus and particularly its relationship with Beijing?.

ANGELA STENT: Every U.S. president since the end of the Cold War has tried to reset relations with Russia, both Democrat and Republican, and all these resets have failed. And the major reason why they failed is because so far, U.S. presidents and the U.S. public have had a very different understanding of the drivers of international relations and how the world should be governed. 

I think the major difference is now that we have a president in President Trump who seems to share Vladimir Putin’s view of the world: there are only a few truly sovereign states—the U.S., Russia, China, maybe India—that smaller states have limited sovereignty, and as Aslı was alluding to, that the way you govern the world is you really go back to a tripartite, as it would be now, Yalta, and each of the major powers has their own sphere of influence. 

And neither Russia nor the United States really have much time for a number of different international organizations, unless they’re ones that they control.

So on the basis of this, I would say that a reset is possible because the U.S. has changed the rules of the game and we see a U.S. very willing to engage with Russia. We know that President Trump has been, you know, very eager to do business in Russia since he visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1987. He admires Vladimir Putin. 

He has an animus against Ukraine. And he still sees huge business opportunities in Russia. He’s alluded to it based on I’m not quite sure what, particularly if the major U.S. energy companies do not go back into Russia. So for that reason, he will try to have a successful reset with Russia.

A month ago, Putin was saying that the United States was the main enemy of Russia. He’s of course changed his tune. He has now said that U.S. interests align with those of Russia. And he wants a reset because I think he believes he’s going to get it on his terms, which would of course include a settlement in Ukraine in which Ukraine is unable really to secure its own sovereignty and territorial integrity. 

Because if there is a ceasefire in Ukraine and President Trump thinks that’s all we have to do, as we know, the Russians will come back, and they haven’t given up their desire to subjugate Ukraine and see regime change there.

So having said all this, one of the goals behind the Trump administration’s outreach to Moscow and resetting relations is [that] they seem to believe that they can separate Russia from China, that they can induce Putin to rethink his relationship with Xi Jinping and with China and do whatever you want to call it, a reverse Kissinger. And we’ve heard them explicitly say this.

As we have said in the paper that we all wrote, it is highly unlikely that Russia has any desire to separate itself from China. Of course, it likes to have options. If it had a successful reset with the United States, that would probably give it somewhat more leverage in dealing with China. 

At the moment, it’s highly dependent on China to continue this war. But I think what Russia would do would be to say, fine, we’re going to continue this close relationship with China, with North Korea, Iran, et cetera. But now we have a good relationship with the United States. This just raises our standing in the world.

But there is a fundamental mistrust of the United States among the current and previous and probably future Russian leadership. And they’re not going to squander this relationship with China that they’ve built up over the past couple of decades.

PATRICIA KIM: Ali, from Beijing’s perspective, how might a potential U.S.-Russia reset, even if it’s superficial, impact China’s strategic calculus? Could it alter the trajectory of its so-called “no-limits partnership” with Moscow? And if so, in what ways?

ALI WYNE: Thanks, Pattie. I would pick up where Angela left off with her most recent answer. I do think that Russia sees maybe a tactical opportunity to diversify its diplomatic portfolio as it were. 

But as Angela said, we have to take into account not only Russia’s fundamental, enduring distrust of the United States, but also its fundamental and growing dependence on China, a dependence that can be measured in economic terms and diplomatic terms. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that China is sanguine about the prospect of some kind of rapprochement between the United States and Russia. 

Given how insistent the second Trump administration has been on entertaining this possibility of a reverse Nixon or a reverse Kissinger, China has its apprehensions, but I wouldn’t say that those apprehensions have morphed into trepidation.

As an example, recently Russia’s security chief, the main security chief, Sergei Shoigu, went to Beijing, [and] met with President Xi, and China and Russia. In their joint readouts of that meeting, they hailed the continued momentum of Sino-Russian ties. 

So, I think the momentum in that relationship between China and Russia continues apace. And I don’t see any reason for that trend to change. I would just say that if there is to be any fundamental change in the dynamics of the Sino-Russian relationship, I think that those would be far more likely to emerge from a recalibration on the part of either China or Russia about the net strategic utility of the relationship, as opposed to from external pressure.

I think that what we have seen to date is that external pressure from the West—and I think particularly from the United States—has had the unintended effect, the unfortunate effect of perhaps compelling China and Russia to strengthen their embrace. 

And despite the possibility of a tactical reset in U.S.-Russia relations, I would still argue that on balance, over the long-term, I think that Russia continues regard the United States as its principal adversary, China continues to regard the United States as its principal adversary. 

And so long as those fundamental strategic judgments hold, it isn’t clear to me that perhaps a tactical reprieve in U.S.-Russia relations would alter that fundamental dynamic.

So just in brief, to summarize, China is certainly monitoring developments in the U.S.-Russia relationship, which as a number of others on the call have said, have come at a dizzying pace, and I think that that dizzying pace will continue. So China is not sanguine. China will continue to monitor developments between the United States and Russia. 

But I would say that from Russia’s perspective, I think that Russia regards the next four years as an opportunity to extract perhaps tactical concessions from the United States. I don’t see any evidence thus far that Russia sees an opportunity to reset its relationship with the United States fundamentally in a way that would outlast the second Trump administration, and I think that China takes comfort in that likelihood.

PATRICIA KIM: Tara, I’d like to shift gears a bit and look at China’s role in any potential negotiated settlement or peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. A critical question surrounding any cessation of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine is: How will the cessation of hostilities be enforced? 

