ARTICLES OF THE DAY

May 13th, 2022

MEMOREE JOELLE, RUSSIA TODAY ............................................................................................................... 2

ANDREI SOLDATOV AND IRINA BOROGAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ...................................................................... 4

BENN STEIL, FOREIGN AFFAIRS ..................................................................................................................... 9

EZZATULLAH MEHRDAD, THE DIPLOMAT .....................................................................................................12

SHANNON TIEZZI, THE DIPLOMAT ...............................................................................................................15

 The Roe v Wade decision is not about abortion. It’s about
preserving a republic
It’s about time we Americans remembered we are supposed to govern our own lives
Memoree Joelle, Russia Today
W hile feminists and
left-wing activists
nationwide decry
the leaked Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court decision draft
as an attack on women’s
rights, the real issue is not
about women or even about
abortion. What happens next
with Roe v. Wade could help
steer the US back toward what
the founding fathers intended
– a Court that keeps
majoritarianism in check as it
upholds the Constitution.
When debating issues such as
Roe v. Wade, it is important
that we all first and foremost
understand that America is a
constitutional republic, not a
democracy. In a democracy,
the minority of a population
are always subject to majority
rule – no matter how morally
bankrupt that majority may be
or may become. The founders
feared that very scenario, and
thanks to the wisdom and
foresight of men like James
Madison, our system of
government doesn’t function
that way. Instead, we have a
system of checks and balances
under republican governance,
where the minority is not at
the mercy of the majority.
Over time, this essential
characteristic of our
government has been diluted
and sometimes outright
ignored, as with the original
Roe v. Wade decision. If the
judges in 1973 had respected
the role of the Court in relation
to the Constitution, abortion
law would have stayed at the
state level. For a small group
of judges to make Roe’s case
the law of the land, was, in
fact, anti-Constitutional.
decided at the state level.
James Madison described this
in Federalist 10 when he
wrote:
“The influence of factious
Nearly fifty years later, the
leaders may kindle a flame
Supreme Court has decided to
within their particular States,
reverse this bad decision
but will be unable to spread a
based on these exact
general conflagration through
constitutional grounds. Of
the other States. A religious
course, the social
sect may degenerate into a
consequences of righting such
political faction in a part of the
a wrong will be further civil
Confederacy; but the variety
unrest. America is already a
of sects dispersed over the
very divided country, and our
entire face of it must secure
political and cultural division
the national councils against
has put increasing pressure on
any danger from that source.
state governors and legislators
to use their full constitutional Thus, we have state laws and
powers. I believe this is for the federal laws, but the ideal
best in the long term, as it will vision for America is for state
decentralize some of the law to govern citizen’s lives in
federal powers that never most circumstances, not
should have been established. federal law.”
What’s unfortunate is that it
has to happen over a hot-
button cultural issue. Protest One of the great things about
fatigue is real. America is that if you don’t
like the politics or laws of a
Depending on which side of
particular state, you can get up
the abortion debate you’re on,
and move. And we do. Since
you might be happy or
2020, we’ve seen a steady
angered by California
migration of people moving to
Governor Newsom’s
states that more closely align
emotional vow to make his
with their political, cultural,
state more abortion-friendly
and world views. If this trend
than ever before. By contrast,
intensifies in the coming
the more conservative-leaning
years, as we are
states will likely greatly
simultaneously returning
restrict or outright ban
power back to the states, such
abortions. But both of those
as with the repeal of Roe v
scenarios represent exactly the
Wade, America will come to
way our system is meant to
look very different even
work. Because the US is a
within one generation.
large and religiously diverse
country, and thus The knee-jerk reaction might
encompasses an array of be to presume that we will be
personal beliefs, an even more divided country
inflammatory issues such as than we are now, but in my
abortion are usually best view, limiting federal power
will lead to peace and
compromise nationwide.
Let’s not forget that once upon
a time, ALL Americans – red,
blue, and purple – believed in
and wanted less government,
not more. I could write a book
about why we regressed, but
what matters now is that we
return to our heritage. We
have a shot at doing just that
with solutions such as the
Convention of States. Under
Article V of the US
Constitution, such a help to counter some of the
convention can legally be
called for the purpose of
proposing amendments and
limiting federal power. It
would be a win-win for all
Americans if at least thirty-
four states came together to
make it happen, and now
would be the perfect time.
Given the Biden
administration’s push for
more federal control, a
Convention of States would
overreach.
As Americans, it seems, we
are gradually waking up to
realize that we’ve been
sleeping passengers for far too
long on a ship we are meant to
steer.
 Escape From Moscow
The New Russian Exiles—and How They Can Defeat Putin
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Foreign Affairs
R ussians are fleeing
their
droves.
country
Armenia,
Georgia, Uzbekistan; Estonia,
Latvia, Montenegro. In the
in
first two weeks of the war
alone, Georgia took in 25,000
Russians, and Armenia was
receiving some 6,000
Russians per day. By the end
of March, 60,000 Russians
had gone to Kazakhstan. And
many more have sought
refuge in a number of different
countries in Eastern Europe.
Since Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of
Ukraine began, Russians who
have the means to do so have
been racing for the border in
what has become the largest
exodus since the Bolshevik
Revolution.
The dramatic flight
underscores the far-reaching
effects of Putin’s war. For
Russians who came of age in
the 1990s, it seemed at first
that the days of having to
abandon the country for
political reasons were over.
One could leave for economic
reasons, but there was no
longer a fear of persecution or
restrictions on personal
freedoms. In recent years, as
the Putin regime has become
increasingly autocratic, all
that has changed. The first
large group to be affected
were opposition politicians,
independent journalists, and
political activists, who started
fleeing to Europe and the
United States after 2013
(Putin reintroduced political
emigration as early as in 2000,
but back then, it was mostly
limited to the oligarchs who
fell out with the Kremlin). The
outflow accelerated in 2020,
after Putin intensified his
crackdown on civil society
and changed the constitution
BRAIN DRAIN
The new wave of exiles from
Putin’s Russia can be grouped
into four categories. The first
and largest consists of IT
to allow him to stay in power
specialists; according to the
at least until 2036.
