This paper draws on my professional experience working on energy and climate issues in the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as many conversations with policymakers, technical experts, and civil society stakeholders from Athens to Beirut and from Istanbul to Cairo. The renewable energy revolution offers both cleaner power and a practical foundation for cooperation through shared infrastructure and capital flows. The region’s energy future is as much about finance, diplomacy, and institutional trust as it is about technology. My aim here is to explore how financial mechanisms can bridge historic divides and support a shared energy transition. My hope is that this paper contributes to reimagining the Eastern Mediterranean not as a collection of competing interests, but as an interconnected energy community bound by mutual prosperity and resilience.

• Introduction
• Rising tides: Meeting the Mediterranean’s surging energy needs
• From pledge to power: Speeding the region’s renewable revolution
• Beyond borders, beyond banks: Innovative financing for regional energy
• Shared foundations: Creating a regional energy community
• Shared horizon: Finance and diplomacy for a unified Eastern Mediterranean energy landscape

Introduction

The Eastern Mediterranean region stands at a critical juncture in its energy development. Positioned as a geopolitical crossroads with significant renewable energy resources and strategic importance, the region encompassing Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt has the potential to become a leader in sustainable energy while strengthening regional cooperation and economic integration.

This study examines how the Eastern Mediterranean can secure a sustainable energy future through a two-pronged approach: strategically financing next-generation grid technologies that leapfrog legacy infrastructure challenges, while simultaneously developing integrated financing mechanisms that foster cross-border cooperation. This dual strategy aligns technological innovation with regional stability and market integration needs, creating a framework for sustainable development that transcends political boundaries.

The Eastern Mediterranean’s abundant renewable energy potential, particularly in solar and wind resources, presents a transformative opportunity. The region could generate approximately 144 percent of its projected 2050 electricity demand through renewable energy sources.¹ Yet despite this potential, significant challenges persist. Aging and fragmented grid infrastructure, geopolitical tensions, and uneven regulatory frameworks hinder energy integration.

Additionally, ongoing political conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and maritime boundary threats in the region complicate the development of cross-border infrastructure, while the region remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels at a time when global climate commitments push for rapid energy transition.²

Meeting these challenges requires more than traditional approaches. This paper argues that innovative financing mechanisms can serve dual purposes: funding advanced infrastructure development while simultaneously functioning as instruments of regional cooperation. By strategically structuring financial tools that encourage cross-border collaboration, the Eastern Mediterranean can transform its energy landscape while creating economic interdependencies that help overcome historical political tensions.

The analysis unfolds in four parts. First, it examines the regional context—focusing on power demand trends, the state of grid infrastructure, and the region’s renewable energy potential. Second, it analyzes how COP28 commitments (made at the 2023 climate conference) intensify the need for rapid renewable integration and technological leapfrogging. Third, it evaluates the financing mechanisms available to fund this transition, from multilateral development banks and green bonds to Islamic finance and bilateral investment. Finally, it explores how these financing tools can support frameworks for regional collaboration, including physical infrastructure development, regulatory harmonization, energy diplomacy, and governance structures.

Rising tides: Meeting the Mediterranean’s surging energy needs

The region’s energy landscape is characterized by growing demand, aging infrastructure, and untapped renewable potential against a backdrop of complex geopolitical relationships. These interrelated factors explain why the strategies of technological leapfrogging and regional integration are necessary for sustainable energy development in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Regional power demand trajectory

Electricity demand across the Eastern Mediterranean is expected to grow substantially in the coming decades. Turkey, a pivotal economy in the region, saw its electricity consumption reach 348 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2024, marking a 3.8-percent increase from the previous year.³ Projections indicate a rise to 380 TWh in 2025, 455 TWh by 2030, and 510 TWh by 2035.⁴

This growth trajectory is mirrored in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, driven by population growth, urbanization, and economic development. Meeting this demand sustainably requires a massive expansion of renewable energy capacity and modernized infrastructure to support it.

Recognizing the potential and cost competitiveness of renewable energy systems, countries in the region have established ambitious renewable energy targets. Turkey aims to double its electricity capacity by 2035, with renewable energy providing nearly 65 percent of power.⁵ Egypt has set a target of renewable energy providing 42 percent of its power by 2030 and 58 percent by 2040, while Greece plans to cover at least 60 percent of its power needs with green electricity by 2030.⁶

Untapped renewable potential

The Eastern Mediterranean possesses immense renewable energy potential that remains largely untapped, though Turkey and Greece have made progress in this area. The whole Mediterranean basin’s current renewable capacities stand at 90 gigawatts (GW) for solar photovoltaic and 82 GW for wind energy, with a potential exceeding 3 TW for the whole basin—a figure that underscores the opportunity for rapid expansion.⁷

The Eastern Mediterranean’s total renewable energy capacity in 2023 was around 90 GW, with research suggesting that the region could potentially generate 144 percent of its projected 2050 electricity demand through renewable energy sources.⁸ Egypt could produce 188 percent of its demand from solar and wind energy, with 76 GW of surplus electricity production. Syria could produce 592 percent of its total demand, while Turkey and Greece could produce 105 percent and 96 percent, respectively, of their 2050 demand.⁹

According to the author’s estimates, if the pipeline of solar, wind, and hydropower projects in Egypt is fully implemented—including projects that are announced, planned, or under construction—its renewables generation capacity would grow twelvefold, in line with those of other North African nations. If the pipeline of solar, wind, and hydropower projects in Greece is fully implemented, this would result in a sevenfold increase in renewable energy generation capacity.¹⁰ These estimates are not just an opportunity to enhance energy security and accelerate the energy transition. They are also an economic opportunity with the potential to create jobs, stimulate investment, and position the region as a global leader in the growing clean energy sector.

The rapidly growing power demands across the Eastern Mediterranean necessitate expanding renewable energy capacity while also fundamentally rethinking how electricity is transmitted and shared. Addressing this challenge requires examining the current state of interconnection infrastructure and identifying opportunities to transform the region’s fragmented grid systems into an integrated network.

The interconnection imperative

Cross-border transmission grid interconnections are of cornerstone importance in the development of power systems. Grids that depend on intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, benefit greatly from interconnections for balancing the intermittent nature of renewable sources. Because different countries have varying electricity demands throughout the day, spare capacities and shortfalls can be balanced between different grids.

The Eastern Mediterranean’s grid infrastructure presents a fragmented landscape in which cross-border electricity trade is limited. Northern countries such as Greece benefit from advanced energy grids, while southern and eastern regions lag behind. Across the whole Mediterranean, northern-shore countries have sufficient, albeit underutilized, interconnections, while southern-shore countries lack interconnection infrastructure and synchronization. ​Additionally, there are few north-south interconnections, with only a link from Spain to Morocco and another from Turkey to Syria.​¹¹ This disparity creates both a challenge and an opportunity for leapfrogging conventional development paths.

Eastern Mediterranean countries continue to prioritize energy self-sufficiency through domestic power generation rather than regional power trading. With the exception of the Palestinian territories, which import nearly all (99.4 percent) of their electricity due to minimal local generation capacity, several countries maintain exceptionally low power import levels—around 1 percent of their total consumption—including Cyprus (0 percent), Lebanon (0.078 to 3.61 percent), Jordan (0.29 to 2 percent), and Egypt (0.29 to 0.41 percent). Similarly, with the exception of Greece and its integration into the European electricity market, power exports remain negligible throughout the region, with most countries exporting less than 1 percent of their generated electricity. This self-contained approach stems from incompatible technical systems among national grids that impede synchronous operation, difficulties in maintaining grid stability across borders, and persistent political tensions that discourage deeper energy integration.¹²

Some interconnections exist in the Eastern Mediterranean but are underutilized or nonoperational. Many of the interconnections are used purely on an emergency basis to cover unexpected or scheduled outages, or are not in operation at all. Key connections such as Turkey-Syria (400 kilovolts (kV)), Jordan-Syria (400 kV), and Lebanon-Syria (400 kV, 220 kV, and 66 kV) are currently inactive, largely due to regional conflicts and technical incompatibilities between national grids, including different frequencies and control systems.¹³

Yet some progress toward greater regional integration is under way. A “super grid” is slowly emerging across the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean Master Plan 2022 outlines several Eastern Mediterranean interconnectors including: the Great Sea Interconnector between Greece, Cyprus, and Israel (1000 MW); the EuroAfrica interconnector to link Cyprus and Egypt (1000 MW), the Green Energy Interconnector (GREGY)  between Greece and Egypt (3000 MW of primarily renewable power); and a number of capacity-expansion proposals such as the ones between Egypt and Jordan (1100 MW), Jordan and Syria (800 MW), Syria and Turkey (600 MW), and Jordan and the Palestinian territories (100 MW).¹⁴

These projects are designed to enhance electrical integration, facilitate renewable energy exchange, and improve security of supply. The Great Sea Interconnector, which is under construction, is expected to be operational by 2030 with a capacity of up to 2 GW, while the GREGY project is expected to be completed by 2031.¹⁵ These developments have been planned for more than a decade. An older proposal, the Mediterranean Electricity Ring, aimed to connect Mediterranean countries via a circle of interconnections to facilitate cross-border power exchange. In the Eastern Mediterranean, this included connecting Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece.¹⁶

However, significant challenges remain. Tensions caused by maritime disputes between regional countries such as Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, the unresolved Cyprus question, and the protracted Israel-Palestinian conflict, all impede the development of cross-border infrastructure.¹⁷

In addition, the geopolitical diversity, uneven political stability, and limited political trust among Eastern Mediterranean countries dampen some national governments’ interest in exploring partial reliance on external electricity. Reasons cited often include the potential for electricity being used as a geopolitical lever, the risk of disruption caused by internal conflict, infrastructure failure, governance breakdown propagating across borders, and concerns about expanding cybersecurity vulnerabilities by exposing national grids to transboundary breaches.

Additionally, many countries maintain vertical monopolies in their electricity sectors—e.g., utilities such as Electricité du Liban (EDL) in Lebanon, Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) in Israel, and, to some extent, various companies in Jordan—which enable them to control generation, transmission, and distribution, thus limiting market competition and cross-border electricity flow.

Technical barriers are equally significant, as systems have evolved separately with different standards and technologies. Alternating-current (AC) interconnections require high degrees of technical compatibility and operational coordination, creating stability risks when disturbances in one location impact other areas of the network. These challenges are compounded by insufficient regulatory frameworks and governance structures needed to support cross-border trading.¹⁸

From pledge to power: Speeding the region’s renewable revolution

Developing renewable energy capacity and establishing physical interconnections form the backbone of regional energy integration, and these efforts need to rapidly scale up due to the urgency of the climate crisis. Global climate commitments and obligations provide a framework for measuring progress and highlight the gap between current trajectories and required outcomes.

Meeting COP28 targets

The commitment at COP28 to triple the world’s installed renewable energy generation capacity by 2030 provides a clear imperative for action in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nations collectively committed to this target as part of the global stocktake of the 2015 Paris Agreement.¹⁹ In addition, 130 nations—including Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey—also joined the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, a voluntary coalition committing to triple their renewable energy capacity and double the rate of energy-efficiency improvement.²⁰ In September 2024, nine northern Mediterranean countries (often known as the MED9) agreed to collaborate on making the region a renewable energy hub, aligning with this global target.²¹

A growing grassroots initiative known as TeraMed is seeking to mobilize Mediterranean countries to triple their renewable energy capacity and reach 1 terawatt in combined generation capacity.²²

As of 2023, Eastern Mediterranean countries had an installed renewable power capacity of 90 GW, accounting for 42 percent of their total electricity generation.²³ To meet the COP28 target, the region must reach 405 GW of capacity by 2030, requiring a steep annual growth of 45 GW. Unsurprisingly, the region is not on track. With the exceptions of Greece and Egypt, all Eastern Mediterranean countries must accelerate their efforts if they are to meet the threefold-increase target.²⁴

In my view, meeting these ambitious renewable targets requires more than simply adding generation capacity. The Eastern Mediterranean needs advanced infrastructure solutions that can both accommodate the tripling of renewable energy and overcome existing grid fragmentation. Smart grid technologies represent the critical connective tissue that will enable this rapid transition.

Smart grid innovation: The digital backbone of renewable integration

To effectively integrate the growing share of renewables and enhance grid stability, the Eastern Mediterranean must leapfrog conventional infrastructure by investing in smart grids. In addition to interconnections, smart grid technologies enable better management of intermittent renewable sources, improve reliability, and reduce losses. These technologies include battery storage, advanced metering infrastructure, dynamic line rating, and other network automation, data management, and analytics technologies for real-time monitoring and control.

Battery storage is particularly crucial for managing the intermittency of renewable energy sources, ensuring grid stability as the share of renewables increases. However, large-scale battery storage projects are still nascent in the Eastern Mediterranean—with the exception of Turkey, which set a target for battery energy storage capacity to reach 7.5 GW by 2035.²⁵

Flexibility mechanisms, including demand response and renewable hydrogen production, further enhance grid stability. Technologies such as electrolysis using solar and wind electricity for hydrogen production are gaining traction. Turkey has plans to develop 5 GW of electrolyzer capacity for green hydrogen production by 2035, and to expand capacity to a staggering 70 GW by 2053.²⁶ Similar applications are being explored in Egypt, which plans to become a transit route for renewable hydrogen.²⁷

Smart meters also help manage the grid better through demand-side management. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece is leading on smart meters. It plans to roll out 3.12 million units by 2026, funded by the European Investment Bank, to enhance energy efficiency and support demand response.²⁸

Deploying advanced grid technologies across borders also requires moving beyond identifying technical requirements to addressing the fundamental question of funding this transition. Additionally, this paper argues that the financing challenge is not merely about capital mobilization but also the creation of financial structures that simultaneously enable technological leapfrogging and regional cooperation.

Beyond borders, beyond banks: Innovative financing for regional energy

The transition from technical requirements to financial realities necessitates examining the substantial capital investments needed to realize the Eastern Mediterranean’s energy transformation. While technological solutions provide the roadmap, financing mechanisms will determine the pace and scale of implementation, particularly when the magnitude of required investment exceeds traditional national budgetary capacities.

Quantifying the investment challenge

The Eastern Mediterranean’s energy transition demands significant capital to expand limited renewable energy capacity, modernize aging grids, and develop cross-border interconnections.

Renewable energy projects typically cost around $1 million per megawatt of installed capacity. Their costs are already competitive, and they are the cheapest form of new generation capacity across the region. Moreover, those costs are expected to continue falling and renewables are expected to be the cheapest source of electricity in most countries—including for storage—by 2027.²⁹

However, given the sheer scale of buildup required to meet COP28 commitments, the enormity of the financing required cannot be overstated. If the region is to build 45 GW of renewable energy capacity this year, this would require approximately $45 billion just for generation capacity at current costs, excluding transmission and storage infrastructure.³⁰

Transmission infrastructure is another challenge, especially given how its cost is often borne by grid operators rather than by private developers. The Great Sea Interconnector, for example, is estimated to cost approximately €1.9 billion ($2.08 billion).³¹

By 2030, the region’s total investment needs for sustainable energy transition could well exceed $300 billion. The magnitude of investment required highlights why ordinary national financing approaches are insufficient for the Eastern Mediterranean’s energy transformation. Instead, the region needs to scale finance beyond national resources and to explore financing instruments that mobilize capital at scale and also create structures for regional cooperation, serving as both financial tools and diplomatic instruments in a region where political tensions have historically impeded collaboration.

Financing the energy transition

The Eastern Mediterranean’s sustainable energy future will require mobilizing diverse financing sources and mechanisms. A mix of public and private funding sources—ranging from multilateral lenders and climate funds to innovative partnerships and financial instruments—can bridge the investment gap and accelerate the energy transition.

In developing countries within the Eastern Mediterranean, this challenge is made more difficult by the higher cost of capital, as investors demand high-risk premiums due to country, currency, or sector uncertainty.

This section outlines key financing sources and provides case studies and examples of how each source is being applied (or could be applied) in the Eastern Mediterranean. Each financing mechanism not only brings capital but can also serve as a catalyst for regional cooperation and innovation in energy infrastructure.

1. Multilateral development banks

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) provide a foundational source of capital and risk mitigation for large-scale energy projects in the region. Institutions such as the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the World Bank offer concessional loans, grants, guarantees, and technical assistance to support renewable energy and grid modernization. For example, the EBRD has invested more than €3.8 billion in renewable energy across emerging markets, supporting 119 projects totaling more than 6 GW of capacity.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, MDB financing often underpins ambitious projects. For example, the EBRD and partners launched a $500-million framework that helped finance sixteen solar plants (750 MW) in Egypt, including in the Benban solar park.

Another notable initiative with a renewable energy component is the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Sustainable Energy Financing Facility (SEMED SEFF), a joint program of the EBRD, EIB, Agence Française de Développement, and KfW, a German state-owned bank. With a €141.7-million budget, SEMED SEFF catalyzed investments in Jordan and Morocco to cut more than 150,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and boost renewables (25 percent of its funds went to renewable energy projects).³²

MDBs not only supply affordable long-term loans; they also crowd in other investors. In Egypt’s Benban project, for instance, the EBRD, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the AIIB, and the African Development Bank (AfDB) cofinanced solar plants alongside private developers, dramatically lowering financing costs and risk.³³ By leveraging MDBs’ preferred creditor status and technical expertise, such involvement signals to markets that projects are bankable.

By providing concessional finance, convening power, and technical and policy assistance, MDBs help Eastern Mediterranean countries undertake projects that might otherwise be too costly or complex, from large wind and solar farms to regional grid interconnectors. Their financing comes with due diligence and policy guidance, encouraging reforms (such as market liberalization or improved procurement frameworks) that improve the overall investment climate. Going forward, scaling up MDB capital—including through their climate-focused funds and guarantees—will be crucial to meet the region’s renewable investment needs at the pace demanded by global climate commitments.

2. Green finance and investment

Green finance refers to capital raised for climate-friendly and sustainable projects through instruments such as green bonds, green loans, and ESG (environmental, social, governance) investments. In the Eastern Mediterranean, green bonds specifically are emerging as an important tool to tap global capital markets for renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure. The global green bond market has expanded rapidly to more than $2.5 trillion outstanding by 2024.³⁴

Eastern Mediterranean nations have started to issue their own green bonds to fund clean energy, often with strong investor demand. Egypt was an early mover, launching a $750-million sovereign green bond in September 2020.³⁵ Cyprus followed in 2022, issuing a €1-billion green bond. In 2023, Israel and Turkey debuted their first sovereign green bonds, raising $2 billion and $2.5 billion, respectively.³⁶ Greece signaled plans to issue a sovereign green bond as well. While a national issuance expected for 2024 remains pending, the Bank of Greece issued a €500-million green bond in 2020.³⁷

Other private institutions have also issued green bonds, including banks and other businesses such as renewable energy companies. Lebanon’s Fransabank SAL issued its first green bond in 2018, valued at $60 million, with support from the IFC and EBRD. The proceeds were directed to support sustainable finance initiatives. Jordan’s Kuwait Bank followed in 2023 and, in collaboration with the IFC, issued its first green bond, valued at $50 million. The funds were allocated to renewable energy, low-carbon transport, and sustainable water and wastewater projects. ​ Additionally, Arab Bank in Jordan issued a $250-million sustainable bond in October 2023 to support green and sustainable initiatives.³⁸

However, the market remains nascent and fragmented. Strengthening regulatory frameworks, standardizing green taxonomies, and building technical capacity among issuers and investors will be key to unlocking green capital at scale. For instance, Turkey developed its own sustainable finance framework in 2021, while IFC support enabled Egypt to develop green bond guidelines and the Amman Stock Exchange to produce sustainability reporting guidelines.³⁹ The European Union recently introduced the European Green Bond Standard, a voluntary framework to ensure transparency and combat greenwashing, which could serve as a model to harmonize practices in the region.⁴⁰

3. International climate finance

International climate finance refers to dedicated funds and initiatives aimed at supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. For Eastern Mediterranean nations (many of which are middle-income or emerging economies), these funds are an important supplement to domestic resources. Key global climate funds include the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Climate Investment Funds (CIF) such as the Clean Technology Fund, and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Historically, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has underutilized these funds: MENA has received only about 6.6 percent of cumulative financing from the major global climate funds through 2023.⁴¹

Eastern Mediterranean countries are now working to improve their access to these pools of finance by developing strong project proposals and institutional capacity. Egypt has been notably successful in tapping climate funds, securing about one-third of all GCF resources allocated to MENA as of 2023. About 85 percent of Egypt’s GCF funding has been in the form of loans. Jordan has also received international climate finance, accounting for roughly 10 percent of GCF funding in MENA (with around half in loans). Meanwhile, Turkey has benefited from World Bank funding via the Türkiye Green Fund (TGF), receiving a $155-million loan for the greening of firms through equity financing, while Lebanon has benefited from GEF grants, receiving about 8 percent of GEF’s MENA allocations.⁴² These funds often work by blending with multilateral bank financing or by de-risking projects to attract private investors (through instruments like guarantees and concessional tranches).

4. Islamic finance

Islamic finance is a growing source of funding for the energy transition and is particularly relevant in the Muslim-majority countries of the Eastern Mediterranean. Islamic finance follows sharia principles, such as prohibition of interest, and typically uses profit-sharing or asset-backed structures.⁴³ Green sukuk (sharia-compliant bonds earmarked for environmental projects) have emerged as a key instrument to raise capital for renewables while tapping into Islamic investor pools. The global sukuk market has seen strong growth and greening in recent years. The first half of 2024 set a record, with $9.9 billion in green and sustainability sukuk issuances, indicating accelerating interest.⁴⁴

While most green sukuk so far have originated in Southeast Asia and the Gulf, Eastern Mediterranean nations are starting to consider them.⁴⁵ Egypt, for example, has been considering sukuk as a financing tool. It passed a Sovereign Sukuk Law in 2021 and could issue green sukuk to fund projects under its renewable energy and sustainable transport plans.⁴⁶

Importantly, major finance institutions are steering toward climate action. In 2021, Emlak Katılım issued the first green sukuk in Turkey with a total value of 51.8 million Turkish lira.⁴⁷ The Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) has also issued sukuk to raise funds for green projects. For example, in 2024 it issued a $2-billion benchmark sukuk earmarked partly for green development programs.⁴⁸

Beyond sukuk, Islamic finance can support renewable energy through Islamic banks and funds investing in project equity or providing sharia-compliant loans (such as profit-sharing and loss-sharing musharakah (a joint-venture structure) or lease-based Ijarah financing). Islamic finance also opens opportunities for waqf (endowment funds) or zakat (charitable contributions) to be structured for community-level clean energy access or climate resilience projects, although such models are still in experimental stages.

5. Bilateral investment

Financing and development support from one country to another plays a pivotal role in the Eastern Mediterranean’s energy landscape. Bilateral investment often comes either directly from foreign governments (through aid, export credits, or state-owned banks) or via government-backed companies and sovereign wealth funds pursuing projects abroad. In the push for renewables, several powerful bilateral actors have emerged: notably the Gulf states (such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia) and China. They view renewable energy projects not only as commercial opportunities but also as avenues to strengthen strategic ties and influence in the region.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have invested significantly in Egypt’s renewable energy projects, using investors such as ACWA Power, Masdar, and AMEA Power to fund new wind and solar capacity.⁴⁹ For example, Masdar has partnered with Egyptian firms to develop a gigantic 10-GW onshore wind farm, one of the world’s largest, which it announced on the sidelines of COP27.⁵⁰

China is increasingly becoming a major bilateral financier in Eastern Mediterranean energy. Chinese state-owned enterprises and funds have targeted renewable energy acquisitions and projects, especially in economies where financing gaps exist. In Egypt, Chinese banks and companies have supported the Benban solar complex; for example, the AIIB provided $210 million in debt financing for eleven solar plants (totaling 490 MW) in Benban’s second phase.⁵¹ Chinese firms have also supplied solar panels and construction for many Benban projects. China also has energy investments in Turkey, Lebanon, and Greece. China’s Silk Road Fund has acquired a 49-percent stake in ACWA Power’s renewable energy portfolio.⁵² These investment patterns are part of the increasing “greening” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and reflect China’s willingness to invest in lower-income Eastern Mediterranean nations, though these investments often serve dual purposes of commercial returns and strategic positioning.⁵³

The European Union (EU) and its member states also act bilaterally through programs like the EU-funded Neighbourhood Investment Platform, which gives grants to complement loans for energy projects in the Mediterranean neighborhood.⁵⁴ Europe often emphasizes grid interconnections and market integration (e.g., funding studies for a EuroAfrica interconnector between Egypt and Greece), Gulf countries favor high-profile generation projects, and China is active across the value chain from generation to transmission.

Bilateral investments bring substantial capital and can fast-track projects, but they also entail geopolitical balancing as recipient countries in the Eastern Mediterranean navigate offers from multiple suitors. When managed well, bilateral financing can complement multilateral efforts. It also can foster regional cooperation. For instance, the UAE not only invests in Arab neighbors but has discussed energy deals involving Israel (such as solar facilities in Jordan exporting power to Israel as part of a desalinated water and solar energy swap between Israel and Jordan).⁵⁵

6. Debt financing

Debt financing (i.e., borrowing funds to be repaid with interest) is one of the predominant ways to fund energy infrastructure, including renewable projects, worldwide. In the Eastern Mediterranean, debt financing takes multiple forms: loans from commercial banks or international institutions, bonds issued in capital markets, export credits or supplier credits for equipment, and concessional and blended debt.

Given that debt is cheaper than equity, developers typically seek debt to cover most of the project costs. For investors and lenders, renewable energy projects can be attractive debt opportunities because they generally generate steady cash flows once operational.

Finance for regional cooperation

A comprehensive financing strategy leveraging all of the above mechanisms is crucial for the Eastern Mediterranean to realize its energy transition ambitions. Multilateral and climate funds provide scale and patient capital, green and Islamic finance tap new investor pools, and bilateral investments bring in strategic funding.

Additionally, financing structures such as project finance, public-private partnerships, power purchase agreements, and blended finance can help reduce risk. Green investment banks can help mobilize funding for green projects, while innovative tools like fintech and results-based financing fill niche gaps.

In my view, the region’s success in meeting COP28 goals hinges less on the availability of technology and more on the ability to align financial incentives across borders.

By structuring these financing approaches with regional cooperation as their foundation, these instruments create shared financial interests across borders, incentivizing collaboration and helping overcome entrenched political obstacles. Financial mechanisms explicitly requiring cross-border participation serve as powerful diplomatic tools in addition to their capital mobilization function.

For instance, multilateral investment funds that mandate co-investment from multiple Eastern Mediterranean countries establish joint ownership stakes in critical infrastructure, creating a financial incentive to maintain peaceful relations. Similarly, blended finance structures offering preferential terms for projects with cross-border components make cooperation economically advantageous compared to purely national approaches. For example, a Mediterranean renewable energy fund requiring participation from Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus could provide a neutral financial platform in which shared economic benefits supersede maritime disputes.

The strategic design of these mechanisms must include governance frameworks that span national boundaries, with representation requirements ensuring all stakeholders have meaningful input in investment decisions. Interconnection-specific project bonds co-issued by multiple countries can create shared liability structures in which default risks are mutually borne, fostering accountability across traditional divides.

When properly implemented, these tools can transform abstract diplomatic goals into concrete economic incentives. Countries with historical tensions can begin to view their neighbors not as competitors but as essential partners in accessing capital markets and achieving energy security. Countries that once viewed energy resources as potential flashpoints for conflict can instead develop economic interdependencies that make continued cooperation the most rational choice.

Shared foundations: Creating a regional energy community

While innovative financing mechanisms provide the tools for transformation, their successful implementation depends on creating supportive physical, institutional, and diplomatic frameworks. The mobilization of capital through green bonds, MDB funding, climate finance, and other financial instruments discussed above is necessary but insufficient on its own to achieve regional energy integration.

Having participated in several regional energy dialogues, I have observed that trust between regulators remains limited. Finance can be the tool that enables cooperation in more sensitive policy areas. Yet it must be paired with robust infrastructure development, harmonized regulatory environments, diplomatic initiatives that overcome historical tensions, and coordinated governance structures that span national boundaries. The implementation of regional energy integration requires establishing concrete structures for collaboration that can transform the Eastern Mediterranean’s abundant renewable resources into a shared, resilient energy architecture that benefits all participating nations. These efforts must include

• physical infrastructure development and grid integration;
• interconnected energy markets and regulatory alignment on grid codes, tariff structures, and cross-border trading;
• regional cooperation and diplomatic engagement; and
• regional governance frameworks.

Scaling cross-border initiatives for a connected grid

Cross-border energy cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean is advancing through several key initiatives aimed at integrating renewable energy sources and enhancing grid connectivity. There are nine interconnection projects and proposals at different stages of development across the region. If implemented fully, they can help create a more unified energy market capable of efficiently distributing energy across the Mediterranean while addressing the intermittency challenges of solar and wind.

The Great Sea Interconnection, set to link Cyprus, Greece, and Israel, is perhaps the region’s flagship project and will facilitate the trade of renewable electricity across borders. Similarly, Egypt and Greece are exploring the GREGY interconnection. Beyond the Eastern Mediterranean, Italy and Tunisia are advancing the ELMED interconnection between them, which is expected to be operational by 2027.⁵⁶ Technologies already exist to manage some of the perceived risks of interconnections. Using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines offer greater controllability and can be isolated more easily than traditional AC interconnections. Interconnections can also be directed to non-critical loads or areas in order to reduce risk to cross-border disruptions, while robust cybersecurity standards and protocols can help protect critical infrastructure.

Harmonizing regulations for seamless market operation

Achieving a fully integrated energy market in the Eastern Mediterranean requires harmonized regulations to ensure fair access to grids, promote investment, and reduce the cost of risk capital. Countries involved in interconnection projects need to have the regulatory framework in place to allow for successful entry of foreign electricity into domestic electricity markets and successful export of their electricity to foreign markets. This is especially difficult for countries in which electricity utilities hold vertical monopolies in all sectors of the economy. Turkey, Cyprus, Greece, and Egypt have unbundled or are on the way to unbundling their electricity markets; meanwhile, Jordan, Lebanon, and, to a lesser extent, Israel have electricity utilities that hold vertical monopolies and are responsible for generating and supplying electricity to all sectors in the economy.⁵⁷

The EU’s internal energy market policies are a model for regulatory convergence, emphasizing transmission ownership unbundling between electricity generation or supply companies and transmutation ones, consumer rights, and the role of regulatory actors such as the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER).⁵⁸ The EU’s Electricity Directive 2019/944 mandates nondiscriminatory access to transmission and distribution systems, a principle that could be adapted for the Eastern Mediterranean to attract private investment.⁵⁹

However, this EU model cannot be fully replicated in the Eastern Mediterranean due to different system maturity levels. The Association of Mediterranean Energy Regulators (MEDREG), comprising twenty-seven energy regulators from twenty-two countries, recommends that regulatory frameworks must be tailored to specific subregional contexts, and that Eastern Mediterranean countries need to develop more regulatory solutions independent from those of the EU.⁶⁰

Progress in regulatory harmonization could also increase infrastructure investments significantly in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, this progress is slow due to the region’s diverse regulatory environments, with countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt maintaining state-controlled energy sectors, while others like Greece and Cyprus align with EU directives to liberalize the energy market. Overcoming these disparities will require sustained dialogue, capacity building, and incentives for alignment.

Energy diplomacy: Transforming geopolitical challenges into opportunities

Geopolitical tensions are another major barrier to cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Political and security dynamics significantly influence energy cooperation in the region. Long-standing disputes—such as those between Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus over maritime boundaries, the Syrian civil war, the unresolved Cyprus question, the recently intensified Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the Israel-Lebanon conflict—have all historically hindered regional collaboration and the development of cross-border infrastructure, particularly affecting projects like the EastMed Gas Pipeline.⁶¹ Overcoming these challenges will require financial resources as well as diplomatic engagement and innovative governance structures.

However, the shift toward renewable energy and the EU’s focus on a green energy economy present new opportunities for cooperation. Initiatives such as the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF)—established in 2019 as a platform focused on natural gas development, it includes Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, along with France and Italy—can be both reformed to become more inclusive of all Eastern Mediterranean counties and expanded beyond natural gas to include renewable energy, power infrastructure, and advancing electricity interconnection and trading.⁶² Some energy policy experts have advocated for renaming the EMGF as the East Mediterranean Energy Forum (EMEF) to reflect this broader mandate.⁶³ Such a forum should include a regulatory platform, in which each country is represented by its national regulatory authority or electricity governing body, to jointly promote greater harmonization of regional energy markets and legislation.

Energy cooperation is increasingly recognized as a tool for regional stability and economic integration. The development of renewable energy projects and interconnectors can create shared economic interests, reducing the potential for conflict.⁶⁴ This approach transforms energy from a source of competition to a platform for collaboration, potentially easing long-standing tensions through mutual economic benefits and shared climate goals.

An increased shift toward renewable energy sources not only ensures long-term sustainability and economic benefits for the region, but also has higher potential than gas diplomacy. Unlike natural gas and other tradable commodities, renewable energy systems are an undisputed resource. Additionally, collaboration on renewable energy projects through interconnections provides synergies between partnering countries due to the benefits they provide to both grids.

Shared horizon: Finance and diplomacy for a unified Eastern Mediterranean energy landscape

The Eastern Mediterranean stands at the cusp of a transformative energy transition in which innovative financing can simultaneously advance technological leapfrogging, economic development, and regional cooperation. By strategically structuring investment mechanisms that require collaboration, the region can convert financial transactions into diplomatic bridges.

Financial innovation offers three distinct diplomatic dividends beyond its direct economic benefits.

First, joint financing creates structured engagement opportunities that maintain dialogue even during political tensions. When countries coinvest in renewable infrastructure through mechanisms such as regional green bonds or mixed-ownership projects, they establish technical and financial communication channels that persist through diplomatic fluctuations. These ongoing interactions build relationships among technical experts and financial officials that can later facilitate broader cooperation.

Second, shared financial liabilities transform political calculus by creating mutual dependencies. When neighboring countries with historical tensions become co-guarantors of infrastructure loans or joint issuers of project bonds, they develop a tangible economic interest in maintaining stable relations. The economic costs of diplomatic ruptures become quantifiable and immediately visible to stakeholders on all sides.

Third, financial innovation creates positive-sum narratives in a region often characterized by zero-sum competition. By enabling countries to collectively tap into previously inaccessible capital pools—such as global ESG funds seeking large-scale sustainable investments—regional financial mechanisms demonstrate that cooperation delivers benefits unattainable through individual action.

If the Eastern Mediterranean realizes this vision of financially driven integration, it could emerge as a global model for how innovative capital structures can overcome entrenched geopolitical challenges. The region’s abundant renewable resources, which have the potential to generate more electricity than its projected future demand, provide the natural foundation, while innovative financing creates the institutional architecture for a sustainable energy future that transcends historical divisions and creates shared prosperity across borders.

The path forward requires financial creativity, diplomatic persistence, and technical expertise—but the potential rewards extend far beyond renewable kilowatts to include a fundamental reconfiguration of regional relationships built on shared economic interests rather than historical grievances.

The Atlantic Council would like to extend special thanks to Limak Holding for its valuable support for this report.

Karim Elgendy
Executive Director,
Carboun Institute;
Associate Fellow,
Chatham House

Karim Elgendy is an expert on energy transition and climate policy in the Middle East and North Africa. His research examines the intersection of climate diplomacy, energy geopolitics, and sustainable development across the region. Elgendy investigates how countries navigate energy transitions and climate change impacts within shifting geopolitical landscapes, and analyzes how regional and global power dynamics influence climate action and policy implementation. He possesses deep expertise in energy and climate policies across the Eastern Mediterranean and Gulf Cooperation Council states, with particular focus on renewable energy, climate resilience, and diplomacy.

Elgendy has authored numerous articles and policy publications in leading journals and platforms. He has presented at over one hundred public speaking engagements and has delivered guest lectures at several prestigious universities. His expert analysis is regularly featured in broadcast, print, and digital media outlets, and he has appeared in most mainstream media outlets.

The Atlantic Council in Turkey aims to promote and strengthen transatlantic engagement with the region by providing a high-level forum and pursuing programming to address the most important issues on energy, economics, security, and defense.

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The gap between actual and needed global investment in renewable energy is projected to grow to tens of trillions of dollars over the next ten to thirty years while the costs of climate change continue to compound. Public finance alone—via governments, multilateral development banks, and international financial institutions—is insufficient to meet the challenge. To bridge this widening investment gap and attract private investors that will have to provide most of the funding, what’s needed is a combination of innovative financial tools that are tailored to local contexts and mitigate risk, enhance creditworthiness, and attract private capital at high leverage rates. Guarantees are especially important because of their reputation for their efficacy and effectiveness in mitigating real and perceived risks of projects, which enhances project creditworthiness and often attracts investment from the private sector.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of investment gaps in the renewable energy industry at the global level as well as in EMDEs to achieve the global net-zero targets and discusses the risks and obstacles facing private investors in the renewable energy industry. It also reviews various de-risking, risk-reduction, and risk-transfer financial mechanisms that could boost private investment in clean energy infrastructure and nature-based solutions projects centered around a discussion of a guarantee proposal called the Emerging Market Climate Investment Compact (EMCIC). The EMCIC is a proposal for a guarantee facility funded primarily by wealthy governments that would provide guarantees to major global investors to mobilize $100 to $500 billion in private investment in climate mitigation investments, namely clean energy infrastructure and nature-based solutions, in EMDEs over ten years. The structure of the facility would be simplified so that qualified investors would assemble portfolios that would be broadly guaranteed (against most political and commercial risks), would do their own due diligence subject to standards set by the EMCIC, and would generally not require recipient country guarantees.

Finally, the paper includes case studies on clean energy investment in Brazil and South Africa—and country-specific mechanisms available for scaling up this investment.

Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou was the macroeconomist with the GeoEconomics Center (2021-2024) and a Senior Lecturer of Economics at the American University in Washington, DC. 

Frank Willey is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center. 

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The ninth Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum will be held June 17 and 18 in Washington, DC. Please check back regularly for updates on our programming.

The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.

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The post Scaling up private capital for climate investment in emerging markets appeared first on Atlantic Council.

China has built a commanding monopoly over rare earths, the seventeen metallic elements that are crucial for modern technologies spanning from energy to defense. Through decades of strategic state intervention, China now controls over half of global mining production and 90 percent of separation and refining capacity.