And more specifically, how will Ukraine’s security be guaranteed? There have been questions about what kind of peacekeeping force is necessary to enforce the terms of a deal. 

There have been debates about whether non-European troops or observers should be involved in such an effort. In your view, should Europe encourage Beijing to contribute to a peacekeeping force, whether observers or troops? Do you think China’s presence would help stabilize the situation or could it introduce additional complexities?.

TARA VARMA: So, you know, Pattie, a number of leaders have reached out to Xi Jinping and to the PRC asking them to, first of all, lean into Vladimir Putin, convince him actually to begin the cessation of hostilities. I think we need to remind our listeners as well that this is a blatant violation of territorial sovereignty and of international law by Vladimir Putin, who invaded a sovereign country, Ukraine, three years ago now. 

A number of leaders have reached out to China hoping that, because Xi Jinping seems to be the only leader able to talk to Vladimir Putin right now, he would listen to them and help put an end to this war. 

What we’ve seen is not exactly that. It’s been very significant material support by China, which has helped Russia not only continue the war but actually renew its stockpile of weapons. 

So I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do it, but I feel like a number of leaders have done that and it hasn’t panned out completely yet. I think the developments of the past 24 to 48 hours show us that Europe is taking these new developments quite seriously. 

In London, Prime Minister Starmer and French President Macron said that they were working with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a peace proposal that they would then submit to the U.S., and they’re also working on a ceasefire. 

So I think they’ve kind of understood what the U.S. is putting on the table and how to ensure that some, even minimal, form of U.S. support be maintained.

But you’re right. The question is whether there can be troops on the ground or not. This has been a topic of really high contention amongst Europeans themselves. 

Macron and Starmer were two leaders who didn’t want to rule out that there might be troops on the ground, not mentioning whether they should be European or NATO-led troops, but that there should be some form of European participation in ensuring Ukraine’s security in the mid-to-long-run. And there have been no agreements, to say the least, on this issue. We’ve seen a lot of internal European divisions.

So before reaching out to other powers, I would say I think we need European unity on this and to decide how far we want to go as Europeans in protecting Ukraine. And my sense is in the past three years, Europeans have been quite clear that Ukraine’s security, Ukraine’s future is not only existential, but it’s really tied to European security and so that we have a special responsibility when it comes to ensuring the security of Ukraine. 

We need to decide this amongst ourselves and then I think reach out to other powers who might want to participate as well and who would form a clear deterrent to Vladimir Putin. I think that’s important because whatever ceasefire is decided right now, it needs to be very clear in its terms that it will deter Vladimir Putin in the end not to invade Ukraine again, which is I think a very big risk right now.

PATRICIA KIM: Right. Tara, just to push you a bit on that. Do you think China’s presence as some sort of tripwire would help stabilize the situation or could it introduce additional complexities?

TARA VARMA: I guess it depends on China, right? If China really wanted to do this, it would mean 180 degrees on the position that it’s taken until now. So I think if it were serious about it and that it wanted to involve troops, and these would be Chinese troops and for instance, maybe not UN troops, I think it might help definitely to deter Vladimir Putin. But that entails China fundamentally changing its position right now.

And what we’ve seen in the past three years is Xi Jinping reaching out to Vladimir Putin quite a lot. Not so much reaching out to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

I think Zelenskyy and Xi only spoke once. I’m not saying that it’s impossible. I mean, I could see how, first of all, China would want to participate in the reconstruction of Ukraine. 

I think that’s going to be a big issue. And if China is serious about this, it will definitely want some political stability on the ground. So I think if China sees an interest for itself in peace finally happening in Ukraine, then yes, it might shift gears and be serious about it.

But that would mean, again, a change in its relationship with Russia, which is not unforeseeable considering how we’re seeing a U.S.-Russia rapprochement right now that I’m guessing, that I don’t know how comfortable Beijing is [about]. So that would mean Beijing shifting its gears a bit. It’s not impossible, but it’s not what we’ve seen until now.

PATRICIA KIM: Aslı, Tara just mentioned Chinese assistance on reconstruction. So Chinese leaders have previously expressed that they are willing to contribute to Ukraine’s post-war rehabilitation and reconstruction. 

Do you believe that China’s involvement in these efforts would be beneficial? Critics have warned that Beijing’s role in rebuilding Ukraine’s critical infrastructure could pose security risks or create additional points of leverage over Ukraine and Europe in the future. How would you assess these concerns and what are your recommendations?
 
ASLI AYDINTAŞBAŞ: Pattie, I think China’s involvement in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction may be inevitable and may actually not be such a bad thing for Ukraine’s sovereignty and survival, given that the United States, namely the Trump administration, has made it very clear that they do not want to spend, in the words of President Trump, one more dime on Ukraine. So, China may be one of the few players out there willing to engage in reconstruction.

But would it be a hedge against further Russian aggression? I don’t know. I think it may be too early to talk about that. We have to see how talks roll out, whether they are able to put together a successful peacekeeping force, and if the Russian aggression towards Ukraine is at least paused for now.

So it is too early to say whether China’s economic involvement in Ukraine brings the type of long-term stability we are seeking. But I think countries will be looking for that, looking to see if China can play a constructive role. We are, of course, in very much of an upside-down situation. We’ve long criticized China for its predatory economic practices in Asia and Africa and here and there. 