Russian Association of
Electronic Communication, at
least 100,000 such
But it was the assault on
professionals have left since
Ukraine that has turned this
the invasion began. Long
trend into a giant wave.
known for its engineers and
During the initial weeks of the
computer scientists, Russia is
invasion, amid ever-
one of a very few countries in
tightening repression at home,
which local Internet platforms
hundreds of thousands of
can compete successfully with
Russians are believed to have
global platforms such as
left the country. Those who
Google and Facebook. Before
have fled come from many
the war, many of these
different professions and
professionals were employees
backgrounds. Many had never
of U.S. and other Western
contemplated emigration
companies; others ran their
before. But nearly all of them
own companies and did work
have three things in common:
for foreign clients.
they have a high level of
education, are from the bigger
cities, and have a liberal
After February 24, however, it
outlook.
became clear that this kind of
international work would no
longer be possible. The
For Russia, the departure of so
sweeping sanctions imposed
many educated professionals,
by the West hampered access
academics, and
to Western technologies, and
businesspeople raises
many were unable to be paid
profound questions about the
by their Western clients or
future makeup of the country.
even connect to the servers of
For those seeking large-scale
their companies. Moreover,
political change, it also poses
many of these people are
a new challenge: whether it
young, in their mid-20s to 40s,
will be possible to effectively
and fear being drafted into the
pressure the regime from
army if they stay.
abroad, with so much of the
domestic opposition now in
jail or simply gone. And for
The second group of
those left behind, the
emigrants are journalists,
hollowing out of civil society
activists, and
means that they may be stuck
nongovernmental
with a country that is
organization employees: this
culturally impoverished,
group numbers probably not
paranoid, and hard line.
much more than 1,000 people,
although their departure,
given their importance in
undergirding an independent
civil society, will have outsize
consequences for the country.
They quickly recognized at
the start of the war that the
regime had made it impossible
for them to pursue their work
in Russia, and for many of
them, staying in the country
presented a very real risk of
arrest and possibly prison.
Russians are fleeing their
country in droves.
The third group is made up of
the liberal intelligentsia of big
cities like Moscow and St.
Petersburg—professors,
researchers, and historians.
Until now, members of this
group were employed by
universities, museums, or
other research organizations.
Many worked on projects
supported by Western
foundations rather than the
Russian government and had
previously pursued their work
largely free from Kremlin
propaganda. Many had ties to
Western universities. But in
today’s Russia, this kind of
independent work is seen as
unpatriotic. The fleeing
intellectuals do not think that
their lives are in danger, but
their careers are, and many of
them have already lost their
jobs because of their liberal
views. And for the most part,
they are reluctant to work and
live in growing isolation from
the West.
The last category of exiles is
made up of businesspeople
and managers of big
corporations, including state-
owned companies such as
Gazprom, as well as the
Russian banks. These
Russians no longer feel
comfortable in a country that
is closing its borders and
isolating itself from the
outside world, and many of
them had been working for
companies that are now
subject to Western sanctions
or might become subject to
sanctions pretty soon. When
the war started, many of these
people abruptly left their jobs
and fled to Europe. But their
chances of finding
employment or a project or
business to invest in remain
slim, owing to their
citizenship and the taint of the
Russian corporate world.
Already, two months into the
war, some of the recent
émigrés—above all, IT
specialists—are returning to
Russia because they lacked
resources to remain abroad.
Having spent all the cash they
brought with them and found
themselves unable to access
their Russian bank accounts,
they were forced to go home.
But now, with the rumors of a
general mobilization in the
cards, many are trying to find
a way to leave again—this
time, for good.
GOOD RIDDANCE
In part, the current exodus has
been encouraged by Putin
himself. During the first two
months of the war, the
Kremlin has made clear that it
would rather drive its
opponents out of the country
than have them make trouble
at home. Until now, for
example, the Russian
government has not put any
restrictions on leaving. As
Putin said on March 16, “The
Russian people will always be
able to distinguish true
patriots from scum and
traitors and simply spit them
out like a fly that accidentally
flew into their mouth.”
In taking this approach, Putin
is drawing on a long Russian
tradition. In past upheavals—
anti-Semitic pogroms under
the tsar, the Russian Civil
War, World War II, and anti-
Semitic campaigns during the
Soviet era—millions of
people were allowed and even
encouraged to emigrate. Even
when ordinary Russian and
Soviet citizens struggled to
get permission to leave,
troublemakers were actively
pushed out. In 1922, for
example, Vladimir Lenin
personally drew up a list of
220 “undesirable
intellectuals,” over 160 of
whom he packed onto the so-
called philosophers’ ships and
sent to Germany. In the 1970s,
Leonid Brezhnev expanded a
policy of stripping dissidents
of Soviet citizenship and
throwing them out of the
country.
But unwanted Russians could
also make trouble overseas.
As we described in our book
The Compatriots, throughout
the Soviet years, Russian
political exiles never stopped
trying to change the regime
they had left behind. In the
1920s, they launched a
campaign of terror, sending
undercover agents to bomb a
Bolshevik gathering in Russia
and attacking Soviet officials
when they traveled abroad. In
the 1930s, when the Red
Army sent forces to back up
the Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War, exiled
veterans of the White Army—
the Bolsheviks’ opponents in
the Russian Revolution—
went to fight for Francisco
Franco. And when the
Germans invaded the Soviet
Union in 1941, some Russians
abroad saw a chance to fight
communists and joined with
the Nazis. Later, during the
Cold War, Russian exiles
proved instrumental in
shaping the anticommunist
propaganda war being waged
by the United States and the
United Kingdom: it was
Russians who sent balloons
laden with leaflets over the
borders of Eastern Europe,
and it was their voices that
were broadcast from Radio
Liberty and other West-
backed stations that were
beaming information across
the Iron Curtain. Similarly,
when the Soviet army invaded
Afghanistan in 1979, Russian
political émigrés in London
and Paris launched a
propaganda effort to try to
convince Soviet soldiers to
defect to the mujahideen.