This dominance has been enabled by a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach that includes the Communist Party, the state apparatus, the military complex, industry, and research institutions. These entities work together to implement a broad range of policies that ensure global control, such as price controls, tax policy, environmental regulations, standards setting, foreign policy, defense strategy, industry planning, and research and development. These labyrinthine policy- and market-making processes add layers of complexity to the already opaque inner workings of the Chinese state.

This report by Craig Hart demystifies these interconnected systems by:

• outlining China’s strategic objectives
• identifying the key rare earths stakeholders in government and industry
• unraveling the complex web of policies that enable its global market dominance
• exploring potential opportunities for the West to develop a counterstrategy to develop its own rare earths supply chains

Explore interactive graphics mapping China’s key rare earths stakeholders, system of direct and indirect subsidies, and the role of Belt and Road investments.

Craig A. Hart was a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. He is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.

Global Energy Forum

The ninth Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum will be held June 17 and 18 in Washington, DC. Please check back regularly for updates on our programming.

The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.

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The post Mapping China’s strategy for rare earths dominance appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean (ASIO) megaregion occupies a pivotal position in the global energy landscape, both as a key transit route and as home to some of the greatest energy suppliers and consumers worldwide. This sprawling region encompasses the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, South Asia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as well as East Africa and, further afield, Australia.

Energy cooperation within ASIO is a linchpin of economic and geopolitical stability. The GCC, with vast hydrocarbon reserves and increasing investments in renewable energy, serves as a cornerstone of energy supply for South and Southeast Asia. At the same time, the ASIO region’s energy relationships transcend supply and demand dynamics. Decarbonizing energy systems, securing critical trade routes, and addressing energy poverty all imply a growing degree of regional and interregional strategic collaboration.

The energy landscape of the ASIO region is also a key component of broader, global geopolitical and strategic change. Critical maritime chokepoints link energy trade routes with regional and international security considerations. Global powers including China and the United States actively shape the region’s energy and political dynamics, creating both opportunities for collaboration and risks of competition.

With heightened concerns about Chinese ambitions, and with a less dependable and more protectionist US partner, many ASIO countries are in a mood to balance. Geopolitical change and the need for energy are driving deeper cooperation within the bloc and prompting outreach to second-tier powers.

This publication explores the energy relationships that define the ASIO region, focusing on three key interregional dynamics: GCC-South Asia, GCC-Southeast Asia, and South Asia-Southeast Asia. It also examines the broader regional issues shared by all ASIO countries, as well as the roles of East Africa and Australia within this vast energy ecosystem. The memo also situates this discussion within the context of broader global partnerships, particularly with the United States and Western allies.

Fellow

Phillip Cornell

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Global Energy Center

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

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The ninth Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum will be held June 17 and 18 in Washington, DC. Please check back regularly for updates on our programming.

The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.

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The importance of an effective US industrial strategy is growing amid rapid technological change, rising energy demand, and geopolitical uncertainty. In response, policymakers are focused on how US industry can stay competitive in an era of electrification, digitalization, and AI, as well as global conflict.

Key industrial sectors like steel, aluminum, cement, and chemicals must meet rising global demand for low-emissions products while countering unfair trade practices, especially from countries like China that use state support and low environmental standards to undercut competitors. Durable US competitiveness will depend on supportive policies and transparent markets that reward higher environmental and labor standards.

The question for US policymakers is not whether to compete, but how. Industrial policy is a bipartisan priority, even if strategies differ, and a national security imperative. Given its fiscal constraints, the United States must find ways to ensure its industries thrive globally while avoiding new spending.

Over the past year, the Atlantic Council engaged dozens of industrial stakeholders from private, public, and nonprofit sectors to assess how the United States can lead in sustainable industrial development. The consensus: although no specific outcome is assured, the country is well-positioned to lead if it acts decisively. This study concludes with near-term recommendations to overcome barriers and lay the foundation for a revitalized, competitive, and sustainable US industrial strategy.

David Goldwyn is the chair of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Advisory Group and a nonresident senior fellow with the Council’s Global Energy Center.

Andrea Clabough is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and an associate at Goldwyn Global Strategies, LLC.

Global Energy Forum

The ninth Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum will be held June 17 and 18 in Washington, DC. Please check back regularly for updates on our programming.

The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.

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The post Building for tomorrow: Preparing US industry to compete in a lower-carbon global economy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In 2014, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) launched a massive investment campaign to develop its domestic semiconductor industry. While significant policy and media attention is focused on PRC efforts to catch up to the United States at the leading edge of semiconductor manufacturing, PRC investments in foundational, or “lagging-edge,” semiconductors are also an important strategic development. In this issue brief, the authors examine PRC investments in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as an example of critical, specialized semiconductors that are often manufactured with foundational technology.

FPGAs are specialized semiconductor chips that offer a unique combination of flexibility and performance. They are critical components in guided missile systems like the FGM-148 Javelin, automobiles like the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV, telecommunications systems, and cloud data centers. Today, the United States leads the FPGA industry. US firms hold market-leading positions in FPGA design and design software, while most FPGA manufacturing and assembly, testing, and packaging is conducted by US firms or by close allies such as Taiwan.

However, the PRC has steadily increased its semiconductor investment efforts in recent years to develop manufacturing capabilities for foundational semiconductors overall, and design capabilities for FPGAs in particular. This new PRC capacity will come online in one to three years and, given its substantial scale, it may price US FPGA firms out of the critical segments of the FPGA market. This will create both availability and security risks for the US FPGA supply chain.

Semiconductors are at the heart of US-China tech tensions

In the last decade, US and PRC policy postures toward the semiconductor industry have changed. As the overall US-China relationship shifted from collaboration to competition,¹ the US-China semiconductor ecosystem has evolved from a benign mutualistic partnership into a strategic competition. This shift, coupled with rising tensions between the United States and the PRC overall, triggered a broad US response, including prohibiting PRC investments, imposing export controls on critical chips and manufacturing equipment, and an industrial policy that supports domestic chipmakers. Key PRC and US actions are summarized in Figure 1.

Figure 1. What steps have the United States and China taken in the race for semiconductor supremacy?

China’s chip strategy is powered by state funding and localized supply chains

In 2014, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)²articulated its ambitions to become a leader across the semiconductor value chain by 2030,³ it quickly established a National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (NICIIF, commonly known as the “Big Fund”) to provide financial support toward those goals. The first phase of funding, amounting to an estimated $21 billion,⁴ supported domestic semiconductor manufacturing and chip design capabilities, largely through overseas acquisitions and foreign semiconductor equipment purchases.⁵

In 2018, China revised its goal to focus on increasing domestic semiconductor production as part of its Made in China 2025 industrial strategy.⁶ In the same year, a series of articles appeared in a publication affiliated with the PRC Ministry of Science and Technology. They identified specific “chokepoint technologies,”⁷ including both semiconductors and the photolithography machines needed to manufacture them.⁸

The second phase of Big Fund investments took place in October 2019, providing an estimated $28.9 billion,⁹ to support upstream development and downstream acquisition of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, along with critical raw materials.¹⁰ In 2021, the PRC began to supplement Big Fund investments with an explicit dual circulation and indigenous innovation strategy,¹¹ aiming to replace US- and foreign-made semiconductors with domestic alternatives.¹²

Chinese companies, including those with long-term US ties, are increasingly supporting the PRC government’s initiatives to develop a localized semiconductor supply chain.¹³ Between 2018 and 2023, the PRC produced 34 percent of the world’s chip design and fabrication-related research articles while the United States trailed behind at 15 percent.¹⁴ Nine out of the world’s top ten chip research producers are also PRC institutions.¹⁵ Of course, these statistics should be read with some skepticism, as China has often produced large volumes of lower-quality research publications.¹⁶ However, the sheer quantity of chip-related publications produced by Chinese researchers indicates the PRC’s substantial resource allocation and strategic commitment to advancing its broader semiconductor industry.

In 2024, China announced the third phase of the Big Fund, an estimated $47.5 billion investment focused on chip-making equipment.¹⁷ However, total PRC semiconductor investment fell sharply in 2024, with analysts attributing the decline to reduced demand and lower government subsidies.¹⁸

While the PRC is building capabilities to design and manufacture leading-edge semiconductors, it is also strengthening its capacity to produce lagging-edge semiconductors.¹⁹ Jeremy Mark, a senior fellow with the GeoEconomics Center of the Atlantic Council, observed that “China has an insatiable appetite for all types of semiconductors and investments have been, by necessity, in legacy chips.”²⁰ As part of the PRC’s efforts, PRC FPGA firms are growing. This upward trend demands increased concern even though China’s current FPGA sector is relatively nascent compared to the United States.²¹

From Obama to Trump—the US response to PRC investments

The US government has countered China’s semiconductor advancements through intensified foreign investment reviews and export controls, while also tightening US outbound investments into China’s semiconductor sector. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has blocked PRC state investments and acquisitions of semiconductor firms consistently across recent presidential administrations. For instance, in 2016, the Obama administration prohibited the sale of the US operations of Aixtron GE, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment firm headquartered in Germany, to a PRC investment firm.²² The following year, the Trump administration blocked the PRC acquisition of the Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, a US FPGA firm, on similar national security grounds.²³

Since 2020, US policy to counter PRC semiconductor industry growth has largely relied on the assumption that the United States and its allies control technological chokepoints, and can deny the PRC access to them using export controls.²⁴ This approach is largely in-line with the “chokepoint effect” model of weaponized interdependence, as proposed by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman.²⁵ Recent policy discussion has begun to question whether efforts to deny access to chokepoints in fact incentivize indigenous PRC technological development, a concern raised in Farrell and Newman’s original paper.²⁶ Similar US efforts to take advantage of chokepoints in the global financial system have spurred both the PRC and US allies in Europe to develop technological solutions to reduce the importance of US-controlled chokepoints.²⁷ Additionally, the US has also increasingly relied on executive directives to limit Chinese access to American capital, beginning with Executive Order 13959 issued by President Donald Trump in 2020, which prohibited US investments in designated Communist Chinese Military Companies (CCMCs). In 2021, President Joe Biden amended EO 13959 and revoked EO 13974 by issuing EO 14032, which expanded the scope to include companies supporting the Chinese Military-Industrial Complex (CMIC) and surveillance efforts while also narrowing investment restrictions by prohibiting indirect investments in CMIC-linked companies. In 2023, Biden signed Executive Order 14105, authorizing the Treasury Department to restrict or require disclosure of US investments in sensitive technologies—such as semiconductors—in countries of concern, particularly China.

As shown in Figure 1, US actions against the PRC semiconductor industry began to increase during the Trump administration in 2018 and carried over to the Biden administration. In response to US restrictions, the PRC enacted similar controls to impose pressure on US firms and its semiconductor industry.

China’s growing involvement in the FPGA industry

The FPGA market has become a key competitive arena between the United States and the PRC. While the United States is still the global leader in FPGAs, China’s substantial investments in the FPGA space present an emerging challenge to the United States’ ability to produce the most advanced FPGA chips and potentially the ability of the United States and its allies to manufacture FPGAs at scale. Our research indicates that the PRC is launching a major buildup of manufacturing capacity at lagging-edge logic nodes, including substantial state investments in FPGA firms.

To analyze the FPGA industry and China’s growing involvement, we employ the value chain model described in Figure 2, which includes both core stages of the semiconductor value chain and key inputs.²⁸

Figure 2. An overview of the semiconductor value chain, from initial design through end use

The participants in the FPGA supply chain are grouped into four main categories.

China is increasing its efforts to localize FPGA production in response to growing domestic demands, aiming to decrease reliance on US suppliers, particularly for low- and mid-range FPGAs.²⁹ US sanctions and export controls have limited China’s access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, prompting China to increase investments in lagging-edge semiconductor capacity that depends on older, less-sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME).³⁰ The PRC currently holds an advantage in certain aspects of manufacturing and the majority of assembly, testing, and packaging (ATP), while also making significant investments in domestic FPGA firms, specifically in R&D to strengthen its FPGA chipmakers’ design capabilities.

US manufacturers pay the price for China’s chokehold on critical raw materials

China is the leading supplier of raw materials needed for FPGA manufacturing, specifically silicon and gallium. In 2024, the PRC produced approximately 80 percent of global silicon production and 99 percent of worldwide low-purity gallium production.³¹ Given China’s history of using its critical mineral supply as a geopolitical tool, mounting competition between the United States and the PRC increases the likelihood of PRC restrictions on critical minerals.³² The PRC’s actions to control raw materials to-date—including China’s complete ban on gallium exports to the United States in December 2024 and stricter licensing requirements for other critical minerals in April 2025—have significantly increased prices for various raw materials, including gallium. Even before China’s April 2025 measures, gallium prices had already risen by roughly 80 percent by December 2024,³³ thereby increasing the cost of US FPGA manufacturing.

While other countries could step in over time to provide additional gallium capacity, prices may remain elevated or increase further before US and allied gallium production can increase. However, gallium is only one of many critical inputs used in FPGA manufacturing, and many FPGA end customers are largely price-inelastic (e.g., military and defense applications).³⁴ This implies that gallium pricing dynamics alone are unlikely to drive major shifts in the FPGA market. China’s dominance and strategic manipulation of its raw material supply reduce the cost of domestic Chinese FPGA manufacturing while driving up manufacturing cost for US FPGAs.

Ensuring continued dominance in assembly, testing, packaging

ATP involves separating silicon wafers into individual chips, which are then connected with other components and packaged into an end product.³⁵ ATP services are typically outsourced to third-party semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT) firms. While China and Taiwan make up 60 percent of global ATP operations,³⁶ China is home to five of the largest OSAT firms globally (JCET, HT-Tch, TF, LCSP, and Chippacking) and is investing in its next-generation advanced packaging capabilities.³⁷ As the semiconductor industry—including FPGA firms—increasingly relies on advanced packaging to drive performance gains,³⁸ China’s advancements in next-generation packaging techniques may increasingly position the country as a significant competitor in the FPGA space and in critical end-customer applications that depend on them, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers.

Big Fund investment fuels the rise of PRC FPGA firms

Investments from the Big Fund in PRC FPGA firms like Anlogic provide early indicators that FPGAs are a focus area for the PRC.³⁹ According to the Atlantic Council’s Jeremy Mark, there is “no evidence that there is a slacking of [Chinese] investments and commitment of resources toward semiconductors and SMEs [as] its technology growth strategy, particularly in AI, requires semiconductors.”⁴⁰ This manufacturing capacity will provide firms with an option to manufacture FPGA chips at costs substantially lower than what is typical today. However, this new manufacturing capacity will likely come with substantial availability and security risks.

There are five notable PRC FPGA firms in the low-to-mid-range FPGA segment:

1. Anlogic⁴¹ (安路科技): Anlogic is the largest domestic FPGA vendor in China, although it trails three US firms in Chinese market share.⁴² Anlogic held 38.2 percent of the domestic low-end FPGA market share as of 2019⁴³ and mainly targets industrial and automotive applications. Anlogic has received significant support from the PRC government in 2019 through the Big Fund.⁴⁴ Anlogic reportedly spends at least 40 percent of its revenue on research and development (R&D).⁴⁵
2. Gowin Semiconductor (高云半导体): Gowin Semiconductor is gaining domestic market share, specifically in IoT, automotive, and industrial applications. Founded in 2014, Gowin has attracted multiple government-backed investments. In May 2022, Guangzhou Bay Area Semiconductor Group, a state-backed fund, led the most recent funding round and emerged as Gowin’s largest shareholder⁴⁶ This funding is expected to be used for expanding R&D as well as target new markets.⁴⁷ Gowin is the only PRC FPGA supplier with an automotive-grade FPGA certification.⁴⁸
3. Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group (上海复旦): Fudan Microelectronics is a state-affiliated integrated circuit (IC) design company that originated from Fudan University in 1998.⁴⁹ In 2024, Fudan Microelectronics spent roughly a third of its revenue on R&D.⁵⁰ Although the Big Fund does not appear to have invested directly in Fudan Microelectronics, the company receives investments from state-affiliated financial entities⁵¹ and significant government research grants.⁵²
4. Shenzhen Pango Microsystems (紫光同创): Pango Microsystems is the largest FPGA supplier to Huawei and seeks to expand into advanced FPGAs.⁵³ Pango has also attracted investments from government-backed entities.⁵⁴ The firm reportedly dedicates 80 percent of its 800-plus staff to R&D.⁵⁵
5. Hercules Microelectronics (京微齐力): Hercules Microelectronics, founded in 2017, focuses on FPGAs for AI acceleration, data centers, and electronic vehicles.⁵⁶ Although not directly backed by the Big Fund, Hercules Microelectronics received funding from investment funds linked with the Beijing municipal government.⁵⁷
   

These examples demonstrate the level of financial support the PRC government supplies to FPGA firms, both through the Big Fund and other initiatives. A significant portion of this funding is directed toward R&D efforts, enabling PRC FPGA firms to expand their capabilities and compete more effectively with established US FPGA firms. However, while Big Fund support appears to have played a key role in building PRC FPGA firms, it has not been able to drive long-term, sustainable growth. For example, its pre-IPO investment in Anlogic likely strengthened investor confidence in the firm and helped the company raise approximately $186.04 million.⁵⁸ This capital infusion supported significant R&D efforts, resulting in six new chips being released in 2022.⁵⁹ As a result, Anlogic revenue surged from $105.16 million to $154.83 million,⁶⁰ with net profit of $8.89 million.⁶¹ However, as the semiconductor industry slowed between 2022 and 2023,⁶² the Big Fund reduced its Anlogic holdings from roughly 39 million shares to 31 million shares⁶³ and Anlogic experienced a substantial 2023 net loss of $27.87 million, primarily driven by weak downstream demand and its continued aggressive R&D spending of $54.3 million.⁶⁴ The trend persisted in 2024, with Anlogic reporting another net loss of $28.54 million, despite reducing its R&D spend by about 7 percent.⁶⁵

Figure 3. Anlogic’s revenue and profit have declined without sustained Big Fund investment

Anlogic’s recent performance highlights three key takeaways. First, Big Fund investments appear to have provided critical capital that enabled Anlogic to enter and compete in the FPGA market with rapid, extensive R&D. Second, Anlogic has struggled to sustain profitability through semiconductor market swings without ongoing capital support. Third, despite financial pressures, Anlogic and similar firms remain committed to aggressive R&D investment to enhance their competitiveness and improve their product portfolios, ultimately enabling them to offer high-quality FPGAs at lower costs.

Conclusion

The FPGA market is highly segmented and the substantial customization of FPGA designs needed for different applications can form a significant barrier to entry. However, rapid, large-scale PRC investment in lagging-edge semiconductors has established more than just the five FPGA design firms highlighted above and has increased substantial manufacturing capacity at lagging-edge process nodes, which will ramp up PRC FPGA production in the near future. The PRC FPGA firms described above collectively address a broad set of critical FPGA segments, with considerable support from the PRC government.

This development poses two principal concerns for the United States. First, these FPGAs will enable the PRC to develop new capabilities across its economy and for military purposes. Second, if geopolitics allows global technology standards and supply chains to remain integrated, US FPGA makers may struggle to compete with these new PRC players given the scale and degree of their government support. FPGAs are critical components in US defense equipment and underpin US critical infrastructures as well as significant economic activity. To protect US national security and economic interests, the US government should consider launching a dedicated effort to address the impact of PRC FPGA firms on the resilience of US FPGA supply chain.

Celine Lee holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and previously held fellowships at the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).

Andrew Kidd holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and was previously an engagement manager in the high-tech and public sector practices at McKinsey & Company.

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and a fellow and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Technology Programs, works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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This brief, the inaugural of the series, by William Yancey Brown highlights the vast energy and mineral potential of the Atlantic Ocean and how African nations bordering the basin can manage resources responsibly and fairly. It launches against a backdrop that includes World Ocean Day, the 2025 UN Ocean Conference, and the continuing work of the Group of Twenty (under South Africa’s presidency) within the Oceans 20 engagement group.

The Atlantic Ocean is of paramount importance to Africa. The African nations on the ocean’s shore represent 46 percent of the continent’s population, 55 percent of its gross domestic product, and 57 percent its trade. The blue economy is crucial for Africa as the continent’s economies see new changes brought upon by issues related to the maritime energy transition, the port revolution, maritime transport, fishing, and control over exclusive economic zones. African countries have accordingly developed frameworks, through the African Union, for action in the region and declared 2015-2025 the “Decade of Africa’s Seas and Oceans.”

Introduction

The world’s second-largest ocean—the Atlantic, bordering more than thirty nations—is rich with energy and minerals, as well as the marine life and human livelihoods that development impacts. The Atlantic has a well-established oil and gas industry and a rapidly growing offshore wind sector. In addition, nascent sources of energy and minerals exist at the water’s surface (tides, currents, and waves), just below in the temperature differences between ocean layers, and on the seafloor. There are windfarms and oil and gas infrastructure off the coasts of Europe and North America—but the challenge now is how to tap the African Atlantic’s energy potential responsibly and fairly.

Though renewables are the clear best route to reducing greenhouse gases, it can be expected that African nations will continue to develop their offshore oil and gas resources. At the same time, however, wind farming could usefully be tried in some areas along Africa’s Atlantic coast—and to expand the range of renewables available, venture capitalists should also look closely at the potential projects in the works to harness the energy of waves, currents, and the ocean’s thermal energy. Funders, international organizations, and African nations along the Atlantic have several policy options to explore the ocean’s resources in a sustainable way. On the question of mining critical minerals from the deep sea, however, much more research on the seabed environment—and availability of alternative terrestrial sources—is needed.

Nascent ocean energy and mineral resources

The Atlantic Ocean provides a place for energy production facilities that could be located on land or sea, in addition to energy sources derived from the ocean itself. These placements include the world’s first floating nuclear facility and solar power plants offshore of the Netherlands.¹ So far, mainland Africa has neither of these, although a floating solar power plant is planned for the Seychelles.² Ocean locations present a harsh environment for devices and accessibility, and environmental restoration is difficult if accidents occur. On the other hand, ocean placement offers space and distance from human settlements.

Tides and currents. Moving river water made up about 15 percent of global electricity generation in 2023.³Hydropower makes up more than half of electricity generated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, and Norway.⁴ The Atlantic Ocean has its own standing currents and tidal flows, such as the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, and powerful tides in locations on both coasts of the basin.

Small-scale generating facilities powered by non-tidal, standing ocean currents have been tested in locations including the Gulf Stream offshore of the United States and the Kuroshio Current offshore of Japan, but no commercial-scale facility is operating anywhere yet.⁵ The greatest potential for non-tidal current power in the African Atlantic is reportedly offshore of South Africa, or perhaps of Guinea-Bissau and Morocco.⁶

A 240-megawatt (MW) tidal power plant has operated on the Atlantic coast of France since 1966.⁷ Africa has some much smaller Atlantic tidal plants, but no commercial-scale tidal power generating facilities are operating there and prospects for tidal facilities offshore of Africa’s Atlantic coast are weak.⁸ Cost is a principal impediment. Environmental impacts are also a concern, but the same is true for well-developed hydropower on land. Despite tepid progress to date for tidal power, new projects are on the books in Europe.⁹

Waves. Waves offer great potential power for electricity on Atlantic coasts. Wave action on the US Atlantic coast could reportedly provide average power generation of about 18 gigawatts (GW).¹⁰ Wave and tidal current energy could potentially meet up to 20 percent of the United Kingdom’s current electricity demand.¹¹ Atlantic Africa has energetic waves in the south offshore of South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Namibia. Senegal, Cabo Verde, and Morocco in the north also have high wave potential.¹²

Many wave energy test projects have been completed or proposed for the Atlantic in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.¹³ However, only one small wave energy facility offshore of northern Portugal currently provides electricity to the grid.¹⁴ Another small grid-linked project off a pier is set to begin operations in 2025 in Los Angeles.¹⁵ As for tides and currents, the challenge and cost of maintaining wave energy facilities remains an impediment to significant deployment.

Ocean thermal energy conversion. Tropical seas, including in the Atlantic, have surface waters much warmer than the deep sea. This difference allows devices to circulate water and power turbines through ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC).¹⁶ “Open” versions of the technology can also desalinate seawater. OTEC could theoretically provide about 8 terawatts (TW) of power globally, more than the current global electricity demand.¹⁷ However, OTEC has a long history of experimentation without yet providing a commercial operating source of power to the grid.¹⁸ This might change with a small 1.5-MW project scheduled to be installed in 2025 offshore of São Tomé and Príncipe.¹⁹ There is also potential for floating OTEC along the west coast of continental Africa, with the highest potential reportedly from Guinea to Gabon.²⁰

Methane hydrates. Methane hydrates are ice-like solids in which water traps methane. They occur on ocean continental margins, including offshore of the Americas and Africa, and hold vast amounts of carbon and energy.²¹ Combined with this promise is the peril of releasing methane from any mining, including through submarine landslides. Japan has taken a special interest in methane hydrates and has conducted experimental projects successfully extracting methane gas.²² No such projects have yet been undertaken in the Atlantic Ocean.

Developed ocean energy and mineral resources

Oil and gas. Under its Stated Policies Scenario (STEPS), the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global oil supply will decrease about 7 percent by 2050 and natural gas production will increase by about 4 percent.²³ Offshore production currently comprises roughly 30 percent of global oil supply and 28 percent of global natural gas production.²⁴ Large historical Atlantic-linked sources include the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

Rystad Energy estimates that, in Africa, about 3.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) of new deepwater oil and gas supply will be near final decision or under construction by 2035. Nigeria is the historic hub of West African offshore oil production and expects to raise production from 2 million barrels per day (bpd) to 3 million bpd with an anti-theft initiative.²⁵ The Baleine Field offshore of Cote d’Ivoire and Namibia’s offshore Orange Basin recently began production, and exploration is under way or planned offshore of São Tomé & Principe, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, among other countries.²⁶ Natural gas production began in January 2025 offshore of Senegal and Mauritania and is expected to produce around 2.3 million tons of liquified natural gas (LNG) annually for more than twenty years.²⁷ Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras predicts a ramping up of current offshore production to 3.2 million barrels per day (equivalent; including natural gas) in the next five years, with oil production centered on its “pre-salt” basins.²⁸ Guyana’s Stabroek Block expects to produce 1.3 million bpd of oil by 2027 and holds an estimated 11.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil and significant natural gas.²⁹

Wind energy. Offshore wind energy farms globally provided an estimated 75 GW installed operating capacity as of 2023, about 7.5 percent of the roughly 1,000 GW total installed global wind energy that year.³⁰ Europe and the United Kingdom have historically led offshore wind development, but China is now leading deployment.³¹

Atlantic Ocean wind farms are currently operating offshore of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the northeastern and mid-Atlantic coast of the United States, with additional farms planned.³² Three commercial offshore wind farms are now operating in the United States, with other US Atlantic projects under construction.³³ The US Atlantic projects are driven by coastal state governments that have established targets for renewable energy. However, supply chain issues and costs have led to the cancellation of some proposed projects. Development is also weighed down by the shift from the strong support of the Biden administration to adversity from the Trump administration.³⁴

No wind farms are currently operating offshore of South America or Africa. Planning is under way but in early stages for Brazil, Morocco, and South Africa. Africa has good winds for turbines on the Atlantic coast in the south and northwest.³⁵ Locations on either side of the Cape of Good Hope are being considered in South Africa, with a specific project proposed to the east in Richards Bay.³⁶

Critical minerals in the Atlantic

Critical minerals are generally defined by national laws as minerals that are essential for important industries and vulnerable to supply chain disruption.³⁷

Most critical minerals, including rare earths, are more scarce than rare in terms of the amounts present in geologic features found at many locations around the globe. However, their actual mining and production are constrained, with China producing most critical minerals and Africa a key place for mining. For example, 74 percent of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), under conditions that are both unsafe and undependable.³⁸ Dependable access to critical minerals without overreliance on China is a priority for many Western industries. The United States was a leader in the past but, despite such high interest in critical minerals, global prices for key metals and material fell by about 26 percent in 2023, including a 47-percent decline in cobalt and a 32-percent decline in lithium carbonate.³⁹

Whether these minerals should be mined from the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction, in addition to land mining, is hotly debated under international law (see below). Polymetallic nodules (PMNs) in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean, where these nodules are abundant, receive the most attention from industry, governments, and nongovernmental organizations. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has designated Atlantic Ocean exploration areas for polymetallic sulfides (PMSs) along the mid-Atlantic Ridge and for cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts (FMCs) in the South Atlantic.⁴⁰ Little information is publicly available about potentially recoverable amounts and no exploitation has been authorized, but research on the biological communities that could be impacted raises great concerns for environmental impacts.⁴¹ The Trump administration stepped outside of the ISA in April 2025 with an executive order promoting seabed mining both on the high seas and the US continental shelf.⁴² Encouraged by the order, Canada’s The Metals Company has announced that it will apply for permission to mine high-seas PMNs under a US statute,⁴³ despite protests from the ISA,⁴⁴ and another company, California-based Impossible Metals, has applied to mine PMNs in the US territory of American Samoa.⁴⁵ The Department of Interior announced on May 20 that it was launching the process for a lease sale there based on that application.⁴⁶

The environmental framework

The ocean energy sources described above are primarily regulated by the nations to which they are adjacent, either because the resources are located in sedimentary geologic formations of the continental shelf (as in the case of oil) or because proximity to onshore populations facilitates construction and operations and lessens the cost of transmitting electricity (as in the case of wind). Critical mineral exploration and mining are primarily regulated on the continental shelves of nations under national laws and on the high seas by the ISA, which was established under the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).⁴⁷The United States also has a dated statute for high seas mining, applicable to anyone under US jurisdiction.⁴⁸

National laws for ocean energy and mineral development vary, and this short paper cannot document their details. But consider US laws for reference. The facilities involved require authorization from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA).⁴⁹ Authorization begins with leasing, followed by approval of development plans, with environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).⁵⁰ NEPA is a procedural statute without ultimate environmental standards. The approvals include conditions, most designed to mitigate environmental impacts, whose authorities come from other US environmental laws. A large offshore wind farm might have one hundred conditions. OCSLA includes standards to minimize environmental harm, but environmental review is given sharper teeth through the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), which have firm impact tests.⁵¹ Noise is a significant concern, and is regulated as “harassment” under the ESA and MMPA. OCSLA also requires lessees to decommission facilities at their expense once a lease ends. All of these regulatory actions are subject to judicial review and many rulings have affected requirements. That said, oil, gas, and wind energy projects have gotten through the approval process and are operating in the United States.

European nations with Atlantic coasts (and the EU itself), South American nations, and some African nations have legal frameworks for environmental review with environmental assessment procedures akin to those of NEPA in the United States. Most lack hard stops such as the ESA and MMPA. Article 6(4) of the EU Habitat Directive approaches these stops, requiring that certain actions with negative environmental impacts can proceed only if carried out for “imperative reasons of overriding public interest” and with compensatory measures.⁵² The International Offshore Petroleum Environmental Regulators (IOPER) provides a venue for cooperation on oil and gas environmental regulation in the Atlantic and elsewhere but does not currently include any African nation agency.⁵³

The ISA has issued final rules for deep seabed prospecting and exploration in the area beyond national jurisdiction and draft rules for exploitation.⁵⁴ Both rules prohibit activities in the international area that would cause “serious harm” and define this to be any effect from activities on the marine environment that represents a “significant adverse change in the marine environment.” Both final and draft regulations also require a “precautionary approach.”⁵⁵

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are another key environmental safeguard. Some have already been designated in the Atlantic in the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of coastal nations.⁵⁶ MPAs provide environmental protection that complements mitigation measures for activities in areas that are being developed.⁵⁷

All of these environmental policies rest on the foundational need to address climate change. The Atlantic Ocean is an important sink for carbon dioxide through direct absorption and sequestration by sea life. It is also the object of impacts such as sea level rise, higher temperatures, acidification, and potential disruption of the major currents.

Policy recommendations

Each ocean energy and mineral resource described above sits within a framework of cost competitiveness, scale, required environmental protection, and governance stability.

Recommendation: Waves, currents, and OETC

Waves, currents, and OETC have potentially great scale. In theory, each could meet large shares of Atlantic Ocean coastal electricity demand. However, none of the three has gone viral, constrained by the costs and challenges of operations and maintenance. All three nevertheless warrant continued investment in projects and research.

• Venture capital firms concerned with energy and relevant government agencies should consider funding new projects for wave, current, and OETC technologies, with a particular view for projects supplying power to island populations of Atlantic southern African nations.

Recommendation: Methane hydrates

Methane hydrates also have potentially great scale but are challenged by the risk of accidental releases in development, production of greenhouse gases, local environmental impacts, and the abundance of natural gas from alternative current sources.

• Japan has led work investigating methane hydrates on its continental shelf. It should continue these efforts and seek collaborative research partnerships with other nations.

Recommendations: Oil and gas

Oil and gas production sits in a maelstrom of analysis and often angry commentary. Science allows no sound doubt that Earth’s surface is warming because of anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. Furthermore, it is apparent that governmental policies to date have not solved the problem. Performance has taken a back seat to aspiration. Post-combustion technologies such as engineered or natural sequestration by biota, direct removal from the air, and atmospheric additives such as aerosols are only partial solutions.

Fair play is another consideration for oil and gas offshore of West Africa and Guyana. The economies of wealthier nations historically benefited from fossil fuels. Many less wealthy nations, including those in Africa, missed out and are seeking funding to address climate impacts. They do not want to be told not to develop their own offshore oil and gas resources—particularly as production continues in wealthy countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Norway—and wealthy nations are unlikely to provide funding anywhere near the levels developing nations request. African nations can be expected to move forward with developing their major Atlantic offshore reserves, as they are now doing in conjunction with major companies. Better use of fossil fuels, such as prevention of methane leakage and priority for natural gas over coal or oil for electricity will help address climate impacts. However, the single best available avenue for reducing greenhouse gas emissions appears to be replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, including solar, wind, and nuclear facilities on land in addition to renewable ocean energy.

Potential conflict and corruption are also obvious challenges hitchhiking on the road to wealth from offshore oil and gas resources for West Africa and Guyana. Unless both can be dealt with effectively, fair play in wealth allocation will be a mirage. Where US companies are involved, it does not help that the current administration has said it would not enforce the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or consider the social cost of carbon in decision-making as previous administrations did.

Atlantic African nations should:

• In cooperation with other agencies and institutions, prioritize renewable and nuclear energy development to mitigate climate change by replacing fossil fuels.
• Include a quantified measure of the social cost of carbon in regulatory decision-making.
• Maintain transparent and independently audited programs for government revenue collection and expenditure, including sovereign wealth funds, and explicitly require multinational firms subject to US jurisdiction to comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
• Work with other Atlantic nations to establish and maintain what could be known as a “Pan-Atlantic Blue Ring” of coastal, island, and marine conservation areas, building on existing conservation areas, with a dual purpose of climate reliance and biodiversity conservation for its own sake.

Recommendation: Offshore wind

Offshore wind is not a pipeline for sovereign wealth, but it can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels. It can be cost competitive with other energy sources in some locations and has scale—in the neighborhood of 1–2 GW capacity for larger projects in the United States. Its status going forward in the United States is uncertain given the critical stance of the current administration, preexisting complications in regulatory approvals, supply chain problems, and possible overenthusiasm on finances. Some US Atlantic projects are operating or close to that and are likely to provide planned electricity over the twenty-five- to thirty-year terms of their leases. Some other leases without approved project plans might ultimately culminate in operating projects. In the long term, offshore wind is an experiment with a reasonable probability of a good result. Nations other than the United States are more supportive, such as the EU nations and China. Atlantic coastal Africa has the wind needed in the south and northwest and could usefully try it out. Whether leases will be renewed at the end of their first life is a question. Investors have generally presumed they will be, but the answer will be informed by the costs of competing energy sources, including solar and nuclear facilities on land.

• Atlantic African nations in the south and northwest with good winds should establish potential lease areas for wind farms through a public review process that examines needs for economic viability, full-scale review of environmental impacts, and deconflicting of impediments generally. Public auctions for leases should be held once potential lease areas are established, to confirm whether companies have an appetite for projects. If they do, projects should be advanced.

Recommendations: Critical minerals

Critical minerals are a proper priority for nations whose industries and national securities depend on them. The United States and others are concerned that China dominates production. However, addressing this calls for a scalpel, not a hammer. Each mineral has its own value, sources, potential replacements, recyclability, and location in the marketplace. The price for some, such as cobalt, has fallen in the past two years.⁵⁸ Furthermore, the economics and environmental impact of deep seabed mining should be compared with mining on land. Terrestrial mining can decimate mining sites and areas along the roads to them. But the ecology of terrestrial areas can be reasonably well described and impacts from mining mitigated. Also, restoration after project completion is much easier where people can walk and breathe and vehicles can drive. Recent research indicates that even larger species in the deep sea are mostly not yet described.⁵⁹ Furthermore, restoration is either conceptually impossible (if the material removed is habitat) or technically infeasible. Fundamentally, the environmental standard for mining under the high seas is to prevent serious harm. No experienced and objective environmental regulator could conclude that the standard is met by the technologies currently available.⁶⁰

• Before supporting approval of any deep sea critical mineral mining on the high seas or in their offshore national jurisdictions, Atlantic nations should advance research on the deep seabed environment, including species and ecology, and on the availability of terrestrial sources.

Additional recommendations: Artificial intelligence

Finally, many companies and researchers working on generative artificial intelligence (AI) believe that artificial general intelligence (AGI) that matches highly skilled human intelligence will be available in the next several years. Generative AI agents already exist that perform tasks as though they were humans, and they get better every day. Robots are also in the works. These advances in generative AI will touch everything in human society, including sustainable energy and mineral production in the Atlantic Ocean basin.⁶¹ AGI will likely be able to perform much analysis and procedure, improving the speed, and possibly the accuracy, of reviews. Despite model biases, generative AGI might offer the potential for less biased or corrupt decisions when it comes to selecting operators or siting energy projects.

Just as important, however, the people who now earn a living doing things related to sustainable energy and minerals will need help if AGI agents do the work in the future. The sooner these efforts start, the better.

• The larger companies with leading generative AI models should continue to provide or initiate support for institutions in Atlantic Africa for training and access to the best models they are making available.⁶²
• Community leaders in African towns and villages likely to be affected by Atlantic energy and mineral development should form stakeholder teams to engage with developers. The teams should include at least one individual with access to a leading AI large language model (LLM) and experience in prompting it so that the model itself can participate in discussions about community benefit from development and potential harm to employment from AI.