You know, it was the job of U.S. diplomats to go around the world and developing countries especially and warn these countries about the debt trap from China and about deeper economic engagement with China. But it’s really hard to make that case at this moment in history, when we have, you know, a U.S. president talking about, you know, sort of getting Greenland or a riviera in Gaza, or putting on the table a very sort of extractionist deal with Ukraine for critical minerals.

So if the U.S. changes its tone towards a more, perhaps for lack of a better word, extractionist agenda, economic agenda to various parts of the world and abdicates its role as the enforcer of rules and norms and the liberal order and so on, it is really very difficult to make a case against deeper economic engagement with China for many parts of the world, including, I would say, eventually Europe. We’ll see how that goes. 

I mean, Ukraine may be too weak to play footsie with China at this point, because they’re so dependent on Western support and weapons and so on, but other countries may start seeking economic partnerships with China as a result of a new posture from Washington.

I will quickly flag Turkey for the reconstruction discussion, because this is a country that has huge experience in reconstruction and energy sectors and is known as a country that exports infrastructure and development projects all around Africa, North Africa, the Middle East.

So I think what is for me interesting to see [is] if Europeans and U.S. will tap into Turkey’s resources. Turkey clearly does not have the money to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. 

But it has the ability to quickly help with roads and energy grid infrastructure and so on, if they will become sort of a preferred party so as not to leave it all to China, but if such a new arrangement could in itself serve as a reset in relations between Turkey and Europe or the West in general.

PATRICIA KIM: Angela, another striking development that’s accompanied the war in Ukraine has been the deepening of ties between Russia and North Korea. Last year, the two sides signed a mutual defense pact, and North Koreans contributed more than 10,000 troops so far to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. 

This development, in turn, has raised considerable anxiety in Beijing, which doesn’t appreciate being on the sidelines or being in the dark about what two of its closest neighbors are doing when it comes to security collaboration. As the war winds down, how do you see the Russia-North Korea relationship evolving? Do you think the Russians will continue to keep the North Koreans close?
 
ANGELA STENT: Yes, thank you for that question. And let me just say something about peacekeeping because this has been an interesting discussion. Don’t forget that Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has explicitly said, no European troops will be allowed to be peacekeepers in Ukraine. 

So I think we’re very far away from even contemplating what kind of peacekeeping force they would have.
Alright, let me turn now to North Korea. 

North Korea has become a very important ally of Russia in its war with Ukraine, sending troops, providing ammunition, artillery for the Russians, and we don’t quite know what the Russians are providing the North Koreans, but we suspect a lot of it is high-tech, satellites, and maybe even contributing towards their own nuclear program. And Putin sees this alliance, as you say, it’s a mutual defense pact, with North Korea as part of Russia’s growing role as the leader of what Russia calls, or Putin calls, the world majority, or what we might call the Global South.

So this is not just some kind of temporary relationship only directed towards helping Russia win the war with Ukraine. I think if and when the war ends maybe they’re not going to need the North Korean soldiers who’ve been dying at very high rates, by the way, in Russia. But I believe that this relationship will continue. And again, it provides some extra leverage for Russia in its relationship with China, which is such an asymmetrical relationship as we can see.

And I would expect this to continue because the Russians have never been that concerned about North Korea’s nuclear program. What they’re really concerned about would be if something happened to the North Korean regime and you had a united Korea that was in the Western camp. 

Again, it seems unlikely, but that would be their deepest fears. So they’ve overcome some of the reservations they had about dealing with North Korea. And I think as long as you have Putin or someone who shares his views in power in the Kremlin, and as long as you have Kim Jong Un there, and he’s quite a young man, I think this relationship will remain and it’s really not going to be that greatly affected if the war ends.

PATRICIA KIM: Ali, there’s a question about what happens to the so-called axis of upheaval or the dark quad, which is the four-way partnership among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. 

In our paper in December, we made the case that while China and Russia’s partnership runs deep and the fact that China, Iran, and North Korea have all supported Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine in some shape or form, it’s also important not to overstate the alignment of these four states and their ability to actually work together as a coherent axis.

With the shifts that we’re seeing in the United States-Russia policy and maybe changes in the way Beijing is viewing all of this, how do you expect Beijing’s strategic calculus in managing its relationships with other members of this so-called axis to change? And what implications would you say this has for U.S. security interests?
 
ALI WYNE: Thanks, Pattie, and I do want to underscore one of the points that you made in asking your question, which is I think that there is a tendency sometimes to perhaps overstate the import of interactions that we see between competitors and adversaries. One sort of analytical and prescriptive mistake is to discount the import of deepening alignment, but another analytical and prospective mistake, which we highlight in the paper is to aggrandize. So point one, I think.

Point two is that, and I think we also make this point in the paper, I don’t think that anyone would deny that there is deepening alignment between these four countries as a whole and between various subsets of this quad, the dark quad as you said. 

I think it’s important to note though that China goes to great lengths to—whether or not you agree with its self-perception or its self-depiction—but China does go to great lengths to present itself as separate from the other three, and China is very loathe to be grouped in with the other three. I think that China likes to present itself as being an upholder of the international system, whereas the other three are perhaps more disruptive.

And certainly, if you just look at China and Russia, there is a persuasive argument to be made that Russia doesn’t have the wherewithal to present a coherent challenge to the United States, to present a coherent challenge to the international system. I think that Russia has concluded that it can best remind the rest of the world of its influence by sowing upheaval, and I think that China likes to present itself as being more of a stabilizing force.