Liberals who have remained
in Russia have found their
situation increasingly
untenable.
At the same time, throughout
the communist years, those
who had fled tried to influence
public opinion in Europe and
the United States. They staged
protest rallies in numerous
Western capitals, and in 1971,
they even tried to bomb the
New York office of the Soviet
trade company Amtorg to
raise awareness of the plight
of Soviet Jews.
Most of these efforts had little
measurable effect. It didn’t
help that Russians émigrés
were notoriously bad at
building political
organizations, mostly because
they had very conflicting
views on the Russian future
once it was liberated from
communists—democrats
clashed with imperialists and
nationalists.
But there was one area in
which Russians abroad scored
some spectacular successes:
they wrote a number of
important books that, once
they were smuggled out of the
country, proved instrumental
in changing Western opinion
about the Soviet Union. (The
Gulag Archipelago, by
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and
the memoir of Svetlana
Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter,
are just two examples.) And
when those books were read
aloud and discussed in
Russian on the radio stations
that targeted the Iron Curtain,
they helped reshape public
opinion within the Soviet
Union itself. Other efforts
were less efficacious, but
these books and broadcasts
worked. Ultimately, for exiles
to make a difference in Russia
itself, they had to somehow
find a way to reach those who
had stayed behind.
BUDVA, NOT BERLIN
In many ways, the new
Russian exodus differs from
previous waves. After the
1917 revolution, some
Russian émigrés went to
Prague, Istanbul, and
Shanghai. But above all, they
went to Paris and Berlin. In
those cities, vibrant Russian
communities developed,
publishing their own journals,
newspapers, and books and
forming important Russian
connections in the West. Now,
by contrast, visa restrictions
and the high cost of living
mean that only a small number
of Russians are heading to
Berlin. Even smaller numbers
have gone to London, and
Paris is almost entirely out of
the picture.
Today’s exiles head
elsewhere. Some U.S.
software giants have moved
their Russian personnel to
Ireland. But those IT workers
who emigrated on their own to
continental Europe have
struggled to get visas and bank
accounts. That is why many IT
specialists have sought refuge
in Georgia, Armenia,
Kazakhstan, and Turkey
instead of Europe. The cost of
living in Tbilisi or Istanbul,
two popular destinations, is
much cheaper than in the
Baltic states. (In addition to
Russian exiles, Istanbul has
also become home to many
foreign correspondents who
cover Russia and had been
based in Moscow until the
new censorship made their
work impossible.)
Throughout the Soviet years,
Russian political exiles never
stopped trying to change the
regime they left behind.
For the IT specialists, the
landscape has continued to
change as the war goes on.
Armenia has made an effort to
help them register companies
and open bank accounts in the
country—and it helps the
local economy, too, since
there is a requirement to hire
local staff. On May 3, the
United States also announced
that it plans to make it easier
for Russian IT workers to
move to the States. A small
colony of the Russian
intelligentsia has also
emerged in Montenegro,
where Russian passport
holders are welcomed and real
estate is affordable.
The European Union has
received its own wave of
Russians, though they are
going to different countries
than previous generations.
Vilnius, the small and cozy
capital of Lithuania, emerged
as the most important center
for the Russian political
exiles—it is here that Russian
opposition leader Alexei
Navalny’s organization has
set up shop, along with many
independent Russian
journalists and bloggers. This
has been possible thanks to the
position of the Lithuanian
government, which welcomed
refugees from Belarus and
Russia. Riga, the capital of
neighboring Latvia, has
agreed to host a small number
of NGOs and journalists, and
an even smaller number have
moved to Tallinn, the capital
of Estonia, and Prague, the
capital of the Czech Republic.
Overall, in contrast to the
earlier waves of Russian
exiles, which went to Western
Europe in the early twentieth
century and the United States
during the later decades of the
Cold War, the current wave
has largely been aimed at
Central and Eastern Europe.
THE INFORMATION
INSURGENCY
Although they have ended up
in different countries than
their Soviet forebears, the
current wave of exiles has
faced many of the same
challenges in bringing about
change at home. Over the past
decade, for example, Russian
émigrés have launched several
political organizations in the
West, like Free Russia Forum,
launched by chess world
champion and political
activist Garry Kasparov, who
is now in exile in New York.
Predictably, they have fallen
into the same trap as their
Cold War predecessors,
unable to form a coherent or
united front.
But Russian exiles have been
more successful in giving the
world—and Russians
themselves—an accurate
picture of what is happening
under Putin. Consider the start
of the war, when around 100
of Russia’s top independent
journalists left the country,
joining colleagues who had
left earlier. Many of these
journalists have continued to
do their work from abroad,
producing independent
reporting on Russian affairs
and generating original
content on YouTube,
Telegram channels, and other
social media.
Even before the war, some
political organizations of
Russian exiles understood the
power of foreign-based news
and information directed at
the Russian public. Since the
start of the war, supporters of
the jailed opposition leader
Alexei Navalny and of the
oligarch-turned-exile Mikhail
Khodorkovsky have moved
entirely to online journalism,
producing continuous streams
of content on YouTube and
other channels and reaching
millions of Russians.
In part, this is because Russian
government censors have
failed to build a complete
information monopoly inside
Russia. Despite recent efforts
to ban or shut down
independent news sites, and to
block access to global
platforms such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Instagram,
many Russians remain
connected to the world via the
Internet through virtual
private networks. Besides, for
unknown reasons, Russian
censors have not blocked
access to YouTube and
Telegram. Thus, the portion of
Russian society that is well
educated and independent
minded—perhaps 15 percent
or more of the population —
have continued to get reliable
information about the war
from abroad—often from the
same independent Russian
journalists they had followed
before the invasion.