Issue Brief Apr 24, 2025

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The post Marine energy: Harnessing the power of the Atlantic appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Reauthorizing the DFC is vital to ensuring the United States is not outcompeted by China in its hemisphere. It is essential for supporting US jobs, creating markets for US exports, advancing energy independence, and linking foreign policy outcomes directly to economic benefits for American workers. Congress must act decisively to secure America’s economic interests and leadership in the Western Hemisphere.

How to update the DFC to further advance US foreign policy priorities in Latin America and the Caribbean

Created in 2018 under the BUILD Act, the DFC merged the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) with USAID’s Development Credit Authority. This restructuring introduced a more agile and powerful tool for advancing US development objectives while strategically countering rivals, especially China.

As Congress prepares to revisit the DFC’s authorizing legislation, it should prioritize ensuring that the agency can effectively mobilize private capital for high-impact investments in infrastructure, minerals, energy, technology, and healthcare. These sectors are essential to strengthening the United States domestically—a key criterion set by the current administration for all agencies pursuing foreign policy initiatives. For example, investments in rare earth mineral exploration in the region not only secure preferential access for the US to the resource but can also generate US jobs in areas such as classification, storage, distribution, and processing.

The DFC must also reposition itself with enhanced tools, such as capital financing and technical assistance, so it can lead strategic investments. These investments should prioritize relocating supply chains for critical minerals, semiconductors, pharmaceutical inputs, and digital connectivity throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Strengthening strategic alliances with like-minded countries and the private sector is essential to expand the DFC’s role in sectors vital to US economic and national security.

Key takeaways:

• Strategic alignment: The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is a crucial agency for advancing US foreign policy objectives, promoting job creation and development, fostering economic partnerships, and supporting strategic allies. It aligns with forward-looking initiatives from the Trump administration, such as América Crece 2.0, which emphasizes private-sector-led growth. But DFC’s first reauthorization provides a unique window for updates to enhance effectiveness and alignment with US foreign policy priorities. Congress has until October to approve a reauthorization bill, but the decreasing availability of funds presents an urgency for approval.
• Geopolitical competition: The DFC can and should act as a strategic counter to the rising global competition for influence across the world, and particularly, in many of the developing nations that have continued to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The DFC offers a transparent, market-based alternative to opaque, state-driven financing models that come with political strings attached.
• Economic security: By investing in critical infrastructure and critical rare earth minerals, cybersecurity, energy, and healthcare in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the DFC can enhance US economic security by strengthening alliances with like-minded countries to serve as a counterweight to aggressive Chinese actions that seek to dominate key sectors for the US economy and US supply chains while reinforcing the value of US-led investment.

Report May 29, 2025

Why Latin America and the Caribbean matter for OECD countries

By Jason Marczak, Martin Cassinelli

Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly vital partners for OECD countries, offering critical minerals, food security, and clean energy assets. With democratic institutions, open markets, and active multilateral engagement, the region supports global resilience. Strengthened OECD–LAC cooperation can advance shared goals in economic security amid shifting global dynamics.

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 12, 2024

A strategy to counter malign Chinese and Russian influence in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Matthew Kroenig, Jason Marczak, Jeffrey Cimmino

As strategic competition with China and Russia continues to intensify, the United States and its allies need a strategy for countering the malign influence of authoritarian rivals in the Western Hemisphere. This Atlantic Council Strategy Paper proposes a path forward for the United States and its allies to do that.

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The post Why Congress must reauthorize the US Development Finance Corporation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A vague “Japanese model” comes up in many conversations about industrial strategy in the United States. It is common knowledge that, in the second half of the twentieth century, Japan found new export destinations for its industrial output while working its way up the manufacturing value chain. Japan’s powerful (though now defunct) Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) almost always receives credit for managing this success. In short, the casual evaluator of economic security policies might answer that Japan has known what it is doing for longer than the United States.

Self-critical Japanese specialists would find such a portrait saccharine and outdated.

From the 1970s onward, Japan gradually opened its current account and its economy to investment. By the 1980s, when US public opinion was turning against Japanese imports, MITI’s power had already greatly diminished. Alongside the rest of the Japanese government and the Bank of Japan, it struggled to recreate favorable conditions during the lost decade that started in the early 1990s. There has since been increasing alarm regarding China’s rise and its many consequences for the Japanese economy, including Japan’s dependence on Chinese imports and investment.

While these concerns had been building for some time, the spark that started a legislative bureaucratic overhaul to extend the government’s authority and centralize the chain of command came during the second term of late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, from 2012–2020.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent weaponization of supply chains made Abe’s decisions seem remarkably prescient. Yet the world has changed even faster than he might have expected. Japan has built new policies and teams to deal with economic threats wrought by China and Russia, but these were designed to work in conjunction with partners, primarily the United States. Though suspended, President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” 31-percent reciprocal tariff on Japan casts doubt on whether Washington still considers Japan the United States’ closest partner in Asia.

Japan finds itself in a predicament remarkably similar to that of other US partners. But unlike the European Union, it is wary of threatening to deploy its economic statecraft policies against the United States. Instead, following in Abe’s footsteps, it hopes to rely on deals. This has proven successful in obtaining a green light for Nippon Steel’s purchase of US steel, as Trump lifted Joe Biden’s blocking of the transaction. But the welcoming of Japanese investment by no means guarantees a looser stance on Japanese imports to the United States.

Over three months, we conducted interviews with Japan’s economic security policymakers in Washington and Tokyo, who agreed to meet despite their busy schedules. The goal of this piece is to represent how these teams are organized and how they think about relevant issues. The fallout from Trump’s tariffs was front of mind in every conversation, yet it was still possible to present a comprehensive picture of where Japanese economic statecraft stands now, and how it will continue to prepare for more uncertainty. 

From vision to legislation

Abe left a significant legacy in economic and defense policy. It should be no surprise that he also made a difference in the areas in which they overlap. Economic themes were present in Abe’s 2007 speech on the “free and open Indo-Pacific” during his shorter first term. In front of India’s Lok Sabha (or parliament), he committed Japan to promoting regional connectivity and economic partnerships. Nonetheless, the bureaucratic and legislative overhaul of economic security and economic statecraft came in the later years of Abe’s second term. Before that, security and economics were treated separately and their needs perceived as different.

On the security front, growing threats from China and North Korea helped Abe justify a reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution to expand the role of its Self-Defense Forces. In 2013, Japan created a National Security Council to centralize decision-making with the support of a National Security Secretariat (NSS). Two years later, the government passed security legislation allowing Japan to exercise collective self-defense, enabling it to aid allies under attack even if Japan itself is not directly threatened.

Concerns about economic security were already present, especially those relating to Chinese intellectual property (IP) theft and overreliance on Chinese manufacturing. However, these were clearly superseded by the need for a revitalization of Japan’s economy, which by then had suffered two decades of subpar growth. Abenomics, the prime minister’s signature economic policy, succeeded in reversing deflation and boosting consumer spending through increased government spending and quantitative easing. Attempts to improve competitiveness through structural reforms, including reform of the labor market, were somewhat less successful.

Abenomics was a net positive for Japan’s economic security, boosting consumption and making Japan (slightly) less reliant on exports. While economic revitalization was the priority, this didn’t prevent the prime minister and the political class from becoming more attuned to the economic security risks Japan faced. China’s decision to withhold exports of critical minerals for several months in 2010 was probably the first significant shock. But when Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, Japan surprised observers by joining the United States and the European Union in imposing country-specific sanctions outside a United Nations (UN) mandate. These events were enough to kickstart an overhaul of Japan’s economic security landscape.

In 2015, Abe said in a speech to the US Congress that the United States and Japan “must take the lead to build a market that is fair, dynamic, sustainable, and is also free from the arbitrary intentions of any nation.” The subsequent years were characterized by more focus on economic security. The NSS created a specific economic security team in 2019, and Japan made several updates to legislation.

Before the changes of the late 2010s, Japan’s economic security policies were governed by the still extant Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA) of 1949. This act originally imposed a tight regime of inbound investment screening, which was progressively hollowed out as Japan sought to bring itself in line with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other international standards. Still, the division of labor set out by FEFTA hadn’t changed. The Ministry of Finance remained responsible for investment screening while the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)—the successor to MITI—became the natural decision-maker for export controls and subsidies.

To this day, FEFTA remains the legal basis for the Japanese government’s investment screening and export controls. However, vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that an additional layer of legislation would be needed—one that could build economic resilience by allowing the government and firms to cooperate in a more intensive way. This was the basic rationale of the Economic Security Promotion Act of 2022. This law created the position of minister for economic security, based in the prime minister’s office, although much of the engagement with firms and data collection is still run out of METI.

How the ministries and agencies are responding to new challenges

As the government of Japan has placed greater emphasis on economic security and updated its legislation, its departments haven’t significantly altered their division of labor in terms of economic statecraft. METI continues to lead on export controls, the Ministry of Finance on investment screening, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on sanctions. What has changed is how policies are coordinated, with the creation of teams explicitly devoted to economic security.

When it was created in 2014 to support National Security Council meetings, the NSS did not feature an economic security team. Instead, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs played this role by default given that it was already responsible for coordinating policy with other governments. While this ensured that Japan applied the measures to which it agreed in international forums, it was clearly insufficient to implement a holistic strategy of economic self-defense, resilience, and indispensability. 

Since the 2019 creation of an economic security team within the NSS, the balance between internal and external coordination has become clear. The ten-person team is small but powerful. It can convene meetings between large, well-established ministries and bring their preferences in line with a more general sense of Japanese strategy, including Tokyo’s alignment with Washington. This role has become more prominent since the arrival of the first minister of state for economic security—who sits in the cabinet office, not inside METI or another large ministry—and a legislative mandate in the Economic Security Promotion Act for the NSS to coordinate economic security policy. The team’s access to the prime minister’s office also allows it to seek political guidance faster than experts in ministries can.

And yet, while the role of the NSS in economic security has clearly grown, the team’s small size and the long-standing roles of other ministries and agencies make the NSS a partial counterpart to the US National Security Council. The economic security team has a blue-sky thinking role and runs a regular program of cross-departmental tabletop exercises focusing on economic coercion, some of which have included US government specialists.

It’s important to remember that the NSS economic security team is not automatically at the top of the chain of command in the way the National Security Council (NSC) might be. Sensitive decisions on export controls and investment screening can also be settled by METI and the Ministry of Finance, respectively. Therefore, studying the role of each organization remains essential.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs no longer carries out internal coordination on economic security, as this mandate has been moved to the NSS. Despite this shift, the ministry still plays a vital role in Japanese sanctions and helps coordinate international positions on other tools such as export controls. As we’ve found in other countries, such as France, the diplomats have two key qualities: they are present at every international summit and often must stand in for more expert colleagues when a deal is done, and they are good at finding compromises.

While Japan has participated fully in the recent Western sanctions coalition against Russia, this has been made possible by exemptions that Tokyo sought and obtained. The best example is the sanctions exemption for the Japanese-owned Sakhalin-2 oil and gas refinery from the Russian oil price cap and other measures that could stem the flow of liquefied natural gas. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also contributed to talks on how to make the sanctions effort work better, such as the Common High Priority Item list for export controls. In December 2023, it also pushed Japan to take the unprecedented step of using the legal basis of its Russia sanctions to sanction third-country entities enabling Russia to circumvent sanctions.

These decisions show that the ministry’s culture still prioritizes coordination with the United States. This worked well under the Biden administration, during which both governments managed to organize two 2+2 Summits of the Economic Security Consultative Committee, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and METI on the Japanese side and the Departments of State and Commerce on the US side. There is no clarity regarding whether this will continue under the second Trump administration.

Difficulties coordinating with the United States will be a culture shock for the ministry, but it will try to salvage what it can and keep pushing for unity in the Group of Seven (G7). The ministry is also leading on building understanding with the Global South, especially on economic security. Japan realizes better than some of its close partners that sanctions and economic statecraft can be easily misconstrued in third countries and can have adverse impacts on their economic development. Therefore, the ministry has taken on the task of explaining how its economic security policies do not contradict overarching principles such as the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, while also pushing for overseas development aid to be better coordinated with economic security priorities.

METI

Proponents of industrial policy have a starry-eyed view of the Ministry of Economics Trade and Industry’s predecessor—the Ministry of International Trade and Industry—and its role in steering Japan’s rise as an export powerhouse. The eulogizing is not entirely misplaced, but it perhaps overlooks how the powerful super ministry has needed to adapt, first to the shortcomings of Japan’s export-driven model and now to the era of economic coercion. METI can leverage deep sectoral knowledge on the Japanese economy and its interdependencies with the rest of the world, which other ministries do not have. Yet its officials still tend to downplay their readiness for the new challenges and say Japan has a lot to learn about the tools of economic statecraft.

One sign of this is that METI’s Trade and Economic Security Bureau, though run by long-standing official Hiroshi Ishikawa, is a recent creation and another result of the 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act. The bureau’s role is to implement the new legislation by taking a forensic approach to Japan’s problems and the cards it can still play. In close cooperation with firms, the finance sector, and universities, the bureau’s work is organized into three pillars. These are

• “red” areas of disruptive technological innovation in which Japan needs to cultivate its indispensability but must beware of losing autonomy;
• “blue” areas in which Japan has technological advantages and should maintain its indispensability; and
• “green” areas of external dependence in which de-risking is needed.

So far, the approach has also made it easier to unlock larger subsidies for advanced semiconductors, which fit squarely within the “red” area in which Japan risks being left behind. The best example of this is the 1-trillion yen ($6.9 billion) subsidy for TSMC to build a factory on the island of Kyushu.

The three-pillar framework has been useful in raising awareness with firms. Some small and medium enterprises had been unaware that their intellectual property and production were part of what makes Japan indispensable to the global economy. This is usually good news. The exercises have made clear that Japan is ahead of the curve in synthetic biology. The Japan pavilion at the Osaka World Expo proudly features a human heart made of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. But technological advantages are also bringing constraints, such as the US demand for a trilateral deal with Japan and the Netherlands to control the export of semiconductor manufacturing equipment or Tokyo’s own decision to restrict exports of drone technologies that can have military applications.

Ministry of Finance

Of all the ministries working on Japan’s economic security, the Ministry of Finance has had the most stable area of responsibility. Under the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act of 1949, the Ministry of Finance carries out investment screening. Policies were initially very strict; however, investment liberalization progressed after Japan joined the OECD in 1964. Since the second Abe administration, attention has shifted to the new challenge of economic security.

Unlike other export controls, which often face skepticism from Japanese members of parliament keen to help firms in their constituencies, inbound investment screening enjoys broad-based political support. In 2020, an amendment supported by politicians and driven by the changing international environment considerably tightened screening by requiring prior notification of any foreign direct investment (FDI) covering 1 percent or more of ownership in a firm in a sensitive sector—down from 10 percent. The measure is country agnostic, but the shift was apparently driven primarily by China.

Prior to a 1978 liberalization, the ministry also practiced outbound investment screening. Since 1998, a simpler post-investment reporting system has become standard practice for Japanese firms, but this does not include screening. Arguably, Japan’s modest venture capital ecosystem relative to that of the United States means it faces fewer dilemmas on outbound investment.

Japan will need to diversify its partnerships to weather the storm

Japan’s recent legislative and bureaucratic reforms were carried out with awareness of US political volatility, though perhaps not an expectation that the second Trump administration would engage in a trade war with its allies. While Tokyo welcomed early signals of US engagement, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s participation in the Quad dialogues, it cannot ignore the reality that Washington is increasingly prone to economic coercion, even against allies.

This is not without precedent. US pressure in the 1980s contributed to Japan’s long economic stagnation. But today’s situation represents a larger shift and comes under more challenging geopolitical circumstances for a country like Japan, which now considers three of its neighbors to be bad actors. Japan must prepare for a strategic divergence from US economic policy, while identifying ways to prevent definitive ruptures wherever possible.

During the Trump presidency, Japan will be on a different course than the United States on green energy technology, as Japan is an export powerhouse in this field. It will also be at odds with the United States on overseas development assistance in regions where US retrenchment is enabling China’s advance. Institutions like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) already quietly prioritize projects with economic security value; this approach should be made more explicit to encourage greater uptake in Asia and Africa.

Deeper coordination with G7 partners and other likeminded countries is essential, including on the most worrying scenarios in the Strait of Taiwan. Japan shares many of the European Union’s concerns about the US tendency to frame every economic issue as a national security threat. Japan also prefers country-agnostic policies, instead of the tier-based or country-specific approaches US administrations have developed.

Tokyo prefers more predictable policies yet—unlike the European Union—it is unencumbered by internal divisions among twenty-seven member states. It has a unique opportunity to serve as an example of what open economies that do not wish to engage in economic coercion, but must be ready to stand up to it, should do. METI’s systematic approach to cultivating indispensability is certainly more advanced than what the rest of the G7 is doing. On the other hand, Japan remains vulnerable to coercion through its supply chains and much more work must be done to build resilient alternatives to China.

Japan is in a geopolitically challenging neighborhood and is witnessing the basic tenets of its foreign policy—from alignment with the United States to fostering a rules-based environment—come under unprecedented stress. Yet its advanced manufacturing base and recently updated legislation on economic security also provide it with more cards to resist economic coercion than most countries hold. Its public and private sectors are now largely aligned on these issues. Business leaders have even expressed support for former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi becoming the next prime minister.

It’s hard to think of a more ringing endorsement from the private sector for prioritizing economic security.

Charles Lichfield is the deputy director and C. Boyden Gray senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

The report is part of a yearlong series on economic statecraft across the G7 and China supported in part by a grant from MITRE.

The contents of this issue brief have not been approved or disapproved by the Japanese government.

Issue Brief Mar 27, 2025

Canada needs an economic statecraft strategy to address its vulnerabilities

By Kimberly Donovan, Maia Nikoladze, Lize de Kruijf

To address threats from Russia and China and reduce trade overdependence on the United States, Canada’s federal government will need to consolidate economic power and devise an economic statecraft strategy that will leverage Canada’s economic tools to mitigate economic threats and vulnerabilities.

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Issue Brief Dec 20, 2024

Decoding French economic statecraft

By Charles Lichfield

Understanding how France “does” economic statecraft will be crucial for US and other Western policymakers in the months and years ahead.

Economic Sanctions Economy & Business

Report Jun 21, 2023

Sanctioning China in a Taiwan crisis: Scenarios and risks

By Charlie Vest and Agatha Kratz

New research on possible options and their costs of G7 sanctions on China in the event of a Taiwan Crisis.

China Economic Sanctions

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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The post How Japanese economic statecraft has shifted from promotion to protection appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The United States is ill prepared to confront the challenges of an increasingly hostile global strategic environment. A coordinated coalition of adversarial states is working to dismantle the US-led global order, seeking to replace it with one defined by their ambitions and autocratic principles. At the forefront of this effort is China, which is rapidly accelerating its military capabilities and expanding its defense industrial base (DIB) to field sophisticated weapons systems designed to deter the United States globally and secure its goal of national rejuvenation. Aligned with China are Russia, Iran, and North Korea—forming an increasingly unified axis of authoritarians steadily advancing toward this objective. Compounding these challenges are increasingly frayed traditional US security alliances, notably in Europe, that leave the United States further exposed.

The most effective strategy to contend with this evolving threat landscape is through robust preparedness—both immediate and long term. Against this background, US and allied attention has increasingly turned to Africa. Africa holds one-third of the world’s known mineral reserves, including 80 percent of platinum and chromium, 47 percent of cobalt, and 21 percent of graphite.

Of the fifty minerals identified as critical by the US Geological Survey (USGS), thirty-two are found in Africa. US policymakers have therefore begun to explore partnerships with African countries to secure these resources. Yet, despite several promising initiatives, the United States still lacks a coherent and comprehensive policy for engagement—particularly one that can compete with the entrenched influence of the axis of authoritarian states, notably Russia and China, in the continent’s mining industry.

By supporting African nations in the development of their domestic mineral processing capabilities, the United States could enable them to retain a greater share of their mineral wealth and build self-sufficiency in defense. Such efforts could also diminish China’s influence across the continent. For the United States, developing these capabilities could secure a reliable source of critical minerals.

This report begins to lay the groundwork for such an effort by:

• Identifying the defense capabilities the United States should prioritize to remain competitive in the evolving global strategic environment and the critical minerals necessary to support them.
• Charting Africa’s critical mineral resources relevant to US defense needs and assessing the shifting defense postures of African nations, particularly where the development of their weapons systems and security objectives aligns with US interests.
• Underscoring the importance of US support for building Africa’s mineral processing infrastructure, while addressing the structural barriers that have hindered progress so far.
• Advancing targeted recommendations for US policymakers to operationalize such efforts and redefine US-Africa relations for today’s global challenges.

Issue Brief Apr 24, 2025

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By Aubrey Hruby

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Report Sep 23, 2024

Lessons for African mineral producers from the Indonesian experience

By Julien Marcilly and Bradford Simmons

Indonesia and its success with resource nationalism can serve as an example for many mineral-rich African countries.

Africa Energy & Environment

Report Jul 1, 2024

From greenfield projects to green supply chains: Critical minerals in Africa as an investment challenge

By Aubrey Hruby

This report provides a snapshot of Africa’s mineral wealth and mining industries, draws out the similarities between the mining and infrastructure investment attraction challenges, describes the competitive landscape African nations find themselves in, and makes innovative recommendations—namely to the US government—to rapidly accelerate investment in sustainable mining industries in African markets.

Africa Economy & Business

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

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The post Keeping China at bay and critical minerals stocked: The case for US-Africa defense collaboration appeared first on Atlantic Council.

There are four steps that European nations should undertake in the near and medium term to enhance NATO’s deterrence and defense capabilities against the prospect of Russian aggression.

As the European Commission’s plan for strengthening European defense stated, “Russia will remain a fundamental threat to Europe’s security for the foreseeable future,” and one which requires a timely response inasmuch as “Russia has made it clear that according to their understanding they remain at war with the West.” Accordingly, as part of enhancing NATO defense, Europe needs to take prompt action to significantly increase:

1. the effectiveness of forces at its borders with or near Russia,
2. its capability for sea control,
3. the resilience of critical infrastructures necessary to defense operations, and
4. its defense industrial capabilities.

The importance of Europe taking such actions arises from a confluence of three factors: first, Russia’s willingness as demonstrated by its actions in Ukraine to undertake “major mechanized high-intensity warfare” to achieve its geopolitical aims; second, the challenges facing the United States military with the potential for conflict in the Indo-Pacific that could require resources that heretofore have been focused on Europe; and, third, decades of defense underinvestment by European nations that have left their militaries and defense industrial bases ill-prepared to engage in a sustained conventional conflict.

These concerns are significantly heightened because Russia, despite its more than three-year, ongoing war against Ukraine, has nonetheless been able to reconstitute its land forces and has fully maintained its air, naval, cyber, and space capabilities. In recent testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s supreme allied commander, described Russia’s continuing reconstitution of its military forces:

Moreover, in addition to maintaining its force structure, Russia has substantially enhanced its defense industrial capabilities. Again, per Cavoli:

Moscow is also marrying its expanded industrial prowess with more sophisticated technological capabilities. For example, Russia is investing significantly in, and having early success with, unmanned vehicle swarming capabilities.

Most significantly, Russia’s threatening activities are not limited to Ukraine. One key concern is that Russia has been building up its infrastructure near the borders of Finland and the Baltic states. As one report describes:

It is not clear, of course, whether Russia would choose to attack NATO countries. But what is clear from Cavoli’s testimony is that “Russia’s willingness to employ brutal means in pursuit of its goals,” and that the “Russian regime has refashioned its military, economic, and social structures to sustain what it describes as a long-term confrontation with the West—systemic changes that illustrate Russia’s intention to confront us into the foreseeable future.”

Estimates vary as to when Russia could sufficiently reconstitute from its conflict with Ukraine to undertake an attack against NATO. The uncertainty is rooted in the fact that the duration of the Russia-Ukraine war is itself uncertain, with substantial efforts as of this writing being taken by the United States to bring the fighting to a halt. In that event, a report from Bruegel stated: “A significantly more challenging scenario for Europe would be an unlikely peace deal accepted by Ukraine. In such a scenario, Russia is likely to continue its military build-up, creating a formidable military challenge to all of the EU in a very short period, given current Russian production. The EU and allies including the UK and Norway would need to accelerate their military build-ups immediately and massively.

Specific predictions as to the time needed for full Russian reconstitution generally range from two to five years. Norway’s senior commander has stated that two to three years would suffice; Jack Watling of the United Kingdom’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has noted the importance of “ensuring that the UK’s Armed Forces are contributing to a credible deterrence posture alongside European NATO allies by the end of 2027.”  Other estimates fall into a three-to-five-year window.

Timing uncertainties—even at the higher end—should provide little comfort. As retired Maj. Gen. Gordon “Skip” Davis, a former deputy assistant secretary general at NATO, has warned, if Russia is given “two, maybe three to five years” to rebuild its forces while Europe fails to rearm at the same pace, European forces “would be at a significant disadvantage in a high-intensity fight.”

Such a scenario of NATO fighting at a substantial disadvantage is entirely plausible if Europe fails to take action. Most obviously, Russia is fully capable of large-scale warfare with its current capabilities. If full-scale conflict in Ukraine were to end, many of those capabilities could be directed against NATO—perhaps for a relatively limited operation such as against one of the Baltic countries, combined with nuclear threats to dissuade NATO from launching an effective response, or, with longer preparation, possibly a full-scale attack. Moreover, if the United States were facing or actually engaged in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific—keeping in mind that China’s President Xi Jinping has told his forces to be ready to succeed in a conflict against Taiwan by 2027—European nations should have the necessary capabilities to respond effectively against Russian aggression.

European nations are, of course, alert to these issues. As a consequence of the Russian threat, and amid growing concern over US commitments to the North Atlantic alliance, their combined defense budgets (including Canada) are now equal to just over 2 percent of their aggregated gross domestic product. Multiple nations are planning further increases: Poland expects to spend 5 percent of GDP in 2025; Germany recently voted to exempt defense spending from its “debt brake,” and the government announced support for defense spending (including relevant infrastructure and cyber capabilities) of 5 percent of GDP; France has set a target of 3.5 percent; and the United Kingdom has established a target of 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027 and 3 percent thereafter. For its part, the United States has called for “adopt[ing] a new 5-percent-of-GDP Defense Investment Plan,” which will be a central topic at the NATO summit in June.

Additionally, the European Union has determined to become a significant player in the defense arena. There is a newly created Commissioner for Defence and Space, and the EU is undertaking to provide 150 billion euros to member countries for defense. Further, the EU is planning to authorize countries to “trigger an emergency clause allowing them to make defense investments that push them over the bloc’s budgetary spending limits.” Exactly how much additional spending this would generate is not clear since, as of this writing, only twelve of the twenty-seven EU countries plan to use the emergency clause, and three of the larger countries—France, Italy, and Spain—do not plan to. Nonetheless, reporting on the European Commission’s tracking of member states’ defense plans indicates: “The European Commission is sticking to its estimate that member states could spend up to €650 billion on defence over the coming four years despite just half of governments requesting more fiscal headway to boost investments in the sector in time.”

As valuable as these actions are, it is important to recognize that even the most expansive budgetary plans do not translate into prompt, actual military capabilities. Initiatives must be transferred into actual budgets. Budgets must be approved by parliaments and then provided to defense ministries. Ministries must sign contracts. And companies with contracts must undertake production that often requires the scaling up of facilities.

Europe has a very long way to go on defense spending and capability requirements, with NATO asking “alliance members to raise their military capability targets by 30% as the organization seeks to boost its force posture, according to the [Supreme Allied Commander Transformation] in charge of defense planning at the 32-nation alliance.” Accomplishing these upgrades—to achieve a military posture credible and sufficient enough to offset Russian capabilities—demands a strategic approach that can be accomplished in a timely fashion and with a laser-like focus on the most critical and implementable capabilities. European nations are in a race against the clock and, consequently, must prioritize actions in the near and medium term to deliver capabilities that provide the greatest deterrence or, if necessary, actual military defense against a Russian threat.

To achieve this goal, NATO should focus on the four key challenges it currently faces. First, Europe has too few forces on the borders with Russia. Second, Europe, without US support, cannot marshal the forces necessary to gain sea control. Third, European nations are highly vulnerable to cyberattacks on infrastructure that is critical for sustained, effective military operations. Fourth, Europe’s defense industries lack the capacity to provide substantial amounts of effective weaponry in the near and medium term.

The NATO summit in June offers a forum for the alliance, and its constituent members, to adopt the necessary actions in response to these concerns. The required steps are set forth below.

I. Europe needs to promptly boost the efficacy of forces at its borders with or near Russia

As described above, Russia is in the process of enhancing its capabilities near the Baltic states and Finland. Doing so will provide the infrastructure and forces necessary for a conventional attack. But deterring or defeating such an attack—and especially repelling not expelling an attack—requires an effective NATO forward force posture. However, as Cavoli has stated:

To establish the necessary posture that Cavoli envisions, European nations should take the following actions, all of which can be accomplished in the near and medium term and all within existing or planned budgets. These actions should be undertaken irrespective of any decisions by the current US administration regarding American forces for Europe.

First, NATO European nations need to undertake a massive buildup of unmanned aerial vehicles. The use of drones has completely changed the nature of battle—as demonstrated by their role in the Russia-Ukraine war: Drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say.

Just as the United States is planning for extensive use of unmanned vehicles in the Indo-Pacific should there be a conflict over Taiwan, and as Ukraine has done in its own defense, NATO needs to have a large and effective unmanned vehicle inventory available for use in the event of war with Russia. Ukraine is utilizing millions of unmanned vehicles. NATO needs a comparable supply. (A large-scale capacity for ammunition production is also needed—and discussed below in the defense industrial section.)

Second, NATO nations that border Russia and Belarus must establish effective obstacles—including land mines—to blunt a Russian attack. Useful lessons can be drawn from the Ukraine conflict, where mines have been utilized by both sides, and from the Korean context, where the defense of South Korea is supported by mines. Five Baltic nations—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—are in the process of withdrawing from the Ottawa Treaty, which bars the use of anti-personnel mines (anti-vehicle mines are allowed). The sooner mines are emplaced on the borders with Russia and Belarus, the stronger NATO deterrence and defense will be.

Third, some European forces should move forward on NATO’s eastern flank. Germany is planning to have a brigade stationed in Lithuania by 2027. The United Kingdom should position one of its brigades currently in England to Estonia, where the UK already has a brigade headquarters leading a multinational force. In Latvia, where Canada leads a multinational force, France could bring forward a brigade. There could be arrangements other than mobilizing UK or French forces, but the key point is to add forward forces ready for a conflict if necessary. These actions will be necessary to meet the requirements of the NATO Force Model calling for “well over” 100,000 forces in up to 10 days and 200,00 in 10–30 days.

Fourth, equipment for European forces needs to be prepositioned in or near the Baltics and Poland to be readily available in the event of conflict. Prepositioning could be on land—as the United States currently does in several places in Europe—or the equipment could be placed on maritime prepositioning ships, again following the US approach which worldwide includes seventeen prepositioning ships.

Fifth, Europe needs to establish an equivalent to the US Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) pursuant to which US airlines “contractually commit to . . . augment Department of Defense airlift requirements in emergencies when the need for airlift exceeds the capability of military aircraft.” Creating a European equivalent would be particularly valuable for moving personnel to fall in on prepositioned equipment as recommended above.

In terms of the proposed prepositioning and the European version of CRAF, it is worth noting that while mobility by rail and motor vehicle has long been identified as a challenge for NATO, and while the European Union has undertaken a mobility initiative that has reduced a certain amount of bureaucratic obstacles, little has been accomplished to meaningfully enhance physical mobility. For just one example, the “completion of Rail Baltica, an alternative 870km (540 miles) north-south railway link [through the Baltic states], has been postponed from 2025 to 2030 and is facing massive cost overruns.”

II. Europe needs to enhance its capability for sea control

In the event of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, United States naval forces would play a major role, thereby calling on much or all of those forces for the European theater to be engaged in that arena. European maritime forces would therefore need to make up the resulting gaps in NATO’s four seas—Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, and North—as well as in the Atlantic and in the Barents Sea. European navies have excellent capabilities, including, for example, French and UK aircraft carriers and submarines from multiple countries extending beyond France and the United Kingdom to Norway, Sweden, and Germany, among others. As an illustration of European maritime capabilities, Cavoli testified that NATO operations in spring 2025 relied solely on approximately 20 European ships, and he had “zero U.S. ships working for [him] as SACEUR.”

The issue for NATO maritime forces, therefore, is not so much one of upgrading capabilities but rather one of mass. European navies are relatively small. That challenge is susceptible to solution, however, by utilizing unmanned maritime vehicles as part of NATO’s maritime operations. The value of unmanned surface vehicles has been demonstrated by the United States through Task Force 59 operations in the Gulf and Windward Stack (now transitioned to Southern Spear) operations in Latin America, where USVs have provided highly effective surveillance capabilities critical to maritime domain awareness. More dramatically, Ukraine has utilized USVs successfully to attack and neutralize the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

NATO itself has recognized the value of unmanned capabilities and has begun operations with unmanned surface vehicles through its Baltic Sentry activity: “NATO launched Baltic Sentry, a new military activity in the Baltic Sea which aims to improve Allies’ ability to respond to destabilising acts. The activity brings together Allied navies, maritime surveillance assets, and private sector operators to ensure real-time situational awareness and rapid response capabilities across the Baltic Sea’s vulnerable zones.”

According to media reports, approximately twenty USVs are taking part in Baltic Sentry, and NATO has established Task Force X to further these capabilities. In a conflict, much larger numbers of unmanned vehicles would be required just for maritime domain awareness—and even larger numbers would be necessary if lethal capabilities were to be included, as Ukraine is successfully doing in its conflict with Russia. Accordingly, NATO must urge nations to substantially increase their unmanned surface fleets and to add unmanned lethal capabilities to the existing surveillance capabilities.

III. Europe needs to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructures fundamental to defense operations

NATO’s military capabilities are reliant on the effective operations of key critical infrastructures, including the electric grid, pipelines, transportation capabilities (rail, seaports, and airports), and information and telecom systems. Those systems, however, are susceptible to Russian cyberattack. As the recent US Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community states: “Russia’s advanced cyber capabilities, its repeated success compromising sensitive targets for intelligence collection, and its past attempts to pre-position access on U.S. critical infrastructure make it a persistent counterintelligence and cyber attack threat. Moscow’s unique strength is the practical experience it has gained integrating cyber attacks and operations with wartime military action, almost certainly amplifying its potential to focus combined impact on U.S. targets in time of conflict.”

While the assessment focuses on US infrastructure, comparable vulnerabilities exist in Europe. Moreover, given the “no limits” relationship between Russia and China, it is entirely possible that China’s very formidable cyber capabilities could be used in support of a Russian attack against NATO.

To be sure, in a conflict, cyberattacks are unlikely to be definitive in and of themselves. Ukraine has sustained many such attacks and has continued its defense against Russia. The operational technologies running critical infrastructure are resilient in the sense that they generally get disrupted but not destroyed by a cyberattack—and so can be reconstituted.

Still, disruption can have far-reaching and even catastrophic consequences—especially in the early days of a conflict when NATO would be engaged with bringing the necessary forces into place to repel a Russian attack. Critical infrastructures companies like port or railway operators do not have the expertise to respond to a high-level cyberattack on their own. A coordinated public-private set of actions would be required.

There are currently three overlapping sets of activities intended to bring about the necessary resilient cybersecurity for European private sector infrastructures:

1. NATO formally recognized the importance of cyber as an operational domain in 2016 and has undertaken a variety of initiatives since then. At the 2023 “Vilnius Summit, Allies . . . committed to more ambitious goals to strengthen national cyber defences as a matter of priority, including for critical infrastructures.” Most recently, NATO has said it will establish the NATO Integrated Cyber Defense Center to combine NATO’s existing cyber efforts and to engage industry partners from across the alliance as well. But this activity is not expected to be complete until 2028, and it is far from clear what degree of effort it will be undertake to ensure the resilience of key critical infrastructures.
2. Twenty-three of the thirty-two NATO nations are members of the European Union and therefore subject to the EU requirements on cybersecurity. EU regulations require that “essential and important entities should adopt a wide range of basic cyber hygiene practices, such as zero-trust principles, software updates, device configuration, network segmentation, identity and access management or user awareness, organise training for their staff and raise awareness concerning cyber threats, phishing or social engineering techniques.”
3. NATO nations have national cybersecurity programs, illustrated by France’s National Cybersecurity Agency [ANSSI] and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Defence Centre. Each of these (and the other national cyber agencies) undertakes to provide support to private sector entities, though the specifics vary according to the country. For example, the NCDC “support[s] the most critical organisations in the UK, the wider public sector, industry, SMEs as well as the general public. When incidents do occur, we provide effective incident response to minimise harm to the UK, help with recovery, and learn lessons for the future.”

A recent analysis set forth a series of key actions required to protect critical infrastructures necessary for NATO military operations. None of those actions should wait until 2028 for NATO’s establishment of its Integrated Cyber Defense Center. Most crucially: “NATO ultimately needs a mechanism for planning and implementing cyber operational collaboration among alliance members and with the private sector.”

In establishing such collaboration, NATO should “prioritize involving private sector entities that have a key operational role, including unique insights that could support operational activity as well as direct operational capabilities.” Key aspects of such collaboration would include:

• identifying and engaging the highest-priority infrastructure assets to ensure that they are sufficiently investing in resilience and have the highest level of government support in order to protect national security and economic productivity; and
• establishing “sector-specific councils or working groups that include representatives from member states, industry partners, and relevant NATO bodies. These groups could facilitate the exchange of threat intelligence and best practices, enhance collective defense capabilities, and streamline coordinated responses to cyber incidents affecting multiple NATO countries.”

Additionally, a focus on technological capabilities will be important. As the report states, “New innovations can help to provide visibility into both operational and information technology, using artificial intelligence to quickly learn what normal activity looks like and detecting anomalous behavior.”