Another point is that, as far as how China is appraising developments between the United States and Russia, my sense is that China seems to have concluded that even if it were to pursue a fundamental recalibration of its disposition towards Russia, that shift wouldn’t change the broad thrust of Western policy towards China. And so I think China’s conclusion is, why would we jettison a partnership with Russia if that action wouldn’t produce significant strategic dividends for China?

I guess the last point I would make is that the broad contours of China’s diplomacy seem unlikely to change, and I would argue that China is broadly trying to diversify its diplomatic portfolio and particularly trying to strengthen its relationships with three sets of countries. 

The first set of countries, which is the one that we’ve been discussing mostly in this conversation, is with countries with which the United States has either competitive or adversarial relations. So in category one, China is trying to strengthen its relationships with Russia, with Iran, with North Korea.

Category two is with so-called middle powers or swing states or pivot states, whatever your preferred nomenclature, but these are regional powers that are, I think, trying in many cases to play the United States and China off of one another and that see an opportunity to exercise greater agency by simultaneously courting the United States and China.

These are countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey. So, category two is these middle powers that haven’t decisively thrown their lot in with either the United States or China. I think China is trying to make further inroads with those middle powers.

The third category of countries where China is arguably exerting its greatest amount of effort is countries in the developing world. I hesitate to reduce the enormity of the developing world to a phrase such as the Global South or the global majority. 

But certainly, if you look at where China is building new diplomatic postings, where China is strengthening its trade, its investment, its infrastructure footprint, I do think that the linchpin of China’s foreign policy thus far, when it comes to pushing back against growing pressure from advanced industrial democracies, it is in the developing world. 

So despite this dizzying set of developments in U.S.-Russia relations, I would summarize by saying that I would expect the broad contours of China’s diplomacy to be largely unchanged.

So just to summarize, China is looking to strengthen its relationships with three sets of countries: U.S. competitors and adversaries; middle countries; and then countries in the developing world. And I would expect that regardless of what transpires between the United States and Russia, that three-part diplomatic strategy on China’s part will likely endure.

PATRICIA KIM: Tara, I want to bring back the European perspective. You’ve made the case that the U.S. and Europe should align their China policies, especially given Beijing’s support for Russia. How feasible is such alignment under current conditions or the current U.S. administration? 

Could the U.S. and Europe coordinate on China? And if so, what should they prioritize as they develop a coordinated approach?
 
TARA VARMA: You know, Pattie, this is a really important issue. And I think looking at the legacy that the Biden team had left, looking at a world where the U.S. and Europe could work together on China, one of the things that I thought was [that] there was until a few weeks ago, a shared assessment or shared understanding from the European side and the American side of the trajectory that China was taking, which was more and more autocratic, more and more supportive of Russia. 

And yet China is such a crucial part both of the American and the European economies and the American and European economies being intertwined themselves. This triangle was really important to tackle.

I think we’re in a fairly different situation now where I’m not sure that the U.S. and Europe share the same assessment when it comes to China and what to do with China. It seems quite clear that President Trump wants to do a deal with President Xi Jinping in the same way that he wants to deal with Russia. 

And that he believes in spheres of influences, that China has the right to a sphere of influence, that Russia has the right to a sphere of influence, and in the same way that the U.S. has a right to a sphere of influence. And that he believes that these three great powers are the great powers that matter today.

He evidently doesn’t really care about what Europeans think, or doesn’t believe in their contribution in any way whatsoever. I was thinking the U.S. and Europe could cooperate on critical raw materials. 

When we look at the negotiation that he is starting with President Zelensky, it’s really about the U.S. having access to critical raw materials, not the U.S.’s partners in any way. 

Same for securing key technologies or building export control, building key standards on technology, all these issues that were really key to the previous U.S. administration. They don’t seem key at all to the current administration, or at least the current administration doesn’t see a role for allies in that relationship.

So I think the triangulation in the Europe-U.S.-China relationship is really different now than it was a few weeks ago, and I see unfortunately now very little space for discussion and deal-making, because I think what President Trump is looking for is not so much transactionalism or deal-making as we were told, but he’s in the logic where it’s more of an extortion really, he’s looking to make deals with people where his counterparts don’t benefit from the deal at all. 

He wants to be the sole benefactor of the deals that he makes. We are seeing this with Ukraine, we’re seeing this with Europeans. And so, unfortunately, I think the space for cooperation is really limited right now between the U.S. and Europe on building a China strategy.

PATRICIA KIM: Aslı, the last question today goes to you. Regardless of the developments in Ukraine or potential shifts in the U.S.-Russia-China dynamic, the expectation is, as Ali alluded to, that China will continue courting the Global South, positioning itself as a champion of a more multipolar world order, and we expect Russia to do the same. 

In our working group paper, one of our key recommendations was that the United States should take the competition for influence in the Global South seriously. So from your perspective, and given the situation today, what concrete steps should the United States be taking to strengthen its position and to engage in this critical arena?

ASLI AYDINTAŞBAŞ: Pattie, it doesn’t look like someone from the Trump administration has read our paper, at least the part on the Global South. I’m kidding, of course. The Global South does not seem to be a priority for the Trump administration and our recommendation that the United States must more vigorously counter Chinese and Russian charge, that it wants a hegemonic control and so on. 