That content is now in huge
demand: YouTube videos
about the actual course of the
war in Ukraine routinely
gather several million views,
and even some of the
individual Telegram channels
of exiled Russian journalists
have tens of thousands of
subscribers.
RETHINKING RUSSIA
As the war in Ukraine
continues, liberals who have
remained in Russia have
found their situation
increasingly untenable. The
reality of the Russian present
has become horrible, but the
Russian future appears even
more bleak: a joke that has
gone viral on social media has
it that English classes in
Russian schools have stopped
teaching the future simple
tense—because Russia no
longer has a simple future.
Nor does the Russian past
offer much hope anymore.
After the Soviet Union
collapsed, then President
Boris Yeltsin’s narrative was
straightforward and
appealing: the Soviet period
was a terrible deviation from a
more glorious past, and
Russians simply needed to
regain what they had before
1917, the Russia of Leo
Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
and Anton Chekhov. But
when Putin invaded Ukraine,
the Russian Empire suddenly
ceased to look so attractive.
Russian liberals, disgusted by
this new war of Russian
aggression, have begun to
look on the imperial exploits
of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries with
horror.
To work on a new national
narrative, Russians badly need
not only journalists but also
larger institutional support,
and that support can no longer
be based in Russia. Despite
the long history of Russian
emigration, however, there is
only one successful example
of such an offshore institution:
the Russian Free University,
established in Prague in the
1920s, when Prague was a
center for Russian intellectual
exiles after the Bolshevik
Revolution. Dubbed the
“Russian Oxford,” the
university was financed by the
Czech government, thanks to
the patronage of the country’s
first president, Thomas
Masaryk. Until it was shut
down by the Germans in 1939,
it managed to keep the
Russian intellectual tradition
alive and thriving.
Now, there is increasing talk
about the need to establish a
similar kind of university-in-
exile. There is certainly no
shortage of professors to lead
such an institution, given how
many have fled the country.
But such an institution would
need significant Western
support, and European
countries in particular would
need to take the lead.
Europe should not regard
Russians exiles as the enemy.
During the long Cold War, the
United States was the only
country that had a strategy
aimed at Russian exiles. In an
effort spearheaded by the
diplomat George Kennan, the
United States in the early
1950s established the
American Committee for the
Liberation of the Peoples of
Russia and the Free Europe
Committee, which used
political refugees to foment
resistance behind the Iron
Curtain. These committees in
turn set up Radio Free Europe
and Radio Liberty, which
brought vital information to
audiences across the Eastern
bloc. Yet European countries
stayed largely on the sidelines.
For example, although there
were numerous Russian
dissidents in West Germany
and the US-backed Institute
for the Study of the USSR and
Radio Liberty and Radio Free
Europe were headquartered in
Munich, the German
government did not have any
part in running those
institutions.
That inaction needs to change
now. With hundreds of
thousands of Russians on the
European continent, it is time
for European governments to
start thinking of these exile
populations far more
strategically. Rather than
remaining on the defensive,
trying to deflect the
disinformation and
cyberwarfare campaigns that
Moscow aims at the West,
they should draw on this
crucial resource to wage a new
kind of information war on the
Kremlin. And although much
of the emphasis in the Western
media has been rightly
focused on Ukrainian
refugees, European
governments should be wary
of falling into the trap of
regarding Russians exiles
themselves as the enemy,
rather than crucial allies, in the
effort to counter the Putin
regime.
By funding and supporting
Russian media, educational,
and research projects based in
Europe, European
governments could help bring
liberal ideas and independent
reporting about Russia to
Russians themselves and help
counter the propaganda of the
Putin regime. Over time, they
could also help give rise to a
new narrative about Russia
and what the future of the
country might be. If Western
governments fail to support
this sudden wave of exiles,
however, they will squander
what could be one of their
most effective forms of soft
power against Russian
autocracy.
 No Marshall Plan for Ukraine
Geography and Geopolitics Dictate a Different Reconstruction Model
Benn Steil, Foreign Affairs
P erhaps the
massive U.S. program to
rebuild Western Europe’s
most
enduring legacy of the
Marshall Plan, the
economy after World War II,
is the endless desire to repeat
it. Daunting geopolitical
challenges invariably spawn
appeals for new Marshall
Plans to foster stability and
prosperity. The global
financial crisis seeded in 2008
brought forth calls for a
Marshall Plan in southern
Europe. The Arab Spring did
the same in the Middle East.
Ditto the civil war in Syria.
Today, Ukraine, victim of
horrific mass brutality and
destruction, is only the latest
in a procession of stricken
countries spurring calls for the
legend’s reapplication. “There
will be a new Marshall Plan
for Ukraine,” declared
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky in
March. European Council
President Charles Michel
concurred, announcing that a
May donor conference was
“the starting point for [a] kind
of European Marshall Plan for
Ukraine.”
On its surface, Ukraine would
appear to be fertile ground for
a Marshall Plan. It is, much
like most of the 16 Marshall
Plan recipients of 1948–1952,
a market-oriented European
country with democratic
foundations, anxious to
integrate more closely with its
neighbors to the west. It has
great untapped potential in
energy production, chemicals,
agriculture, and industrial
manufacturing.
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Yet Ukraine suffers from an
immutable characteristic that
even the most noble and
generous of foreign saviors
cannot change: geography.
Ukraine borders a powerful
country to the east, Russia,
whose government does not
wish it to look westward for
salvation or to succeed as a
prosperous, independent
country. And Russia is fully
capable of undermining, with
mere threats, any steps
Ukraine may take in this
direction.
To be sure, Ukraine’s rich
friends in the United States
and western Europe can do
much to aid the country’s
suffering people and to
rebuild its damaged
infrastructure. Yet without
Russian cooperation or at least
committed noninterference—
a noninterference that is
inconceivable currently or in
the foreseeable future—the
robust and enduring revival
experienced by the Marshall
countries is simply beyond
Ukraine’s reach.