Beyond the foregoing recommendations, four further actions will be important:

1. NATO networks as well as key critical infrastructures should all strictly adhere to the requirements for “zero trust architectures” that reduce the abilities of adversaries to compromise network capabilities. As noted above, the EU’s NIS 2 standard calls for zero trust, but it will be critically important to ensure that this requirement is being effectively put in place (including for non-EU nations). Achieving that goal will require a certification system backed up by red teaming to determine whether the particular system is in fact highly capable.
2. NATO should be ready to undertake an expanded effort akin to the United States’ “Hunt Forward” activity, which works with allies and partners to identify and eliminate malware in key cyber systems.
3. It will be necessary for NATO not only to focus on cyber defense but also to undertake to disrupt the offensive cyber capabilities that Russia would utilize against the alliance. As previously described: “The actual implementation of NATO’s cyber offensive capabilities is by nations through a process described as the ‘sovereign cyber effects provided voluntarily by allies.’ . . [Utilizing] this approach allows allies to support NATO commanders with cyberattacks, but to keep to themselves (as they choose), the particulars of their offensive cyber methods.. . . . However, in conditions of conflict, the value of wartime cyber offensive operations may benefit from broader coordination with kinetic operations.”
4. NATO should also undertake to ensure that both its own information technology systems and those of the critical infrastructures upon which it relies transition to so-called “memory safe” software inasmuch as two-thirds and more of cybersecurity issues derive from the use of unsafe code. This cannot be accomplished immediately, but the United States Defense Advanced Projects Agency has developed the “TRACTOR” program which will automate the transition from the widely used C language to the memory safe RUST language.

Achieving the NATO-private sector collaboration described above, including the necessary operational and technological changes, is crucial for wartime success. However, while it would be difficult enough to establish an effective NATO-private sector cyber relationship, there are further significant obstacles given both the national and European Union cybersecurity roles. Analytically, a NATO-EU collaboration should be achievable since all share a desired outcome: resilience to a Russian (or Chinese) cyberattack.

Practically, however, NATO-EU collaboration often devolves into multiple meetings without consequential on-the-ground impact—and NATO is not without fault as its approach to national cyber requirements has been more aspirational than operational or technical. It will be a critical test for European defense—and for the leaders of NATO, the EU, and the private sector—to see if cyber resilience can in fact be enhanced or whether it will fall prey to bureaucratic dysfunctionality.

IV. Europe needs prompt enhancement of its defense industrial capabilities

Europe’s defense industrial base needs substantial and immediate enhancement. As the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness stated, “The defence industry is too fragmented, hindering its ability to produce at scale, and it suffers from a lack of standardisation and interoperability of equipment, weakening Europe’s ability to act as a cohesive power across the bloc.” In recognition of these deficiencies, individual European allies and the European Union have pledged to enhance their defense production and capacity. But many of those much-needed initiatives will take time—to send sufficient demand signals to industry, to ramp up industrial capacity, and to field actual capabilities to ensure allied warfighters are appropriately equipped. Time, however, is a very expensive commodity for a Europe facing a reconstituting Russia. Speed is critically important.

In the short and medium term, European allies need a sober assessment of what capabilities must be fielded quickly and which capabilities can reasonably be produced on the continent. As a first step, Europe should look to Ukraine for lessons learned on how to ramp up defense production quickly and which capabilities have been particularly effective against Russia. As discussed above, unmanned vehicles play an outsized role on the modern battlefield, and maintaining robust ammunition stockpiles is essential. Ukraine mass-produces UVs—at a volume of four million drones annually. European allies should undertake to promote defense industrial initiatives that deliver unmanned vehicle capabilities at comparable scale as promptly as possible. 

European allies could use the planned increases in defense budgets for investments in facilities for UV production. Such facilities can be stood up relatively quickly. By way of example, in the United States, Anduril is building a so-called “arsenal plant” to produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems annually. The plant is expected to cost less than one billion dollars and to be operational in approximately eighteen months. Anduril is considering standing up a similar facility in the United Kingdom, but there are a number of European companies, such as Helsing in Germany or Leonardo in Italy, that could step up production of unmanned vehicles with the appropriate financial support. Investing in such facilities, and ramping up capacity across Europe, would dramatically strengthen Europe’s capabilities for any conflict on NATO’s eastern flank.

Alongside an industrial base in need of immediate and substantial enhancement, Europe is woefully low on artillery and ammunition rounds. The Ukrainian military uses approximately two million 155 mm artillery rounds annually. Through the European Act in Support of Ammunition Production, the European continent is supposed to scale up bloc-wide ammunition production efforts to produce two million 155 mm rounds a year. However, this much-hyped initiative has struggled to deliver on its promises—and even if it were able to reach this benchmark, it would still fall short of the necessary artillery production to sufficiently resource Ukraine and allied militaries while simultaneously replenishing allied stockpiles.

Europe struggles to produce the requisite number of artillery rounds, in part due to systemic industrial capacity issues but also because of a global shortage of TNT and gunpowder. In the short term, Europe should authorize around-the-clock industrial shifts in munition factories to ramp up production. Additionally, European allies should explore innovative opportunities to cast artillery rounds and other munitions rather than relying on the traditional method of forging, as proposed in a recent Center for a New American Security (CNAS) report. Forging is a time-intensive process compared to casting, which is more flexible and allows for recyclable metal to be molded in a shorter time frame. Europe has a significant foundry industry that could be redirected to produce artillery rounds and other munitions. Overcoming the global shortage of TNT will require strengthening strategic supply chains with like-minded allies and partners—most notably Japan. In the longer term, European allies should invest in new munition manufacturing facilities and expand the number of TNT production facilities beyond its reliance on the existing Nitro-Chem plant in Poland. To be sure, European munitions troubles extend beyond 155 mm artillery rounds. However, the clear vulnerabilities in this artillery production underscore the necessity for Europe to take prompt and innovative action to scale its munitions production.

The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that air defense is crucial to safeguarding civilians as well as critical infrastructure. Europe has tried to bolster its air and missile defense through collaborative procurement programs like the European Sky Shield Initiative and now the ReArm Europe plan. However, in the past, such initiatives have had mixed success, as progress stalls over political divergences. For example, France has been openly critical of the European Sky Shield Initiative for prioritizing the purchase of US weapon systems over European systems. As European allies continue to disagree on key issues related to security and defense, allies at the national level must forge ahead by buying individual capabilities that meet NATO’s interoperability standards to ensure these systems can be integrated across the alliance. Some would be US systems, such as Patriot, and some would be European, such as the NASAMS system by Kongsberg or the newer Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG.

Lastly, even if Europe were to adopt all of these approaches tomorrow—at both speed and scale—it would likely fall short of the needed industrial capacity to field sufficient capabilities to deter or defend against Russian aggression. In the short term, Europe must cooperate with its allies and partners, both in North America and the Indo-Pacific region, to fill its stocks and provide other capabilities. Despite political headwinds, the United States remains the strongest defense industrial partner of Europe: Its systems are widely used, trusted, and meet interoperability standards established by NATO. The remedy for laggard defense industrial capacity on both sides of the Atlantic is greater cooperation—not isolationism.

Where national governments diverge on approaches, European military planners and industry partners should explore other opportunities to strengthen industry-to-industry ties. This approach would match European defense industrial ambitions by supporting European efforts to meet short-term capability targets while also investing the necessary capital in facilities to grow a healthy and robust European defense industrial base in the long term. To this end, efforts to harness advantages on both sides of the Atlantic in the form of co-production and co-development facilities are heating up. For example, in December, RTX partnered with MBDA to open the first Patriot missile facility in Germany—which is slated to begin producing over a thousand Patriot missiles for NATO allies annually. Opportunities like this allow Europe to quickly scale up facilities, while allowing European industries to offset some of the steep costs associated with building out new manufacturing plants. In the short term, Europe is equipped with capabilities at an accelerated rate while at the same time developing the requisite infrastructure to create for itself a healthier and more self-sufficient defense industrial base. 

V. Conclusion

The transatlantic community agrees: Europe must do more to enhance its role in NATO. Taking the actions set forth in this issue brief will provide the necessary enhancement of European defense capabilities in the short and medium term to deter and, if necessary, defeat a reconstituted Russia.

Board director

Franklin D. Kramer

Distinguished Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

Cybersecurity Defense Policy

Staff

Kristen Taylor

Assistant Director

Transatlantic Security Initiative

Europe & Eurasia European Union

Report Nov 4, 2024

NATO needs a ‘hellscape’ defense at ‘Replicator’ speed

By Franklin D. Kramer, Kristen Taylor

To enhance deterrence, the NATO Alliance should adopt a ‘hellscape’ approach designed to acquire and field low-cost, highly effective massed armaments, prepositioned on the forward lines of conflict, within a two-to-three year timeframe.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

New Atlanticist Oct 9, 2024

European defense industrial woes need a transatlantic remedy

By Kristen Taylor, Luka Ignac

To ensure its security, the European Union should collaborate more closely with the United States on defense industrial production.

Conflict Defense Industry

Issue Brief Feb 21, 2024

NATO multidomain operations: Near- and medium-term priority initiatives

By Franklin D. Kramer, Ann Marie Dailey, Joslyn Brodfuehrer

How can NATO improve its ability to fight as a multination coalition? These seven initiatives for NATO to take over the next five years can help.

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

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A small group of nations established the International Maritime Organization in 1948 to create a modicum of global governance. Since then, IMO (as insiders call it) or the IMO (as most others call it) has fulfilled its task of functioning as a global parliament and secretariat for matters relating to ocean safety. Yet, like all other multilateral organizations, IMO depends on its member states’ goodwill and compliance. Today several large member states undermine the organization, and the United States left its negotiations over greenhouse gas reduction. IMO will continue to function as a steward of global ocean safety. But to achieve better maritime order, states should also join forces in coalitions of the willing or a maritime “elite league.” Countries in such formations could, for example, introduce stricter pollution or protection and indemnity (P&I) insurance rules.

Like many other organizations within the United Nations (UN), and the UN itself, IMO was established in the years immediately following World War II. Even with a Cold War rapidly forming, the world’s nations knew that they would need to share the oceans and that improving maritime safety was in everyone’s interest. Convening in Geneva in 1948, sixteen pioneering nations—ranging from Canada to Pakistan and including one country, Poland, from the emerging Soviet-led East bloc—formed the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO). ¹

The Convention on the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization stipulated that the new organization would provide “machinery for co-operation among Governments in the field of governmental regulation and practices relating to technical matters of all kinds affecting shipping engaged in international trade, and to encourage the general adoption of the highest practicable standards in matters concerning maritime safety and efficiency of navigation. It would also “encourage the removal of discriminatory action and unnecessary restrictions by Governments affecting shipping engaged in international trade so as to promote the availability of shipping services to the commerce of the world without discrimination.”²

The IMCO’s mission was to facilitate safe and fair global shipping. It did so based on consultations and consensus-focused decisions by its members. The convention stipulated that “the functions of the Organization shall be consultative and advisory” and that the organization should “provide for the drafting of conventions, agreements, or other suitable instruments, and to recommend these to Governments and to intergovernmental organizations, and to convene such conferences as may be necessary.”³ That gave the IMCO’s secretariat no decision-making powers—decisions were to be made by the member states—and certainly no enforcement power.

In successfully founding the IMCO, the sixteen nations had proven that a shared maritime organization was possible even among nations that shared virtually nothing else. They were soon joined by a steady stream of other countries, with early joiners including nations as different as Austria and Myanmar.⁴

Mission: Facilitate safe and fair global shipping

The organization proved valuable. As Cold War power dynamics became more entrenched, global shipping continued to function, with ships able to call at any chosen port regardless of the port state’s geopolitical leanings, the ship’s flag state, or the ship’s country of ownership. Along the way, IMO’s members adopted a string of conventions that enhanced shipping safety, including the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter in 1972, Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in 1974, and the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage in 1971 with an amended version in 1992.⁵ The latter forms the basis of the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds, a London-based multilateral organization that administers two compensation to victims of oil spills. Another marquee agreement—the International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation—was adopted in 1990.⁶

In 1982, having decided that the name IMCO was bulky and confusing, member states renamed the organization the International Maritime Organization. It has continued to oversee the safety of global shipping, and the cargo traveling by sea has continued to grow. In 1980, ships transported 3.7 billion tons of cargo on international voyages; by 2023, the volume had grown to 12.3 billion tons.⁷

Today IMO is the world’s default maritime organization, though crucially it is not the custodian of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), known as the constitution of the oceans. One hundred and seventy-six of the world’s nations now belong to IMO; the only ones that do not are landlocked countries that have very low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (such as Burkina Faso, $887), a tiny population (such as Liechtenstein, 39,850 residents), or both.⁸ Taiwan, which has a large maritime industry but is barred from joining the United Nations system as China considers it a renegade province, is also not a member. The IMO Assembly, which approves IMO’s activities and budget and elects IMO’s executive organ, includes all the organization’s member states and meets every two years

Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, said, “What IMO has achieved has been remarkable, things like the MARPOL Convention [the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships] and so many other conventions and instruments. The decision-making process does take time, and it’s quite tortuous at times, but the whole idea is that the organization tries to work on a consensus. That means compromises, but it’s pretty effective.”⁹ It has indeed been effective. Even though the 176 member states have widely divergent views and priorities, IMO has managed to become a global protector of safe shipping, albeit a slow-moving one that lacks enforcement powers. Instead, like other UN agencies, it relies on its member states to follow the rules to which they have committed themselves.

Geopolitics, greenhouse gases, and an abrupt US exit

In April 2025, the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee convened in London to negotiate an agreement reducing the shipping sector’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The emissions account for about 3 percent of GHG emissions, and IMO member states had been debating and discussing stricter emission rules for several years. Intense negotiations at the April meeting eventually resulted in an agreement that “will progressively lower the annual greenhouse gas fuel intensity of marine fuels, and a greenhouse gas pricing mechanism requiring high-emitting ships to pay for their excess pollution.”¹⁰ The agreement is to be “mandatory for large ocean-going ships over 5,000 gross tonnage, which emit 85% of the total [carbon dioxide] emissions from international shipping.”

The agreement was adopted by a majority of member states (sixty-three, including the twenty-seven European Union (EU) members, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, China, Norway and Singapore) voting in favor. Sixteen countries (including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia) voted against it, and twenty-five countries (including Argentina and Pacific Island states) abstained.¹¹ The agreement must be formally adopted by a two-thirds majority in October 2025; if that happens, it will enter into force in 2027.¹² However, an unusual event occurred during the negotiations. On instructions from Washington, the US delegation abruptly departed; the US government also sent a note to the other member states, urging them to reconsider their “support for the GHG emissions measures under consideration.” According to two people close to the process who spoke to the author, the US government privately put further pressure on countries to reject the agreement or abstain. Referring to the greenhouse gas emission proposal, the US démarche added, “Should such a blatantly unfair measure go forward, our government will consider reciprocal measures so as to offset any fees charged to U.S. ships and compensate the American people for any other economic harm from any adopted GHG emissions measures.”¹³

Brian Adrian Wessel, the director general of the Danish Maritime Authority and leader of the Danish negotiating team, said, “Geopolitics entered IMO with these negotiations. There was a coalition of oil-exporting states led by Saudi Arabia and a group of sanctioned states comprising Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea that opposed the agreement, and then the US de facto joined them in trying to block it. So it was left to the rest of the member states, including the EU and China, to work together to find a solution.”¹⁴

He added, “IMO stood its ground with a significant majority vote. In this day and age, a multilateral agreement on green transition is not a given in any way. The first maritime regulation on greenhouse gas emission, passed with a vast majority, that’s historic.”¹⁵

Platten said, “This is the first time in around fifteen years that an IMO agreement went to vote. It was quite a moment to be in the plenary hall when that happened. But nonetheless, we have an agreement now, which makes shipping the first industry to legislate to decarbonize, putting a carbon price for the first time, and some reward elements to it as well. What other industries have done anything like that? The answer is none whatsoever.”¹⁶ He continued, “IMO is one of the last UN bodies which is still functioning as a multinational body. I think that’s because shipping needs to be globally regulated. It cannot do anything else.”¹⁷

The deterioration of the global maritime order

The US departure from the negotiations, however, reflected a wider reality. The global maritime order, which nations and the maritime industry have painstakingly constructed over the last century, faces serious travails. To be sure, commitment to maritime treaties has never been complete. Some shipowners and flag states have been indifferent or reckless when it comes to pollution by their ships and, especially in recent years, countries have regularly violated UNCLOS. That was the case with the 1980s Tanker War between Iran and Iraq; the shadow maritime war targeting Iranian and Israeli merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz; the Houthis’ attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea; and China’s maritime harassment of civilian vessels in the South China Sea.

But nations and companies have largely adhered to IMO’s overwhelmingly technical conventions. One reason for this compliance is that better safety practices benefit everyone. Another is that any ship calling at a port is subject to port state control, the maritime equivalent of a safety inspection, which means that independent inspectors register any rule violations. Owners and flag states must address these deficiencies before ships can continue their journeys.

As the rules-based international order continues to deteriorate, commitment to IMO rules is also slipping. Even though the MARPOL Convention bars ocean pollution (whether involving oil or other substances) by merchant vessels, the world’s growing shadow fleet willingly and systematically accepts a disproportionate risk of oil spills.¹⁸ In May 2023, the shadow tanker Pablo exploded off the coast of Malaysia, causing oil spills in local waters, and other shadow vessels have spilled oil elsewhere.¹⁹ Despite such dangerous incidents, IMO has been unable to ensure compliance with its rules—even though its member states include several “flags of extreme convenience” (my term) that primarily flag shadow vessels. Insisting on compliance is made yet more difficult by the fact that shadow vessels don’t call at ports of Western countries, where post state controls are typically fully implemented, but instead sail straight to their destination or perform ship-to-ship transfers before returning to their ports of origin. “It’s very tempting to start saying, if they don’t play by the rules, why should we then play by the rules?” Wessel noted.²⁰

Response options for nations committed to maritime governance

IMO member states could introduce proposals aimed at curtailing dangerous shadow vessel practices or, for that matter, proxy group attacks on merchant shipping. Indeed, some IMO member states are teaming up to at least bring attention to systematic violations. “We try to work closely together where we see such issues, whether it’s in Asia or in our own neighborhood, and then take it into the IMO,” Wessel said.²¹Interview with the author, April 22, 2025.²² Yet most attempts at strengthening rules or creating new ones are likely to be unsuccessful, as nations benefiting from the practices would vote against the measures and encourage other countries to do the same.

“What IMO can do is act as a facilitator,” Platten said. “Everyone wants safe shipping, and that’s what IMO regulates. People make grand statements at IMO, whether it’s on the Ukraine issue or anything else, but ultimately it’s a technical body that decides on regulation for shipping. It’s never at its best when there’s political grandstanding. It’s much better when it gets on with things as it did with the greenhouse gas agreement, which is people working late, late, late into the night to try and find some landing ground.”²³

Within IMO, a significant number of countries around the world are indisputably committed to maintaining and enhancing maritime governance. By definition, shipping encompasses the whole world, and IMO remains irreplaceable as the forum through which the world’s nations can maintain standards. However, it can no longer be assumed that all members want to enhance the global maritime order.

The fact that IMO depends on its global membership for any action, and that leading nations now openly undermine the maritime order, means there is a gap in global maritime governance. It’s clearly in no country’s interest to impose more governance on itself while other countries use the world’s oceans impeded by fewer rules, but countries could team up in self-selecting groups to enhance maritime rules in their waters.

For example, while UNCLOS’s right to innocent passage is sacrosanct, countries affected by the shadow fleet could collectively adopt pollution rules that go beyond MARPOL. The countries that could initiate such an undertaking include coastal states in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and other countries whose territorial waters and exclusive economic zones shadow vessels regularly traverse.

As the shadow fleet has also led to systematic subversion of maritime incident insurance (known as the P&I club system), coastal states in different parts of the world now share the seemingly intractable problem that suspected shadow vessels sail through their waters with insurance barely worth the paper on which it is written. They, too, can team up to adopt stricter insurance rules. Adopting stricter pollution rules, P&I insurance rules, or both would enhance maritime safety without detracting from IMO. In that way, they would resemble initiatives by NATO member states that have a regional focus and take place outside NATO but don’t undermine the Alliance. They include, most prominently, the Joint Expeditionary Forces, which encompass ten northern European countries.²⁴

Sailing in safer waters

The International Maritime Organization serves the world’s nations and the shipping industry well, but it is undermined by growing geopolitical tensions and decreasing commitment to global rules and institutions. While IMO can continue serving a crucial function as the world’s default maritime convener, nations committed to the maritime order can enhance safety in their waters by forming coalitions of the willing that share, for example, stricter rules on pollution or P&I insurance. That would make sailing in their waters more expensive. It would also, however, help nations committed to the maritime order establish a maritime “elite league” in whose waters all maritime participants would know that the highest standards apply.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

Threats to the global maritime order

Learn more about the Atlantic Council’s project Threats to the global maritime order: Protecting the freedom of the seas.

Report Jan 23, 2025

From Russia’s shadow fleet to China’s maritime claims: The freedom of the seas is under threat

By Elisabeth Braw

This report analyzes the deterioration of the global maritime order, focusing on rule violations in areas including maritime border alteration, harassment of civilian vessels, and disturbance of navigational tools

China Europe & Eurasia

Report Dec 6, 2024

The threats posed by the global shadow fleet—and how to stop it

By Elisabeth Braw

Since 2022 the number of aging ships whose ownership, insurance status, and safety is unknown has exploded, prompted by Russia’s reliance on this “dark fleet” to ship its oil in defiance of Western sanctions. What can be done about this environmental, economic, and safety threat on the high seas?

China Europe & Eurasia

Report Aug 9, 2024

What attacks on shipping mean for the global maritime order

By Elisabeth Braw

This report discusses the history of attacks on shipping, the rules implemented to keep shipping safe, and the new and serious threats posed by the Houthis and other actors. It also discusses steps Western governments and the shipping industry can take to reduce the harm posed by such attacks.

Europe & Eurasia Maritime Security

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

The post The world needs a maritime ‘elite league’ to combat rogue shipping appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Where should the US Congress put its attention?

The heterogenous nature of the Caribbean offers various opportunities to strengthen relations with the region and, by extension, advance US interests. From natural gas to geothermal energy, Caribbean countries offer new opportunities for US investment. Reducing crime and gang proliferation across the region can protect US citizens traveling abroad and stem the potential flow of illicit goods and services.

Energy security

The United States can strengthen its positioning in the Caribbean by supporting regional energy security. At current estimated reserves, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago house almost 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with further offshore exploration expected to increase the size of reserves. At the same time, other countries require reliable power generation–which can be provided by liquified natural gas (LNG) imports–to provide resilience to their electricity grids during natural disasters, improve economic competitiveness, and to underpin ambitions to add renewables to their energy matrix.

Here, the United States will find opportunities on three fronts. First, natural gas exploration opportunities, liquefaction infrastructure, and building pipelines and LNG storage are areas where US oil and gas companies and mid-size service-based companies can invest. Second, imported oil from Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago can be low-cost and competitive options vis a vis other suppliers to satisfy growing US energy demand and supplement domestic shale supply in Texas and Midwestern states. Finally, congressional members can work with the Southern Caribbean hydrocarbon producers to support energy security in Europe and lessen demand for Russian energy resources by increasing cargo exports to EU members.

Greater Caribbean energy security can also lead to lower electricity prices, which can benefit constituents of US congressional members traveling to the Caribbean and potentially reduce migration to the United States. Most of the region (except for Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago) pays some of the highest electricity in the Americas (see Figure 3), which is on average, double or triple what US consumers pay. At the same time, electricity costs can account for almost 70 percent of a hotel’s utility due to air conditioning, lighting, and heating, among others.

Therefore, to keep profits stable, the high costs translate to the consumer–in this case, US tourists. This means that by bringing down electricity costs and lowering the cost to travel and having overnight stays in the Caribbean, US tourists benefit and have more purchasing power to buy in-country goods (most of which are imported from the United States). Further, reducing electricity prices can stem Caribbean emigration flows to US shores given that high costs of living are a key migratory push factor.

Reducing violent crime and gang activity

Security concerns in the Caribbean are on the rise. Figure 4 shows that Caribbean countries have high homicide rates (per 100,000) relative to their Latin American neighbors. Rates have been on the rise due to increased gang proliferation and illegal imports of small arms–many of which originate from the United States. For example, countries like Trinidad and Tobago, declared a state of emergency late 2024 due to increased gang activity and the usage of high-powered assault weapons. Gang proliferation is also on the rise. While Caribbean countries do not house large gangs, smaller gangs pervade the region, using the informal ports of entry to move illicit guns, goods, and services. In 2021, Jamaica identified 379 different gangs with 140 named in 2023 for Trinidad and Tobago. The decentralized nature of criminal and gang networks in the region inhibits Caribbean governments and police forces’ abilities to combat gang operations. Further, gangs in the Caribbean, especially in Jamaica, are turf oriented. This allows smaller gangs to gain a foothold in local communities, sometimes acting as community leaders and providing needed social services and protection from rival gangs.

Addressing the Caribbean’s security challenges can protect US citizens traveling to the region and curb gang activity and illicit trafficking before they reach US shores. Travel destinations for US citizens, such as Jamaica and islands in the Eastern Caribbean are among the most violent in the region. Therefore, improving citizen safety in the Caribbean ensures US citizens’ safety as well. Given that gun-related activities are a primary driver of citizen insecurity, one solution is for US agencies to work closer with Caribbean defense and police forces to improve monitoring, tracking, and seizures of illegal small arms.

Further, stemming gang activity in the region can also disrupt transnational criminal organizations’ operations. Specifically, Caribbean countries are used as a transit point for drugs, many of which end up in the United States. Enhanced maritime security and interdiction in the Caribbean Sea can help interrupt illegal drug supply chains and weaken transnational criminal organizations. However, the capacity to monitor drug flows is a challenge. Partnerships with the United States to gain access to satellite imagery and drone technologies to identify drug shipment routes can provide Caribbean governments the needed tools to tackle drug flows.

Bottom lines

• The challenges facing Caribbean countries are growing and have consequences that are not constrained to the region’s geographic borders, likely to directly or indirectly affect US interests. This can be avoided if there are consistent and strong partnerships between the Caribbean and the United States. This can and should start with stronger US congressional engagement to the region.
• US congressional members should consider legislation that prioritizes a holistic strategy with appropriated resources to the Caribbean. While CBSI tackles security challenges, support is needed across the energy, infrastructure development, agricultural, and financial services, among others.
• Given the importance of the Caribbean to US interests, the House Foreign Affairs Committee should consider a hearing that highlights new opportunities to strengthen US interests in the Caribbean and the broader US-Caribbean partnership.
• Strengthening US-Caribbean ties start with building a foundation for a long-term partnership. US congressional engagement can help turn four-year policies into decades of friendship, all while protecting US interests along its “third border.”

Staff

Wazim Mowla

Fellow and Lead of the Caribbean Initiative

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Caribbean China

Staff

Maite Gonzalez Latorre

Program Assistant

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Americas Education

New Atlanticist Mar 25, 2025

The US needs to build a new Caribbean policy. Rubio’s trip to the region can be the first step.

By Wazim Mowla

US engagement with the Caribbean should prioritize energy investments and efforts to reduce violent crime in the region.

Caribbean Economy & Business

New Atlanticist Apr 29, 2025

What’s next for Trinidad and Tobago’s new prime minister?

By Wazim Mowla and Dale Ramlakhan

On April 28, Kamla Persad-Bissessar was elected as the next prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. While she is returning to the role, she’ll find a country that is different from her first term.

Caribbean Elections

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

Learn more

The post US interests can benefit from stronger congressional ties with the Caribbean   appeared first on Atlantic Council.

NATO faces a growing threat from a resurgent Russia capable of hybrid and kinetic aggression across the Northeast Corridor—from Finland, the Baltic region, and Poland to the Black Sea. Currently, NATO’s defense posture relies heavily on US military support for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), strategic lift, command and control (C2), and the extended deterrence provided by the US nuclear umbrella. With the United States increasingly focused on the Indo-Pacific region and committed to burden sharing, and with growing calls for European strategic autonomy, NATO must be able to deter and respond to threats as a unified entity—one not effectively dependent on US warfighting capability and capacity. Regardless of spending levels, NATO must shift from a national-centric approach to an Alliance-wide mindset. This requires a shared engineering and analytics methodology to optimize defense resource allocations with a focus on speed, precision, and collaboration.

To assess the transatlantic geostrategic environment and explore strategic options available to NATO, MITRE and the Atlantic Council partnered to conduct a NATO Force Mix Analysis (NFMA). The findings of this analysis call for accelerated capability development, institutional reform, and operational integration under a forward-leaning, data-driven, mission-engineering framework. This framework would enable NATO to make data-informed decisions to:

• Adaptively evolve concepts, operational decision making, and assignment of authorities toward more effective strategic outcomes.
• Optimize funding investments and deliver unified capabilities that produce the best mission effects required for operational success.
• Effectively leverage technology to achieve mass.

By 2027, NATO must strengthen the Baltic Defense Line. Timely action is essential to ensure credible deterrence, reassure frontline allies, and deny Russia any opportunity to test NATO’s resolve or readiness in a high-threat environment. To achieve this, the following actions are essential:

• Prepare a warfighting burden-sharing roadmap.
• Establish a unified NATO multidomain warfare doctrine.
• Invest in multidomain C2 and ISR infrastructure.
• Establish a NATO multidomain open system architecture.
• Accelerate forward posture of heavy forces and integrated air and missile defense.
• Enhance military mobility and industrial coordination.
• Establish additional joint ISR fusion centers.
• Develop a pan-European logistics control network.
• Form multidomain operations (MDO) and cyber/influence task forces.

Together, these initiatives offer a blueprint for a more self-reliant, capable, and unified NATO in 2027—ready to meet emerging threats head-on.

Introduction

NATO’s deterrence posture in the Baltic states is undermined by an overreliance on US military capabilities. In a crisis where the United States were focused elsewhere, European NATO nations may therefore be unable to mobilize a timely, effective response. This overreliance creates both strategic and operational vulnerabilities that can be exploited by Russia to challenge the Alliance’s credibility and threaten national sovereignty.

NATO’s ability to deter or respond rapidly to Russian aggression is limited by:

• A lack of massed, ready combat forces in the theater.
• Insufficient integrated air and missile defense.
• Slow logistics and reinforcement timelines.
• A lack of organic strategic mobility with a reliance on US air and sealift.
• A reliance on US enablers for theater integrated C2, ISR, and mission networks.

Without the United States, NATO remains superior in numbers and technology on paper but lacks the operational integration, logistics, and joint force capabilities to rapidly match Russian mass and tempo near its borders. NATO must develop a force structure and a mix of capabilities that allow for the execution of regional defense plans with an emphasis on burden sharing. This modernization strategy must be objective, threat-based, and resource-informed.

The strategic context: A geopolitical landscape shaped by the orders forming around the US and China

The next few years will be pivotal for Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community, as shifting US geostrategic priorities toward the Indo-Pacific, persistent Russian threats, the rise of authoritarian powers, and a rapidly changing global order redefine the political landscape.

Alongside changing US and European Union (EU) defense priorities, the outcome of the war in Ukraine will be a critical factor in shaping NATO’s strategies. As the devolution of the post–Cold War liberal international order accelerates, with increasingly fluid relations between states, a new geopolitical landscape looms over the horizon, shaped by the bounded orders that the principal great powers, the United States and China, are forming around them. To address the challenges facing the United States in key theaters, adaptability and robust multidomain capabilities will be paramount in ensuring both regional stability and the protection of democratic values. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the Euro-Atlantic theater, as resource requirements in the Indo-Pacific region will continue to divert US resources there, making technology a key multiplier for the US European Command (EUCOM) and NATO.

Russia’s aggressive regional actions show no sign of slowing, with Moscow targeting Europe through both direct and indirect methods. As General Christopher Cavoli, EUCOM commander and the supreme allied commander Europe, recently testified before the US Senate, Russia has been and will likely remain a chronic threat to NATO. From military threats to hybrid warfare tactics—such as cyber-attacks, information campaigns, and economic pressure—Russia is further consolidating its influence in countries like Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. As it rebuilds its military capabilities and doubles down on nuclear reliance, Russia is strengthening its ties with authoritarian regimes, creating an emerging “axis of dictatorships” alongside China, Iran, and North Korea.

The growing Russia–China partnership poses a unique challenge to NATO, particularly as China expands its influence globally and engages in economic warfare. That country also benefits from its de facto alliance with Russia by gaining access to some of Russia’s modernized military technology, while China, in turn, provides a vital economic lifeline to Russia and a “moral legitimacy” for Russia’s actions in Europe, which align with China’s designs on Taiwan. This fusion of economic and military power, coupled with assertive moves in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, is reshaping global dynamics and testing NATO’s reach and resilience. The West faces a rapidly evolving challenge, requiring swift, strategic responses to counter the growing authoritarian alliance that threatens global stability.

As Europe confronts an increasingly precarious security environment and potential friction in relations with the United States, the European Union appears to be doubling down on its efforts to achieve strategic autonomy. In March 2025, the EU unveiled a bold white paper outlining plans to significantly boost defense spending, foster collaborative defense projects, and shift toward purchasing European-made arms. This move is designed to close critical capability gaps in missile defense, drones, and cyber warfare, while also pooling resources to create a more unified defense infrastructure. The proposal even includes borrowing up to €150 billion for defense loans, aiming to reduce fragmentation in Europe’s defense industry and enhance the continent’s self-reliance. At the same time, recent elections in Germany have introduced new dynamics into that country’s defense policy. The newly elected leadership is reevaluating its defense priorities, a shift that could have significant implications for Germany’s role within NATO and its contributions to collective defense. Friedrich Merz, the incoming chancellor, has successfully lobbied the Bundestag to lift the legal deficit spending restrictions on defense, while repeatedly underscoring that Europe must chart an independent course. How Germany navigates this shift will be crucial in shaping Europe’s defense future and the tenor of transatlantic relations.

NATO, meanwhile, remains focused on deterrence and collective regional defense. With an emphasis on burden sharing and joint procurement of critical systems, the Alliance is rapidly expanding its combat-ready, forward-deployed forces in Poland and the Baltics, underpinned by a robust training and sustainment hub in Germany. The outcome of an ongoing US defense-posture review may drive additional modernization and deployment efforts, but this “fight tonight” readiness reflects NATO’s shared vow to defend European borders and ensure security. As NATO defense ministers have pointed out, these efforts demonstrate Europe’s increasing commitment to sharing the transatlantic defense load.

However, to truly succeed in its mission, NATO’s efforts must be underpinned by a data-driven approach. Modernization planning for its MDO strategy must integrate cutting-edge data analytics to ensure that defense initiatives are not only effective but responsive to the emerging threats of today and tomorrow. This strategy must be backed by a comprehensive Alliance-wide effort and a coordinated whole-of-government response to address NATO’s most pressing security challenges with agility and precision.

Europe stands at a critical juncture. There is potential tension inherent in Europe’s evolving commitment to strategic autonomy and strengthening NATO’s collective defense, as both ultimately rest on the ability to generate relevant, usable integrated capabilities. This demands a warfighting mindset, and an understanding of the acquisition, integration, and training required to be successful.

As Europe grapples with the challenges of an increasingly unpredictable world, the key question for NATO and collective defense will be what capabilities Europe can contribute to offer credible options to NATO. Success will hinge on how swiftly and effectively these efforts are coordinated and implemented, as they will significantly shape political decisions in the years ahead.

The war in Ukraine

Russia’s war on Ukraine has redrawn the European security map. It is a system-transforming conflict with asymmetric technology offsets, notably the emergence of drones and drone warfare. Regardless of the outcome, preexisting assumptions about transatlantic security and power distribution in Europe no longer hold. It is a litmus test for both NATO’s unity and the EU’s ability to sustain its support for Ukraine—especially as US military priorities shift toward Asia.

The coming months will be pivotal in determining how both institutions adapt to these pressures. NATO must reconcile the diverging priorities among its members, while the EU needs to strengthen its defense industrial base (DIB) to supply Ukraine, advance its own rearmament, and contribute to regional stability. As the crisis unfolds, the world will be watching how NATO and the EU respond—and whether they can navigate their internal divisions to confront the broader challenges ahead. Most of all, as the Trump administration endeavors to broker a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine, the outcome of that process will likely be a defining factor in how the conflict unfolds in the coming months.

NATO’s cohesion is being put to the test, as the Trump administration’s pressure on allies to rearm generates a positive but uneven response. While some member states have stepped up defense spending, others remain hesitant, citing economic pressures and varying threat perceptions. The countries in the Baltic area and the Northeast Corridor have significantly increased their defense spending, while countries farther away from NATO’s eastern frontier have been less forthcoming. This divergence risks weakening unity and effectiveness. NATO must address internal tensions to remain a credible force.

The EU’s push to rearm is also being challenged. Economic strains, particularly in major European economies, threaten the EU’s ability to sustain a unified defense approach. The EU’s ambition to reduce dependency on the United States and bolster its defense capabilities is at risk unless it can harmonize the defense priorities of its member states. It also fails to address the most fundamental question of which country—absent a US nuclear umbrella—would provide a nuclear deterrent and in what fashion. This highlights the critical need for the EU to present a cohesive yet realistic program to address a dynamic regional and global security environment. While NATO remains the cornerstone of collective defense and deterrence in Europe, the EU can and must play a complementary role by strengthening defense industrial capacity, improving military mobility, and reinforcing political cohesion across the continent. The EU must use the financial and regulatory levers at its disposal to enable member states to meet their key capability requirements, as defined by NATO planning.

With the Ukraine conflict exposing vulnerabilities, NATO’s reinforced presence in the Baltic area and Poland has never been more essential. These regions are key to deterring further aggression and ensuring that European borders remain secure. At the same time, the war’s impact on energy security and global supply chains has pushed Europe to rethink its transition to green energy. No longer willing to rely on Russian energy, European nations are diversifying their sources and debating the future of clean energy initiatives. Some EU members have mooted the idea of reopening the Nord Stream pipelines and at least partially normalizing economic relations with Russia once a ceasefire in Ukraine has been put in place. But Europe’s challenges go beyond energy: NATO and the EU face the rise of hybrid warfare, autonomous systems and drone warfare, cyber threats, and false information campaigns—all of which undermine stability and test the Alliance’s adaptability.