It just seems so irrelevant at this point in history. It’s hard to see Washington prioritizing an affirmative economic agenda in the Global South or [going] around the world talking about reforms to the longstanding problems in multilateral institutions.

I mean, if the cuts in USAID and U.S. foreign aid were not enough of a sign, I think that the type of policies and language we’re hearing—on tariffs and the Gaza Riviera, Greenland, and Ukraine, rare minerals deal, et cetera—it is making a clear case to countries in the Global South that [the] U.S. is unpredictable, somewhat chaotic, but also that it is going to very much act like—Tara has used the word extractionist, and I think that is a good expression—but it’s going to very much have an America First agenda.

This is a different United States, and it is clearly not one that is going to be seeking a more inclusive international order. So that has a sense of creating an equality in terms of how countries see the U.S. and China.
And it also creates a situation in which Russia and China do not have to try very hard to make a case that the U.S. has a hegemonic attitude in its relations with other countries.

Because the truth is, power as an enforcer of a rules-based international order of liberal democracy and so on was a huge chunk of U.S. power and leverage around the world, [including] the Global South. 

Sometimes countries resented this democracy versus autocracy argument. But it was the case that the United States was still the primary enforcer of a rules-based order and a defender of democracy.

Now, if that’s not going to be the case, I think there could be a sense that China and the United States are really, you know, sort of coming from a similar place. And China does have the advantage of having more predictability and stability in what it offers the world.

So what I see right now in the Global South is a huge panic. They don’t know how to deal with the Trump administration. They don’t know how to engage with the Trump administration. 

They don’t know how to position themselves in a world that’s not just transactional, but it’s possibly a triangulated form of a great power condominium and a world in which there are spheres of influence. And that’s really bad news for a lot of countries.

And I think that, you know, the two high profile visits we’ve seen recently at the White House, you know, the King of Jordan coming to the Oval Office, or President Zelenskyy coming into the office, and having to leave in situations that left him far worse off, somewhat humiliated and worse off back at home, is also creating this sense that maybe the Global South will stay behind and watch it for now and see where it goes. And it doesn’t look like it has any other option at the moment.

PATRICIA KIM: Asli, as you just discussed, it really is an unprecedented time. There’s uncertainty across the globe, not just in the Global South, but in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

We have a lot of work ahead in determining whether the shifts we’re witnessing are temporary or represent lasting changes in the global order—and in assessing the impact of these developments on China and Russia’s strategic relationship and the implications for US interests.

I’d like to express my gratitude to all of our speakers for joining us today for such an insightful and timely discussion. Aslı, Tara, Angela, Ali, that was truly a tour de force. Thank you once again, and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in.

(Patricia M. Kim, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Angela Stent, Tara Varma, and Ali Wyne)

Patricia M. Kim :  Foreign Policy, Center for Asia Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş : Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe, The Turkey Project

Angela Stent  : Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

Tara Varma    : Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

Ali Wyne        : Senior Research and Advocacy Adviser, U.S.-China - International Crisis Group

The US Opioid Epidemic Has Gone Through Four Phases: The Fentanyl Crisis From Naloxone to Tariffs

US President Donald Trump ramps up border enforcement efforts as Trump demands crackdown on immigration, drug trafficking

USA, OMIKAMI-TV - Since fentanyl entered the U.S. illegal drug market, more than a million people in the United States have died of opioid overdose. (8/3/2025).

The costs of fentanyl use go beyond the tragic deaths and drug-use-related morbidity, however. In addition to having significant implications for public health and the economy, the fentanyl crisis intersects in many ways with U.S. foreign policy.

U.S. overdose deaths began declining in 2023. But there is little certainty as to which domestic- or foreign-policy interventions have been crucial drivers. 

The wider availability of overdose-reversal medication is fundamental, as is expanded access to evidence-based treatment. It is also possible that the Biden administration’s actions toward international supply from Mexico and China are contributing to this reduction in overdose deaths: since the start of 2024, China has become more active in suppressing the flow of precursor chemicals, and Mexican cartels, perhaps purposefully, are now trafficking a less lethal version of fentanyl. 

A wide array of policy measures as well as structural factors outside of policy control could be cumulatively and interactively reducing mortality.

The fact that the declines in mortality are not uniform across U.S. ethnic, racial, and social groups or geographic areas suggests the importance of access to medication for overdose reversal and the treatment of opioid use disorder, as well as the influence of structural factors. 

There is strong bipartisan support for preserving access to medication-based treatments. But crucially, access depends on medical insurance coverage, such as that provided through Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. There are strong ideological divides about the financing and structure of the U.S. insurance industry as well as other aspects of drug policy.

On February 1, President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on imports from China until each country stops the flow of fentanyl (as well as migrants, in the cases of Mexico and Canada).1 He gave all three countries a month-long reprieve before implementing the tariffs in March to see if they satisfied his counternarcotics demands. 

Canada adopted a robust package of anti-fentanyl measures. Mexico too tried to appease the United States through a set of law enforcement actions, though it held out on perhaps the most important form of cooperation—expanding the presence and mandates of U.S. law enforcement agents in Mexico to levels at least approaching those enjoyed during the Felipe Calderón administration.

Unlike Mexico or Canada, China did not take any further counternarcotics actions and instead responded with counter-tariffs of its own, even as Trump threatened to add additional tariffs on imports from China of up to 60%.2 On March 4, 2025, Trump dismissed Canada’s and Mexico’s law enforcement actions as inadequate, implementing the 25% tariffs. 