BUTTER, AND GUNS
The fundamental error made
by champions of new
Marshall Plans is to presume
that the essence of the original
program was simply the
application of vast amounts of
government money. The sums
committed by the Truman
administration between 1948
and 1952 were indeed
substantial: about $160 billion
in current dollars. During that
period, the 16 Marshall
countries
recovered
rebuilt
rapidly,
and
with
economic output expanding
nearly 60 percent. This fact
underlies the belief that those
dollars were the source of its
achievement. Yet economists
who have analyzed the aid’s
direct impact on Western
Europe’s economic revival
have concluded that the effect
was modest. My own research
suggests that other, less
quantifiable, factors were
comparably or more important
than those dollars or, at the
very least, vital complements
to them.
No doubt, Marshall aid did
serve to reverse the rising tide
of communist political
influence, particularly in
France and Italy. But an
indispensable complementary
factor in the success of that aid
was credible U.S. security
guarantees. These had been
wholly absent from the
original State Department
blueprint for the Marshall
Plan, which aimed to boost
production capacity in the
recipient countries as quickly
as possible so they could
provide for their own defense.
At the insistence of France
and the United Kingdom,
however, U.S. defense
pledges quickly became
integral to the program.
Without Marshall aid, Paris
and London, fearing an
industrially revived Germany,
would never have cooperated
with U.S. plans for quickly
repairing German
infrastructure and ramping up
the country’s industrial
production, which proved a
major engine of Western
Europe’s stunning recovery.
But even that aid would not
have been sufficient to
overcome French and British
resistance had the United
States not also agreed to
provide them with security
guarantees—guarantees
against aggression by either
the Soviet Union or Germany.
Those guarantees, enshrined
in Article 5 of the 1949 North
Atlantic Treaty, represented a
fundamental shift in U.S.
policy. This policy had, until
1948, been to continue rapidly
withdrawing troops and
materiel from Europe.
Between 1945 and 1948,
annual U.S. defense spending
plummeted from $963 billion
to $95 billion. In 1949,
however, it increased sharply,
to $128 billion, and U.S.
troops began surging back to
the continent. It was this
reversal of earlier U.S.
designs for deindustrializing
Germany (known as the
Morgenthau Plan) and
disengaging from Europe that
animated the revival of
business confidence and
private investment in the
region.
Ukraine will never attract
large-scale investment while it
remains under the shadow of a
hostile Russia.
Because the countries
ultimately covered by the
Marshall Plan were not as
geographically vulnerable to
the threat of Soviet attack as,
for example, the eager but
unfortunate Czechoslovakia
and Poland, the United States
could credibly underwrite
their security. This fact
allowed the Marshall sponsored militias in Iraq. In
countries to quickly integrate such inherently fragile
economically rather than security environments, in
pursue hopelessly inefficient countries never friendly to
autarkic policies of the sort Western-style market reform
necessary to assure supplies of to begin with, the private
steel and other commodities domestic and foreign
critical to unaided self- investment necessary to
defense. generate sustained
transformational economic
growth never materialized.
It is notable that the United The lesson for today is clear:
States committed large annual security must come first.
sums, comparable to those of Positive political reform and
the Marshall years, to economic revival, assisted by
European relief efforts in foreign aid, can only follow in
1946 and 1947—with no stability’s wake.
material effect on economic
recovery. This earlier pan-
European aid, funneled THE RUSSIAN SHADOW
through the new United
Ukraine’s remarkable courage
Nations Relief and
and will to resist foreign
Rehabilitation
aggression have earned it
Administration, was
enormous respect and
undermined by the Soviet
admiration around the world.
Union, which subverted
The country will, however,
democratization, economic
never attract large-scale
reform, and private
investment while it remains
investment in Eastern Europe,
under the shadow of a hostile
as well as by communist
Russia, which is willing and
Yugoslavia, which shot down
able to unleash devastation at
U.S. relief planes. Going
a moment’s notice. Whereas
forward, the Truman
the creation of NATO was
administration was therefore
integral to the success of the
determined to take full control
Marshall Plan, ending the
of U.S. aid dollars, focusing
prospect of Ukraine’s
them on only those countries
incorporation into NATO is a
capable of making full and
stated Russian war aim.
productive use of them.
Unless the United States is
willing to escalate all the way
to nuclear confrontation with
Fast forward to the new
Russia, it will never be able to
millennium, and the same
neutralize the ongoing threat
challenges exist. The United
to Ukraine and its economy.
States committed $210 billion
to war reconstruction in just
two countries, Afghanistan
The regrettable but
and Iraq—$50 billion more
inescapable conclusion is that
than it committed to the 16
long-term, credible internal
Marshall countries, in current
and external security is a
dollars. Yet there is precious
precondition for a successful
little to show for that money.
Marshall Plan in Ukraine, and
The main reason for this
that the United States and its
failure was the inability of the
allies are incapable of
United States to defeat the
providing it. If the latter were
Taliban insurgency in
to mount a massive aid
Afghanistan and Iran-
program aimed at cementing
Kyiv’s western orientation,
Russia could credibly threaten
Ukraine, its officials, its allies,
its trading partners, and any
enterprises operating there
with costly cyber, military,
and economic attacks. To be
clear, Russia may never be
able to conquer Ukraine, but it
is more than capable of
making it a hellish place to
live and do business.
Humanitarian relief aid is, of
course, desirable in its own
right. But it will not seed a
stable, prosperous democracy
without major domestic and
foreign private investment,
and such investment will not
be forthcoming unless it is
safe from expropriation and
destruction. When it comes to
making a Marshall Plan, there
are simply no substitutes for
auspicious geography and
donors willing and able to
deter or defeat determined
opponents. The Marshall
countries had both. Ukraine,
sadly, has neither.
 Far From Home: The Afghans Aiding Afghanistan
Global attention on Afghanistan has largely dried up, but the Afghan diaspora cannot look away.