Defense spending dilemmas, shrinking and fragmented defense industries

As global security challenges intensify, both US and European DIBs are grappling with serious capacity and scalability issues. The US DIB, now only 30 percent of its Cold War size, is strained by contractor consolidation and growing supply-chain vulnerabilities. Europe’s defense sector remains fragmented, hampered by disconnected industrial policies that stifle cross-border collaboration and scalability, with lead times from orders to delivery still unacceptably long.

To maintain strategic readiness and counter growing threats, both the United States and Europe must urgently come up with bold solutions:

• Modular, scalable production facilities and additive manufacturing must be prioritized to rapidly adapt to shifting demands.
• A significant boost in munition manufacturing capacity is needed to sustain large-scale conflict operations.
• Cybersecurity enhancements across industrial and critical infrastructure networks are paramount to safeguard against emerging digital threats.
• The integration of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and autonomous systems will empower defense forces to deliver rapid effects with minimal manpower.
• Improved NATO coordination and interoperability are essential to ensure defense production is optimized, maximizing collective industrial capacity.

In President Donald Trump’s second term, the United States faces a critical defense spending dilemma exacerbated by fiscal constraints, military recruitment challenges, and the demands of potential simultaneous conflicts in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. These factors present significant risks to NATO, transatlantic relations, and global security. To address these challenges, NATO must move from the perennial talk about burden sharing to burden shifting and focus on transferring conventional combat capabilities from the United States to Europe. This shift will require deeper military integration and force modernization to maintain NATO’s effectiveness against growing threats from Russia and China. The United States must capitalize on its technological advantages while strengthening cooperation with European and Indo-Pacific allies. This approach will ensure the United States can balance its global commitments and continue to take the lead in maintaining international security. As a result, NATO’s collective defense efforts will remain robust amid evolving geopolitical pressures. In a nutshell, technology must be a critical force multiplier for the Alliance, helping to offset at least some of Russia’s advantage in mass.

Since its founding, NATO has depended on US leadership and military power. With the United States less able to provide the same level of conventional forces and infrastructure in Europe as it did during the Cold War and the 2000s, key NATO members—particularly Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—will have to significantly ramp up defense spending and military readiness. The key challenge will be to ensure that the EU doesn’t veer into a full-blown “strategic autonomy” project, as that would inevitably drain real resources from NATO. Instead, efforts at deeper European defense industrial integration should allow Europe to take greater responsibility for its security by resourcing core conventional deterrence capabilities within NATO, while still benefiting from US strategic support. In this new landscape, NATO’s collective defense would benefit, as regional defense plans would be backed by real, exercised capabilities—ensuring NATO is once again up to the task. Should the opposite happen—i.e., if Germany decides to push the EU to chart an independent course from the United States—the ensuing stresses in transatlantic relations would further fracture European politics and likely make the continent more vulnerable to Russian blackmail or all-out aggression down the line.

European NATO nations have pledged to increase defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, and many exceed that benchmark. Yet current European force posture in the Baltic states and elsewhere in the Northeast Corridor is insufficient to deter or respond to a rapid Russian incursion without significant external reinforcement. NATO needs to:

• Approach European rearmament in a way that builds credible, multidomain, combat-ready formations while keeping the United States engaged.
• Conduct a comprehensive review of capabilities and gaps (where the United States is engaged) to inform future force design and new operational concepts and doctrine to underpin collective defense.
• Develop a capability roadmap that enables burden sharing across the Alliance.

The view within NATO: What the Alliance needs by 2027

In response to Russia’s expanding capabilities, NATO has embraced a deterrence-by-denial posture, focusing on MDO to counteract aggression. This includes deploying forward forces, pre-positioning critical equipment, and developing operational concepts that prioritize holding the line and achieving rapid victory. Success will depend on massed effects and orchestrated battlefield efforts, with the unique strengths of each NATO member synchronized to support one another.

To counter emerging threats, NATO must urgently strengthen its logistical networks and mobility, ensuring rapid reinforcement of its eastern borders. Investment in key north-south road and rail corridors to enhance mobility along the eastern flank—from Scandinavia to the Baltic and Black seas—is essential for seamless troop and resource movement. Equally critical are interoperable C2 systems, designed with a data-centric, on-demand capability approach. These systems must integrate multidomain forces across nations, services, and echelons to maintain cohesion and operational effectiveness. To meet these challenges, NATO must modernize its infrastructure and adopt a wartime mindset, focusing on resilience, readiness, and strategic investments in critical capabilities. The Alliance must establish the necessary authorities to institutionally act with specific member states working in tandem with the EU to invest in critical infrastructure upgrades that support NATO operational requirements.

Russia’s military modernization efforts include enhancing unmanned systems for ISR and attack operations, networked fires, advanced weapons like hypersonic missiles, and robust cyber capabilities. Coupled with hybrid tactics such as false information campaigns, cyber-attacks, and sabotage, Russia poses an increasingly complex threat—especially with its use of “gray zone” strategies designed to blur the lines between conventional and irregular warfare. To counter these threats, NATO must be able to rapidly mobilize and deploy forces, emphasizing massed effects and MDO to blunt Russia’s initial momentum. The first seventy-two hours are critical, as Russia would aim to quickly seize territory and key infrastructure. Denying Russia these early operational gains could provide a critical off-ramp to avoid a protracted conflict. The following operational needs are key to NATO’s success:

• Track and target key Russian units by using advanced C2 and ISR capabilities, holding them at risk before conflict escalates.
• Surge reinforcements to hot spots through enhanced rapid deployment mechanisms as tensions rise.
• Deploy highly lethal forces, supported by unmanned systems, to halt Russian advances at the point of contact, using well-coordinated defensive positions and preplaced forces.
• Counterattack through multidomain orchestration and converged effects, targeting Russian C2 and employing anti-armor and long-range precision fires systems to disrupt rapid advances.
• Build integrated, trained formations capable of maneuvering and attacking Russian forces, logistics, and C2 systems to reclaim territory and reestablish international boundaries.

NATO must continue to strengthen its forward combat-ready presence with balanced rotational and permanently stationed forces, while investing in fires and defensive capabilities that provide a reinforcement window from the United States and other NATO nations. Critical to ensuring deterrence by denial is the top-down commitment from member states to operationalize multidomain C2, NATO’s unified networking and digital infrastructure.

Building an effective NATO force design

The Alliance must ensure that procured systems are the right systems based on regional plans, capability targets, and desired mission effects and work together seamlessly to create an integrated and interoperable multidomain force. To that end, NATO must:

• Deploy multinational MDO groups with shared ISR, C2, and kinetic/nonkinetic fires to overwhelm Russian forces and halt their advance.
• Expand integrated air and missile defense systems to counter advanced threats, including drones.
• Enhance rapid deployment and mobility through improved multimodal transport corridors and strategic airlift capabilities.
• Implement layered force protection and counter-mobility measures along NATO’s borders, buying time for multidomain forces to strike Russian formations deep inside their territory.
• Pre-position critical supplies (ammunition, fuel, heavy equipment) along the eastern flank.
• Invest in pooled and shared resources across member states, particularly in high-tech areas like satellite communications, drones, AI, and surveillance platforms.
• Invest in integrated training and experimentation to create strategic deterrence.

Establishing a NATO multidomain operations strategy

NATO’s ability to conduct effective MDO has never been more crucial. To counter Russia’s expanding military capabilities, NATO must integrate and leverage all domains—land, air, sea, cyber, and space—into a unified, cohesive strategy. MDO allow NATO to rapidly respond, disrupt enemy operations, and maintain strategic advantage. By improving interoperability, developing common standards, and building a seamless digital ecosystem, NATO can enhance its operational effectiveness and ensure rapid, coordinated action across all member nations. To counter Russia’s aggression and to reinforce its role as the cornerstone of global security, NATO must put forward an MDO strategy focused on a range of critical capabilities:

• A next-generation multidomain C2 system: This system must integrate all operational domains—land, sea, air, space, and cyber—into a single, unified interface for commanders. It should be fully interoperable across NATO member states and their national C2 architectures, enabling seamless cross-domain integration and battlefield orchestration, regardless of time, geography, or mission requirements.
• Integrated multidomain C2 operations centers: Within NATO’s multinational divisions, corps, and joint force commands, these centers can help to integrate situational awareness of national forces. Progress must continue to enable them to be networked to orchestrate operations across all domains, ensuring quick, coordinated action.
• Integrated ISR fusion centers: These centers must break down information-sharing barriers and integrate intelligence from multiple domains to provide real-time, actionable insights that are essential for swift decision making that enables expanded maneuver and cross-domain fires.
• AI (algorithmic warfare): AI will be pivotal in predictive analytics, persistent targeting, effects planning, and operational decision support. These algorithms can enhance decision making by providing commanders with insights on potential outcomes and courses of action.
• Cyber-resilient digital architectures: The zero-trust model secures critical systems and data by minimizing attack surfaces, enforcing least-privilege access, and enabling resilient, segmented networks. NATO’s digital infrastructure must employ this cybersecurity model to be protected from adversarial attacks that could disrupt or manipulate critical data, AI algorithms, and operational capabilities, ensuring system integrity and operational continuity.
• Autonomous systems: Leveraging low cost, expendable systems for reconnaissance, targeting, maneuver, lethal and nonlethal fires, and logistical support will significantly increase operational efficiency and reduce risks to personnel in contested environments.
• Unified networking and digital infrastructure: A data-centric approach will enable plug-and-play software development tailored to mission needs, ensuring NATO’s digital systems remain agile and responsive to emerging threats.

NATO must prioritize systems thinking, integration, and data interoperability within a unified, multidomain digital architecture. This approach is vital to ensuring that collective defense and deterrence capabilities are effective and adaptable to the complexities of modern warfare. These measures can significantly enhance NATO’s deterrence posture by leveraging technology to achieve mass and counter emerging threats. Success hinges on developing common standards, fostering interoperability across national systems, and creating a robust digital ecosystem that facilitates seamless data flow and decision making.

Envisioning NATO’s future through mission engineering

The United States and NATO must make smarter, faster decisions about what capabilities to acquire and how to integrate them within an multidomain force design. Every acquisition and force-development decision should be driven by a clear understanding of why it’s needed, when it’s needed, where it will be deployed, and what mission outcomes are expected. Only by focusing on these key factors can NATO build the warfighting capability and capacity needed for future success within the urgent timelines required.

NATO force modernization is not just about increasing defense spending—it is about spending smarter and optimizing the resources in hand more effectively. Regardless of spending levels, NATO must shift from a national-centric approach to an Alliance-wide mindset. This requires a shared engineering and analytics methodology to optimize defense resource allocations with a focus on speed, precision, and collaboration.

By investing in forward-deployed forces, integrated air and missile defense, multidomain warfare enabled by integrated C2 and ISR, autonomous systems, and resilient logistics, European NATO nations can strengthen deterrence and response capabilities—without relying on immediate US military intervention.

NATO, especially NATO European nations, must rapidly transform warfighting concepts and capabilities to counter a resurgent Russian threat by 2027. This demands agile decision making and investment in technological innovation, seamless integration, and interoperability—all essential to generate combat mass and achieve dominance in multidomain warfare.

MITRE’s data-driven, systems-thinking approach coupled with the Atlantic Council’s Euro-Atlantic strategic knowledge revolutionizes multidomain force design by combining scenario-based mission engineering and operational analysis. Known as the NATO Force Mix Analysis, this powerful methodology assesses and optimizes military force structures, C2, ISR, and fires architectures, all aligned with strategic capability options in a threat-driven context to help inform coordinated, future-ready investment strategies across the Alliance.

If broadly adopted, the NFMA can help NATO—especially European members—accelerate capability development, respond more effectively to current and emerging threats, and validate new technologies through continuous, real-world analysis and experimentation. This, in turn, would enable faster deployment of critical systems and smarter operational decisions. Specifically, the NFMA could support NATO in the following ways:

• Inform early deployment of experimental platforms and operational concepts. Prototypes will be evaluated in both live exercises and fielded operational environments to test performance, uncover capability gaps, and refine tactics. This would enable NATO to assess the real-world effectiveness of emerging technologies and operational concepts before full-scale integration.
• Provide the foundation for continuous testing and evaluation of tactics, techniques, and procedures in varied operational scenarios. Through persistent experimentation, NATO will remain adaptable, learning and evolving in response to new threats and opportunities for innovation.
• Enable rapid development and procurement of new capabilities to ensure NATO can meet evolving defense needs. Employing open architectures and agile acquisition for fielding critical capabilities will reduce time to implementation and enhance operational flexibility.
• Help NATO collectively identify and field the right combination of force structures, technologies, and operational strategies to strengthen its deterrence posture while maintaining agility and readiness. Through mission engineering, operational prototyping, persistent experimentation, and agile acquisition, NATO can test new capabilities and refine operational strategies to ensure sustained deterrence and rapid response in the Baltic region.

The Alliance must assess and adapt its force mix to operate in a contested, multidomain environment. The following analytic questions are critical to guiding NATO’s posture, readiness, and resilience amid evolving threats and uncertain US. force commitments.

• How can NATO combat readiness and forward presence be improved?
• How can NATO establish a resilient, multidomain C2 and ISR architecture and how does NATO best offset a reduction in US commitment of its capability and capacity?
  • How resilient is European C3 and ISR under cyber and kinetic attack?
  • What data integration and decision processes enable NATO unity and speed?
• How can NATO improve persistent targeting and lethality?
  • How can NATO establish a joint fires network?
  • What is the role of AI and autonomous systems in targeting and lethality?
• What is required for integrated air and missile defense (including counter-unmanned aircraft systems) to hold the line?
• What is required for NATO to successfully execute contested logistics forward in the battlespace? Can NATO sustain thirty-plus days of combat operations without US strategic lift, theater lift, and logistics assets and expertise?

The NATO 2027 use case: Insights and priorities

Initial insights from the NFMA underscore several operational priorities critical to NATO Europe’s ability to independently deter or defeat a Russian offensive in the Baltic region by 2027, particularly in scenarios with limited or delayed US engagement. These insights highlight the importance of integrating advanced fires, mobility, survivability, and C2 capabilities into a cohesive, MDO concept.

Key findings and operational priorities include:

• Countering Russian mass and tempo with integrated fires: NATO must pair long-range precision fires with close-combat drone swarms to disrupt and degrade Russian force concentration and tempo. This layered approach enhances survivability while enabling rapid effects across the depth of the battlespace.
• Persistent targeting via multidomain fires and C2 networks: Success in a high-threat environment requires a persistent, integrated “kill chain” linking ISR, C2, and fires across all domains. NATO must be capable of delivering operational-level fires from standoff range to neutralize Russian anti-access/area-denial systems, command nodes, and massed maneuver forces within key mobility corridors.
• Overmatch in mobility, countermobility, and survivability: NATO forces must dominate the terrain through superior mobility and countermobility operations, creating choke points and engagement zones that slow Russian advances and funnel them into preplanned kill boxes. Critical targeting priorities include Russian combat engineering units that enable cross-country movement and breaching operations, in addition to traditional C2 and logistics nodes.
• Integrated, layered force protection and terrain shaping: A combination of physical border fortifications, camouflaged forward positions, and active defense systems is required to delay Russian momentum and generate tactical opportunities—creating conditions for NATO forces to strike with precision anti-armor fires, loitering munitions, and coordinated drone swarms, especially at choke points and terrain seams.

These insights reinforce the need for NATO to invest in operational prototyping, joint experimentation, and rapid fielding of advanced fires and survivability capabilities. Implementing these priorities through a data-driven, mission-engineering approach will ensure NATO Europe is postured for success in a contested, near-peer conflict environment.

Recommendations

Building on the operational insights from the NFMA, the following recommendations are aimed at enabling NATO Europe to independently deter, respond to, and potentially defeat Russian aggression in the Baltic states by 2027. These measures are designed to accelerate capability development, institutional reforms, and operational integration in line with a forward-leaning, data-informed, mission-engineering framework.

• Prepare a warfighting burden-sharing roadmap: NATO must develop a capability roadmap that enables burden sharing and, where appropriate, burden transfer from the United States to Europe for critical warfighting capabilities while addressing gaps to achieve threat overmatch.
• Establish a unified NATO multidomain warfare doctrine: Develop and implement a multidomain operational concept, aligning land, air, maritime, cyber, and space operations across regional defense plans and force structures.
• Invest in multidomain C2 and ISR infrastructure: Build a resilient, interoperable digital architecture to support real-time C2, dynamic targeting, and cross-domain ISR sharing among allies.
• Establish a NATO multidomain open system architecture: Create an open system test and experimentation architecture to drive C2 interoperability and rapid deployment based on mission and user need.
• Accelerate forward posture of heavy forces and IAMD: Pre-position armored units and layered air and missile defenses in key forward areas to enable rapid combat mass and early crisis response.
• Enhance military mobility and industrial coordination: Improve cross-border military transit and align defense industrial base efforts for surge production of critical systems and munitions.
• Establish additional joint ISR fusion centers: Set up additional ISR hubs in Germany, Poland, and Finland that build on existing Baltic centers to provide persistent battlespace awareness and theater-level targeting.
• Develop a pan-European logistics control network: Create a secure, integrated logistics system to sustain operations under contested conditions, incorporating civilian and military infrastructure.
• Form MDO and cyber/influence task forces: Deploy specialized units to coordinate cross-domain fires and information operations, supported by integration cells at corps and division levels.
• Conduct no-notice Article 5 rehearsal war games (without US surge forces): Routinely execute unscripted, short-notice multinational exercises to test NATO’s ability to respond to aggression under Article 5. Use outcomes to inform force posture and capability investments.
• Build a NATO integrated training and validation program: The joint training architecture, in coordination with Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, will validate unit readiness and interoperability in line with the 2027 vision. This program should emphasize realistic, threat-informed scenarios and integration of new technologies and concepts.

Conclusion

To maintain NATO’s deterrence credibility and defend national sovereignty in the face of a reconstituted Russian threat, Europe must assume greater responsibility and operational capability. Achieving this NATO Europe 2027 vision requires more than policy alignment—it demands a mission-driven, technically grounded approach to force design, readiness, and modernization. In support of operationalizing this vision, the MITRE–Atlantic Council collaboration on the NATO Force Mix Analysis offers a reusable, scalable technical framework to guide strategic defense decisions through 2027 and beyond.

This framework integrates advanced digital engineering tools, mission-level modeling, and decision analytics to continuously evaluate NATO’s defense needs, mission requirements, and acquisition priorities in a dynamic threat environment. It provides a rigorous, evidence-based foundation for aligning strategy with capability development—supporting faster, smarter, and more resilient force planning across European allies.

Key enablers of the NATO 2027 vision include:

• Mission-driven analysis: NFMA supports an ongoing assessment of force mix options aligned with strategic objectives, enabling nations to prioritize investments that close capability gaps and build operational mass.
• Digital engineering and modeling: High-fidelity simulation and modeling environments allow planners to visualize and evaluate operational concepts, logistics, and reinforcement timelines under contested conditions—before investments are made.
• Operational prototyping and experimentation: The NFMA approach enables early testing of new operational concepts and technologies through simulation, live exercises, and real-world experimentation—de-risking decisions and informing doctrine.
• Agile acquisition support: Insights from the NFMA can guide iterative acquisition decisions, accelerating the deployment of high-impact capabilities such as ISR, integrated air defense, mobility assets, and interoperable C2 systems.

Scott Lee is the chief engineer for multidomain operations and C2 at MITRE. In this role, he leads MITRE’s efforts to develop solutions that address the defense challenges and operational requirements of next-generation command and control and enabling systems in support of US and allied and partner warfighting concepts. He previously led MITRE’s Joint All-Domain C2 (JADC2) Cross-Cutting Priority.

Andrew Michta is a senior fellow in the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the former dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. He holds a PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University. His areas of expertise include international security, NATO, and European politics and security, with a special focus on Central Europe and the Baltic states.

Peter Jones retired from the Army as a brigadier general and is a contract engineer at MITRE, providing broad support to the Army portfolio especially in the area of future concept development and experimentation in support of Training & Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and now predominately Army Future Command’s Future Concept Center. Prior to his retirement, Jones served for two years as the U.S. Army Infantry School Commandant and 56th Chief of Infantry.

Lisa Bembenick is the executive director of international security affairs for MITRE. She is responsible for MITRE’s international strategy and senior level relationships on defense issues related to the United States, Europe, and NATO, and positions MITRE to bring its technical capabilities to bear on critical security outcomes faced by NATO countries. She was previously director of strategy for MITRE’s National Security Engineering Center.

As part of their strategic partnership, the Atlantic Council and MITRE have conducted a NATO Force Mix Analysis, examining ways to harden the Alliance’s eastern flank, measure the value of multidomain operations, and deter Russian aggression. This paper is jointly produced by the Atlantic Council and MITRE.

MITRE and the Atlantic Council gratefully acknowledge Meg Adams, Greg Crawford, LeAnne Howard, Jackson Ludwig, and Matt McKaig for their valuable contributions to the publication of this paper.

The authors would also like to thank Paul O’Donnell, Lori Fermano, Phillippe Dickinson, Sheila Gagen, Bailey Galicia, and Sydney Sherry for their editorial assistance.

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The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post For NATO in 2027, European leadership will be key to deterrence against Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For more than a decade, Syria’s crisis has caused unimaginable suffering inside the country and a constant stream of strategically significant spillover effects across the Middle East and globally. However, this dynamic changed in late 2024, when armed opposition groups in Syria’s northwest launched a sudden and unprecedentedly sophisticated and disciplined offensive, capturing the city of Aleppo and triggering an implosion of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. In the space of ten days, Assad’s rule collapsed like a house of cards, dealing a crippling blow to Iran’s role in Syria and significantly weakening Russia’s influence. 

Now, for the first time in many years, Syria has a chance to recover and reintegrate into the international system. If the United States, Europe, Middle Eastern nations, and other stakeholders embrace the right approach, support the right policies, and encourage Syria’s transition to move in the appropriate direction, the world will benefit—and Syrians will find peace. The work of the Syria Strategy Project (SSP) and the policy recommendations in the report “Reimagining Syria: A roadmap for peace and prosperity beyond Assad” present a realistic and holistic vision for realizing that goal. 

This report is the result of intensive joint efforts by the Atlantic Council, the Middle East Institute (MEI), and the European Institute of Peace (EIP), which have been collaborating since March 2024 on the SSP. At its core, the project has involved a sustained process of engagement with subject-matter experts and policymakers in the United States, Europe, and across the Middle East to develop a realistic and holistic strategic vision for sustainably resolving Syria’s crisis. This process, held almost entirely behind closed doors, incorporated Syrian experts, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders at every step.

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Civil Society Conflict

New Atlanticist May 13, 2025

Experts react: Trump just announced the removal of all US sanctions on Syria. What’s next? 

By Atlantic Council experts

Our experts provide their insights on how the removal of US sanctions on Syria would affect the country and the wider region.

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New Atlanticist Dec 8, 2024

Experts react: Rebels have toppled the Assad regime. What’s next for Syria, the Middle East, and the world?

By Atlantic Council experts

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been ousted as opposition forces quickly took the Syrian capital. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the developments.

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Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.

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The post The fall of Assad has opened a door. But can Syria seize the moment? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In the coming years, the US-South Korea (Republic of Korea, or ROK) alliance is likely to be tested in at least three fundamental ways: by a concerning growth in North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile weapons program; by changes to ROK defense capabilities and structures, including the establishment of ROK Strategic Command (ROKSTRATCOM); and by potential strategy and policy changes under new US and ROK political administrations.

Though the alliance may rise to the challenges of these tests to emerge stronger, these factors could potentially prevent the United States and the Republic of Korea from leveraging the mutual benefits that come from being integrated into a unified wartime command system and the long-standing ideal of a US-ROK bilateral agreement that emphasizes mutual defense. The United States will need to continue to adapt its approach, account for its ally’s perspectives, and plan for the inevitable change to the status quo on the Korean Peninsula.

A second North Korean enrichment facility heightens security concerns in Seoul

The first test for the alliance is the continuing growth of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Current estimates suggest Pyongyang has enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads, which generates compelling security concerns that could create tension among two longtime and staunch allies—the United States and the Republic of Korea. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has placed increasing importance on the regime’s nuclear weapons development in the last decade, portraying nuclear weapons as not only defensive but providing the means to win in conflict. In September 2022, North Korea promulgated a new law that laid out a much broader approach to the use of nuclear weapons, including their employment in various conditions.  

In 2023, Kim updated Article 58 of the state’s constitution to “ensure the country’s right to existence and development, deter war and protect regional and global peace by rapidly developing nuclear weapons to a higher level.” In September 2024, North Korean state media released photos for the first time of a suspected second uranium enrichment facility and Kim called for a higher number of more capable centrifuges to boost his plans to “exponentially” increase nuclear warhead production. Further, 2025 marks the final year for Kim to achieve the military capability development goals laid out in his five-year plan.

North Korea has a nuclear dyad with land- and sea-based nuclear weapons, and it is developing new technologies, including hypersonic gliding flight warheads and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, consistent with Kim’s drive to rapidly develop nuclear weapons and the five-year plan. North Korea’s Strategic Forces have short-range, medium-range, intermediate-range, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), along with 200 road-mobile launchers. North Korea’s continued development of its rail-based ballistic system shows the regime’s efforts to diversify launch platforms, including various vehicles and ground launch pads and potentially submarines, and increase the survivability of its force. While Kim’s ability to strike the US homeland with North Korean ICBMs only grows with additional testing and the introduction and testing of its solid-fuel ICBM in 2023, the regime is also hard at work improving the efficacy of its precision-guided tactical nuclear weapons, which are designed to significantly damage South Korea and US forces on the peninsula, as well as create response challenges for the alliance.

In addition, North Korea is moving forward on its sea-based deterrent. It has ballistic missiles and what it terms ”strategic” (alluding to long range and nuclear capability) cruise missiles for both developmental, missile-firing submarines and underwater platforms. Its tactical nuclear attack submarine, the Hero Kim Kun Ok, is designed to launch tactical nuclear weapons from underwater. In January 2024, the regime tested its underwater unmanned nuclear weapon system, the Haeil-5-23, as a purported response to the trilateral US-ROK-Japan maritime exercise. In January 2025, the regime tested an underwater-to-surface strategic guided cruise missile while also vowing to respond to the United States with the “toughest counteraction.”

Ultimately, North Korea wants to halt US-ROK joint (and multinational) military exercises and to splinter an alliance of seventy-plus-years between the two nations. Its determined and bellicose approach has the potential to highlight the asymmetry of what’s at stake between the United States and the ROK and, if unchecked, sow fear and doubt into the fabric of the alliance.

Would South Korea go nuclear? A shift in ROK defense architecture

The second test of the alliance follows changes in the ROK’s defense architecture and capabilities, including the advent of the ROK Strategic Command (ROKSTRATCOM), which may increase potential areas for divergence among allies even as the changes show the ROK’s increasing capability and willingness to take greater responsibility for its own defense. ROKSTRATCOM’s establishment may be an opportunity rather than just a challenge and it is perhaps more a response to an increasingly serious threat from North Korea than a shortfall in the US-ROK alliance. It nevertheless highlights that South Koreans may not feel US extended deterrence guarantees are sufficient given the growing North Korean threat.

Plans to establish ROKSTRATCOM were underway for over two years by the time of the command’s official establishment on October 1, 2024, yet many Americans either did not pay attention or believe there was a need for such a command on the Korean Peninsula. After all, the United States, South Korea’s strongest ally, has been with the ROK since the Korean War began in 1950. The two countries also have a long-standing Mutual Defense Treaty, signed shortly after the Korean War Armistice. So, for some observers, South Korea’s need for such a command was questionable. The United States already commits to defending South Korea, most visibly with 28,500 military personnel present on the peninsula and contributing to the Combined Forces Command, US Forces Korea, and the United Nations Command. Regular joint exercises and strategic activities, such as a port visit of the USS Kentucky ballistic missile submarine to Busan, also bolster this presence.

Importantly, though, ROKSTRATCOM does not clearly fall under the combined alliance wartime command construct under a bi-national Combined Forces Command that has been in place since 1978. ROKSTRATCOM is instead an independent ROK-controlled command, currently led by ROK Air Force Lieutenant General Jin Young Seung, and it is still under development exactly how this new command will align and coordinate with CFC and other alliance constructs like the bilateral Military Committee.

Operationally, ROKSTRATCOM resides under the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff, serving as an integrator of ROK armed forces’ strategic weapons systems from each military branch. In July 2024, a former ROK minister of defense expressed the administration’s vision of the command:

The strategic command will be a unit that leads the development of nuclear and conventional integrated operational concepts and plans and combat development in new areas such as space, cyber, and the electromagnetic spectrum in conjunction with the operation of the ROK-US Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG).

According to a news report citing the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, the command “would also give the orders to subordinate military assets to strike enemy targets or intercept hostile missiles as part of the Kill Chain strategy and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation [KMPR] plan.” (See the ministry’s 2022 white paper for more information about the kill chain strategy and the KMPR plan.)

It is more than just command and control that is changing, however. South Korea’s independent strike capabilities are increasing. South Korea unveiled its most powerful conventional weapon, the Hyunmoo-5, referring to it as an “ultra-high-power ballistic missile.” The high-yield Hyunmoo-5 appears to be intended as a ROKSTRATCOM capability, integral to reinforcing ROK messages of an “overwhelming response” to any North Korea nuclear attack. It remains to be seen, however, how the command will contribute these forces to a conflict on the Korean Peninsula—and this calls into question the previously relied upon unified command system.

The establishment of ROKSTRATCOM is a historic event and time will tell if capabilities breed intentions. It appears South Korea is not willing to take the option of having nuclear weapons off the table despite the US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence commitments. As the ROK continues to grapple with its current and future defense challenges, the United States should take care to be an integral part of this ROK process, thereby ensuring a better understanding of the intentions of allies, enhancing the alliance, and deterring North Korea from strategic attack.

New presidents in Washington and Seoul portend policy changes

The third test involves expected changes by the new Trump administration to US policies and strategies affecting the alliance, along with potential adjustments by the imminent new South Korean administration to its approach toward the alliance and to defense issues more broadly. Coupled with divisive domestic politics in both the United States and South Korea, these developments could potentially open old wounds and create new points of contention within the alliance. As the new US administration begins to set its tone for foreign policy for the rest of its term, many South Koreans seem hopeful, but uncertain. Meanwhile, South Korean media reports and commentaries are examining the implications of rumored US force reductions in Korea and other potential changes to US policy and strategy affecting the alliance as either challenges or opportunities.  

South Korea will soon have its own new president, after the martial law declaration by Yoon and his removal from office resulted in elections set for June 3. A new ROK president may well inject more uncertainty into the state of South Korean affairs, which could affect the alliance, as the country works to self-heal from Yoon’s surprising martial law announcement and the subsequent fallout.

Meanwhile, there are lingering questions about whether South Korea will eventually develop its own nuclear weapons. While many Americans empathize with South Korea’s undesirable position, its creation of ROKSTRATCOM and varied calls by ROK officials for nuclear weapons are concerning for US assurance efforts and, potentially, its nonproliferation policy. Would South Korea really go nuclear? Given the tense nuclear-armed neighborhood that surrounds the small country, and North Korea’s continued refusal to give up its nuclear weapons, many ask, “Why not?” Others, however, argue South Korea “cannot” or would “never” do so because it is a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). However, the NPT has a get-out-of-jail free card in Article X. According to a 2005 Arms Control Today article by the late arms control experts George Bunn and John B. Rhinelander:

Article X of the NPT provides a “right” to withdraw from the treaty if the withdrawing party “decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this [t]reaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” It also requires that a withdrawing state-party give three months’ notice.

South Korean public discussion of a nuclear latency capability and indigenous nuclear weapons has been growing, with some officials publicly expressing the desire to keep the option open or to actually build nuclear weapons. Most recently, the People Power Party presidential candidate, Kim Moon Soo, announced that, if elected, he would pursue a nuclear latency capability—meaning that South Korea would be much closer to being able to build nuclear weapons on short notice. This indicates South Korea’s unease with relying on the United States as the only nuclear weapons responder to a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.

Conclusion

These new hurdles—a more capable and threatening nuclear North Korea; a shift in South Korea’s defense architecture, including a unilateral strategic command; and presidential-level political changes—will inevitably strain the alliance, but may also present opportunities. The US-ROK alliance has remained ironclad, with more than seven decades of experience and adaptation, underpinned by a commitment to each other’s mutual defense. Now it is up to both countries to learn from their past while developing new approaches to the changing status quo. No matter who wins the ROK presidential election, the continued strength of the US-ROK alliance matters in the face of threats confronting both the United States and South Korea. Early and in-depth engagement by Washington with the new South Korean president to begin charting a new course for the alliance will ensure the US-ROK alliance emerges even stronger and more equipped to enhance each country’s interests, as well as underpin stability in the region.

Heather Kearney is a nonresident fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also a senior Indo-Pacific analyst in the Joint Exercise, Training, and Assessments Directorate at United States Strategic Command. As a senior analyst for risk of strategic deterrence failure, she leads a team dedicated to assessing trends in the environment in order to inform strategic risk assessments.

Amanda Mortwedt Oh is a USSTRATCOM liaison officer in the Office of Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Policy, Strategic Stability, in the Joint Staff J-5 Directorate. She focuses her research on Northeast Asia and strategic deterrence and was most recently a Fall 2024 Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Policy Fellow. She is the previous director of international outreach and development at the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) and has published several articles and reports on North Korea’s prison camps and human rights issues. She is also a lawyer in the US Army Reserve Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

Disclaimer: The views presented in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of US Strategic Command, the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US government.

The Tiger Project, an Atlantic Council effort, develops new insights and actionable recommendations for the United States, as well as its allies and partners, to deter and counter aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Explore our collection of work, including expert commentary, multimedia content, and in-depth analysis, on strategic defense and deterrence issues in the region.

Report May 12, 2025

A rising nuclear double-threat in East Asia: Insights from our Guardian Tiger I and II tabletop exercises

By Markus Garlauskas, Lauren D. Gilbert, Kyoko Imai

A decade from now, the United States will face even tougher challenges in the Indo-Pacific than it does today. With this in mind, the Atlantic Council’s Guardian Tiger tabletop exercise series is preparing mid-level government and military leaders to address such threats.

Arms Control China

Report Nov 9, 2023

Deterrence is crumbling in Korea: How we can fix it

By Markus Garlauskas, Lauren D. Gilbert

Conventional wisdom in the United States holds that deterrence in Korea is strong, but this widespread confidence is based on a backward look at long-standing assumptions that are no longer tenable, along with rapidly shifting politico-military conditions. This report explains the urgent actions required to get ahead of these changes and maintain effective deterrence.

China Indo-Pacific

Issue Brief Jan 31, 2024

A US-South Korea alliance strategic memo on deterrence

By Markus Garlauskas, Lauren D. Gilbert

With North Korea’s rapidly advancing military technology, aggressive nuclear policy changes, and deepening ties with the PRC making deterrence on the Korean Peninsula increasingly more complex, this is how the US and South Korea can shore up cooperative deterrence and boost alliance resilience.

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The Indo-Pacific Security Initiative (IPSI) informs and shapes the strategies, plans, and policies of the United States and its allies and partners to address the most important rising security challenges in the Indo-Pacific, including China’s growing threat to the international order and North Korea’s destabilizing nuclear weapons advancements. IPSI produces innovative analysis, conducts tabletop exercises, hosts public and private convenings, and engages with US, allied, and partner governments, militaries, media, other key private and public-sector stakeholders, and publics.

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The post New presidents and new nuclear developments test the United States–Republic of Korea alliance appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The frontier has become the front line.

Canada’s choice is binary: secure its portion of the Arctic or suffer the consequences of foreign powers acting with impunity in and around Canada’s Arctic. Ottawa’s central challenge, therefore, is to harden its Arctic presence with dual-use infrastructure and supply chain resilience while hostile powers increase their influence around the pole.

This task gets more difficult the longer Ottawa dithers because change manifests across many vectors concurrently. The infrastructure and supply chains critical to the region are underdeveloped and ill-suited for the future—and they do not improve with age. Climate change continues to alter the contours of the region, often to Canada’s strategic disadvantage. An ascendant generation of US strategists proclaim that the Canadian Arctic is the “new soft underbelly” of North America. And it is no longer fantasy to suggest that the Arctic is ground zero for the new ‘Great Game’ between the United States, Russia, and China.

The region has been one of strategic contest since 1921, when Joseph Stalin claimed the North Pole for the Soviet Union, a claim re-animated by Moscow in 2015. It may lack the trenches and dragon’s teeth in Europe, or the clashes between fishing vessels and coast guard ships in southeast Asia. But the Arctic is no longer a low-threat, low-force posture environment that can be defended by a couple Coast Guard icebreakers and some Canadian Rangers on snowmobiles.

It is a region of strategic consequence and likely to be more so in the coming decades, which begs the question—why does Canada lag allies and adversaries alike in both the defense and development of its Arctic territory?

The simplistic answer is that Ottawa is torn among competing interests and an inability, or an unwillingness, to marshal the domestic resources necessary to protect its Arctic from a growing cast of players keen to exploit perceived vulnerabilities in pursuit of their interests.

The Atlantic Council delved deeper into Canada’s challenge to bolster infrastructure and supply chain resilience in the region. Research included literature reviews, interviews, and off-the-record conversations with a broad range of government and private-sector stakeholders. Interviews yielded constructive, if passionate, views from respondents who expressed repeatedly how much they want Canada to secure its part of the Arctic and enable its full development.

Analysis revealed that Ottawa knows the region well; the Canadian government has few peers in understanding the Arctic and what is required to right supply chains there. Geological surveys and development plans are completed to a gold standard. Stakeholders know the problem and solution space—and have for decades. But domestic policy, not climate change or geopolitical calculus, is the primary factor influencing strategic decisions for Canada’s north.

Key players (and honorable mentions)

Climate change has made the Arctic accessible. Glacier melting has created new sea routes, extended shipping seasons, and unveiled vast natural resources. But it has also created an opening in the region for strategic contest. Three threat vectors shape the region’s security dynamics for Canada.

Russia

More than half of the Arctic Circle’s population and half its economy are Russian. Russia sits at the end of one of the Arctic’s most accessible regions. Russia is opening old bases and building new infrastructure throughout the region. It holds more than 50 percent of Arctic investment (made between 2017 and 2022), and its military doctrine treats the north as central to economic and national defense. Since 2014, the Kremlin has launched Cold War-style investments in Arctic airfields, radar systems, submarine networks, and year-round basing. Russian military planners are considering anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) domes extending over the Northern Sea Route.

Moscow likely observes that Canadian defense planning remains rooted in an outdated peace dividend mindset—one that grossly underestimates the threat of state-on-state conflict in the Arctic. Canada’s lack of comprehensive undersea surveillance renders its Arctic maritime approaches effectively blind, and its military presence in the region—symbolized by a modest footprint of Canadian Rangers—leaves much to be desired in terms of deterrence or rapid response. Equipment remains outdated, modernization plans languish in bureaucratic limbo, and logistics chains are stretched perilously thin. These gaps create space for Russian forces to maneuver below the threshold of war, exploiting ambiguity and Canada’s limited detection capabilities to assert influence or project force unchallenged.

The Kremlin likes to see how Canada’s strategic dependence on the United States substitutes alliance commitments for genuine sovereign deterrence. Ottawa’s whole-of-government approach—while inclusive in theory—has fragmented decision-making in practice, rendering Canada slow and reactive at a time when speed and coherence are strategic advantages. Indigenous consultation, while legally and morally necessary, remains procedurally rigid and politicized, often becoming a brake on critical national security decisions rather than a channel for partnership and empowerment.

While Russia invests heavily in its Arctic capabilities, Canada’s Arctic capability is stuck in the twentieth century. Surveillance assets are aging, space-based platforms are insufficient, and investment in modern ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) technology remains anemic. Communications remain unreliable across vast regions, exposing both civilian and military systems to disruption. Cyber defenses—especially around critical infrastructure—are poorly funded and unevenly deployed, inviting adversaries to strike via code rather than missile.

China

China considers itself a “near-Arctic power” and its Polar Silk Road links Arctic shipping to its global Belt and Road ambitions. China’s white papers frame the region as a commons to be commercially and scientifically accessed. Icebreaker construction in Chinese shipyards matches the tempo of a nation preparing for permanent presence.

Beijing understands that Canada’s economic infrastructure in the Arctic is brittle. Melting permafrost, seasonal reliance on ice roads, and a near-total absence of deepwater ports make northern logistics vulnerable to both climate and conflict. These choke points offer asymmetric opportunities to disrupt supply chains or sabotage dual-use facilities. China could exploit these vulnerabilities by embedding itself through ostensibly civilian investments in Arctic mining, telecommunications, or transportation infrastructure—investments that are strategic positioning by other means. In such a fragile environment, any hybrid attack or technological failure could sever vital arteries with catastrophic effects.

From China’s vantage point, Canada’s Arctic declarations are noble but hollow—bold in language but weak in execution. For Beijing, which has increased defense spending every year for three decades, Canada’s plan to reach two percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense spending by 2030 is symbolic. Procurement remains tangled in inefficiency and overregulation, hampering modernization and undermining operational readiness. Economic pressures, shifting political winds, and lukewarm support for military spending are likely to derail Canada’s commitments before they mature. Moreover, China likely sees Canada’s overreliance on its NATO allies as a strategic liability. The Arctic can be probed or pressured just below NATO’s collective defense thresholds—ensuring ambiguity, diffusing Western resolve, and highlighting Canada’s limited unilateral options.

Manpower shortages, insufficient Arctic basing, and the long-delayed Nanisivik port all point to structural underinvestment in hard infrastructure. These gaps offer Beijing a rich menu of asymmetric opportunities to: subvert Arctic economies through proxy investments; cultivate cultural ties through scholarships, research partnerships, and diplomatic outreach; sabotage digital and physical infrastructure through cyberattacks or dependency entrapments; and sow political dissent by financing Indigenous, environmental, or anti-militarization movements within Canada’s own democratic fabric.

The United States (and others)

For Washington, Canada’s failure to defend its Arctic territory is not merely a function of limited resources, but of deliberate strategic neglect. The refusal to acquire nuclear-powered submarines—essential for year-round under-ice patrols and true sovereignty enforcement—reveals a deeper aversion to the burdens of great power responsibility. While adversaries invest in undersea dominance and dual-use Arctic infrastructure, Ottawa opts for half-measures: diesel patrol submarines that can’t operate under the polar ice, minimal surveillance capabilities, and no permanent military basing north of 60.

The US view is shifting from a posture of “monitor and respond” to one of “prepare and deter.” Pentagon reports no longer downplay the Arctic as a region of strategic importance. Even smaller powers have taken notice. India published its Arctic strategy in 2021, emphasizing scientific diplomacy. Turkey signed the Svalbard Treaty to gain access rights to the Arctic in 2023. France and Germany are also exploring greater footprints in the region.

While the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE) Pact with Canada and Finland represents a trilateral effort to rebuild icebreaker capacity and harden the Arctic industrial base, it is not enough. Canada remains trapped in a peacetime posture and mentality—symbolic patrols and seasonal exercises—while the region becomes increasingly contested by powers that are, at best, are neutral to Canada’s concerns and, at worst, openly hostile to them.

This inertia is rooted in a political culture that prioritizes accommodation over assertiveness. Successive governments have deferred to progressive special interest groups whose influence blunts hard security policies. Environmentalist and Indigenous consultations, while important, are often weaponized procedurally to paralyze decisive action. The result is a government debilitated by process, one that speaks of sovereignty but shrinks from the instruments necessary to enforce it. Even modest defense initiatives face resistance if they challenge entrenched activist orthodoxies or require confronting Canada’s internal contradictions. This includes the legal quagmire of provincial and territorial jurisdiction in the North, which Ottawa remains unwilling to override or reform.

Perhaps most damning for Washington is Canada’s lack of strategic coherence. Ottawa provides a strategic framework for the Arctic but fails to dedicate the resources to achieve the objectives contained therein. Policy and strategy without resource commitments are unseriousness ideas. Moreover, Canada’s policies do not form a doctrine of Arctic deterrence, convey no idea on how to mobilize federal will, and fail to weave a unifying narrative that connects Arctic defense to the survival of Canada as a sovereign nation in an increasingly anarchic world.

America cannot—and will not—permit a soft underbelly to fester in a domain as critical as the Arctic. It is not inconceivable for US forces unilaterally securing parts of the Canadian Arctic in the event of a crisis. Such actions, while diplomatically uncomfortable, would be strategically necessary if Canadian gaps remain unaddressed. To be blunt: if pressed and in a fight with Russia or China in the Arctic, the US will almost certainly be “Elbows Up” in defense of North America, even if it offends Canadian sensitivities.

Five “cold kills”

Our research unearthed five factors that contribute to Canada’s Arctic inertia. Each of these “cold kills” continues to impede progress on increasing supply chain and defense resilience.

1. Lacking multipartisan consensus on the region as “ground zero” for a new “Great Game.”

Canada cannot do much in the Arctic if it lacks enduring political will to support and fund dual-use infrastructure over decades. The growing importance of the Arctic for great-power competition underscores the need for politicians, defense planners, local communities, industry partners, and other relevant stakeholders to walk in the same general direction, if not in lockstep. Despite the urgency of this task, no sustained, cross-partisan strategy for Arctic defense exists. Without it, investments, infrastructure development, and operational planning will almost certainly come up short. In 2025, Natural Resources Canada is projected to invest $12.1 million toward climate adaptation projects in the North—which is necessary, but insufficient when compared to similar efforts by other Arctic powers.

Yet, allies offer a contrast. Norway’s Arktis 2030 fund and its defense pledge of 3 percent of GDP underscore a whole-of-society approach. Finland’s NATO entry boosted its participation in Arctic exercises. Sweden utilizes Arctic data to create a stronger and better informed national defense policy. Denmark leverages Greenland’s geostrategic importance in its Arctic defense. While Canada’s Arctic is inaccessible by comparison, it can look at what NATO allies do right in the region and their whole-of-society approaches.

2. Placing too much of the strategic burden on local communities.

The Canadian government continues to place disproportionate responsibility for Arctic security on local communities, revealing a dangerous strategic asymmetry between rhetoric and capability. The Canadian Rangers, though a symbol of national resolve and cultural integration, are not a substitute for a modern, standing military presence. They are lightly armed, part-time volunteers—valuable in their knowledge of the land but structurally unfit to deter or respond to the increasing threats posed by adversarial state actors operating just beyond the line of sight. This over-reliance has created a strategic mirage: Ottawa appears engaged in Arctic defence, but the burden is unfairly borne by those with the fewest resources and the highest exposure.

In effect, Canada’s Arctic is not treated as an equal part of Confederation, but as a frontier outpost whose primary function is surveillance and symbolic sovereignty. The political imagination to raise Arctic communities to the standard of living of rural southern Canada is absent. There is no serious nation-building project underway—no long-term vision to tie infrastructure, broadband, energy, healthcare, and education in the North to the national grid of opportunity.

The region is home to significant deposits of iron ore, gold, diamonds, and rare earth elements. The Mary River Mine on Baffin Island is one of the world’s richest reserves of high-grade iron ore, producing millions of tons annually. Similarly, the Hope Bay and Meliadine gold mines contribute substantially to Canada’s mineral output. These resources are critical for economic development and for national security, given their importance in defense manufacturing and technology. Yet, the extraction and transportation of these resources are hampered by limited infrastructure that eludes further development due to lack of coordination and investment at all levels of government. While the Yukon Security Advisory Council can be a model for shared governance federal, territorial, and Indigenous jurisdictions overlap without coherent authority. The result is a bureaucratic bottleneck that limits response agility and accountability, especially in scenarios involving mass casualty events or foreign incursions below the threshold of war.

3. Misunderstanding the Arctic as a land- or maritime-centric domain, instead of a multidomain one.

Canada’s Arctic strategy remains anchored in a legacy mindset—fixated on land and maritime domains—while the battlespace has already expanded far beyond the ice and tundra. The Canadian Arctic is a multi-domain operating environment in the most rigorous sense: a crucible where air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace domains converge. Focusing primarily on ground mobility or maritime choke points is antiquated.

In an era defined by precision-guided conflict, gray zone incursions, and orbital competition, the North requires integrated deterrence across all domains. The space domain is already decisive; Russia and China have launched dual-use satellites optimized for polar reconnaissance, while Canada’s surveillance constellation remains limited and aging. Cyberspace, too, is an active front. Persistent foreign probing of Canada’s critical Arctic infrastructure—from power grids to fiber lines—underscores the need for zero-trust architectures and sovereign cyber capacity hardened against both disinformation and sabotage. The air domain, often overshadowed, remains underutilized despite offering cost-effective ISR opportunities via high-altitude, long-endurance drones and balloon-based sensors that can supplement space assets in degraded environments.

Canada must approach the Arctic as a multi-domain region. Infrastructure nodes at Iqaluit, Yellowknife, and Inuvik must be conceived not as mere logistics hubs, but as permanent and staffed bases in a broader multi-domain lattice of deterrence. Airfields should be hardened, satellites shielded, networks encrypted, and data fused in real time. The resilience and infrastructure footprint must be multi-domain: ISR in orbit, radar on ice, seaborne logistics hubs, and hardened cyber networks. It might even be cheaper to establish and easier to maintain air-based sensors to augment space-based sensors, such as high-altitude, long-endurance drones and high-altitude balloons.

4. Missing the point that infrastructure spending enables both military and local resilience.

Canada’s policy frameworks fail to grasp a foundational truth: infrastructure is not ancillary to defence; it is defence. Roads, railways, hospitals, and power stations in the Arctic are bulwarks of resilience and lifelines to national unity. The harsh environment demands more than token outposts; it demands permanence that begins with infrastructure designed for both civilian and military pursuits.

Canada’s persistent underinvestment in Arctic infrastructure can be attributed largely to sticker shock. Building in the north is expensive at the outset, but those initial costs conceal long-term value. Roads, railways, and ports that facilitate the movement of Canadian forces and provide necessary infrastructure for local communities also enhance NATO mobility and resilience.

The Grays Bay Road and Port Project is unlikely to open before 2035. Until then, the Port of Churchill remains Canada’s only Arctic deepwater port for more than 106,000 miles of coastline—and even it is more than 800 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. The overland situation is equally stark. The long-considered Mackenzie Valley Highway remains unbuilt. Meant to replace unreliable winter roads and connect remote Arctic communities, the highway should be considered as a defense artery.

Moreover, the North needs cyber towers as much as radar domes; fibre optic cables as much as sonar arrays. Schools and post-secondary institutions—anchored by Arctic research centres—should be erected alongside hardened military installations to attract families, not just forces. In Alaska, the dual-use success of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport provides a model: educational and aerospace ecosystems aligned with the broader security posture of the United States.

Still, there are signs of acceleration. The Department of National Defence has committed $230 million to extend the main runway at Inuvik Airport. The upgrades include modern lighting and arrestor systems—investments tailored for sustained military operations and a rare example of a concrete commitment in a domain often shaped by abstraction. Canada should build Arctic spaceports and drone launch facilities for persistent surveillance and communications dominance—assets that would likely qualify as defence expenditures under a broadened NATO definition. And that definition is evolving. With calls to raise the alliance-wide benchmark to five percent of GDP, the line between civil and military investment will blur. Forward-thinking allies are already redefining defence to include national resilience, critical infrastructure, and technological redundancy.

5. Failing to call out the need to achieve A2/AD capability.

Canada’s current Arctic strategy is more performative than purposeful. It remains anchored in rituals of presence rather than a doctrine of deterrence. The reasons are structural and cultural: A2/AD sounds too aggressive for a nation wedded to peacekeeping identity and constrained by intergovernmental jurisdictional frictions. But if Canada is to hold the Arctic, it must defend it—not merely inhabit it. That demands something Canada has never attempted: a comprehensive anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy adapted for the circumpolar battlespace.

A2/AD refers to the deployment of integrated capabilities that prevent an adversary from operating freely within a region. This includes long-range fires, persistent surveillance, advanced radar, cyber denial tools, hardened command-and-control infrastructure, and air and maritime denial platforms. Canada does not mention A2/AD in its Arctic lexicon because it fears what it implies: that the North is no longer a sanctuary but a frontier. Building an Arctic A2/AD network would require political will, sustained investment, and a strategic mindset that accepts confrontation as a precondition for sovereignty. It would also provoke diplomatic risk—Russia would label such a move provocative, and China would test the perimeter with gray-zone maneuvers masked as scientific exploration or commercial navigation. Yet the absence of such a posture risks far greater cost: a hollow sovereignty, subject to erosion by increments.

Investments in some areas do not amount to A2/AD. True, Canada’s $38.6-billion commitment over twenty years to modernize NORAD is substantial. If fully implemented, this would be the largest reinvestment in continental defense since the early Cold War. Arctic over-the-horizon radar systems will track threats from the US-Canada border to the Arctic Circle. A more powerful polar variant will extend coverage into the Arctic archipelago and beyond. Crossbow—a classified network of advanced sensors—will supplement these systems with real-time precision. And the Defence Enhanced Surveillance for Space (DESSP) project will allow space-based tracking of adversary launch and maneuver capabilities. Canada has partnered with Australia on a next-generation Arctic early-warning detection system. But even these investments are insufficient; they do not achieve A2/AD in the Arctic. Canada has ISR blind spots, insufficient logistical depth, and infrastructure degraded by thawing permafrost. RADARSAT’s capabilities are aging; the Northwest Passage is functionally unmonitored. There is no cruise missile defense layer.

A Canadian A2/AD architecture would extend ISR reach from geostationary orbit to the ocean floor. At its core: Over-the-Horizon Radar (AOTHR), high-altitude drones, and advanced satellite constellations fused via a hardened C4ISR backbone. Any credible A2/AD structure must project deterrence not only northward but outward via NORAD, integrating seamlessly with allied efforts across the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap and the European High North.

Challenge and opportunity

We recommend the following six steps to shape decision-making vis-à-vis Canada’s Arctic. Addressing each of them is necessary for more resilient supply chains and robust infrastructure for defense of the Canadian Arctic.

1. Achieve enduring domestic political consensus.

Without sustained, bipartisan consensus on the strategic value of the Arctic, Canada’s northern policy will remain fragmented, underfunded, and vulnerable to reversal.

Canada should establish a nonpartisan Arctic Strategy Council, drawing on members from federal, provincial, territorial, and Indigenous governments, as well as the private sector. This council could be modeled loosely on the United Kingdom’s National Security Council, with a standing mandate to oversee and report on Arctic development milestones.

To correct course, Parliament should adopt a minimum percentage of GDP for Arctic infrastructure and defense investments—similar to how NATO’s 2-percent defense spending benchmark frames national priorities. A 0.5-percent GDP floor specifically earmarked for Arctic readiness would send a powerful signal to allies, adversaries, and Canadians alike.

2. Build permanent bases and infrastructure.

Sovereignty requires presence. Canada cannot assert command over its northern territory while maintaining a transient, seasonal military posture.

Canada must develop at least two permanent Arctic bases by 2035 and reinforce the air infrastructures in Yellowknife. These installations should support multi-domain enablers: ground forces, drone squadrons, ISR satellites, and cyber defense detachments. One proposed location is Resolute Bay in Nunavut—a strategic logistics point halfway through the Northwest Passage. Another is Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, where the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway provides ground access to the Beaufort Sea.

Canada need not sacrifice environmental stewardship to bolster its dual-use infrastructure in the region. On the contrary, the development of small modular reactors (SMRs) offers a way to meet energy needs in a sustainable and flexible manner. These compact, deployable energy systems would enable off-grid installations to power radar stations, bases, and airstrips—allowing the Canadian Armed Forces to operate autonomously across a vast and power-starved frontier.

Canada can and should discover best practices in other nations and adopt to the fullest extent possible. The Arctic Remote Energy Networks Academy is training a new generation in clean energy implementation, building the intellectual and technical foundation for sustainable Arctic energy systems. It is one example of innovation that can help make strides in the Arctic.

3. Reorient superclusters toward strategic innovation.

Canada’s innovation ecosystem is misaligned with its strategic realities.

To adapt, Canada must integrate Arctic operational challenges into supercluster mandates. The focus of these superclusters has strayed too far from core security imperatives, and redirecting their mandate toward the defense and security sector could allow Canada to reanimate its atrophied defense industrial base, stimulate Indigenous research and development, and provide a platform for strategic innovation drawn from academic and private-sector talent.

The Global Innovation Cluster for Advanced Manufacturing could sponsor development of modular Arctic housing for deployed forces. The Digital Technology Cluster could support remote communications networks hardened against magnetic interference. And the Protein Industries Cluster could help devise shelf-stable, high-calorie rations adapted to extreme environments.

Canada should establish a national challenge prize—modeled on the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge—to spur innovation in climate-resilient infrastructure, Arctic mobility, and remote power generation. Such efforts should be coordinated by a Defence Innovation Agency akin to the United Kingdom’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), ensuring alignment between technological output and operational need.

4. Integrate civil-military infrastructure.

Canada must adopt a whole-of-society approach to Arctic logistics—one that erases the line between civilian and military use.

Every kilometer of highway, every meter of runway, and every watt of power grid must serve dual purposes. Similarly, the Grays Bay Road and Port Project, which aims to connect the rich mineral fields of western Nunavut with the Northwest Passage, must be prioritized for its economic benefits and geopolitical value. Its completion would give Canada a second deepwater Arctic port—an essential node for resupply, power projection, and emergency response.

Meanwhile, the feasibility of Arctic spaceports must be considered thoughtfully. With global competition accelerating in polar orbit surveillance, Canada’s geography is a latent advantage. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are prime candidates for launching satellites into sun-synchronous and polar orbits, a domain critical for ISR.

5. Accelerate NORAD modernization and ISR integration.

Canada must modernize its Arctic surveillance and early-warning capabilities through the renewal of NORAD and deep integration of orbital, aerial, and terrestrial ISR platforms.

Canada must move decisively to modernize its contributions to NORAD and integrate a layered, multi-domain ISR architecture that meets the threats of the 21st century. The existing North Warning System (NWS)—a relic of the Cold War—is functionally obsolete. It is increasingly vulnerable to kinetic destruction, electronic warfare, and deception by adversaries leveraging hypersonic, low-flying, and space-enabled strike platforms. While Canada has acknowledged this through its stated commitment to over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) and new space-based capabilities, progress has been halting, piecemeal, and under-resourced.

Canada should fast-track its involvement in key pillars of NORAD modernization alongside the United States by:

1. Over-the-Horizon Radar (OTHR): Advance procurement and installation of Arctic-facing OTHR systems based in Labrador and Nunavut to create a persistent early-warning envelope stretching across the polar approaches. These systems must be hardened against electromagnetic disruption and integrated into NORAD’s command-and-control nodes in real time.
2. Ballistic Missile Defence and the Golden Dome: Canada must shed outdated policy inhibitions and join the continental Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) architecture. A Canadian contribution to a “Golden Dome” over North America—built on Aegis Ashore components, ship-based interceptors, and ground-based midcourse defence systems—would reinforce deterrence and mitigate the strategic vacuum currently inviting adversary escalation. Participation in the US Missile Defense Review and integration into layered BMD command structures should begin immediately.
3. Space and High-Altitude ISR: The integration of RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) assets with Gray Jay microsatellites must be complemented by investment in high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) UAVs, stratospheric balloons, and commercial space partnerships. Persistent polar orbit surveillance is not a luxury—it is the sinew of a sovereign Canadian deterrent.

A modern NORAD without a full Canadian partner is a NORAD weakened in scope, credibility, and political cohesion. In an age of hypersonics, space militarization, and AI-driven surveillance, Canada’s northern shield must be not just symbolic but steel-wrought—an active, intelligent barrier underpinned by the best minds and machines the alliance can field. The window to shape this future is closing fast. Canada must step forward now, not as a follower, but as a co-architect of North America’s defence.

6. Integrate the Arctic with broader national and allied defense postures.

Canada’s Arctic strategy must not be treated in isolation.

Canada must integrate its Arctic strategy into a broader, assertive national defence posture—one that acknowledges the indivisibility of Canadian sovereignty and its responsibilities as a G7 power. The Arctic is not a separate theatre, but the forward glacis of the North American fortress. What begins as radar coverage over Baffin Bay ends in deterrence posture from Vilnius to the Taiwan Strait. Canadian defence policy must therefore harmonize Arctic readiness with strategic power projection abroad, ensuring the nation can respond decisively to threats—whether they emerge from the Beaufort Sea, the Black Sea, or the South China Sea.

The Arctic remains critical—but it is not Canada’s only defence priority. A myopic focus on the North risks undermining broader global responsibilities. Canada must project credible force across multiple domains and theatres. That means integrating Arctic surveillance—through over-the-horizon radar, low Earth orbit satellite constellations, and AI-driven ISR—directly into NORAD’s early warning lattice. These capabilities must be interoperable with US Northern Command, NATO’s Arctic flank, and allied sensors in the Indo-Pacific. Surveillance is not enough; it must be paired with striking power and forward basing.

Strategic mobility and offensive reach are essential. Arctic airbases must be upgraded to sustain F-35 squadrons year-round, with rapid deployment capabilities for long-range precision fires and mobile expeditionary forces. Arctic-class naval platforms should anchor presence and power projection into contested waters, with the logistical depth to pivot between the Arctic archipelago and Pacific choke points. Canadian-built UAVs and high-altitude drones should patrol both the Northwest Passage and Western Pacific, forming a twin-hemisphere presence. Above all, Canada must act as a sovereign Arctic nation capable of defending its territory, while remaining a credible contributor to the rules-based international order. The Arctic is the crucible, but Canada’s responsibilities—and its enemies—do not stop at the pole.

Canada’s Arctic infrastructure and supply chain resilience are foundational components to its basic expression of sovereignty. But the future of the Arctic belongs to those who show up first and endure longest. The question is not whether Canada can afford Arctic sovereignty, but whether it can afford its absence.

Jeff Reynolds is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Kristen Taylor is an assistant director with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

This research was made possible by the generous support of the Canada Mobilizing Insights in Defense and Security (MINDS) program.

New Atlanticist Mar 10, 2025

Experts react: What Mark Carney means for the US-Canada relationship

By Atlantic Council experts

As the next prime minister of Canada prepares to take office, Atlantic Council experts look at what’s ahead for Ottawa and its relationship with Washington.

Elections Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist May 1, 2025

Foreign policy was a hot topic in Canada’s election. Now it’s on Carney to make it last.

By Imran Bayoumi, Maite Gonzalez Latorre

The campaign is over. Now, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney faces several important choices, from how to increase defense spending to what a new relationship with the United States should look like.

Elections Politics & Diplomacy

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

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The post The frontier is the front line: On climate resilience for infrastructure and supplies in Canada’s Arctic appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As global dynamics evolve, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are becoming increasingly important partners for the member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The region offers valuable assets, policy alignment in key areas, and opportunities for enhanced collaboration on shared challenges. 

This report outlines how deeper OECD–LAC engagement can contribute to mutual prosperity, resilience, and global stability.

The region’s assets support global economic security

LAC countries contribute significantly to global food and energy security, climate action, and economic resilience. The region plays an important role in clean energy development, particularly through renewable energy and emerging green hydrogen projects. It is a major global supplier of critical minerals—such as lithium, copper, and nickel—essential for the clean energy transition. LAC’s agricultural output is also vital to meeting increasing global food demand. Furthermore, its rich biodiversity and freshwater resources are essential to addressing long-term environmental and climate-related challenges.

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to a high concentration of electoral democracies and market-oriented economies, which share many of the values and institutional frameworks upheld by OECD countries. These shared principles form the basis for long-term partnership. In multilateral forums, LAC countries have acted as constructive and pragmatic voices, helping to bridge perspectives between developed and developing countries.

However, as the region continues to navigate growing interest from global powers, particularly through increased trade and investment from China, there is a clear call for OECD countries to reaffirm and deepen their engagement.

Key recommendations:

• Build resilient and responsible critical mineral supply chains by formalizing an OECD–LAC Critical Minerals Partnership that promotes investment, technology transfer, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, and infrastructure development to support sustainable mining and industrial upgrading across the region.
• Enhance global food security through targeted cooperation in agritech innovation, rural infrastructure, and trade logistics. Strategic investment in transport corridors, cold chains, and climate-smart agriculture can boost productivity and resilience in LAC’s agricultural sector, benefitting global markets.
• Strengthen global value-chain resilience by leveraging LAC’s trade agreements and geographic proximity to OECD markets. A dedicated OECD–LAC Value Chain Initiative could identify areas of comparative advantage, streamline regulations, and support industrial diversification in key sectors.

Issue Brief Dec 12, 2023

Galvanizing Spain’s presidency for the next chapter

By Ignacia Ulloa Peters, Diego Area, Felipe Félix Méndez

Spain’s presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2023 was a unique opportunity to deepen partnerships between the Euro-Americas. Through shared values, common interests, and complementary capabilities, the EU, US, and LAC have the potential to advance lasting solutions to the most pressing challenges facing these regions and the world.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

New Atlanticist Sep 8, 2024

Argentina’s foreign minister: Why my country wants to join the OECD

By Diana Mondino

In seeking to join the OECD, Argentina is on a path to economic reforms and reputational benefits that can restore investor confidence in the country, writes Argentina’s minister of foreign affairs.

Americas Economy & Business

New Atlanticist Nov 19, 2024

How Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina approached this year’s G20

By Ignacio Albe

Disparate national priorities among Latin America’s three G20 members threaten to stand in the way of a common agenda.

Brazil Climate Change & Climate Action

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

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The post Why Latin America and the Caribbean matter for OECD countries appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As the race for access to critical minerals accelerates—with US President Donald Trump declaring the minerals that power new technologies essential to US national security, and China flexing its control of mineral supply chains with export bans—the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is in the spotlight. But that light reveals a complicated picture: As major powers and neighboring states contend for access to the country’s tin, cobalt, and copper, the Rwandan-backed M23 paramilitary has seized control of large swaths of eastern Congo, and the specter of full-scale war looms. The DRC signed a minerals-for-infrastructure deal with China in 2007, and now a minerals-for-security or minerals-for-peace deal with the United States is in the offing. 

The DRC has a chance to break the so-called “resource curse” and use its mineral wealth to build the roads, power grids, health infrastructure, and more that will sustain a democratic, economically growing country in the years ahead. Other countries and investors have a chance to live up to their commitments to responsible sourcing of natural resources, and in so doing support good governance and regional peace. The alternative is a continuation of the bad patterns of the past, with the real risk of a new outbreak of violence along the same fault lines that produced the deadliest conflict since World War II.

We asked six experts how the DRC—and its global partners—can take this transformative path. Read on for analyses of the country’s business environment, the industrial potential of its critical minerals and other promising sectors, and peace and security throughout the country.

The business case for peace and democracy in the DRC is strong

By Dave Peterson

Read more

Congo’s war and the critical minerals scramble are inextricably intertwined

By Mvemba Phezo Dizolele

Read more

Critical minerals won’t transform lives in the DRC—a radical shift in security and economic governance will

By Rabah Arezki

Read more

Partner perspective: The DRC’s vast potential extends beyond mining

By Thomas De Dreux-Brézé

Read more

US investors must lead on responsible sourcing in the DRC

By Nicole Namwezi Batumike

Read more

Better roads and stable power grids can unlock the DRC’s potential

By Calixte Ahokpossi

Read more

The business case for peace and democracy in the DRC is strong

Dave Peterson is the former senior director of the Africa Program of the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Rwandan-backed rebel militia M23 has seized control of most of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) while the national army (known by its French acronym, FARDC) and international peacekeepers retreat. At least seven thousand civilians have been killed and thousands more raped. Two million displaced persons and refugees are fleeing for safety, joining some five million already displaced. The US embassy in Kinshasa has been attacked by angry mobs—and both strategic interests and American values are at stake.

The DRC is rich. With 111 million inhabitants in a geographical area the size of Europe, the country is blessed (or cursed) by $24 trillion in mineral resources such as copper, cobalt, lithium, gold, and diamonds, much of it crucial to the world’s transition to electric power, half of it exported to China, and much of it now controlled by Chinese investors. Congo has the world’s largest tropical forests after the Amazon and a vast river network that could power half the African continent; it also has enormous agricultural potential, gas, and oil.

And the DRC is where the greatest slaughter of human beings since World War II occurred just thirty years ago, even as atrocities continue to be reported daily in the country’s east. In addition to M23, more than a hundred militia groups terrorize the population. Rampant corruption sucks billions of dollars from the economy every year, and poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, and disease statistics place the DRC near the bottom of global rankings.

The Congolese people have begged for change. Democratic elections held on December 20, 2023, were won by the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi. Although flawed in many respects, credible domestic observation groups, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and others, concluded they reflected the will of the people. The elections were reasonably competitive and peaceful, a notable achievement compared to Congo’s nine neighbors, many among the most autocratic countries in the world. The elections raised the level of political discourse and further cultivated Congo’s democratic practice. Congo’s press is relatively free, so citizens can debate, organize, and criticize their government. The nation’s civil society is extensive, active, and skilled—advocating, educating, and mobilizing citizens on a host of issues.

Yet after another year in power, the second Tshisekedi administration has failed to resolve the conflict in the east, address rampant corruption, or improve governance. The human rights record is not reassuring, as NED’s Congolese partners and others have documented. More than one hundred kuluna, purportedly youth gang members ensnared by DRC’s notoriously corrupt justice system, were recently executed after the government reinstated the death penalty. Freedom of expression is also under pressure as activists, journalists, and whistleblowers are attacked and fear for their personal safety. Meanwhile, the president seems intent on tampering with the constitution to allow him to extend his term in office.

The mining companies, banks, and tech industry—aware of but loath to abandon the bloody supply chain they rely on—profit handsomely from Congo’s precious minerals. Although the conflict in the country’s east is about more than the trade in minerals, and international funders have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the problem, the DRC’s best hope may be for foreign investors to mobilize pressure on the belligerents to make peace. The Belgian government has investigated Apple for tolerating human rights abuses in its supply chain originating in the DRC, and Apple has acknowledged the difficulty of identifying the sources of its suppliers. Because this is an issue for the entire industry, companies should find it advantageous, both in terms of public relations as well as in creating a conducive business environment, to be more accountable for the stability and prosperity of the communities from which they derive their wealth.

The Trump administration is paying attention. Tenuous negotiations between representatives of the Congolese and Rwandan governments led by the administration’s special envoy Massad Boulos may be making progress. To buttress this, Congolese civil society should be included in the process, including appropriate NGOs, community groups, the church, labor, and business, as proved successful in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue two decades ago. The DRC’s democratic aspirations should be the United States’ comparative advantage. The United States made mistakes in Congo, then called Zaire, during the Cold War, to the detriment of its own reputation, and it would be a shame to return to that era of zero-sum geopolitical competition. Security, strength, and prosperity are interests every nation pursues, but the United States can do better. Many Congolese, including civil society and political leaders, still see the United States as a force for good and a beacon of hope for ideals such as freedom, peace, democracy, justice, and human rights. It is what makes America strong: It is what makes the United States friends and allies, accords America respect and admiration—to be seen as a world leader rather than just another player, a model rather than a pariah.

The US private sector should take the lead. A golden age cannot be built on the blood of innocents, a course that can only lead to more hatred and suffering and will ultimately fail. The international business community must unite in committing to resource extraction practices that abide by international standards of human rights and transparency, incentivize the rival governments and factions in the subregion to lay down their arms, and make it easier and more profitable for companies to do their work. The private sector can rally international public opinion and pave the way for stability and prosperity. The long-suffering Congolese people deserve it.

Congo’s war and the critical minerals scramble are inextricably intertwined

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

For the past thirty years, the world has viewed the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo) through a binary lens of conflict and the exploitation of natural and mineral resources. The conflict optics magnify the insecurity that has characterized life in the eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri. The protracted conflict between Congo and Rwanda spawned the proliferation of militias, including the two iterations of the Rwanda-backed M23, which captured the Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu on January 25, 2025, and February 16, 2025, respectively. The death toll is estimated at more than seven thousand since January 2025, with unofficial reports from the region suggesting a much higher number of victims.

With 7.8 million internally displaced people, Congo ranks alongside Syria and Sudan among countries with the largest displaced populations, according to the United Nations. Of the more than two million people who have been displaced since the 2022 resurgence of M23, one million were displaced in 2024. Sexual violence, disappearances, and other human rights abuses have increased in M23-occupied areas. These abuses will continue as the rebels expand their territorial control.

Coverage of the conflict has also emphasized the role of natural and mineral resources as drivers of the war. Congo’s resource endowment is valued at a staggering $24 trillion. Analyses of the war have focused on the looting and smuggling of minerals, and have pointed to Rwanda and Uganda as primary beneficiaries. The two countries have emerged as major exporters of minerals, such as gold and coltan, of which they have limited reserves.

Recently, heightened interest in Congo’s mineral resources has been driven, among other reasons, by the West’s determination to circumvent China and secure critical resources like cobalt, copper, and lithium. For instance, on February 18, 2024, the European Union (EU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Sustainable Raw Materials Value Chains with Rwanda. Even though the EU signed similar memoranda with Congo, Zambia, and Namibia, Rwanda’s case raised questions given the country’s troubled history with Congo concerning mineral resources. This history includes invading Congo, arming violent rebel groups, and smuggling minerals out of rebel-controlled territory.

The second element driving high-profile interest in the country’s mineral wealth is the Trump administration’s classification of critical minerals as vital to US national security. The pursuit of a US-Congo minerals-for-security deal underscores Washington’s increased interest in Congo’s mineral endowment. As the world waits to learn about the contours and substance of the contract and what the United States will offer Kinshasa, it’s worth taking stock of the current foreign investment landscape in the country.

China tops the list of major investors with important financial and technical commitments to Congo’s mining sector. Besides China, the other major players who have established significant footprints in the country include the EU and the United States.

China leads in the mining and infrastructure sectors

China’s investments in DRC focus on the mining sector, with major stakes in the cobalt and copper industries. The engagement stems from the 2008 Sicomines joint venture between Chinese companies (Sinohydro and China Railway Engineering Corporation) and the Congolese government. The venture is the foundation of the Congo-China cooperation. Originally valued at $9 billion, the deal is a minerals-for-infrastructure barter. After pushback from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and Congolese civil society organizations, the deal was renegotiated to $6 billion in 2009. In exchange for mining rights, China has financed infrastructure projects, including roads and hospitals. In 2024, Chinese infrastructure investment commitments were valued at $7 billion. Today, China is the largest investor in the country.

United States seeks minerals for national security

Until the advent of the second Trump administration, the United States showed little interest in DRC minerals and focused on the humanitarian challenges of the country. Western companies that secured mining deals often sold their holdings to the Chinese. With every Western business divestment, the Chinese increased their stake in Congo’s mining sector. The new policy change has generated interest for greater US-Congo cooperation. This minerals-focused change is supported by a robust diplomatic engagement that seeks to broker peace between Congo and Rwanda. The administration’s stated objective is to stabilize Congo and create the right conditions for investments in mining and infrastructure.

The new US approach is yielding early results. On May 6, 2025, California-based KoBold Metals and Australia-based AVZ Minerals reached an agreement for the former to acquire AVZ Minerals’ interests in the Manono lithium deposit in Congo. Billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos back KoBold. The agreement will enable the company to invest over one billion dollars to develop the lithium project.

It is difficult to evaluate the level of current US investments in Congo. US pledges of multi-billion-dollar investments depend on the promises of peace accords between Rwanda and Congo and related bilateral mineral agreements.

European Union focuses on ethical approach to critical minerals

European countries’ approach in Congo focuses on ethical sourcing and sustainability, which also include traceability of minerals due to armed conflict. European development banks have funded projects that improve governance and reduce poverty. Some of these initiatives, however, have faced criticism. For instance, in light of the resurgence of M23, the February 18, 2024, memorandum the EU signed with Rwanda—“establishing close cooperation with Rwanda” on the sourcing of critical minerals—has raised questions about the EU’s commitment to ethical sourcing, given that Rwanda backs the violent M23 paramilitary group. Analysts of the Great Lakes region, diplomats, and members of the European Parliament have all questioned and challenged the intent and effect of the memorandum. Some see it as a driver of the re-emergence of the M23 and the current war between Congo and Rwanda.

Top European investors in Congo include France, the Netherlands, and Italy, who contributed a combined foreign direct investment stock of approximately $32.6 billion in 2022.

Comparative overview of investments

As the scramble for critical minerals enters a new phase with increased US interest in Congo, the country needs effective governance and transparent policies to ensure that foreign investments contribute to sustainable development and economic growth.

Critical minerals won’t transform lives in the DRC—a radical shift in security and economic governance will

Rabah Arezki is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. He previously served as chief economist and vice president for economic governance and knowledge management at the African Development Bank, as well as chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank, and as chief of the commodities unit in the research department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s abundance of critical minerals has given rise to comparisons with Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth. But that abundance has not improved citizens’ lives in one of the poorest countries in the world. Yet there is a course that could make that possible: finding the right balance between openness to investments from multinational corporations and economic sovereignty—broadly defined as the ability of a country to control its own economic system.

The DRC is the repository of the world’s largest reserves of critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, and lithium. Indeed, the DRC holds around 70 percent and 60 percent of the world’s cobalt and lithium reserves, respectively, as well significant deposits of nickel and uranium, which are metal components for energy generation and batteries for electric vehicles. Yet the DRC encapsulates the seemingly insurmountable and intertwined challenges posed by critical minerals. These challenges are tied to geopolitics, conflicts, and the environment as well as economic and social dimensions.

First and foremost, the challenge facing the DRC is the new geopolitics around critical minerals. The demand for critical minerals is exploding. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for minerals is projected to increase by more than four times by 2040 amid the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Major powers—namely China, the United States, and the European Union—are engaged in a technological race spurring competition for access to these critical minerals. At the center of that global scramble is the DRC, which is being courted by these powers like never before. China is heavily invested in the mining sector of the DRC and controls the supply chains of critical minerals, including their processing.

Amid the technological race, China has recently imposed restrictions on exports of critical minerals to the United States. Washington and Brussels have tried to challenge Beijing’s monopoly of the supply chains of these minerals by attempting to secure mining contracts, including in the DRC. That competition should in principle help the DRC to not only get a fair share from the mining contracts but also the opportunity to move up the value chain. In practice, multinational corporations and foreign governments have much stronger capacity in negotiating mining contracts relative to the government of the DRC. Quid pro quos are also common involving the receipt of aid packages originating from self-interested donor countries in exchange for the awarding of mining contracts to multinational corporations—linked to donors.

Another major challenge for the DRC is conflict. The DRC is faced with external and internal conflicts. The DRC has a complex history: Once known as the Belgian Congo, it experienced a cruel form of colonization as the de facto personal property of Leopold II, Belgium’s king. The DRC’s post-independence era was plagued by direct interventions by foreign powers and autocratic rulers. That history helps explain the DRC’s deficient institutions, a persistent low level of trust among citizens, and distrust between the citizenry and the government.

The DRC has long faced massive violence and crimes in mineral-rich provinces such as Katanga and North Kivu—fueled by neighbors such as Rwanda and Uganda. The advances of Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo is alarming for the DRC and could fuel a “major continental conflict.” The Trump administration is actively pushing for a peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda to end the violence. This peace deal appears to be contingent upon the two countries each signing a bilateral economic agreement with the United States involving mineral extraction and processing. The peace negotiations are at an early stage, but these efforts are welcome especially if they lead to an outcome perceived as just.

Minerals are routinely smuggled out of the DRC. Add to that illicit artisanal mining—mining done, generally on a small scale and with low-tech tools, by individuals not employed by a mining company—as a tug of war between the authorities and citizens directly grabbing minerals. As a vast territory, it is imperative for the DRC to expand and strengthen the governance of its security sector to secure its borders and confront armed groups operating on its territory. The DRC is nominally a centralized republic, and it needs to find the right balance for revenue sharing between the different provinces and the central government to reduce internal tensions.

Further, the extraction of critical minerals is leading to significant environmental and health hazards. Indeed, extraction is often associated with deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and the use of toxic chemicals (including mercury), which are polluting ground water sources. Add to that child labor in the extraction of critical minerals, with children and women facing health degradation and abuse. The weak enforcement of environmental and social standards in the DRC is very concerning. A global debate is raging over the boycott of critical minerals emanating from zones of conflicts and forced labor. These boycotts alone are unlikely to sway the DRC’s government to do right by its citizens, but multinational corporations and foreign governments may be more susceptible to pressure.

These multifaceted challenges may seem insurmountable, but that should not deter the government of the DRC. To confront these challenges, the DRC must find a balance between outward- and inward-facing institutions. On the outward-facing front, the government needs to get its fair share of revenues from the extraction of minerals and attract investment in processing domestically. To do so, the government needs to deploy utmost transparency in its dealing with multinational corporations and foster the right human capital to match the capacity on the other side.

On the inward-facing front, the DRC needs to also ensure it is redistributing the proceeds of the revenues from the extraction of critical minerals to its citizens to ensure economic justice. To do so, the government of DRC needs to improve the allocative and technical efficiency of its spending. The government of DRC should pursue further its local content policy (designed to ensure that extractive industrial activity benefits the region where the resources are found) by localizing the processing of critical minerals. A useful example is the case of Botswana, which acquired a 15 percent stake in the world’s biggest diamond miner, DeBeers, which helped lock in local diamond-cutting activities.

This would represent a radical system shift in the DRC’s economic governance apparatus—and such a shift is imperative, in security as well as economic governance. Without that radical shift, the benefits of critical minerals won’t reach the people of the DRC. The Trump administration peace proposal could provide a pathway to a just peace and security between DRC and its neighbors, most notably Rwanda.

US investors must lead on responsible sourcing in the DRC

Nicole Namwezi Batumike is a gender and responsible sourcing specialist at the Congolese nonprofit Panzi Foundation.

The ongoing conversations between the United States and the DRC over access to critical minerals present a rare and urgent opportunity to reset the terms of engagement with Congolese stakeholders and the broader mineral ecosystem. US officials have indicated that American and other Western companies are prepared to make multi-billion-dollar investments in the region once the bilateral mineral deals are finalized. The DRC holds vast reserves of cobalt, copper, and other strategic minerals essential to global technological and energy systems, yet for decades, the Congolese people have borne the costs of extraction without sharing in its benefits, treated as collateral in deals driven by geopolitical rivalries and elite bargains. On top of fueling instability and deepening marginalization, these transactional arrangements have also exposed investors to growing legal, financial, and reputational risks.

Experience shows that when mining fails to deliver value to local communities, companies lose their social license to operate, along with the legitimacy of the regimes they once depended on. In turn, those regimes have proven willing to shift allegiances in pursuit of regime security. The DRC, for example, has filed lawsuits against downstream tech giants and pushed for sanctions targeting neighboring countries laundering conflict minerals. It is increasingly clear that the Congolese regime is not bound to any single partner.

US engagement in Africa must reflect geopolitical realities. Recent peace deal discussions show the United States is willing to engage Rwanda’s refining sector—despite Kigali’s documented role in violating Congolese sovereignty and committing war crimes. If responsible sourcing is to truly guide stable engagements, policymakers must reckon with the risks of endorsing impunity and failing to deliver justice for the Congolese people.

The negotiation of a US-DRC mineral deal offers a crucial opportunity to break this cycle, provided Kinshasa resists the historical pattern of leveraging minerals solely for regime survival, and provided the United States supports a model of genuine security: one not rooted in a logic of extractivism but in mutual accountability and the rule of law. By aligning US investment strategy with Congolese legal frameworks and responsible sourcing standards, both countries can lower risks by forging a sustainable model.

Responsible sourcing is a legal and strategic imperative

Meeting international due diligence standards to ensure that a given business activity does not involve human-rights violations has shifted from being a reputational safeguard to a legal and strategic requirement. Standards include the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Guidelines and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Human rights due diligence is now codified through laws such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, France’s Duty of Vigilance Law, and Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, making risk mitigation binding across global operations, especially in high-risk contexts like the DRC.

Yet despite these frameworks, the DRC remains at war, and the global minerals trade continues to serve short-term political and economic agendas. In 2024, the US Government Accountability Office reported that Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act (America’s flagship due diligence law) had not reduced violence in eastern Congo and may have exacerbated conflict around artisanal gold-mining sites. The US government’s insistence on better outcomes demonstrates that due diligence is a means, not an end, and it cannot resolve the structural drivers of the conflict.

The DRC’s mining codes provide a responsible framework for US investors

It is in this context that the DRC’s 2018 mining code emerges not as an obstacle but as a strategic foundation. On top of aligning closely with international expectations for human rights due diligence, the code offers investors and companies a clear, locally grounded framework to manage risk and build sustainable partnerships. Born out of years marked by revenue leakage, extractive impunity, and donor-driven liberalization, the code reasserts the government’s dual roles as a regulator and shareholder while mandating local beneficiation (a part of mineral processing). It raises royalty rates on strategic minerals like cobalt, introduces a “super-profits” tax, and makes community development contributions legally binding. It also restricts the use of “stabilization clauses,” which limit countries’ ability to apply new regulations to investors with agreements signed before the regulations went into effect, and strengthens environmental and social accountability.

Pilot models offer early lessons in responsible sourcing. For example, at Mutoshi in the Lualaba province, the collaboration of multinational commodities group Trafigura with Chemaf, a Congolese company, and Pact, an international nonprofit organization, showed that formalizing artisanal mining not only met sourcing commitments but also helped contribute to de-risking efforts. Meanwhile, the Panzi Foundation’s Green Mining Community Model, an initiative led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Denis Mukwege, links inclusive training in responsible sourcing and value addition with investments in essential infrastructure like health and education. By seeking to address the root causes of conflict and the violent tactics it enables—such as the use of rape as a weapon of war—the Green Mining Community model promotes integration and community empowerment, positioning responsible sourcing as a pathway to long-term stability and shared value.

Opportunities and challenges in the US policy landscape

The United States is on the path to establishing promising policies and frameworks for responsible investment, as demonstrated by the bipartisan BRIDGE to DRC Act, which emphasizes governance and transparency. Initiatives such as the US-backed expansion of the Lobito Corridor* linking the DRC to Angola’s Lobito port, alongside previous efforts like USAID’s Just Gold project, could provide a strong foundation. However, their long-term impact will depend on aligning with fair labor and environmental standards, sustainable development, and, importantly, the continuity of these efforts under the new administration.

At the same time, setbacks like the 180-day suspension of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement must be urgently addressed. Restoring accountability is essential for ethical investment.

As US Rep. Sara Jacobs highlighted in a March 2025 Africa Subcommittee hearing, investments will only succeed in the long term if they do not ignore the root causes of exploitation.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo stands at a pivotal juncture: either the cycle of extractive exploitation continues, or the government leverages its mineral wealth to foster long-term development. For US stakeholders, the way forward lies in transparent, law-abiding, and community-centered partnerships. This requires a commitment to the DRC’s 2018 Mining Code and collaboration with Congolese civil society. While short-term gains may be tempting, only those who embrace responsible sourcing and inclusive models will build sustainable, competitive advantages.

Better roads and stable power grids can unlock the DRC’s potential

Calixte Ahokpossi is mission chief, Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has vast economic potential, but infrastructure gaps remain a major constraint. The country is rich in natural resources and has a large and young population that could drive its development. However, chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure—roads, rail networks, and power generation—continues to stifle economic progress. Additionally, governance challenges, corruption, macroeconomic instability, and recurring shocks—including armed conflicts in its eastern region—exacerbate fragility.

Addressing these challenges requires tackling their sociopolitical and economic roots, while leveraging the country’s vast natural resource wealth to rapidly bridge the infrastructure gap and foster diversified and sustained economic growth and poverty reduction. The DRC needs an ambitious infrastructure agenda, prioritizing the development of transport corridors and stable power grids.

Weak, unevenly distributed infrastructure

The DRC’s road network is severely underdeveloped, limiting mobility and trade. With only 152,400 kilometers (km) of roads, connectivity remains a challenge. The roads serve the nation’s vast 2.45 million km² territory, a road-to-territory ratio that is just 40 percent of the sub-Saharan African average of 0.14 km/ km², which is already low compared to other regions. Fewer than 10 percent of these roads are passable year-round, and more than half of Congolese (54.5 percent) must travel over an hour to reach a paved or asphalted road. Urban-rural disparities are stark. In the southeast (Haut-Katanga and Lualaba), large-scale copper and cobalt mining has spurred some investment in roads and rail lines, but the transportation infrastructure remains vastly insufficient for a region that supplies most of the world’s cobalt and a significant share of global copper. Indeed, the DRC accounts for over 70 percent of global cobalt output and approximately half the world’s proven reserves. In contrast, the eastern provinces (North and South Kivu, Ituri)—rich in gold and the “3T” minerals (tin, tantalum, tungsten)—receive minimal investment, as small-scale artisanal mining dominates, offering limited economic spillovers.

The DRC remains one of the least electrified nations despite vast hydropower potential. Only 19.1 percent of the population has access to electricity, with rural coverage plummeting to a mere 2 percent. The country is heavily dependent on two aging hydropower plants: Inga 1 (with an installed capacity of 351 megawatts) and Inga 2 (installed capacity of 1,424 MW), both under rehabilitation and operating at roughly 80 percent capacity. These plants primarily serve the mining industry. Ambitious projects like Inga 3 (3,000 to 11,000 MW) and the even larger Grand Inga (which could surpass China’s Three Gorges Dam) underscore the Congo River’s vast potential. Yet delays, shifting international partnerships, and environmental concerns have repeatedly stalled construction.

A barrier to inclusive growth

Weak infrastructure inflates costs, constrains businesses, and fosters economic disparities. Poor infrastructure raises transportation and production costs, stifling economic activity in time-sensitive sectors (like perishable goods). This is evident in agriculture, which employs the majority of Congolese (over 60 percent of the labor force). Despite the DRC’s fertile land, poor transport links prevent farmers from bringing their surplus produce to markets. Goods perish on farms, and the country remains dependent on food imports, making it vulnerable to global food price shocks and exchange rate fluctuations. These disruptions fuel inflation, disproportionately affecting the poorest. The weak transportation network also restricts economic diversification and limits access to remote mineral deposits, leaving critical resources untapped—or controlled by armed groups.

Unreliable energy supply disrupts businesses and limits opportunities for local transformation and adding value. From irrigation systems to medical clinics, power shortages affect essential activities and reinforce a cycle of poverty and missed opportunities. They also hamper industrialization, making local mineral processing, manufacturing, and daily business operations difficult or virtually impossible. Mining companies report that frequent power shortages force them to rely on diesel generators, raising production costs substantially. This inefficiency hits small businesses even harder, eroding profit margins and reducing corporate income tax revenues. Under these conditions, the DRC’s ambition to increase local mineral processing and move up the value chain remains a major challenge.

Five steps to good roads, reliable power, and economic growth

1. Invest in transport and energy infrastructure to generate sustainable growth. The DRC’s vast mineral wealth and energy potential make it an attractive destination for large-scale private investment, but various bottlenecks such as infrastructure, business environment, and governance must be addressed. We focus here on infrastructure ones. Unlocking the hydropower potential (100,000 MW, which is 13 percent of the world’s total) could meet domestic needs and generate export revenue. Modernizing existing hydroelectric facilities and expanding transmission grids would provide clean, affordable electricity to both industry and households. For the mining sector, improved energy access could lower production costs while enhancing compliance with global environmental, social, and governance standards. Meanwhile, broader electrification would fuel local enterprise, boost economic diversification, and improve living standards.
2. Diversify financing for the substantial investments needed to bridge the infrastructure gap. The International Monetary Fund estimates that achieving universal electricity access would require annual spending of 5.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), while ensuring that 75 percent of the population lives within two kilometers of an all-season road would necessitate 14.9 percent of GDP annually over ten years. Given these costs, leveraging diversified public, private, and international financing is key to accelerating infrastructure development.
3. Strengthen public investment management to maximize returns. Weak governance and public investment management have led to waste, corruption risks, and substandard project execution. Strengthening investment governance would maximize value for money, boosting private-sector confidence and investment. Equally key is creating fiscal space for critical infrastructure and social and human capital investments. This requires improving domestic tax and nontax revenue collection and prioritizing growth-enhancing spending. Yet low revenue collection, especially relative to peer countries and the DRC’s economic potential, remains a major constraint.
4. Pursue prudent, strategic government borrowing to secure favorable terms. Domestically, containing inflation would lower borrowing costs and encourage higher domestic savings, strengthening the local financial market. Externally, the focus should remain on concessional financing, prioritizing low-cost, long-term loans. Over time, as policy credibility strengthens and the country’s creditworthiness improves, access to international financial markets could be considered, particularly when global conditions are favorable.
5. Scale up infrastructure investments through regional partnerships. The DRC would benefit from harnessing regional frameworks such as the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community to mobilize resources for transport and energy infrastructure. Cross-border energy grids and trade corridors can reduce operational costs, attract larger financing and enhance the country’s global competitiveness. Regional collaboration offers a pragmatic solution to tackling infrastructure deficits while strengthening economic resilience. Also, the development of the Lobito Corridor,* linking the DRC to Angola’s Lobito port, can deepen regional integration and offer more cost-effective transportation routes for DRC’s exports—though it will be important to avoid undermining parallel port development projects in the western part of the DRC.

In sum, the future of the DRC will be promising if its development challenges can be addressed in an ambitious and realistic manner. Developing a reliable road network and extending electricity provision will be critical to reap the DRC’s vast potential—and will need to be supported by sound macroeconomic policies and reforms to strengthen the country’s resilience to overcome its fragility.

Launched in 2022, the Africa Center’s programming on the DRC seeks to advise on securing the country’s governance and to raise awareness of the economic opportunities in the DRC. In partnership with Rawbank, the Africa Center analyzes the DRC’s business environment, the industrial potential of its critical minerals, and peace and security throughout the country.

*Rawbank, which supports the Atlantic Council Africa Center’s work on the Democratic Republic of Congo, has an equity stake in the Africa Finance Corporation, which leads the development of the Lobito Corridor.

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

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The post Beyond critical minerals: Capitalizing on the DRC’s vast opportunities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The European Union (EU) Growth Plan for the Western Balkans aims to integrate the region into the EU single market, enhance regional cooperation, implement significant governance and rule of law reforms, and boost EU financial support. In doing so, the EU seeks to foster economic development, political stability, and security in the region amid rising geopolitical tensions, while accelerating the Western Balkans’ EU accession process.

The Growth Plan holds substantial potential to reinvigorate the enlargement process and counter the stagnation felt by both the EU and the region. Strong points include:

• Tangible benefits before full accession: Providing stronger incentives for reform.
• Active involvement of regional governments: Increasing buy-in from local leaders, who must submit their own reform agendas.
• Enhanced economic integration, greater access to the EU market, increased EU funding, and reforms to governance and the rule of law: Stimulating investment, promoting economic growth, and raising living standards.

These improvements would bring the Western Balkans closer to the economic success seen in the Central and Eastern European countries in the EU over the past two decades. Moreover, fostering deeper regional cooperation will not only deliver an economic boost but also contribute to political normalization. If successful, the plan will bolster the EU’s political influence in the region, countering the impact of external actors and encouraging much-needed nearshoring investment from EU firms.

However, the plan faces several challenges:

• Enforceability: Although conditionality is rigorous, with disbursement of funds tied to strict conditions to prevent misuse, there are concerns regarding its enforceability. The European Court of Auditors has already raised reservations.
• Quantity: Additionally, the financial support offered is significantly lower than what EU member states in Southeast Europe receive. The reforms required for fund access and single market integration are substantial and will demand significant political will and institutional capacity—both of which have been lacking in the region at times over the past two decades.

The success of the growth plan will largely depend on its implementation. The EU must ensure rigorous enforcement of conditionality, reward positive reform steps, and increase funding for countries making progress. Civil society in the Western Balkans should be engaged as much as possible to foster broader support and transparency. The EU should also leverage the plan to align with its broader geopolitical and geoeconomic interests, particularly in strengthening its strategic autonomy. Additionally, the Growth Plan should be fully integrated with the EU’s competitiveness, green, and digital transition agendas. For their part, Western Balkans leaders should seize the increased agency provided by the plan. They must take ownership of the reforms they propose, participate actively in EU meetings, and design their reform agendas to deliver better living standards and deeper EU integration for their populations.

Fellow

Valbona Zeneli

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Europe Center Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Albanian Corruption

Dimitar Bechev
Nonresident Senior Fellow, Europe Center, Atlantic Council
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe

Isabelle Ioannides
Nonresident Senior Research Fellow
Hellenic Foundation for Foreign and European Policy (ELIAMEP)

Richard Grieveson
Deputy Director
Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies

Report Oct 7, 2024

Working on a new transatlantic approach toward the Western Balkans

By Maja Piscevic, Ilva Tare

The United States and the European Union must work together, and play to their own respective strengths, to prioritize democratic and economic growth and alignment with the West.

Corruption European Union

Report Nov 14, 2024

North Macedonia: A reform agenda on the path to EU integration

By Aleksej Demjanski, Biljana Ivanovska, Branimir Jovanović, Sara Milenkovska, Lura Pollozhani, and Malinka Ristevska Jordanova

Five experts from the region map out a reform agenda for North Macedonia’s newly elected government to pursue greater democratic progress and eventual European integration.

Elections Europe & Eurasia

Report Dec 11, 2023

Getting back on track: Unlocking Kosovo’s Euro-Atlantic and development perspective

By Agon Maliqi

Report exploring the path forward for Kosovo’s integration into transatlantic institutions and the geopolitical and economic challenges and opportunities facing the country.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

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The post The European Union Growth Plan for the Western Balkans: A reality test for EU enlargement appeared first on Atlantic Council.

• Initial expectations
• Russia’s cyber ecosystem
• What happened to Russia’s cyber might?
• Unpacking the (cyber) nesting doll
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• About the author

When the Russian government launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many Western observers braced for digital impact—expecting Russian military and security forces to unleash all-out cyberattacks on Ukraine. Weeks before Moscow’s full-scale war began, Politico wrote that the “Russian invasion of Ukraine could redefine cyber warfare.” The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) worried that past Russian malware deployments, such as NotPetya and WannaCry, could find themselves mirrored in new wartime operations—where the impacts would spill quickly and globally across companies and infrastructure. Many other headlines and stories asked questions about how, exactly, Russia would use cyber operations in modern warfare to wreak havoc on Ukraine. Some of these questions were fair, others clearly leaned into the hype, and all were circulated online, in the press, and in the DC policy bubble ahead of that fateful February 24 invasion.

As the Putin regime’s illegal war unfolded, however, it quickly belied these hypotheses and collapsed many Western assumptions about Russia’s cyber power. Russia didn’t deliver the expected cyber “kill strike” (instantly plummeting Ukraine into darkness). Ukrainian and NATO defenses (insofar as NATO has spent considerable time and energy to support Ukraine on cyber defense over the years) were sufficient to (mainly) withstand the most disruptive Russian cyber operations, compared at least to pre-February 2022 expectations. And Moscow showed serious incompetencies in coordinating cyber activities with battlefield kinetic operations. Flurries of operational activity, nonetheless, continue to this day from all parties involved in the war—as Russia remains a persistent and serious cyber threat to the United States, Ukraine, and the West. Russia’s continued cyber activity and major gaps between wartime cyber expectations and reality demand a Western rethink of years-old assumptions about Russia and cyber power—and of outdated ways of confronting the threats ahead.

Russia is still very much a cyber threat. Patriotic hackers and state security agencies, cybercriminals and private military companies, and so on blend together with deliberate state decisions, Kremlin permissiveness, entrepreneurialism, competition, petty corruption, and incompetence to create the Russian cyber web that exists today. The multidirectional, murky, and dynamic nature of Russia’s cyber ecosystem—relying on a range of actors, with different incentives, with shifting relationships with the state and one another—is part of the reason that the Russian cyber threat is so complex.

Policymakers in the United States as well as allied and partner countries should take at least five steps to size up and confront Russia’s cyber threat in the years to come:

• When assessing the expectations-versus-reality of Russia’s wartime cyber operations, distinguish between capabilities and wartime execution.
• Widen the circle of analysis to include not just Russian state hackers but the broader Russian cyber web, including patriotic hackers and state-coerced criminals.
• Avoid the trap of assuming Russia can separate out cyber and information issues from other bilateral, multilateral, and security-related topics—maintaining its hostility toward Ukraine while, say, softening up on cyber operations against the United States.
• Continue cyber information sharing about Russia with allies and partners around the world.
• Invest in cyber defense and in cyber offense where appropriate.

Russia’s cyber ecosystem

Russia is home to a complex ecosystem of cyber actors. These include military forces, security agencies, state-recruited cybercriminals, state-coerced technology developers, state-encouraged patriotic hackers, self-identified patriotic hackers acting of their own volition, and more. Even Russian private military companies offer cyber operations, signals intelligence (SIGINT), and other digital capabilities to their clients. Together, these actors form a large, complex, often opaque, and dynamic ecosystem. The Kremlin has substantial power over this ecosystem, both guiding its overall shape (such as permitting large amounts of cybercrime to be perpetuated from within Russia) and leveraging particular actors as needed (discussed more below). Simultaneously, decisions aren’t always top-down, as entrepreneurial cybercriminals and hackers—much like “violent entrepreneurs” in Russian business and crime, or the “adhocrats” vying for Putin’s ear to pitch ideas—take initiative, build their own capabilities, and sell them to the state as well.

The relationships that different security agencies, at different levels, in different parts of the country and world, have with Russian hackers also vary over time. A local security service office might provide legal cover to a group of criminal hackers one day (after the necessary payoffs change hands, of course), only for a Moscow-based team to recruit them for a state operation the next. While the Kremlin has a sort of “social contract” with hackers—focus mainly on foreign targets; don’t undermine the Kremlin’s geopolitical objectives; be responsive to Russian government requests—its tolerance for a specific cybercriminal group can change on a whim, too. Security officials might take a bribe from a cybercriminal, much as their colleagues do on the regular, and still find their patrons in prison and their own wrists in handcuffs.

On the Russian government side, the principal units involved in offensive cyber operations are the Federal Security Service (FSB), the military intelligence agency (GRU), and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Russia does not have a proper, centrally coordinating cyber command; it was never launched despite attempts in the 2010s. The Ministry of Defense’s initial efforts to make one happen by circa 2014 were, it came to be understood later, overtaken by the subsequent establishment of Information Operations Troops with seemingly some coordinating functions—though experts still debate its analogousness to a “cyber command” and its level of shot-calling compared to bodies like the Presidential Administration. So while it is possible for the Russian security agencies to coordinate their (cyber) operations with one another, their engagements are marked more by competition than cooperation.

The most prominent example of this potential overlap or inefficiency is when GRU-linked APT28 and SVR-linked APT29 both hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016, making it unclear whether each knew the other was carrying out a similar campaign. This operational friction is exacerbated by the fact that the agencies’ general remits—SVR on human intelligence, for instance, and FSB mostly domestic—do not translate to the digital and online world. All three agencies hack military and civilian targets and, for example, the FSB actively targets and hacks organizations outside of Russia’s borders. Each agency approaches cyber operations differently, too, often in line with their overall institutional cultures—such as the GRU, known for its brazen kinetic operations including sabotage and assassination, carrying out the boldest and most destructive cyber operations, contrasted with the SVR, and its emphasis on secrecy, focusing on quiet cyber intelligence gathering like in the SolarWinds campaign. Still, the Russian state agencies with cyber operations remain active threats to the United States, Ukraine, the West, and plenty of others through intelligence-gathering efforts, disruptive operations, and efforts that meld both, such as hack-and-leak campaigns.

Beyond government units themselves, the state encourages patriotic hackers—sometimes just young, technically proficient Russians—to go after foreign targets through televised and online statements (such as disinformation about Ukraine). Different security organizations, such as the FSB, may hire cybercriminals for specific intelligence operations and pay them based on the targets they penetrate. Other private-sector companies pitch their own services to the state of their own volition, bid on government contracts, and support a range of offensive capability development, research and development, and talent cultivation efforts (including defensive activities and benign or even globally cybersecurity-positive activities beyond the scope of this paper). Russian private military companies increasingly offer capabilities related to cyber and SIGINT to their private and government clients around the world, too. All the while, the state retains the capability to target specific people and companies in Russia that otherwise have nothing to do with the state, apply the relevant pressure, and compel them to assist with state cyber objectives, which it can wield to extraordinary effect.

As the historian Stephen Kotkin notes, “The Russian state can confound analysts who truck in binaries.” While there are several core themes to this ecosystem—complexity; state corruption; overwhelming tolerance for and even tacit support of cybercrime; myriad offensive cyber actors in play—Russia’s cyber ecosystem neither fits into a neat box nor is a neatly run one at that.

For all the threats these actors pose to Ukraine and the West, assuming that the Putin regime controls all cyber activity emanating from within Russia’s borders is not just inaccurate (e.g., the country’s too big; there are too many players; it’s not all top down), but is the kind of assumption that serves as a “useful fiction” for the Kremlin. It makes the system appear ruthlessly efficient and coordinated, gives disconnected or tactically myopic actions a veneer of larger strategy, and puts Putin at the center of all cyber operation decision-making. Thinking as much can, intentionally or not, further feed into the idea that the Kremlin’s motives are clear and fixed or driven by some kind of “hybrid war” strategy. It also obscures the fact that—unlike many Western countries that do, in fact, publish official “cyber strategies”—Russia does not have a defined cyber strategy document, instead drawing on a range of documents and sweeping “information security” concepts to frame information, the internet, and cyber power.

On the contrary, it is the multidirectional, murky, and dynamic nature of Russia’s cyber ecosystem that makes cyber activity subject to sudden change, feeds opportunities for interagency rivalries, contributes to effects-corroding corruption and competition, and provides the Kremlin with a spectrum of talent, capabilities, and resources to tap, direct, and deny (plausibly or implausibly) as it needs. It is in part this dynamism and multidirectional nature that makes Russia’s cyber threat so complex—as mixes of deliberate state decisions, Kremlin permissiveness, entrepreneurialism, competition, petty corruption, and incompetence blend together to create the Russian cyber web that exists today. Relationships between the state proper, at different levels, in different organizations, with nonstate cyber affiliates are often shifting; ransomware groups persistently targeting Western critical infrastructure, for example, may be prolific for months before collapsing under internal conflict and reconstituting into new groups, with new combinations of the old tactics and talent. It is also the reason that what is known to date about cyber operations during Russia’s full-out war on Ukraine provides such a valuable case study in assessing the status quo of this ecosystem—and, coupled with lessons from past incidents (like Russian cyberattacks on Estonia in 2007, Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014), helps to better weigh the future threat.

What happened to Russia’s cyber might?

Cyber operations have played a substantial role in Russia’s full-on invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the ensuing war. These activities range from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks knocking Ukrainian websites offline and Ukrainian patriotic hackers’ attacks on Russian government sites (what Kyiv calls its “IT Army”) to Russia using countless malware variants to exfiltrate data and targeting Ukrainian Telegram chats and Android mobile devices. Without getting into a timeline of every major operation—neither this paper’s focus nor possible given limits on public information—it is clear that Russian and Ukrainian forces and their allies, partners, and proxies have made cyber operations part of the war’s military, intelligence, and information dimensions.

There are many ways to define cyber power, which is by no means limited to offensive capabilities. In Russia’s case, analysts could focus on anything from Russia’s national cyber threat defense system—the Monitoring and Administration Center for General Use Information Networks (GosSOPKA), which effectively brings together intrusion detection, vulnerability management, and other technologies for entities handling sensitive information—to the enormous IT brain drain problems the country suffered immediately following the full-on invasion of Ukraine. As explored in a study last year for the Atlantic Council, Russia’s growing digital tech isolationism—both a long-standing goal and increasing reality for the Kremlin—has driven more independence in some areas, like software, while heightening dependence and strategic vulnerability in others, such as dependence on Chinese hardware. This paper’s focus, though, will remain on Russia’s offensive capabilities.

Pre-February 2022 expectations in the United States and the West, as highlighted above, were dominated by those predicting extensive Russian disruptive and destructive cyber operations. In these scenarios, Russia would leverage its state, state-affiliated, state-encouraged, and other capabilities to cause serious damage to Ukrainian critical infrastructure (telecommunications, water systems, energy grids, and so forth) and cleanly augment its kinetic onslaught. Russia would “employ massive cyber and electronic warfare tools” to collapse Ukraine’s will to fight through digital means.

To be sure, some predictions were more measured. Some pointed to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, as an illustration of Russian forces effectively using DDoS attacks (Moscow’s shatter-communications approach) in concert with disinformation and kinetic action to prepare the battlefield, and conjectured that Moscow would do the same if it moved troops further into Ukraine. Others highlighted Russia turning off Ukrainian power grids as a possible menu option for Moscow as it escalated. Cybersecurity scholars Lennart Maschmeyer and Nadiya Kostyuk, contrary to widely held positions, argued two weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion that “cyber operations will remain of secondary importance and at best provide marginal gains to Russia,” incisively noting that press headlines talking of “cyber war” rest on “the implicit assumption that with the change in strategic context, the role of cyber operations will change as well.” The overwhelming sentiment, though, was worry and anticipation of what some considered true, cyber-enabled, twenty-first century warfare.

But the cyber operations that unfolded immediately before and after the February 2022 invasion defied what many Western (including American) commentators were predicting. Russia didn’t deliver the cyber kill strike expected (instantly plummeting Ukraine into darkness). Ukrainian and NATO defenses were sufficient to (mainly) withstand the most disruptive FSB and GRU cyber operations, compared at least to pre-February 2022 expectations. And Moscow showed serious incompetencies in coordinating cyber activities with battlefield kinetic operations. Many experts who did not expect cyber-Armageddon per se have still been surprised by the limited impact of Russian attacks, the focus on wiper attacks (that delete a system’s data via malware) and data gathering over critical infrastructure disruptions, and apparent poor coordination between cyber and kinetic moves made by the Russian Armed Forces and intelligence services.

What, then, explains the gulf between expectations—decisive moves, cleanly executed operations, and visible results—and reality, with some operations, certainly, but the overwhelming focus on kinetic activity and far less on destructive cyber movement than anticipated? Scholars and analysts have, since February 2022, put forward several buckets of hypotheses.

Various commentators argue, as National Defense University scholar Jackie Kerr compiles and breaks down, that Russia’s weak integration of cyber into offensive campaigns was symptomatic of broader problems with Russian military preparations for full-on war; that Western observers simply overestimated Russia’s cyber capabilities; that poor coordination and competition between Russian security agencies impeded operational success; or that Ukraine’s cyber defenses have been extraordinarily robust. Some have gone so far as to attribute Ukrainian cyber defenses, backed up by Western allies and partners, as the primary reason for Russian offensive failures. Russia cyber and information expert Gavin Wilde argues that Russia focused on countervalue operations (against civilian infrastructure, to demoralize political leaders and the public) more than counterforce operations (against Ukrainian military capabilities), to little effect, “a sign of highly sophisticated intelligence tradecraft being squandered in service of a deeply flawed military strategy.”

Professors Nadiya Kostyuk and Erik Gartzke write that Russia’s full-on war on Ukraine is about territory and physical control, making physical military activity far more important than cyber operations themselves. Cyber scholar Jon Bateman argues that traditional signals jamming and Russia’s cyberattack against the Viasat satellite communications system, coupled with a chaotic slew of data-deletion attacks, may have helped Russia initially—but that cyber operations from there had diminishing novelty and impact. Russia’s poor strategy, insufficient intelligence preparation, and interagency mistrust have been presented as causes for undermining Russia’s cyber-kinetic strike coordination, too. Others argue that Russians wanted to gather intelligence from Ukrainian systems more than disrupt them, that Russia’s information-focused troops have been more optimized for propaganda than cyber operations, and that cyber scholars’ and pundits’ expectations were plain wrong given that Russia wanted to inflict physical violence on Ukraine more than achieve cyber-related effects—necessitating bombs, missiles, and guns over malware, zero days, and DDoS attacks.

In reality, of course, many factors are likely in play at once. Plenty of the above scholars and commentators recognize this multifactorial situation and say it outright (although a few do push a single prevailing explanation for the war’s cyber outcomes). However, it’s worth explicitly stressing that many factors coexist, in light of occasional efforts to provide reductive explanations for complex wartime activities and effects. Concluding that Russia is no longer a cyber threat, for instance, is wrong. While Ukraine as a country has demonstrated extraordinary will and resilience, and while Ukrainian cyber defenses have been more than commendable, explanations that place the rationale solely on formidable Ukrainian cyber defenses are likewise reductive. Taking such explanations as fact simplifies the many factors involved and can veer analysis and debates away from the policy actions that are still needed, such as continued cyber threat information sharing between the United States and Ukraine.

The above, plausible, evidence-grounded explanations are not mutually exclusive. FSB officers, rife with paranoia, conspiratorialism, and a Putin-pleasing orientation, did indeed grossly misinterpret the situation on the ground in Ukraine in 2022 and fed that bad information to the Kremlin, potentially skewing assessments of cyber options as well.

Interagency competition may very well have undermined, once again, the ability of the FSB, GRU, and SVR to coordinate activities with one another, let alone with the Ministry of Defense and Russian proxies in Belarus, and therefore hampered more effective planning, coordination, and execution of cyber operations. For example, during the war’s initial stages, elements of the SVR may very well have sought to technically gather intelligence from targets that GRU- or FSB-tied criminal groups were indiscriminately trying to knock offline or wipe with malware, thrusting uncoordinated activities into tension.

Like in every other country on earth, Russian cyber operators are additionally subject to resource constraints: A hacker spending a day on breaking into a Ukrainian energy company is a hacker not spending time on spying on expats in Germany or setting up a collaboration with a ransomware group. Competition, therefore, not just between agencies—turf wars, budget fights, who gets the primary jurisdiction over Ukraine, and so forth—but within them, over who gets to spend what time and resources targeting which entities, sit within broader Russian government calculi over cyber, military, and intelligence operations. And, among others, Russia’s overall strategy did lead to bad moves, as Wilde and others have noted, with limited effect and burning away Russian capabilities (like exploits) in the process. Recognizing these many likely factors will facilitate better analysis of where Russia stands.

The gap between the imagined, all-out “cyber war” and the past three years’ reality also begs the question of whether the right metrics were considered in the first place. As much as cyber capabilities are inextricable from modern intelligence operations, and as much as cyber and information capabilities are embedded throughout militaries around the world, war is obviously about far more than cyber as a domain. But experts studying cyber all day, every day, may fall into the unintentional trap (as anyone can) of having their area of study become the focal point of analysis in a war with many moving pieces and considerations—hence, some of the commentary anticipated Russian destruction of Ukraine to happen through code, compared to a range of military weaponry. Academic theories, moreover, of how cyber conflict will unfold in political science-modeled simulations or think tank war games may similarly fail to map to battlefield realities, such as generalizing how cyber fits into warfare without adequately considering unique contexts in a country like Russia. Layered on top of all this—in the academies, in the media, in the data and artificial intelligence (AI) era—is a frequent desire to quantify everything, too, obscuring the fact that not everything can be effectively, quantifiably measured and that counting up the number of observed Russian cyber operations and scoring them may still not get to the heart of their inefficacy. Clearly, as US and Western perspectives on Russian cyber power shift with more information and time, it is worth rethinking Russia’s future cyber power—not just for how the West can recalibrate its assumptions and size up the threats, but in how the West can prepare to act and respond in the future.

Unpacking the (cyber) nesting doll

The takeaway from comparing predictions and reality shouldn’t be that pundits are always wrong or that Russia’s cyber operations are considerably less threatening in 2025. Nor should it be that Ukraine is propped up solely by Western government and private-sector cyber defenses, and that Russia is simply waiting to unleash a devastating cyber operation to end it all.

Russia remains a sophisticated, persistent, and well-resourced cyber threat to the United States, Ukraine, and the West generally. This is not going to change anytime soon. Kremlin-spun “crackdowns” on cybercrime (arrests that were little more than public relations stunts), frenetic talk of US-Russia rapprochement, and wishful thinking about Putin’s willingness to cease subversive activity against Ukraine do not portend, as some might suggest, that the United States can sideline Russia as a central cyber problem—and focus instead on China.

The Russian government views cyber and information capabilities as key to its military and intelligence operations, and the Kremlin still has one top enemy in its national security sights: the United States. Outside the Russian state per se, a range of ransomware gangs and other hackers in Russia will continue targeting companies, critical infrastructure, and other entities in the United States, Ukraine, and the West, too. There are at least five steps US policymakers and their allies and partners should take to size up this threat—against the full scope of Russia’s cyber web and integrating lessons learned so far from Russia’s full-out war on Ukraine—and confront it head-on in the coming years.

When assessing the expectations-versus-reality of Russia’s wartime cyber operations, distinguish between capabilities and wartime execution. Clearly, Russian offensive cyber activity during its full-on war against Ukraine has not matched up against Western assumptions that envisioned a cyber onslaught that turned off power grids, disrupted water treatment facilities, and blacked out communications. Evaluating how and why Russia did not make this happen is critical to understanding Russia’s operational motives, play-by-play planning and coordination between security agencies, targeting interests, and much more. But analysts and media must be careful to avoid thinking that Russia’s cyber capabilities themselves are weak. Clearly, when Russian hackers put the pedal to the metal, so to speak—ransomware gangs targeting American hospitals, or the GRU going after Ukrainian phones—they can deliver serious results. A better approach is policymakers and analysts in the United States, as well as in allied and partner countries, breaking out Russia’s continued cyber threats across ransomware, critical infrastructure targeting, mobile-device hacking, and so on while pairing the capabilities against where execution could fall short in practice. Doing so will give a better sense of Russia’s cyber strengths and weaknesses—and distinguish between the different components of carrying out a cyber operation.

Widen the circle of analysis to include not just Russian state hackers but the broader Russian cyber web, including patriotic hackers and state-coerced criminals. Focusing Western intelligence priorities, academic studies, and industry analysis mainly on Russian government agencies as the primary vector of Russian cyber power loses the importance of the overall Russian cyber web. Putting the focus mostly on Russian government agencies also loses, as my colleague Emma Schroeder has unpacked in detail, the role that public-private partnerships have played in cyber operations and defenses in the conflict, and the opportunity to assess similar public-private dynamics on the Russian side. Conversely, making sure to consider the roles of government contractors, military universities, patriotic hackers, state-tapped cybercriminals, and other actors as described above should help to fight the temptation to treat all Russian cyber operations as top-down—and illuminate the many ways in which Russia can build capabilities, source talent, and carry out operations against the West. Understanding these actors will allow for better tracking, threat preparation, defense, and, where needed, disruption.

Avoid the trap of assuming Russia can separate out cyber and information issues from other bilateral, multilateral, and security-related topics—maintaining its hostility toward Ukraine while, say, softening up on cyber operations against the United States. Whether the US government can or cannot separate out cyber issues vis-à-vis Russia from other elements of the US-Russia relationship (e.g., trade, nuclear security), Western policymakers should avoid the trap of assuming the Russian government is currently capable, let alone willing, of genuinely and seriously doing the same: separating out its cyber activities from other policy and security issues.

The Russian government has come to view the internet and digital technologies as both weapons that can be wielded against the state and weapons to use against Russia’s enemies. In this sense, cyber operations (as well as information operations) are core not just to Moscow’s approach to modern security, military activity, and intelligence operations but, perhaps more importantly, to the Kremlin’s conceptualization of regime security as well. Paranoia and propaganda about fifth columnists (with, sometimes, one feeding the other), persistent efforts to crack down on the internet in Russia, and a continued belief that Western tech companies and civil society groups are weaponizing the internet to undermine the Kremlin, mean that the regime will not truly believe it can put “information security” on the sidelines—and that includes not just internet control but cyber operations. Policymakers must go into diplomatic and other engagements with Russia with their eyes wide open.

Continue cyber information sharing about Russia with allies and partners around the world. For years, military and intelligence scholars and analysts have referred to Russia’s actions in Georgia, Ukraine, and other former Soviet republics as a “test bed” or “sandbox” for what Russia might do in other countries. It would be a strategic, operational, and tactical mistake to think that Russian cyber operations against Ukraine are just confined to Ukraine and that two-way information sharing with Ukraine about cyber threats is a waste of time and resources. Quite the opposite: Russia’s cyber and information activities against Ukraine today can give the United States and its allies and partners critical insights into the types of capabilities and operations that could, and very well might be, carried out against them at the same time or days or months later. Whether hack-and-leak operations designed to embarrass political figures, wiper attacks designed to destroy government databases, espionage operations, or anything in between, having real-time information about Russian cyber threats will only help the United States and its allies and partners better defend their own networks and systems against hacks and attacks.

Invest in cyber defense and in cyber offense where appropriate. Persistent, sophisticated Russian cyber threats to a range of key US and allied and partner systems—military networks, hospitals, financial institutions, critical infrastructure, advanced tech companies, civil society groups—demand continued investments in cyber defense. In addition to information-sharing, the United States and its allies and partners need to continue prioritizing market incentives for companies to enhance cyber defenses along with baseline requirements for essential measures such as multifactor authentication, detailed access controls, robust encryption, continuous monitoring, network segmentation, resourced and empowered cybersecurity decision-makers, and much more. Just as the Russians clearly possess a range of advanced cyber capabilities, any number of recent operations, including against Ukraine, show that Russian operations (like those carried out by many other powers) continue to succeed with basic moves such as phishing emails. The United States and its allies and partners need to continually increase cyber defenses. And, where appropriate, the United States and its allies and partners should ensure the right capabilities and posture to carry out cyber offensive operations—including to preemptively disrupt Russian attacks (the “defend forward” euphemism). As the Kremlin is more paranoid and conspiratorial, the notion of diplomatic talks and establishing cyber redlines is less and less realistic. Active mitigation and disruption of threats, rather than relying too heavily on diplomatic meetings or endless criminal indictments, are together a more feasible approach to protecting US and allied and partner interests against Russian cyber threats in the years to come.

Conclusion

Lessons from cyber operations—and about cyber operations and capabilities—from the Russian full-on war against Ukraine will continue to emerge in the coming years. This trickle of information may slowly dissipate some of the “fog of war” surrounding the back-and-forth hacks and shed much-needed light on issues such as coordination and conflict between Russian security agencies in cyberspace.

For now, however, the issue for the United States is clear: Russia remains a persistent, sophisticated, and well-resourced cyber threat to the United States and its allies and partners around the world. The threat stems from a range of Russian actors, and it stands to continue impacting a wide range of American government organizations, businesses, civil society groups, individuals, and national interests across the globe. As wonderful as the idea of cyber détente might be, Putin’s paranoia about Western technology, Russian officials’ insistence that the internet is a “CIA project” and Meta is a terrorist organization, and military and intelligence interest in conflict and subversion against the West will not evaporate with a wartime ceasefire or a newfound agreement with the United States. These are hardened beliefs and fairly cemented institutional postures that are not going to shift under the current regime.

Rather than dismissing Russia’s cyber prowess because of unmet expectations since February 2022, American and Western policymakers must size up the threat, unpack the complexity of Russia’s cyber web, and invest in the right proactive measures to enhance their security and resilience into the future.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Brian Whitmore and Andrew D’Anieri for the invitation to write this paper and for their comments on an earlier draft. He also thanks Gavin Wilde, Trey Herr, Aleksander Cwalina, Ambassador John Herbst, and Nikita Shah for their comments on the draft.

Justin Sherman is a nonresident senior fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Technology Programs. He is also the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm; an incoming adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service; a contributing editor at Lawfare; and a columnist at Barron’s. He writes, researches, consults, and advises on Russia security and technology issues and is sanctioned by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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A decade from now, the United States is very likely to face operational and strategic challenges in the Indo-Pacific even more complex and difficult than those it faces today. The nuclear capabilities of China and North Korea are growing rapidly, and the risk is increasing that a conflict with one would escalate horizontally to a regional conflict involving both.

By 2030, China will likely be a near peer to the United States in terms of strategic nuclear capabilities. Its amphibious, air, and strike capabilities could also dramatically improve its ability to project force to Taiwan and the surrounding region. China’s plans, intentions, and timeline for use of force against Taiwan remain topics of heated debate. However, in the next five to ten years, it is plausible that Beijing will consider conditions to be more favorable for a military resolution, even if it is not eager for a global war with the United States.

In this same period, North Korea is likely to field a wider range of more precise and effective nonnuclear escalatory options, as well as a robust, mobile, tactical nuclear-missile force—backed by a far more credible capability to retaliate against the region and the continental United States with thermonuclear weapons. These capabilities will provide Pyongyang with its own reasons to consider escalating its use of force against South Korea, though its aims will likely be far more limited than Beijing’s aims for Taiwan.

By 2030, it is unlikely that Beijing and Pyongyang will have developed enough trust to enable them to coordinate a campaign of aggression to achieve their goals. However, their individual interests and their common animosity toward the United States and its allies will give each of these potential US adversaries strong incentives to escalate—opportunistically or reactively—in the event the other initiates a conflict. In 2030, each of these potential adversaries will also have much stronger incentives and capabilities to threaten or conduct a limited nuclear attack in the event that either adversary initiates such a conflict.

Meanwhile, two key US allies in the Indo-Pacific—South Korea and Japan—are investing to develop far more powerful militaries by 2030. These allies’ military capabilities, as well as their diplomatic, informational, and economic influence, could help counter and deter growing threats. However, these allies will also have greater motivation and capability to act unilaterally if their own interests are threatened.

Considering these trends, US military and government leaders will face some tough challenges in the Indo-Pacific a decade from now. With these in mind, the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative (IPSI)—with the support of the Strategic Trends Research Initiative of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)—launched the Guardian Tiger tabletop exercise series to help prepare mid-level US government and military leaders for future key roles in addressing such threats. These initial Guardian Tiger exercises were also intended to develop analytic insights and actionable recommendations to help the United States start preparing for limited nuclear attacks by an adversary—work that is continuing today. This report summarizes and analyzes the first two Guardian Tiger exercises.

Key findings

1. If the United States is engaged in conflict with either China or North Korea, it might not be able to deter the other adversary from escalating that conflict or initiating a separate one. As a conflict with an initial adversary escalates, it may become necessary—and even strategically or operationally advantageous—to accept the risk of such simultaneous conflicts against multiple adversaries rather than remain hamstrung by the costs.
2. What it takes to prevent North Korea from escalating a conflict will differ significantly from what is required to prevent China from doing so. Credible threats of vertical escalation from Pyongyang, particularly threats of nuclear strikes, are likely to come early and often. Meanwhile, China has many strong incentives and non-nuclear options to escalate horizontally—across domains and geography, including in space, in the cyber domain, and against the US homeland—to disrupt Washington’s will and ability to support Taiwan. Each adversary’s distinct escalation pattern will require a tailored set of capabilities and approaches to anticipate, deter, and counter it.
3. War in the Indo-Pacific may start over one flashpoint, but it will quickly become about much more. A war beginning over Taiwan is likely to become about far more than the status of Taiwan itself, including China’s overall regional and global position post-war, as well as the US homeland’s safety. Meanwhile, an escalating South Korea-US conflict with North Korea will likely become about the future of the global nuclear order, the credibility of US extended deterrence, and the potential unification of the long-divided Korean peninsula—not just about restoring the armistice.
4. The United States should prepare for the possibility of a limited nuclear attack—with responses beyond just the threat of complete annihilation. The political and military choices necessary to better prepare for a limited nuclear strike, and to operate effectively in the aftermath, are hard. The tendency to avoid these hard choices may mean that the United States is left with no good conventional options if threats of disproportionate punishment fail to deter a limited nuclear attack. Meanwhile, US low-yield nuclear response capabilities are limited, potentially leaving only ineffective or excessive nuclear options in some circumstances.
5. Effective deterrence of war and of escalation during war in the Indo-Pacific will require the United States to simultaneously coordinate laterally and at multiple echelons, including prior to the outbreak of conflict.  This would involve establishing stronger combined (multinational), joint (cross-military service), and interagency command and control, coordination, informational shaping, and planning mechanisms between the United States and its allies across multiple military commands and government agencies, in advance of a crisis.

Methodology

Analysis: Two roads to war

The following sections summarize the starting conditions and flow of events for Guardian Tiger I and II. Note that these scenarios took place based on a set of assumed, projected conditions for the year 2030 and explicitly excluded direct Russian involvement, based on the rapidly changing North Korea-Russia relationship at the time they were designed.

One road to war: North Korea launches a limited attack on South Korea

The road to war leading to the conflict scenario for the first Guardian Tiger tabletop exercise is depicted in Figure 1. It began with North Korea conducting a limited attack on South Korean military forces that did not include any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Submarine and missile attacks targeted South Korean vessels and aircraft in the Yellow Sea (known in South Korea as the West Sea), while North Korea launched precision missiles and rockets at South Korean marine bases in South Korea’s Northwest Islands. North Korea claimed that its actions were in response to South Korea’s violations of North Korean sovereignty, but the US Intelligence Community identified “time pressure” due to factors such as the growing South Korean and US capabilities and domestic political pressures as a major driver for Kim Jong-Un’s attack calculus.

South Korea responded unilaterally with counterstrikes on a range of North Korean military targets. North Korea then escalated further with chemical weapons strikes against two South Korean military facilities. Pyongyang warned that it would respond to US intervention or a US threat to its leadership or nuclear forces with nuclear escalation, in accordance with its September 2022 “Law and Policy” on nuclear weapons. Upon South Korea’s request for US support, the South Korea-US military committee—including each country’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acting on orders from their respective Presidents—agreed that Combined Forces Command (CFC) should decisively defeat North Korea’s attack while deterring North Korean nuclear employment and Chinese military intervention. Beijing called for a ceasefire and withdrawal of forces from the conflict zone, while preparing its own military intervention.

Figure 1. Guardian Tiger I road to war: Visual summary

Timeline A: Turn one

In the first turn (Timeline A), South Korea focused on working in concert with the United States while signaling readiness for unilateral action if necessary. South Korea reached out to the United States to request military support and public messages to reinforce Washington’s extended deterrence commitment.

Washington agreed to strengthen its cooperation with South Korea, and CFC successfully conducted a bilateral strike on the North Korean chemical weapons site. The United States initiated a limited force flow into the theater, careful to avoid triggering further escalation, and offered intelligence support to South Korea and other regional allies in addition to preparing offensive and defensive cyber operations. The US approach focused heavily on diplomacy, including presidential engagement to reassure South Korea and Japan, as well as broader diplomacy condemning North Korea’s violation of South Korea’s sovereignty. Efforts to persuade China to assist in applying extreme pressure on North Korea, particularly through an energy cutoff, fell flat. The overall flow of the first day of Guardian Tiger I is depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Guardian Tiger I, turns 1–3 (Timeline A)

Timeline A: Turn two

At the start of the second turn, North Korea ramped up its nuclear threats—including warning of a pre-delegation order for tactical nuclear employment and conducting a missile demonstration off South Korea’s west coast—while continuing to conduct limited attacks along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with special operations forces (SOF) units and artillery. China began a limited intervention into North Korea with Pyongyang’s permission, deploying ground, naval, air, and air-defense assets in and around North Korea to constrain US-South Korea operations.

In spite of Chinese warnings against further US intervention, South Korea and the United States activated a combined counter-fire task force under CFC. Washington warned against any nuclear use and condemned North Korean nuclear threats, while emphasizing that active Chinese engagement in the conflict would result in serious economic, diplomatic, and military consequences. South Korea reacted to the increasing tension with concern and was particularly worried by Washington’s risk aversion and restraint. Unable to rely on US protection of its interests, South Korea executed a unilateral strike with sea-based missiles against the site of the North Korean missile demonstration launch and conducted precision artillery/multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) strikes on a North Korean divisional headquarters. South Korea also requested US assistance in monitoring North Korean launch sites to prepare to conduct preemptive strikes if necessary.

Timeline A: Turn three

In the third turn, North Korea escalated to a low-yield tactical nuclear demonstration, ostensibly targeted against a South Korean Navy destroyer in the Sea of Japan (referred to as the East Sea in Korea), while firing non-nuclear—but nuclear-capable—intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) over Japan. North Korean representatives privately reassured Beijing that Pyongyang’s intention was to refrain from further escalating the situation unless it was warranted. China urged de-escalation by all parties.

The blue team cells debated response options to this nuclear use, but no consensus emerged. The National Interagency cell suggested that both nuclear and non-nuclear options be presented to the president, but with the emphasis on non-nuclear options. The national defense and military cell proposed a “pulsed operation” against North Korea with advanced precision-strike assets, while assuring China and North Korea that Washington did not want to use nuclear weapons or end the Kim regime unless North Korea used nuclear weapons again. The US theater military cell proposed nuclear and conventional responses, such as a combined nuclear-conventional general offensive or a nuclear strike near Pyongyang. This timeline ended without adjudication of final results.

Timeline B: Turn one

To explore a different pathway of how the options available to the United States could be affected by a different command and control structure, Guardian Tiger I included an alternative scenario with a key change in how US forces in the region were commanded and controlled via the notional creation of a new US Northeast Asia Command (NEACOM), a four-star joint warfighting command falling under US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).¹ The events of Timeline A’s second turn mark the beginning of Timeline B, so that in the first turn of Timeline B, China had already intervened and North Korea had warned of delegation of authorities for North Korean tactical nuclear weapons employment. With NEACOM providing different options to the United States, and with more time to consider the possibilities, the blue team took a different approach. The United States supported South Korea-US CFC counterfire operations and South Korea’s interdiction of North Korean threats to its Northwest Islands with targeting intelligence support and with standoff fires coordinated by NEACOM under the direction of and with the support of INDOPACOM. With NEACOM leading the planning, US and South Korean forces also prepared for a pulsed conventional strike to be executed by CFC, with NEACOM in support, against a wide range of North Korean strategic and operational targets.²This pulsed conventional strike was to be ready for execution on short notice if North Korea escalated further. Meanwhile, the secretary of defense traveled to Seoul and Tokyo to underscore alliance resolve.

At this time, the United States was also concerned about the implications of North Korean officals other than Kim Jong Un potentially having the authority to use nuclear weapons, given the warning from Pyongyang that there had been pre-delegation of release authority to unspecified North Korean commands. With this in mind, the United States undertook a technical operation to send messages via North Korea’s cell-phone system to North Korean elites that they would be held personally responsible for any nuclear use and should oppose it. Though the messages went to many elites, the North Korean regime quickly deactivated the cell-phone network. This quick-turn effort had unclear results and credibility because North Korean elites’ perceptions had not been shaped by an information campaign over time, while the deactivation of the cell-phone network could have proven an impediment to future US information operations even while it disrupted North Korean domestic activities.

Timeline B: Turn two

In the second turn of Timeline B, China deployed additional air and naval assets into North Korean territory. China conducted cyberattacks against South Korea and the United States but did not engage in combat with South Korean, US, or North Korean forces. Suffering military setbacks, North Korea chose to make good on its threats of tactical nuclear strikes by conducting a low-yield nuclear ballistic missile attack against the South Korea-US naval base at Chinhae on South Korea’s southeast coast. North Korea did not warn China beforehand and expected the presence of Chinese forces and assets to restrain US retaliation, thereby limiting the US counterattack to conventional means. The ostensible delegation of authority was more for strategic communications purposes, as the strike was directed and approved by the North Korean leader, but US leadership did not receive confirmation of that—adding an additional element of uncertainty into the blue team’s deliberations.

In response, US and South Korean forces executed a pulsed conventional strike against key high-value targets, but did not expect this to bring an end to the regime. The intensity, speed, extent, and effectiveness of the response surprised North Korean leadership, but Pyongyang considered the heavy damage sustained an acceptable cost given the stakes. Ultimately, despite exploration of several potential military options to continue the conflict, the United States and South Korea did not remain fixed on ousting the Kim regime by military force in the near term, and instead began negotiations to end the conflict with North Korea and avoid a war with China.

A second road to war: China attempts to seize Taiwan by force

The road to war for the second exercise, Guardian Tiger II, is summarized in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Guardian Tiger II road to war: Visual summary

The conflict in the scenario resulted from a Chinese ultimatum to Taipei, followed by an attempt to seize Taiwan by force. China’s multi-domain assault on Taiwan saw preparatory waves of joint fires and strikes on key control nodes, followed by multiple amphibious and airborne landings along Taiwan’s west coast. China’s ground and air campaign was accompanied by the imposition of a maritime exclusion zone (MEZ) and a near-total blockade around Taiwan to sever lines of communication through maritime and air interdiction operations. Finally, China initiated non-destructive cyberspace and space attacks against US regional military networks and satellites. Beijing also attempted to sway US allies to avoid becoming involved in the conflict, with mixed results. Seoul publicly condemned China’s aggression but refused to support Taiwan militarily or allow direct involvement of US Forces Korea (USFK) in the conflict. Beijing also dissuaded Manila from hosting additional US forces.

North Korea initiated a strategic messaging campaign that blamed Washington for starting the Taiwan conflict and attempted to split the South Korea-US alliance. North Korea warned South Korea against allowing itself to be dragged into a war by USFK, calling for Seoul to eject USFK. It also began transitioning to a semi-wartime state.

Turn one

All four turns of Guardian Tiger II are visually depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Guardian Tiger II: Timeline summary

Turn one of Guardian Tiger II began with the faltering of China’s amphibious assault on Taiwan, driven by unexpectedly strong Taiwanese resistance and effective US strikes, which slowed offensive momentum. Only one amphibious Chinese lodgment was successful, with invasion forces suffering heavy losses and unsustainable munitions expenditures. This increased China’s incentives to escalate to maintain offensive momentum. Intense fighting continued between China and the US-led coalition, with heavy losses and munitions expenditures, which led the United States to consider pulling from USFK munitions stocks in South Korea.

Regionally, China conducted missile strikes against US airbases in Okinawa and western Japan, expanding the conflict horizontally in a bid to disrupt US combat power generation and reestablish offensive momentum against Taiwan. China declared an additional MEZ within the Yellow Sea, and threatened strikes against USFK bases unless South Korea restrained USFK involvement. China’s deterrence efforts against South Korea were successful, with USFK involvement and support to Taiwan ultimately constrained by mutual agreement between Seoul and Washington. North Korea also intensified its coercion attempts to eject USFK from South Korea, adding credibility to its threats by elevating military readiness posture to unprecedented levels.

The United States continued the flow of forces into the Taiwan theater and sought to halt China’s offensive momentum through standoff strikes. USFK leaders issued clear signals that USFK elements were not involved in the Taiwan conflict, in an effort to manage the threat of Chinese horizontal escalation.

South Korea prioritized deterring North Korea, and South Korean forces moved to maximum readiness posture short of war. CFC was activated, with some South Korean and USFK forces subordinated to it, and Republic of Korea Strategic Command (ROKSTRATCOM) was activated with key assets placed in readiness to deter further North Korean aggression. South Korea publicly and privately reiterated its expectation that USFK would remain focused on deterring North Korea, and that USFK munitions would not be pulled out for use in the Taiwan conflict. Japan conducted counterstrikes against Chinese forces launching missile strikes on US bases in Japan, which temporarily disrupted the Chinese strike campaign against Japan and fulfilled domestic expectations. Japan expanded its support to US operations, providing additional basing, munitions, logistics, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) support.

Turn two

Turn two began with Chinese missile strikes overflying North Korean and South Korean airspace, successfully striking key US bases in mainland Japan. Beijing provided only Pyongyang advance notification of the overflight. China’s overflight strikes were motivated by practical concerns. Its more numerous and evasive short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), which are capable of overcoming missile defenses more effectively, can only strike many USFJ facilities when fired from northern China and passing over the Korean Peninsula, not from eastern and southern China. China postured assets for intervention in the vicinity of the Chinese-North Korean border and initiated key intelligence sharing with North Korea. Finally, Chinese cyber actors intensified attacks against regional military and civilian targets.

North Korea conducted a limited provocation campaign against South Korea, with the ultimate goal of coercing the removal of USFK from South Korea. North Korea conducted an SRBM demonstration launch into the Sea of Japan (known in South Korea as the East Sea) in an attempt to decouple US nuclear extended deterrence commitments from South Korea and create space for further demands. North Korea also initiated a unilateral regional campaign of cyberattacks against military networks in South Korea. Washington restated its nuclear declaratory policy in an effort to deter North Korean nuclear use. The North Korea cell perceived this as hollow bluster that proved to be more destabilizing than stabilizing.

US forces continued combat operations around Taiwan, with Washington authorizing direct attacks on the remaining lodgment. These efforts halted China’s offensive momentum. Washington authorized proportional cyberattacks on both North Korea and China. US F-35 fighters, including dual-capable (i.e. capable of carrying nuclear bombs) aircraft, were deployed across Japan; after-action reports from both the China and North Korea cells indicated this was a critical concern. Washington attempted to limit escalation by refraining from striking Chinese mainland forces. Notably, the China cell perceived US hesitancy to strike the Chinese mainland as indicative of the success of its robust nuclear deterrent.

South Korea invoked the mutual defense treaty with the United States to request immediate, full-scale military assistance, initiated a partial military mobilization, and activated ROKSTRATCOM assets. It conducted proportional cyber countermeasures against North Korea, which resulted in the shutdown of North Korean cyber connectivity to the outside world and some degradation of North Korean offensive cyber capabilities. This shutdown challenged the efficacy of South Korean information operations later in the exercise, illustrating the value of functioning communication channels. Japan expanded US basing, enabling the dispersal of F-35s and underscoring the bilateral coordination needed to enable their deterrent effect. Japan also initiated additional economic sanctions against China, while contributing additional forces to counterattacking Chinese forces on and around Taiwan.

Turn three

Turn three began with China’s threat of nuclear use to force a resolution to the Taiwan conflict, backed by credible increases to nuclear posture. China conducted additional strikes against mainland Japan, targeting Japanese capabilities critical to conducting strikes and defending against additional strikes. China shifted targeting strategy against Taiwan toward national infrastructure in an unsuccessful attempt to decrease national morale. Chinese cyber actors intensified offensive cyber operations, focusing on regional airports and seaports to interfere with US and allied force flows.

After initial hesitation, North Korea was emboldened to take much stronger action by the escalation of the conflict between China and the US-led coalition, and by the establishment of a China-North Korea military coordination center. As a result, North Korea escalated. It conducted SRBM strikes and SOF attacks using small unmanned aircraft systems against key USFK facilities. It also executed simultaneous SRBM and underground nuclear tests to reinforce its nuclear deterrent and test US extended deterrence commitments to South Korea.

US forces conducted standoff strikes against North Korean maritime and air infiltration platforms that enabled previous North Korean SOF strikes, degrading North Korea’s capacity to conduct follow-on attacks. Additionally, US forces struck North Korean missile delivery platforms, and increased intrusive ISR in order to find and track dispersed ground-based missile delivery platforms. In response to the shootdown of its ISR aircraft by China, South Korea led CFC US-South Korea air operations within China’s Yellow Sea MEZ, which resulted in US-South Korea fighter engagements with Chinese aircraft. South Korea executed additional retaliatory standoff strikes against North Korean SOF bases that facilitated previous attacks, degrading North Korea’s capacity to initiate further asymmetric attacks. Japan shifted ISR and ballistic missile defense assets to combat the threat of North Korean missile strikes, and additionally heightened cyber defenses, improving its defensive posture and ability to respond to further escalation.

Turn four

Turn four began with China’s increase in nuclear posture and its launch of a fractional orbit bombardment munition (presumably nuclear) into a polar orbit, providing an evasive, persistent deterrent to discourage further US and allied assistance to Taiwan. Chinese cyber actors intensified operations globally in order to slow US force flow and threaten further horizontal escalation. China invoked its treaty with North Korea to justify military intervention in Korea, while further enhancing bilateral military coordination and setting the stage for permissive deployment of Chinese forces into North Korea. Finally, China conducted anti-ship missile attacks against cargo ships near US west coast and Australian ports.

North Korea conducted a low-yield nuclear strike on a South Korean airbase in an attempt to disrupt air operations against North Korea, split the alliance, and deter further South Korea-US escalation. Separately, North Korea conducted an unarmed nuclear-capable IRBM demonstration, with four missiles impacting outside of territorial waters around Guam, in an attempt to give the United States pause without triggering additional retaliation. North Korea prepared ground forces along the DMZ, posturing its forces for large-scale conventional conflict.

The United States and South Korea agreed to initiate operations to end the North Korean regime in accordance with declaratory policy regarding a North Korean nuclear attack, with CFC forces conducting large-scale ground and air combat operations, as well as a combined strike against Kim Jong Un and senior regime leadership. The blue team, however, was well aware that this operation was risky and might not succeed due to limited US combat power and a lack of munitions available because of the Taiwan conflict—as well as due to North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and extensive Chinese support. To help mitigate the risks of this operation, South Korea initiated an information operations campaign to attempt to co-opt senior North Korean military elites with nuclear use authorities, but this would likely prove too little, too late.

The US team also considered conducting a low-yield nuclear strike against North Korean military forces in the vicinity of Kaesong Heights using a dual-capable aircraft, in an attempt to restore nuclear deterrence, hold North Korea accountable for its limited nuclear use, and halt the creation of a precedent that would allow for an adversary’s nuclear use without a nuclear response, but it was unclear if this would have been approved.

The exercise director adjudicated that South Korean and US presidents would approve a CFC counteroffensive to remove North Korea’s regime despite the risks, even if it was not clear whether a nuclear strike in the Kaesong Heights would be justified and supported. However, considering the military circumstances, the theater military cell was understandably not optimistic about the prospects for success of such a campaign, and the theater military cell overall expected that tactical nuclear exchanges would occur over the course of the campaign. The exercise director considered it likely that the CFC ground counteroffensive would operationally culminate on the approach to Pyongyang due to the Chinese military forces supporting North Korea, particularly with logistics, intelligence, and air defenses. Even in the event that CFC offensive momentum could be maintained or restored, it was likely that North Korea would conduct additional tactical nuclear strikes to stop the advance before Pyongyang could be seized or the regime removed, and it was questionable whether CFC would be sufficiently prepared to fight through these circumstances.

In this situation, it was also likely that the larger US-China war would continue to escalate. China would seize the opportunity to reinforce its attack on Taiwan while the United States committed combat power, munitions, and other resources against North Korea. This could lead to the fall of Taiwan. Regardless of the situation in Taiwan, horizontal escalation of the conflict to other areas, including China’s sea lines of communication, would likely continue. In these circumstances, given the other US and Chinese escalatory options available, and the clear mutual interest in avoiding a China-US nuclear war, it would be possible that tenuous nuclear deterrence could still hold. However, the risk of miscalculation and nuclear escalation between the United States and China would be high, particularly given the potential for multiple nuclear exchanges between North Korean and US forces if the South Korea-US alliance continued efforts to end the North Korean regime.

Findings and recommendations

The Guardian Tiger tabletop exercises explored challenging scenarios in which US-led forces might struggle to win, or even contain, simultaneous conflicts with China and North Korea. In such a future, traditional deterrence models could falter, and allies may act independently to protect their own interests. To address these risks, this chapter identifies the key findings of the exercises—and provides actionable recommendations to enhance strategic and operational preparedness:

Finding 1

Recommendations

• US military planners should update Indo-Pacific command and control arrangements to account for the high risk of simultaneous conflicts with North Korea and China. This should include a review of, and update to, the Unified Command Plan (UCP) specifically focused on ensuring that US command and control arrangements in the Indo-Pacific enable the ability to effectively fight simultaneously in the Korean theater of operations and in the vicinity of Taiwan.
• The US defense community should work with South Korean and Japanese counterparts to better understand the interplay of responses to Chinese and North Korean conventional and nuclear aggression. Despite the political sensitivities at play, considerations of a simultaneous China-North Korea threat should appear regularly on agendas for bilateral and trilateral Track 1 and Track 1.5 dialogues, tabletop exercises, and similar events.
• The US defense community and military commands should sponsor and conduct additional studies and wargaming related to US force and munitions requirements, as well as posture adjustments, to better address the risk of simultaneous conflicts with China and North Korea, including the potential role of the South Korean and Japanese militaries.

Finding 2

Recommendations

• The US military should visibly reinforce resilience of US bases in the Indo-Pacific against nuclear and non-nuclear attacks, also enhancing deterrence by denial against limited nuclear strikes. These bases should be required to routinely conduct and publicize rehearsals for such attacks, including training with prepositioned radiological detection and protective equipment.
• The US defense community should lead interagency efforts to review and propose updates for all declaratory policy language and related statements regarding US responses to attacks with weapons of mass destruction and strategic attacks against the US homeland, including Guam. This review should propose how to reconcile the policy statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” with the operational and strategic requirements of preparing for a limited nuclear attack by an adversary, to ensure it does not result in a lack of either deterrent credibility or military readiness against such an attack.³

Finding 3

Recommendations

• US defense leadership should publicly and privately underscore the risk that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could lead to a broader regional conflict, even if Beijing and Washington seek to avoid one, as a means to foster allied preparedness and reinforce deterrence.
• The US defense community, in cooperation with relevant combatant commands, should enhance awareness, resilience, and response measures for risk of Chinese non-nuclear strategic attacks on the US homeland in the event of a conflict to reduce the risk of strategic paralysis from such threats and to enable effective responses to such attack. The Department of Defense should support such efforts from the perspective of potential chemical and biological attacks.
  

Finding 4

Recommendations

• US defense and military planners working with their South Korean counterparts, should examine the operational and strategic implications of the South Korea-US declaratory policy on a North Korean nuclear attack. This should lead to renewed efforts to enhance the credibility to execute this policy and to bring an end to the North Korean regime—regardless of the potential for Chinese interference or North Korean nuclear retaliation. This should also lead to preparations for the possibility that this declaratory policy will fail to deter a North Korean limited nuclear attack. The United States should also consider this policy’s implications vis-à-vis Beijing.
• The US Department of Defense should enhance preparations to quickly provide education, training, and analytic support to US forces and US allies in the Indo-Pacific to better enable preparations for low-yield nuclear weapons effects. Ideally, the United States should execute such activities pre-crisis as much as possible, moving quickly to expand these activities in the event that changing domestic political circumstances or crisis urgency on the part of an ally makes such expansion possible. Additional studies, exercises, wargames, and tabletop exercises should include US allies and focus specifically on possible limited nuclear attacks by adversaries in the Indo-Pacific.
• The US defense community and military commands should train and equip US forces to fight and win despite tactical nuclear attacks, and should encourage allied counterparts to do so as well.

Finding 5

Recommendations

• US defense leadership should update the UCP to address the importance of enhanced capacity for bilateral and multilateral operational-level alliance military coordination in East Asia. This should include a capability for more robust operational coordination with the Japanese Self Defense Force than what is possible with the existing USFJ structure. Given the importance of varied basing options in the Indo-Pacific for a resilient posture in the face of attack, and the capabilities that Japan and South Korea can bring to bear, the ability of headquarters to coordinate with allies may be as important—or even more important—than their ability to command and control US-only joint operations.
• US government organizations sponsoring integrated deterrence exercises, wargames, and tabletop exercises should ensure they include more robust methodology for depicting informational tools and aspects as part of integrated deterrence. This should include the simulation of US and allied targeting and effects of informational actions on sub-national audiences, as well as depictions of adversary information operations targeting such audiences.
• US government organizations sponsoring integrated deterrence exercises, wargames, and tabletop exercises should ensure that these events represent multiple echelons of US and allied governments and military forces—ideally including allied personnel as participants—to enable the simulation of US-ally engagement at multiple echelons.

Acknowledgments

The principal investigator thanks the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), particularly the Strategic Trends team, for sponsorship, guidance, support, and resources for this study. Thanks also go to all the experts and stakeholders, inside and outside of government, who participated in the tabletop exercise and contributed their perspectives to enrich the analysis. Special appreciation goes to multiple members of the staffs of the Department of State, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Air Force Futures, the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), the South Korea-US Combined Forces Command, the US Forces Korea, and the 7th US Air Force for their willingness to repeatedly donate their time to inform this project with their invaluable personal perspectives.

The principal investigator would also like to give special thanks to co-authors Lauren Gilbert and Kyoko Imai, as well as current Indo-Pacific Security Initiative team members Emily Kim and Audrey Roh, along with former members Katherine Yusko and Emma Verges, for their key supporting roles in this project, as well as to project consultant Gregory Park for his contributions to the execution of the exercises and the drafting of the report. Thanks also go to Frederick Kempe, the Atlantic Council’s president and chief executive officer, as well as Gretchen Ehle, Nicholas O’Connell, and Caroline Simpson, without whose support the resources for this project would not have been possible. Lastly, the principal investigator would like to share his deepest appreciation for vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig’s support and encouragement for this ambitious project from its very inception. This report is intended to live up to General Brent Scowcroft’s standard for rigorous, relevant, and nonpartisan analysis on national security issues.

This report reflects the analysis of the authors and does not necessarily represent the position of the DTRA or any other US government organization.

Staff

Markus Garlauskas

Director

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Crisis Management Indo-Pacific

Staff

Lauren D. Gilbert

Deputy Director

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

East Asia Human Rights

Staff

Kyoko Imai

Associate Director

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

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