He also added an additional 10% tariff on China, meaning the second Trump administration has now placed a 20% tariff on Chinese goods.3
Apart from increasing the cost of goods for U.S. customers and driving up inflation, these tariffs will have complex effects on anti-fentanyl cooperation. 

Any large U.S. tariffs on China will likely eviscerate Beijing’s cooperation with the United States, resetting the diplomatic clock back to the bargaining of 2018 and noncooperation of 2021-2023. 

As crucial as it is to induce the government of Mexico to start robustly and systematically acting against Mexican criminal groups, whose power has grown enormously and threatens the Mexican state, Mexican society, and U.S. interests, Mexico has no capacity to halt the flow of fentanyl.

Mixing the issues of migration and fentanyl risks Mexico appeasing the United States principally on migration while placating it with inadequate anti-fentanyl actions. Further, U.S. military action in Mexico, which has been threatened by Republican politicians close to Trump, would yield no sustained weakening of Mexican criminal groups or fentanyl flows. 

It would, however, poison the political atmosphere in Mexico and hinder its meaningful cooperation with the United States.

Strong law enforcement cooperation with Canada is crucial. Canada has been facing law enforcement challenges, such as the expansion of Mexican and Asian organized crime groups and money laundering operations in Canada. But disregarding the domestic and collaborative law enforcement efforts Canada has put on the table is capricious.

At home, Trump’s favored approach, which renews focus on imprisoning users and drug dealers, and dramatically toughening penalties for the latter, would be ineffective and counterproductive. And while providing treatment is very important, the dramatic effect of treatment modality on effectiveness cannot be overlooked. Approaches to treatment should be designed based on evidence, not ideology.

(Vanda Felbab-Brown) OMIKAMI-TV

Director - Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors, Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

Trump’s Funding Freeze for USAID Programs Will Be Bad for Africa, China-Africa Analysts Say: ‘China Will Not ‘Replace’ USAID in Africa’!

SOUTH AFRICA, OMIKAMI-TV - The Trump administration’s decision to freeze billions of dollars in foreign assistance creates an opportunity for China to strengthen its presence in Africa, but Beijing will not step in to replace the decades-old aid programs now coming to an end, say China-Africa analysts.(3/3/2025).

Semafor spoke to nearly a dozen China-Africa analysts in recent days who said that China was set to position itself as a reliable partner in the face of the uncertainty unleashed by the US shuttering programs such as those run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). But even then, few of the analysts thought there would be notable change in China’s overall approach in Africa in the short to medium term.

“The idea that the dismantling of USAID opens the door wider for China in Africa is a misdirection,” said Hannah Ryder, CEO of Development Reimagined, a development consultancy. “They don’t give aid in that way, so they can’t “replace” USAID.” Eric Olander, editor of China Global South Project, agreed: “It absolutely is an opportunity for China but not in the obvious ways.” He said it is more likely that China steps up with headline-grabbing moves as it did with the provision of vaccines in some African countries early during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While China has spent tens of billions of dollars through trade and infrastructure project loans in Africa over the last decade, it spends significantly less on aid. Around half of its $3 billion aid budget is deployed on the continent.

KNOW MORE

USAID managed a budget of up to $50 billion last year, running nearly 6,000 humanitarian, health, and developmental projects around the world. It has had a significant impact on African economic development projects, such as Power Africa and Prosper Africa, many of which are now either paused or completely shut due to the funding freeze imposed by US President Donald Trump’s executive order in January. USAID is expected to slash its staff of 10,000 to about 300 with just about a dozen workers left to focus on Africa within the US State Department.
China’s presence in Africa, which has ramped up over the last two decades, has traditionally focused on trade, technology, infrastructure, and security rather than humanitarian aid or health, said Ronak Gopaldas, an analyst with Cape Town-based Signal Risk. “But Trump’s America First approach will create some geopolitical opportunities for China to step into a leadership void in Africa,” he noted.

Olander said any moves by China would not be on a comparable scale to the US’ traditional efforts. Last month China and South Korea sent $4 million to the Africa Centres for Disease Control to help plug some of the immediate health funding gaps left by the US aid freeze. But that number was set against cuts of $115 million by the US from its previous pledge of $500 million. “We shouldn’t expect to see the Chinese try to match USAID because they don’t have the infrastructure to do that and it’s not in their diplomatic DNA to run large aid programs.”

YINKA’S VIEW

There has been plenty of speculation in recent months about how the expected “transactional” nature of a Trump 2.0 administration would play out in Africa. If you want some idea of how that might work, look no further than how the Chinese have operated on the continent for the last 20 years.

Their emphasis has always been on dealmaking, transactional partnerships, and “win-win” agreements. Africa has been an important setting for Chinese global economic expansion. Even as the US focused on building legacy infrastructure systems for delivering vital humanitarian and health programs, China was busy building actual physical infrastructure of bridges and roads.

Both were always needed across most African countries, and it could be argued — despite the misleading talk of Chinese debt traps — that the last 10 to 15 years has been a fertile period for African governments hoping to develop with US humanitarian aid and Chinese infrastructure support.

Sanjeev Gupta, a veteran development finance consultant who has partnered with Chinese companies on projects across the continent, said African governments have a deeper relationship with China than many realize. “China has a much more elevated game with a nuanced understanding of the terrain in a way that the US does not,” said Gupta.

However, that deeper relationship could evolve into a dependency if the US leaves the field for China in many countries, notes W. Gyude Moore, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington.