Ezzatullah Mehrdad, The Diplomat
A
global business
enterprise pivoted to
become a fundraising
platform; a research institute
became a charity; an
entrepreneur donated a West and felt Afghans have
portion of each sale to a
charity; a community cooked
Afghan dishes to raise funds.
This is the Afghan diaspora,
spread over the world from
Germany to California to
Australia and working to help
their homeland, Afghanistan,
survive a devastating hunger
crisis from thousands of miles
away.
The lingering hunger crisis in
Afghanistan has provoked a
sense of responsibility and
generosity among diaspora
communities that stretch
across the world. Decades of
instability flung the Afghan
diaspora around the globe, to
places as disparate as
Australia and Germany,
metropolises like London to
Los Angeles. These
communities are now raising
funds, donating, and getting
creative to support those still
in Afghanistan, trapped in
increasingly difficult
circumstances.
The diaspora’s efforts are
driven by their personal
experiences wrestling with
poverty in the country, by
their age-old homesickness,
and by their lifelong love for
their country. With gestures as
small as sharing a fundraising
link on their social media
pages or donating $5 to a
charity, they aim to save as
many people from starvation
as possible. Despite the
monumental challenge of it,
they hope to fill in the
yawning gap left by the failure
of the international
community to combat the
layered crises in Afghanistan.
Over the past several months,
a starvation crisis has loomed
larger each week in plain
sight, with development
agencies sounding the alarm.
The United Nations’ World
Food Program says that as
much as 95 percent of the
Afghan population lacks
enough food. Save the
Children said 14 million
children in Afghanistan faced
“life-threatening levels of
hunger.”
But in response, in late March
when the United Nations
made an aid appeal of $4.44
billion to help the country,
only half of the appeal was
met with pledges.
Attention on Afghanistan, and
its many challenges, was
already in free fall before
Russia’s February 24 invasion
of Ukraine. The ongoing war
in Ukraine has further drained
attention from Afghanistan,
but it dealt other blows too.
Ukraine, once a donor of aid
to Afghanistan, has now
become a competing recipient
of aid. Furthermore, the war in
Europe has stymied exports of
wheat, which both Ukraine
and Russia previously
exported in vast amounts.
With bread a main staple of
the Afghan diet, the war in
Ukraine has further damaged
already stressed food supply
chains, deepening hunger.
“There is a feeling among the
diaspora community” to help
people in Afghanistan, said
Omar Haidari, an Afghan
advocate and fundraiser who
lives in Berlin, Germany.
“The diaspora saw the
selective solidarity of the
only got themselves.”
The fall of Kabul to the
Taliban in August 2021 drew
the attention of Afghan
diaspora communities back
toward the country. The
sudden collapse of the
Western-backed government
of Ashraf Ghani left Afghan
diaspora communities
desperate and hopeless as they
watched the Taliban return to
rule over the country with
AK-47s and U.S. military
vehicles abandoned by
Afghan forces.
The new reality of life under
the Taliban reached Afghans
abroad via graphic images of
hunger-stricken people
circulating on social media
pages. The desperation and
devastation scrolled by under
the fingers of diaspora
communities safe in wealthy
Western countries.
“Don’t eat out,” pled one a
message on Twitter from a
member of the Afghan
diaspora, saying “one meal
out can feed an entire family.”
Online fundraising efforts on
different platforms surged.
From GoFundMe to Global
Giving, diaspora communities
began raising funds and
donating to support people
still in Afghanistan. Hundreds
of fundraising pages have
collected donations from the
Afghan diaspora and non-
Afghans alike since August
2021. Slowly, non-Afghan
attention and donations dried
up and shifted elsewhere, but
the Afghan diaspora cannot
look away. They have
continued to fundraise and
created new ways of
supporting Afghanistan.
One Afghan-led enterprise,
ASEEL, transformed from an
e-commerce platform to a
fundraising platform. Before
the fall of Kabul, ASEEL was
an online platform that
enabled the sale of Afghan
handmade art to global
markets. The enterprise
changed its mission to raise
funds and took on the form of
a charity, using its online
presence and networks to raise
money and get it to those in
need. Its website and apps
began advertising
humanitarian aid efforts rather
than product sales, allowing
people to fund emergency
food packages and first aid
kits in general or direct them
to specific beneficiaries.
The venture also allows
diaspora communities to
begin their own fundraising
efforts, too. With graphic
images of hunger-stricken
children, posts fill the
platform asking for as little as
$5. “Help Children in
Badakhshan” read the title of
one fundraising effort.
“Support Afghan families for
Ramadan,” said another
recent plea. And another
asked for donations to
“Support Widows, Orphans,
and Improvised Families in
Ghazni.”
Beyond online fundraising,
the diaspora holds events in
person to raise funds. Etahad
Berlin, a community of
Afghans in Germany’s
capital, cooked Afghan dishes
and invited people to enjoy a
taste of Afghanistan. “Enjoy
dishes cooked by our activist
women,” read an online poster
for the event on March 11.
“Share its joy with children in
Afghanistan.” With the funds
raised, the diaspora
community sent food
packages to Afghanistan.
“Thanks for making the
kindness bridge between
Kabul and Berlin happen,” a
Facebook post after the event
read.
“One night, Afghans had an
event in London,” said
Haidari, the 27-year old
activist in Berlin. “They raised
45,000 pounds. But it is not
enough” for helping and
saving people in the long run.
Haidari, who volunteers at
ASEEL, says that they are
working to create job
opportunities for Afghans in
Kabul and elsewhere.
ASEEL, through which
thousands of families have
received food packages,
added a new approach:
Haidari and the team
purchased carts for dozens of
families, which they use for
selling fruits, vegetable, and
other goods. The carts enable
employment, on which the
families rely for survival. “We
need to run business and
capital in Kabul,” said
Haidari. “We help them to
making a living” without
constant donations.
Organizations for
Development Solutions, a
research institute turned
charity, took a similar
approach after online
fundraising and distribution of
food packages to female
widows in Kabul and
elsewhere in Afghanistan. The
institute, based in Kabul but
funded by the Afghan
diaspora in Melbourne,
Australia, provides raw
materials for carpet weaving
to widows. In return, the
widows weave carpets and
sell them to diaspora
communities through the
institute. The systems creates
a sustainable source of
income.
“The widows said they want
an income,” said Mustafa
Soroush, the 37-year-old chief
executive officer of
Organizations for
Development Solutions.
“They have young children
and mostly lost their husbands
to the war either in the form of
suicide bombing or combat.”
Around 120 families have
received food packages –
many of them were on the
verge of starvation before
receiving the aid. Thanks to
the carpet weaving scheme, 50
families now have a stable
source of income.
The scale of the demand is
heartbreaking for Soroush, a
former government official
who studied abroad but
decided to stay in Kabul to
help people in need. He said
that he faces an overwhelming
number of people stricken by
starvation. Whenever he
distributes food packages,
people who have not eaten for
several days circle him, asking
for as little as a single piece of
bread.
“There was a woman who
burst into tears,” said Soroush.
“It was obvious that she had
not eaten anything for days:
her skin had dried up, and her
bones were visible and her lips
were parched.”
“Donations by the diaspora
really save peoples’ lives,” he
added.
For the diaspora, the
motivation to help Afghans
from abroad comes from
personal experience.
Farkhondeh Akbari, one of the
founders of Organizations for
Development Solutions who
was raised in Melbourne, says
that many in the Afghan
diaspora experienced
starvation and hardship in
Afghanistan before leaving.
“They know what an empty
stomach feels like,” said
Akbari, a 24-year-old
postdoctoral fellow at Monash
University in Melbourne.
“They carry Afghanistan
within themselves,” she
added. “The diaspora do not
have luxury lives abroad, but
they still share” what they
have with people back home.
One member of the Afghan
diaspora defined her life
purpose as helping her people
in her home: Afghanistan.
Mariam Razaq was born in a
refugee camp in Germany in
1981 after her parents fled the
Soviet invasion of 1979.
Later, Razaq moved to
Virginia, in the United States,
where she attended school and
then college. But in essence,
she felt she was living in
Kabul, too, through her
mother’s memories of her
hometown.
After college, Razaq had a
chance to go back to a place
where she grew in her mind:
She first visited Kabul in
2005. “I felt at home in
Kabul,” said Razaq, who
volunteered with other women
to run an orphanage in Kabul
until 2019. “I just can’t stop
thinking about helping my
people.”
Like many people hit by the
global pandemic, Razaq was
laid off from her job in
California, where she lives
with her two daughters. In
October 2021, Razaq, a single
mom, booked herself a flight
to Istanbul, Turkey, pursuing
her dream of launching a
business. She walked around
Istanbul’s shops, looking for
Afghan and other sellers of
Central Asian jewelry.
Months into opening her
business, Afsana Boutique,
Razaq now donates 10 percent
of each sale to a charity to help
people in her home.
“I don’t want Afghan mothers
to sell their daughters or die of
hunger,” said Razaq. “I don’t
want a fancy life, but I want to
be able help people back in my
home.”
 Instability in South Asia Spells Trouble for China
Once again, China is learning that its investments and influence in another country are always subject to
Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat
t’s been one hell of a
I month in South Asia. As
discussed in separate
articles later in this issue,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka have
both seen major protests, with
a full-on change of
government in Islamabad and
Sri Lanka’s rulers teetering on
the edge. Meanwhile, Nepal
saw its own governing
coalition collapse last year,
and the foreign policy impact
of that is starting to become
clear.
The new developments in
South Asia are reshaping the
diplomatic landscape and
China’s interests will
inevitably be impacted by the
domestic political debates.
Instability is never good for
Beijing, particularly when it
touches countries where
China has major financial
investments at stake. More
broadly, the power tussles will
impact the geopolitical
competition underway in
South Asia and beyond, as
India, China, the United
States, and others jostle for
influence in the various
regional capitals.
Nepal
China was riding high in
Nepal five years ago. In 2017,
China helped broker a long
hoped-for unification between
the two main communist
parties, the Communist Party
of Nepal - Unified Marxist
Leninist (CPN-UML) and the
CPN - Maoist Center. The
resulting coalition swept to
power with a whopping two-
thirds majority in the 2017
domestic politics.
general elections, bringing
K.P. Oli of the CPN-UML to
power as prime minister.
Oli was seen as a pro-China
prime minister, particularly as
anger in Nepal toward India
was riding high in the wake of
New Delhi’s perceived
interference in Nepali politics
and a flare-up in India-Nepal
territorial disputes. Oli upped
exchanges with China,
including signing a trade and
transit agreement that would
reduce Nepal’s reliance on
India for external trade.
But then in 2020, Oli’s
government began to crack
apart, as the CPN-UML and
Maoists clashed over power
sharing arrangements. China
reportedly intervened to save
the unified Nepal Communist
Party that year, but couldn’t
repeat the feat in 2021. Oli
was toppled when the Maoists
defected, joining with the
largest opposition party, the
Nepali Congress, to create a
new government. Oli was out
as prime minister; Sher
Bahadur Deuba was in.
Since returning to the prime
minister’s office in July 2021,
Deuba has lived up to the
Nepali Congress’ reputation
for being more amenable to
India. He also notably pushed
parliamentary ratification of
the Millennium Challenge
Compact, a $500 million grant
from the United States to
Nepal. The MCC had become
a fraught political issue, with
the Maoists especially
insisting that ratification
would rope Nepal into
Washington’s “anti-China”
strategy for the Indo-Pacific.
For its part, Beijing made sure
to amplify its allies in Nepal as
they denounced the U.S.
Then Deuba turned the tables
by defending the MCC – and
bringing his coalition
partners, including the
Maoists, along with him. In
the end, none of the major
political parties voted against
the MCC’s ratification,
leaving China looking a bit
foolish after its state media
had embraced some of the
more bombastic warnings
about the grant’s impact on
Nepali sovereignty.
To be clear, it’s not accurate to
say that Deuba’s government
is “anti-China” or that Oli was
“pro-China.” In fact, for all
the talk of China’s courtship
of Nepal, even under Oli there
was less progress than meets
the eye. Despite constant
nudging from Beijing,
Kathmandu has not approved
a single Belt and Road project
since signing on to the
Chinese initiative back in
2017.
That said, it is notable that
China’s first major foray into
Nepali domestic politics
ended so quickly. Beijing put
serious effort into bringing the
CPN-UML and the Maoists
together and spent a lot of
diplomatic energy trying to
keep them unified – only for
things to fall apart in the end.
China, as a long-time
champion of non-interference,
may not have realized just
how difficult it is to interfere
effectively in another
country’s domestic politics.
Sri Lanka
In Sri Lanka, meanwhile, an
economic crisis galvanized
protests demanding the ouster
of the Rajapaksa family,
which has a reputation for pro-
China policies. Under
previous President Mahinda
Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka took out
major loans from China for
mega-projects like
Hambantota port and
Colombo Port City. Despite
the billions of dollars now
owed to China, neither project
is turning a profit. Sri Lanka
famously ceded control of
Hambantota port to a Chinese
company in return for cash to
help with its debt crunch.
Colombo Port City is still
under construction after
facing delays and lawsuits.
Now Sri Lanka’s debt woes
have sparked a balance of
payments crisis, as Colombo
no longer has the foreign
currency to finance purchases
of sufficient oil and gas, much
less pay back its debts. Fairly
or not, Chinese loans have
become a potent symbol of Sri
Lanka’s financial
mismanagement. In actuality,
as Umesh Moramudali has
explained in several articles
for The Diplomat, most of Sri
Lanka’s debt is in form of
international sovereign bonds,
not Chinese loans, but the
perception of China bearing
responsibility for the current
crisis continues to dog
Beijing. As protesters seek to
oust the Rajapaksas, accusing
them of financial
mismanagement and
corruption, their demands
come unavoidably tinged with
suspicion of Colombo’s
dealings with China.
Once again, though, it’s too
simplistic to paint the
Rajapaksas as “pro-China” or
“anti-China.” For example,
upon the family’s return to
power in 2019 under President
Gotabaya Rajapaksa
Mahinda’s brother – they
didn’t fully resurrect their
previous approach to China.
Instead, the Rajapaksas made
a point of turning to India as
much as Beijing for support,
including during the ongoing
financial crisis. Sri Lanka
inked a deal with India to
develop the Trincomalee oil
terminal – long a dream
project for New Delhi – earlier
this year. Meanwhile,
relations with China have hit
high-profile snags, in the form
of canceled energy projects
and a spat over contaminated
fertilizer imports.
But in the realm of politics,
perceptions may be even more
important than reality, and
there’s an undeniable
perception in Sri Lanka that
the Rajapaksa regime cut
corrupt deals with China, to
the detriment of the nation. No
matter how the current protest
movement ends, that narrative
will resonate in Sri Lankan
politics for the long term,
limiting the ability of the
Rajapaksas (if they remain in
power) or a potential
successor to craft close ties
with Beijing.
Pakistan
Pakistan’s recent change of
government poses a different
kind of challenge for China.
The new government, under
Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan
Muslim League - Nawaz
(PML-N), is unlikely to
significantly change
Pakistan’s close ties with
Beijing. The China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC),
after all, was originally
inaugurated under a PML-N
government. Talk of China
and Pakistan as “iron
brothers” has remained
consistent through Pakistan’s
– many changes of government.
China’s concerns after the
change of government are
more general. Clearly
Pakistan’s chronic political
instability – no civilian prime
minister has ever completed a
full term in office – remains
very much a problem. While
support for Chinese
investments and interests has
been the one constant,
political instability brings
economic consequences as
well. Pakistan still hasn’t
finished the reform program
from its last IMF bailout, for
instance, and never finished
the previous one either due to
abrupt government turnover.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s
opposition parties are apt to
turn to purposefully disruptive
tactics like sit-ins in major
business districts and
highways to press for political
change. And that’s not to
mention growing concerns
about a resurgence in
terrorism in Pakistan, with
bloody attacks by the Islamic
State and Pakistani Taliban
becoming more frequent in
the past two years.
China made a huge
investment in Pakistan with
CPEC – literally (to the tune
of $62 billion) and
metaphorically. CPEC is the
“crown jewel” of the BRI,
which means the reputation of
China’s signature foreign
policy framework is now
riding on Pakistan’s economic
stability. Imran Khan’s ouster,
and his pledge to agitate his
way back into office, make
that look like a risky bet.

China in South Asia: Down
But Not Out
Of course, the above
developments do not mean
that China’s South Asia policy
is permanently damaged.
Beijing’s main rivals in the
region, India and the United
States, have also seen their
geopolitical gambits fluctuate
or falter due to domestic
politics abroad (with the
Taliban takeover of
Afghanistan as the most
dramatic example). Plus, no
country in the region is likely
to take up a directly hostile
position toward China, no
matter the outcome of the
various political crises at play.
Any shifts will be a matter of game of thrones is never really
degree. won because it never ends.
If we should take anything
from the political turmoil in
For China, the lesson is that
South Asia, it’s this: There are
cultivating lasting influence in
no permanent “winners” or
a partner country is much
“losers,” whether in domestic
harder than signing a
politics or geopolitical
landmark document and
influence. The party on the
declaring a “new golden era”
outs today (along with its
in relations. Even in a country
preferred foreign policy
like Pakistan, where all the
partners) could be back on top
major political parties agree
just a few short years later – or
on the “iron brotherhood”
vice versa. Take the
with China, political
Rajapaksas as an example:
instability takes a toll on how
The family ruled for 10 years
agreements are implemented
before being voted out of
and enforced – and on what a
office in 2015; they were
regional partner even has the
voted back into power in 2019
energy to discuss with China
but now are fighting for their
in the first place.
political lives once again. The