“Every state seeks to diversify its partnerships to prevent a dangerous dependence on a single actor,” he said, noting China is already Africa’s largest trade partner and bilateral creditor. “The US withdrawal only increases China’s importance making it arguably the only game in town.”

THE VIEW FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Even if China had ambitions to fill in the aid funding gaps left by a US exit, it might not be able to do so given its own economic challenges and growing domestic concern about spending abroad, said Atlantic Council’s Alexander Tripp. 

“It’s unclear if China has the capability and capacity to do what the US traditionally has done,” he told Semafor. Tripp pointed to a few “soft power” pushes by China including the “Peace Ark,” a Chinese hospital ship that docked in South Africa last year and that Chinese leaders have “been eager” to highlight. “But initiatives like this are more one-offs.”

If the US employs a more transactional approach with Africa it could result in more strategic projects like the Lobito Corridor, a project inaugurated by the Biden administration in Angola last year, particularly as the race for rare minerals needed for electric vehicles and green energy projects accelerates. That could see the US take on China in a sector in which the Asian giant currently leads, especially in the processing of these rare earth metals.

NOTABLE

The USAID cuts are “going to do an enormous amount of damage to US soft power,” a senior contractor for the agency told the Christian Science Monitor. 

(Adegoke) OMIKAMI-TV 

'How The Uncontrolled Power of AI Can Trigger a Nuclear War Between Major Countries'

USA, OMIKAMI -TV - Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed late in 2024 that artificial intelligence (AI) should never be empowered to decide to launch a nuclear war. (01/03/2025).

The groundwork for this excellent policy decision was laid over five years of discussions at the Track II U.S.-China Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence and National Security convened by the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy.

By examining several cases from the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War, one can see what might have happened if AI had existed back in that period and been trusted with the job of deciding to launch nuclear weapons or to preempt an anticipated nuclear attack—and had been wrong in its decisionmaking. 

Given the prevailing ideas, doctrines, and procedures of the day, an AI system “trained” on that information (perhaps through the use of many imaginary scenarios that reflected the current conventional wisdom) might have decided to launch nuclear weapons >, with catastrophic results.

"My Journey on the Nuclear Brink" is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from nuclear disaster.

The film tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear age, his role in efforts to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed regarding the threat posed by these weapons.

In his extraordinary career, Perry has dealt head-on with changing nuclear threats. Decades of experience and special access to classified knowledge regarding strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique and chilling perspective to conclude that, "Nuclear weapons do more to endanger our security than to safeguard it," William J. Perry's simulants.

Thankfully, in the examples I will consider—the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the September 1983 false-alarm crisis, and the October 1983 Able Archer exercise—a human being showed greater awareness of the stakes and better common sense than the received wisdom and doctrine of the day. It would be imprudent to assume that humans will always show restraint > in such situations, and that well-trained AI systems may provide useful inputs to human decisions.

"Environmental tragedies like Chernobyl and Exxon Valdez remind us that catastrophic accidents are always possible in a world of dangerous technologies," wrote the 1993 Best Book Award Winner, Science, Technology, and Environmental Studies Section of the American Political Science Association.

"Nuclear weapons' seemingly excellent safety record, however, has led academics, policymakers, and the general public to believe that nuclear weapons can serve as a safe deterrent for the foreseeable future," said Scott Douglas Sagan, provocatively challenging that optimism.

Sagan's research into previously classified archives pierces the veil of safety that has shrouded U.S. nuclear weapons and reveals a hidden history of terrifying "near-disasters."

Nevertheless, it is sobering that when facing the real possibility of nuclear Armageddon, human beings exhibited a level of thoughtfulness and compassion that machines, trained in cold-blooded “rational” ways, might not have possessed at the time and might not possess in the future.

Three close calls with nuclear Armageddon

The Cuban missile crisis began when U.S. intelligence learned that the Soviet Union was shipping nuclear-capable missiles and tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba over the course of 1962, in an attempt to improve the nuclear balance with the United States. Even though they did not know the extent to which the Soviets already had nuclear weapons on Cuban soil, almost all of President John F. Kennedy’s advisors, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended conventional air strikes against the Soviet positions. 

Such strikes could easily have led to Soviet escalation >, perhaps by nearby Soviet submarine commanders (armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes) against U.S. warships, or by Soviet ground troops in Cuba (perhaps against the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay). Kennedy opted for a combination of a naval quarantine of Cuba (to prevent any more weaponry from reaching the island by sea) and quiet backdoor diplomacy with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that included offers to remove American missiles from Turkey and to never invade Cuba. 

The Soviets were persuaded to take this deal, withdraw their missiles and nuclear weapons from Cuba, and halt any further military buildup on the island, then run by Fidel Castro and his government.

"In October 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union nearly came to nuclear conflict over the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba. In this hour-by-hour chronicle of those tense days," veteran Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs says, "just how close we came to the end of the world."

"Here," he continues, "is the first gripping account of Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the Soviet handling of nuclear warheads in Cuba; and the extraordinary story of the U-2 spy plane that disappeared over Russia at the height of the crisis," says Dobbs, who has taught at leading American universities, including Princeton.

Written like a thriller, "One Minute to Midnight" is a deeply researched account of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., called "the most dangerous moment in human history," and the definitive book on the Cuban missile crisis.

In the September 1983 false-alarm crisis, a single Soviet watch officer, Stanislav Petrov, > saw indications from sensor systems that the United States was attacking the Soviet Union with five intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would detonate within perhaps 20 minutes.

“He was right,” a family friend said in mid-September. “The satellites had mistaken the glare of the sun off the clouds for missiles.” 

In fact, what the sensors had picked up were reflections of sunlight from unusual cloud formations; the sensors were not “smart” enough to recognize the reflections for what they really were. Realizing that any American attack on the Soviet Union would almost certainly be much larger—since a small attack would only provoke a Soviet retaliation and have little chance of causing meaningful damage to Soviet nuclear forces—Petrov single-handedly chose not to escalate the situation by recommending “retaliation” against the perceived American strike.

Responding to news of Petrov’s death, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) tweeted, “Moments of nuclear tension demand careful self-control. You may not know Stanislav Petrov, but at the height of the Cold War, he saved the world.”—ALICIA SANDERS-ZAKRE

Whether an AI system would have reached that same prudent conclusion, when prevailing doctrine said that any incoming attack likely required immediate retaliation, is anyone’s guess. In this case, the actual human being improvised, using instinct more than formal protocol, to arrive at the correct decision when faced with the unthinkable possibility of an actual nuclear war. Petrov’s basic human essence and character seem to have saved the day, at least in this case.

Just a couple of months later in November 1983, NATO undertook a major military exercise known as Able Archer > during a very tense year in U.S.-Soviet relations. President Ronald Reagan had given his “Star Wars” speech the past March, soon after declaring the Soviet Union an evil empire; then, in September, Soviet pilots shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it mistakenly strayed over Soviet territory, killing everyone on board. The United States was also in the process of preparing to station nuclear-capable Pershing II missiles in Europe, with a very short flight time to Moscow if ever launched.

So, when NATO conducted Able Archer, Soviet leaders worried that it might be used as cover to prepare a very real attack, perhaps with the aim of decapitating the Soviet leadership. At one point in the exercise, NATO forces simulated preparing for a nuclear attack by placing dummy warheads on nuclear-capable aircraft. Soviet intelligence witnessed the preparations but could not tell, of course, that the warheads were fake.

Soviet leaders thus “responded” by readying nuclear-capable systems with very real warheads of their own. American intelligence in turn witnessed those preparations—but a savvy U.S. Air Force general, Leonard Perroots, realized what was occurring and recommended to superiors that the United States should not respond by placing real warheads on its own systems. 

"Whether doing so would have provoked one side or the other to launch a preemptive strike is anyone’s guess; however, the proximity of the weapons to each other, and mutual fears of a decapitating surprise attack, would have made any such situation extremely fraught," explains Leonard Perroots.

“In response to this exercise, the Soviets readied their forces, including their nuclear forces, in a way that scared NATO decision makers eventually all the way up to President [Ronald] Reagan,” says Nate Jones, author of Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War and a senior fellow at the National Security Archive.

Would AI have done better?

In all three cases, AI might have elected to start a nuclear war. During the Cuban missile crisis >, American officials considered the Western Hemisphere to be a sanctuary from hostile powers, and the consensus view was strongly in favor of preventing any Soviet, or communist, encroachment. 

The year before, the United States through the CIA had attempted to work with Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. Certainly, the positioning of Soviet nuclear weapons less than 100 miles from U.S. shores triggered prevalent American thinking about what was and was not acceptable.

Since no sensors could determine the absence of Soviet nuclear warheads, a “cautious” approach based on the doctrine of the day would indeed have been to eliminate those Soviet capabilities before they could be made operational. Only a very real American president—one who had heightened cautionary instincts after witnessing combat in World War II and watching the U.S. bureaucracy make a mess out of the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba the year before—thought otherwise. 

This example shows that the ban on AI starting a nuclear war should include cases in which conventional weapons might be used to strike nuclear-capable weapons or weapons systems.

With the false-warning crisis in September 1983, it took an astute individual to realize the unlikelihood that the United States was attacking with just a few warheads. Indeed, a different officer, or an AI-directed control center, would likely have assessed that the five ICBMs were attempting a decapitation strike against leadership or could otherwise have drawn the wrong conclusion about what was going on. The result might well have been a “retaliatory” strike that was in fact a first strike, and that would have likely produced a very real American nuclear response.

With Able Archer, since American officials knew that they were only conducting an exercise, and knew that the Soviets knew as much, many would have been stunned to see the Soviets put real warheads into firing position. Most might have concluded that the Soviets were using the NATO exercise as a way to dupe NATO > officials into lowering their guard as the Soviet Union prepared a very real attack. 

"AI systems trained on the prevailing doctrines and standard procedures of the day would have likely recommended at the very least an American nuclear alert. And since both superpowers had plans for massive first strikes in those days, designed to minimize the other side’s potential for a strong second strike, a situation in which both sides had nuclear weapons on the highest wartime alerts could have been very dangerous," said Able Archer >.

"Yes, it is possible that very good AI might have determined restraint was warranted in these cases—and might do so in a future situation—perhaps even better than some humans would have. AI can be used as a check on human thinking and behavior. But these examples underscore how dangerous it could be to trust a machine to make the most momentous decision in human history. Xi and Biden made the right decision, and future leaders should stand by it," he concluded.

(Michael E. O’Hanlon) OMIKAMI-TV 

Director of Research - Foreign Policy, Director - Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Co-Director - Africa Security Initiative, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy