On Friday, Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, outlined the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy during a speech at the Arms Control Association in Washington. The speech wasn’t surprising to anyone who has even a cursory understanding of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Most of it was dedicated toward reiterating U.S. policy goals: getting more countries to decrease their nuclear arsenals, even as the U.S. ensures its own nuclear deterrent is updated. But the warning was as clear as day. “Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals,” Vaddi said, “we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.”

Since the mid-1980s, successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic, have largely based the country’s nuclear weapons policy on two pillars: capping and if possible reducing nuclear arsenals across the board and making sure America’s own is functional. U.S. officials have sought to discourage adversaries from attacking the U.S. and its treaty allies in Europe and Asia even as it gradually aspires toward a world in which nuclear weapons no longer exist. The proof is in the numbers: Since 1967, the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile has decreased by 88%, from 31,255 warheads to 3,750.

Yet in the eyes of U.S. officials in Washington, the state of affairs in the world is getting increasingly hairy. The kinds of arms control negotiations that were so prevalent since the latter years of the Cold War are all but dead. New START, the last major arms control accord signed between the U.S. and Russia, is essentially on life support after Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended it in 2023.

If anything, the war in Ukraine has only elevated the importance and value of nuclear weapons for Putin. With Russia’s conventional military battered and bruised, Russia’s strategic weapons systems are becoming much more important in Russian defense strategy. Moscow has not only moved tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus, next door to Ukraine, but also is pouring resources into diversifying its nuclear arms by adding more delivery systems. The Poseidon, a nuclear-armed intercontinental torpedo, is now one of Putin’s most cherished weapons systems. (Whether it actually works is another story.) According to the U.S. intelligence community, Russia is also testing components for a space-based nuclear anti-satellite weapon, which if used could wipe out hundreds of low-orbited satellites.

Russia is hardly the only country the U.S. is concerned about on this front. China is doubling down on its nuclear arsenal to strengthen its own deterrent power. The Pentagon’s most recent report analyzing Chinese military capabilities finds that “over the next decade, the PRC (China) will continue to rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.” China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030 — double its current arsenal.

And although Beijing continues to claim a “no first use” policy — i.e., China won’t be the first power to use a nuclear weapon under any circumstances — policies can change depending on the environment. Indeed, Chinese military documents leave open the prospect of junking this declaration in the event the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is at risk of losing a conventional war.

This is all quite concerning to U.S. officials, amplified by the fact that the United States has so many allies it has sworn to defend. Our extended deterrence commitments, in which Washington would theoretically escalate to the nuclear level to fight off an adversary who has attacked a U.S. ally, include most of Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Extended deterrence, however, is a difficult promise to make credible: Would any U.S. president use nuclear weapons, for example, against Russia, China or even North Korea to defend an ally knowing that doing so would likely put American cities at risk of nuclear annihilation? Would the U.S. even fight a nuclear-armed country in these circumstances, knowing full well that a strictly conventional conflict could escalate to nuclear war? 

President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently calculated that a larger U.S. nuclear arsenal is the cure-all to these problems. The underlying logic is straightforward: By increasing warhead numbers, nuclear adversaries such as China and Russia will eventually come to the conclusion that they simply can’t outcompete the U.S. in this area and that throwing more money into a costly arms race is futile. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is; part of the rationale behind the military buildup in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan’s administration was to bleed the Soviet Union financially.

There’s a cheaper and less risky way of accomplishing what the Biden administration wants to accomplish. But this would require U.S. officials to be self-reflective and recognize that adversary perceptions of U.S. motivations are driving much of Russia and China’s nuclear modernization. Russia, for instance, is compensating for its conventional struggles in Ukraine and views nuclear weapons as absolutely essential to combating what it sees (rightly or wrongly) as U.S. attempts to weaken it over the long term. China, in part, is embracing nuclear expansion to scare the U.S. away from defending Taiwan if Beijing decides to subjugate the island militarily. 

A larger U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal is likely to heighten those threat perceptions, not eliminate them.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The situation, however, has deteriorated for the Ukrainians ever since. The capture of Kherson in November 2022 was the high-water mark of Ukraine’s progress. Since then, the battlefield situation has slowly rebounded to Russia’s advantage. Moscow has regained more territory over the last two months than Ukraine did during its entire counteroffensive last year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is frustrated by Russia’s current operations in Kharkiv, leading Washington to loosen its ban on using U.S.-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

All of this leads to the inevitable question: At what point should Ukraine shift its strategy from total military victory toward a good-enough peace? 

For many, even talking about the possibility of a diplomatic settlement with Russia is blasphemy. Russia, after all, is the aggressor, invading a sovereign neighbor and committing countless atrocities in the process. Its president, Vladimir Putin, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Ukraine is the victim, the logic goes, and forcing it to sit down at the same table with its victimizer leaves a sour taste in our mouths.

All of that may be true to a degree. International politics, though, isn’t a morality contest — it’s at times an ugly, highly competitive slugfest between states where the ideal is rarely attainable.

To date, Zelenskyy has been adamant: Ukraine will only negotiate with Russia after it withdraws its troops from every inch of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation for more than a decade. Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan, which demands a total Russian military withdrawal, Russian compensation for war damage and war crime prosecutions for Russian soldiers, is in effect a surrender document for Moscow. Zelenskyy will reiterate those same terms this month, when dozens of countries assemble in Switzerland for a so-called peace summit.  

Yet that plan, although desirable, is simply not credible. In fact, given the current state of the war, as well as Putin’s willingness to sacrifice Russia’s future to maintain the roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory his forces now occupy, Zelenskyy’s position is downright delusional. This is one of the worst-kept secrets in international relations, one the Biden administration likely recognizes behind the scenes.

The White House, of course, is highly unlikely to state this obvious fact openly. First, doing so would cause extreme strain between Washington and Kyiv at a time when both are working to hold Ukraine’s defensive lines. Second, the U.S. would be embarrassing Zelenskyy by in essence calling his peace proposal a fool’s errand. And the impact on morale within the Ukrainian army could be significant — who would risk their life for a draw? 

But none of these considerations outweigh the facts on and off the battlefield — and whether we like it or not, those facts now favor Russia. While Russia’s casualties are steep — the U.K. Ministry of Defense estimates that 465,000 Russians have been killed or wounded thus far — the Russian government is preparing for a war that could last for years. Putin is consistently throwing bodies into the fight — approximately 30,000 Russians are joining the ranks every month — and is providing lucrative bonuses and benefits to entice more young men to join. Despite stringent U.S. and European Union sanctions, Russia has managed to redirect its crude to the east (mainly to China and India), garnering tens of billions of dollars for the treasury. The Russian economy is sustaining the war effort just as the war is sustaining the Russian economy. 

Ukraine, like Russia, doesn’t have unlimited resources. But unlike Russia, it has less of pretty much everything — less fighting-aged men, less artillery shells available and less wealth to spend on a war that continues to churn with no end in sight. The Ukrainian army is stretched along a 600-mile frontline that has only gotten longer after Russia’s latest push into Kharkiv, forcing Kyiv to redirect troops that would otherwise be reinforcing the line in the Donbas. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy remains hesitant to call a general mobilization to give soldiers fighting at the front continuously for the last two years the time to rest, lest it spur political turmoil in Kyiv or further shrink the Ukrainian workforce.

None of this is to suggest that Zelenskyy should wave the white flag. Nothing is inevitable in war; the side that makes territorial gains this week could very well be retreating the next. The $61 billion infusion of new U.S. aid to Ukraine is just starting to pour in, and the Ukrainians will want to see whether the latest tranche will enable them to recover lost ground. Any diplomatic settlement will also depend on Putin — if the Russian president refuses to actually compromise, then there won’t be much for Ukraine to talk about.

But it’s long past time for observers of this war and U.S. policymakers who are involved in it to drop their delusions about total military victory. Like most wars in history, this one will end through a diplomatic process with which none of the sides will be particularly enamored. The only question is how exhausted Ukraine and Russia need to become to finally negotiate seriously.  

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Chinese officials were always going to pick apart Lai’s inauguration speech. And sure enough they did. During the speech, Lai pledged to defend Taiwan’s democratic character, resume tourism with the Chinese mainland and seek talks with Beijing, relatively tame remarks compared with his comments as a younger lawmaker, but China took serious issue with his contention that any diplomacy between the two should be conducted in a spirit of equality.

In China’s view, Taiwan is a renegade province, not a sovereign state with territorial integrity. According to China’s Taiwan affairs office, Lai “sent a dangerous signal of seeking ‘independence’ and undermined the stability of the Taiwan Strait” in the process. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was more blunt and undiplomatic, calling Lai “disgraceful.”

The strong rhetoric was only the half of it. Shortly after the inauguration, China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, authorized joint air and sea drills around Taiwan. During the first day of the exercises, 49 PLA aircraft, 15 navy vessels and 16 coast guard ships were detected in waters around the island, an extension of the flyovers Beijing has conducted for years now. All of a sudden, Lai had to perform his commander-in-chief duties, traveling to a marine brigade to visit the troops, where he committed himself to defending Taiwan from all threats.  

All this may sound a bit scary if you don’t monitor the Taiwan Strait on a weekly basis. Yet the dozens of fighter aircraft and surface vessels taunting Taiwan’s defenses has as much to do with political signaling to the new Taiwanese authorities as it does with subjugating the island. In effect, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy want to send Lai and his new administration a message: Not only are they prepared to act militarily at a time of their choosing, but they will respond to even the slightest insult. 

None of this bodes well for Lai’s agenda over the next four years. Domestically, Taiwan is feeling the pinch of a rising cost of living, high housing prices and near-stagnant wages for younger workers. While Lai may have extended his party’s stay in the presidential office for a third consecutive term, he lost the majority in the legislature to the opposition Kuomintang. Lai won only 40% of the popular vote, which isn’t exactly a mandate. In addition, a significant portion of the Taiwanese electorate is tired of the two main political parties, so much so that a third-party candidate received more than a quarter of the vote.

Things aren’t looking particularly great internationally, either, but the situation could be worse. Taiwan, after all, is now the golden child in Washington, with Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike agreeing that U.S. shipments of military aid to the island need to be ramped up. Some foreign policy thought leaders are now equating the defense of Taiwan from a possible Chinese invasion as the equivalent of defending global democracy, foisting an almost mystical status on the island’s shoulders. Europe is no longer as resistant to calling out Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait as it used to be, which is a pretty important development given that the European Union’s trade with Beijing last year reached $800 billion in today’s dollars. More European navies are sailing through the Taiwan Strait, although the notion they would get involved in a potential war between China and Taiwan is slim given the limited naval capacities of many European states.

What’s depressing, at least from Lai’s perspective, is that the chances for diplomacy with China today are close to nonexistent. Tsai, Lai’s predecessor, was also interested in establishing durable communications with Beijing during her eight years in office, but Xi ignored her government’s entreaties. It’s difficult to envision Xi being any more sympathetic to someone like Lai, who is commonly seen as more of a hard-liner on the issue of Taiwanese independence than Tsai was.

Taipei will keep trying to kick-start a dialogue, even if it’s on more mundane, nuts-and-bolts issues such as crisis communications between their respective militaries and increasing economic exchanges. But diplomacy is only as effective as the stakeholders’ willingness to partake in it.  

What, then, should we expect over the next four years? While a growing number of national security officials in Washington are extremely concerned about China taking some kind of military action against Taiwan — Xi has tasked China to be prepared to invade the island by 2027 — this is the absolute worst-case scenario. While the side-by-side comparisons between China and Taiwan are beyond stark — China has more of everything, such as people, wealth, fighter aircraft, ships, missiles, ground troops and formal diplomatic relationships — far too many underestimate just how logistically complicated such an operation would be for the PLA, which hasn’t fought a war since 1979.

What’s more likely to occur is a continuation of the last four years: regular Chinese military drills around the island, purchases of more anti-ship and anti-air weapons by Taiwan to make Beijing think twice about ordering military action and yet more hair-raising in Washington. Realistically, that might be the best we can do.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Taken in isolation, Raisi’s death would appear to be a major event. Raisi, after all, was the top elected official in Iran, so his removal will have at least a short-term effect on how the Iranian government operates. But the system that has ruled Iran since 1979 will find a way through this setback and churn on. According to the Iranian constitution, Raisi’s first vice president will be elevated to the presidency in an interim capacity, and elections will be organized in 50 days. 

Notables of the Iranian state will mourn the loss, but it’s hard to overstate just how ruthless Raisi was. He was an Islamic Republic insider through and through, a highly conservative jurist who joined the country’s judicial system at the age of 25. Raisi rose quickly, becoming the deputy prosecutor for Tehran and eventually serving on a panel focused on the charging and sentencing of dissidents. Colloquially known as the Death Committee, Raisi and his colleagues sentenced approximately 5,000 people to death, a fact that hurt Raisi’s reputation when he ran for president against incumbent Hassan Rouhani in 2017. Raisi, however, was unapologetic about his role and insisted he did his duty in service of the Islamic Republic’s system of government.  

Even with his hands stained with blood, Raisi’s fealty propelled him into more senior positions. He would go on to serve as Tehran’s chief prosecutor before being appointed to the Assembly of Experts. a body that elects and oversees Iran’s supreme leader. Eventually, Raisi assumed the role of the country’s prosecutor general. In 2019, he led Iran’s judiciary. And in 2021, Raisi won the presidency on his second try.

The Iranian establishment will no doubt spend the next several days honoring Raisi’s extensive service. For good reason — he was a ruthless enforcer of the Iranian government’s agenda. Raisi was a particular favorite of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the office for the last 35 years. In fact, the main reason Raisi was elected president three years ago was because Khamenei prevented more appealing alternatives from running. But what Raisi lacked in charisma, he more than made up for in subservience; the man, frankly, was a toady doing the supreme leader’s bidding. He wouldn’t act unpredictably like the brash Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or challenge the supreme leader’s office like Mohammad Khatami. Instead, the jurist-turned-president would take it on the chin and do what he was told. If anybody is going to make a documentary about him, it might as well be called “The Loyal Henchman.”

The Iranian people certainly won’t be shedding many tears. Raisi’s tenure was marked by high unemployment, a dismal economy, political repression and strict social mores. With the exception of reestablishing diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and improving Tehran’s strategic ties with Russia, Raisi’s accomplishments are few and far between. U.S. economic sanctions remain locked in, depriving Iran of critical foreign investment and hindering its oil industry — although Iranian crude exports have been inching upward courtesy of demand from China. The rial, Iran’s currency, lost 30% of its value between February 2023 and February 2024 and briefly plunged to a record low in April. The price of food has skyrocketed, and inflation has hovered around 40%, which combined with a weakened currency has affected the most vulnerable in Iran. 

Iran was never a free society, even before the advent of the Islamic Republic, but it got noticeably less free under Raisi’s watch. In September 2022, after the so-called morality police detained and beat a young woman, Mahsa Amini, to death for the way she dressed, thousands of Iranians came out to protest the Iranian government’s social laws. Raisi wasted little time calling in police to brutally suppress the protesters. According to one human rights group, more than 500 people were killed in the ensuing seven months. Thousands more were arrested and treated as enemies of the state. 

U.S. policymakers now are wondering: What happens next? And will Iran change for the better without this hard-liner at the helm? 

The answer to the first question is to be determined. The Iranian government will schedule a new election sometime in the summer, where various hand-picked candidates will compete for the honor of being Khamenei’s loyal surrogate. The challenge for Iranian officials will be to drum up some sort of excitement about the upcoming contest ata  time when many Iranians are disillusioned with politics and even their own lives. During parliamentary elections in March, only 41% of eligible voters turned in ballots, the lowest electoral turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

As to whether Iran will change for the better, we shouldn’t hold our breath. The hard-liners hold all the power nowadays, and whatever is left of the moderate camp is a discombobulated mess whose influence is gutted by the system.

If anybody is anticipating the breaking of a new dawn in U.S.-Iran relations, I recommend they go outside and get some air. 

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Last week, Putin formally took office for a fifth term after a presidential election that the United States, Europe and international monitors widely regarded as illegitimate. The inauguration ceremony was, shall we say, Putin-esque. The 71-year-old, modern-day Russian czar strolled into the grand hall past the honor guard with a spring in his step, inherently confident in his decisions and even more confident of his stature as the only person in Russia today to keep the country secure.

“You, the citizens of Russia, have confirmed that the country is on the right course,” Putin told the delegates during his inauguration speech. Of course, the dissidents, journalists and anti-war protesters locked up in Russia’s penal system would beg to differ.

It’s not a mystery as to why Putin is feeling pretty good with himself. Compare today with last year, and the difference is rather stark. Last summer, the normally decisive strongman was thrust into the biggest challenge of his nearly quarter century in power when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader of the Wagner Group, ordered thousands of his militiamen to storm back into Russia to depose the Russian defense establishment. The Russian security forces were largely missing in action; Prigozhin’s troops shot down several Russian military helicopters and came within 150 miles of Moscow. Putin, caught unprepared, had to cut a deal with Prigozhin to turn his troops around and stop the mutiny. All of this came as Russian troops in Ukraine were in the beginning stages of defending against a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Now, however, Putin doesn’t have these immediate troubles. Prigozhin, who caused the Kremlin so much grief last year, is dead, the victim of an August plane crash the U.S. intelligence community concluded was orchestrated by Putin’s inner circle. The Wagner Group, which at times competed with the Russian army for men, is now under the control of the Russian state. The war in Ukraine still isn’t a bright spot for Putin, but it’s brighter than it was last year. Over the weekend, Russian forces took nine villages in northern Ukraine, forcing thousands of civilians to flee and prompting Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top military commander, to admit that the situation had “significantly worsened” for Ukrainian forces.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, Alexei Navalny, the most high-profile Russian leader for the opposition to Putin, is dead after years of suffering in a Russian prison.

Things aren’t particularly bad for the Russian economy, at least over the short term. Putin’s economic team has managed to adapt to the U.S. and European sanctions enacted after the invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago. The ruble, which lost much of its value in the weeks after the invasion, has recouped losses and has been quite stable this year. The Russian oil industry, the lifeblood of the Russian economy, has largely balanced out its losses in Western markets by pumping more to the East, with China and India more than happy to scoop up the discounts Moscow is offering. Russia’s fossil fuel export revenues actually increased in March as sea-born crude rose by 13%.

The International Monetary Fund predicts Russia’s gross domestic product will increase by 3.2% this year, which if true would mean that Russia’s growth rate will exceed America’s.

It all sounds pretty uplifting from Putin’s perspective. But what’s good for Putin isn’t necessarily good for Russia or the Russian people as a whole. 

Take the Russian economy, for instance. While it’s true that growth figures are on the upswing and Russian crude is still being exported around the world, there is no such thing as permanence in economics. Indeed, Russia’s economic upswing is a bit deceptive because it’s intricately tied to the price of crude and the war in Ukraine. Crude can be notoriously volatile as any car owner in the summer can attest.

For a petro-state like Russia, a few months of low crude prices can translate into tens of billions of dollars in losses, putting added strain on the budget and forcing the government to adopt one of three strategies: lower spending, raise taxes or run a deficit. Over the long term, crude will become less vital to the global economy as countries around the world invest in green energy technology, forcing Putin (or whoever eventually replaces him) to diversify on the fly. 

Banking productivity on the war isn’t exactly a winning strategy, either. Sure, it’s paying off at the moment as the Russian military industrial complex is in full swing churning out artillery shells, tanks, planes and armored personnel carriers. But how long can this last, particularly when Russia is losing its workforce in the trenches of Ukraine? Putin is trapped in a paradox of his own making: Continuing the war is a boon to the Russian economy, but over time, the economy suffers because men who in more peaceful times would be working back in Russia are instead dying in Ukraine.

The Russians are in effect sacrificing their future for the present, worsening a three-decadelong demographic crisis in the process. The future is coming quickly. Even as the IMF gave the Russian economy high marks this year, it projected Russian growth to decrease by more than 40% in 2025.

Putin may be loving life right now. But he is digging a big hole for the country he claims to love so much. And his successor will eventually have to find a way to climb out of it.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The entire monthslong process has been about as tiresome as trying to jam a round peg into a square hole. Even committed mediators will find it hard, if not impossible, to do their jobs if the two sides refuse to budge from their bottom-line positions.

Whether the truce talks succeed or officially fall apart, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear that Israel will eventually send its forces into Rafah to root out what remains of Hamas’ organized battalions. The only question was when an Israeli offensive would begin. If Israeli negotiators aren’t able to come to an agreement with Hamas, as looks increasingly likely, the operation would proceed faster than usual.

On Monday, Israel’s military issued a directive to 100,000 Palestinians in eastern Rafah to evacuate to safer ground. Of course, the term “safer ground” is oxymoronic at this point. There is no safe place in Gaza, and so-called safe zones have been bombed by Israel on multiple occasions during the war. Most Palestinians will likely adhere to the evacuation calls, while others will stick around and take their chances after having to move two, three or even four times over the last seven months.

It’s hard to overstate just how dangerous this entire situation is. Rafah, the Gaza border city near Egypt, is now host to more than half of Gaza’s 2.4 million people. Most of them are crowded into tents, makeshift shelters and whatever apartments are left. The vast majority of the humanitarian aid shipped into Gaza also comes through the crossing point at Rafah. Hamas is fully ensconced in the city, a consequence in large part of the terrorist group having months to prepare its defenses. At least some of the hostages are likely in the city as well, adding yet another complication to the Israeli military’s plans. How to destroy Hamas while freeing the hostages has always been the ultimate question for Israeli policymakers, and it will remain top of mind during a prospective Rafah offensive.

Netanyahu concluded long ago that Rafah can’t be left untouched. But the question of how Israel conducts an operation there matters a great deal. Any mistake, whether it be a drawn-out fight in the city or massive civilian casualties, has the potential to do a great deal of harm to U.S.-Israel relations. President Joe Biden’s administration remains strongly opposed to Israeli military action in the city if the more than 1 million Palestinian refugees residing there aren’t moved out of harm’s way.

“On Rafah itself, look, our position is clear,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during his recent trip to the Middle East. “We cannot, will not support a major military operation in Rafah absent an effective plan to make sure that civilians are not harmed.” He added that thus far, Washington had yet to see a viable plan.

Biden’s position hasn’t changed in the days since Blinken made those remarks: “We continue to believe that a hostage deal is the best way to preserve the lives of the hostages, and avoid an invasion of Rafah, where more than a million people are sheltering,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said Monday.

Netanyahu understands those concerns — he’s been hearing a variation of them for weeks, if not months. Yet at it stands, the urgency of moving into Rafah seems to outweigh whatever concerns Netanyahu might have about how the U.S. would react. While it’s highly unlikely Israel would go into the city without a least a half-hearted attempt to evacuate civilians, there are reports that tents, medical clinics and food distribution centers have been set up in al-Mawasi along Gaza’s southern coastline in preparation for the influx of refugees. It’s also unlikely the Israelis will wait for long.

Netanyahu, after all, has talked up an operation for months and will have to confront yet more threats from his far-right ultranationalist ministers if he’s seen as catering to the Americans. Politically, Netanyahu might not be able to reverse himself.

And yet the politics of the decision aside, we should be under no illusions about how momentous an assault on Rafah would be.

The humanitarian implications could be disastrous. There are nearly as many people in Rafah today as there are in Manhattan. The humanitarian supply lines in Gaza are already stretched extremely thin; to add a second humanitarian emergency on top of the initial one will overload the system and produce more unwanted negative headlines around the world for Israel to deal with.

The diplomatic consequences would be no less explosive. The truce talks hanging on by a thread would be ripped apart, perhaps for good. Israel can forget about getting its hostages back because Hamas is unlikely to hand over its bargaining power at a time when its fighters are being hammered by Israeli bombs in the air and Israeli troops on the ground.

From the very beginning, Netanyahu has insisted repeatedly that defeating Hamas militarily and freeing the hostages were compatible goals. A Rafah invasion will test this proposition like no other.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Nearly three months later, Blinken is in the region again to do pretty much the same thing. Much has changed. For one, Israel and Iran have taken shots at each other, with Iran sending attack drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles toward Israel earlier this month in retaliation for Israel’s bombing of an Iranian diplomatic facility in Syria. (Israel responded by striking an Iranian air defense system in central Iran days later.) The tit-for-tat between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has heated up over the last week, with both increasing the range of their attacks. Israel’s military, meanwhile, is preparing for an offensive in Rafah, a city on the Gaza-Egypt border that is the last refuge for more than 1 million Palestinian refugees displaced from their homes.

One thing that has remained fairly consistent during this time is the lack of formidable progress on the diplomatic track. Israeli and Hamas negotiators, working through the United States, Qatar and Egypt, have spent the last five months trading proposals for a hostage release deal. The talks have been the diplomatic equivalent of a full-mouth root canal. Despite striking a cessation of hostilities in late November that allowed for an exchange prisoners for hostages, the two have no reason whatsoever to trust each other and every reason to stick with their bottom-line demands. For Israel, this means the release of every one of the approximately 130 remaining hostages in Gaza and the total defeat of Hamas as an organization. For the Palestinian militant group, this means Israel stopping the war for good and pulling its troops out of Gaza. Until one or both moderate those demands, the negotiating track will continue to drag out.

It’s easy to blame the mediators for this situation. The Israeli government has pointed the finger at Qatar for not putting enough pressure on the Hamas delegation to agree to terms. Some U.S. foreign policy analysts in Washington aren’t exactly pleased with Doha’s participation either, with some recommending that Qatar threaten to throw Hamas out of the Qatari capital if the group refuses to cooperate.

Yet criticizing the mediators is the coward’s way out. If two belligerents are unable or unwilling to modulate their tone, water down their demands or imagine any scenario beyond the absolute ideal, then it’s hard to see what any mediator could do to move things forward. Even the U.S., a world superpower, has only so much leverage it can use to extract concessions — and what leverage it does have, such as suspending military aid to Israel to compel it to sign a cease-fire, was ruled out by President Joe Biden months ago. 

If there is any blame to go around, it lies entirely on the shoulders of Israel and Hamas. Ultimately, the two parties’ objectives are near incomparable. Israel wants Hamas dead and buried. Hamas wants to prevent that outcome, survive long into the future, cement itself as an irreversible component of the broader Palestinian national movement and remain the top dog in Gaza. While Israel and Hamas would love nothing more than to get their people back, any prospective exchange of prisoners and hostages is tied to broader issues such as the length of a potential cease-fire, whether the cease-fire will eventually become permanent and ultimately how Gaza is governed. 

Ultimately, it’s those questions that are holding everything up. The last two in particular — the permanence of a cease-fire and the future of Gaza — are especially complicated issues to settle. It defies belief that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would simply call off an Israeli offensive in Rafah after spending weeks telling the Israeli public just how vital it is to conduct such an operation. Netanyahu doesn’t have political room to maneuver either. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, two extremists who are standing in the way of Netanyahu’s governing coalition dissolving and the premier getting booted out of an office in an early election, have threatened to leave the government if a Rafah operation doesn’t proceed. Netanyahu is no Yitzhak Rabin; the man doesn’t take risks, particularly on the Palestinian issue, which he’s spent the last four decades of his political career stonewalling.

It also defies belief that Hamas, whose entire credo is armed resistance against Israel until the state itself ceases to exist, would give up the fight or put itself in the vulnerable position of releasing all of the hostage on a mere promise of Israel ending the war. The last thing Hamas wants to do is hand over all its chips without being reasonably assured that Israel’s air and ground operations will stop indefinitely. But can Hamas ever be reasonably assured on that item? If so, what would it take? 

If all of this sounds bleak, that’s because it is. With an Israeli invasion of Rafah looming and Hamas still nowhere near extinguished as a fighting force, the combatants have yet to reach the point where suing for peace is viewed as more beneficial to their respective interests than continuing the war. All we have is hope that, sooner or later, those calculations will change. 

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives muscled through a $61 billion military aid package at a time when Russian forces are continuing to chip away at Ukrainian positions in the east. After six months of intense discussions between House Speaker Mike Johnson and his fractious Republican conference, Johnson put the Ukraine aid legislation on the floor, knowing it wouldn’t sit well with the far right wing of the party. In the end, the House passed the legislation, sending it back to the Senate for consideration.

Ukraine and its backers in Washington and Europe were thrilled. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took to X to congratulate the House for moving the bill after six long months. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pressed the Senate to quickly take up the legislation, adding that it doing so would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that his assumption about outlasting the West was a bad bet. Zelenskyy was the happiest of them all, jumping on American television the morning after the vote and asserting that the new infusion of military assistance means that Ukraine has a chance at victory.

All of these celebrations, however, may be premature. Far from the ultimate victory Zelenskyy and his team are hoping for, the new U.S. aid will likely stabilize the current battle lines and at best enable Ukrainian forces to fend off further Russian gains. Advancement by Ukraine shouldn’t be ruled out, but expectations ought to be kept at a reasonable level.

This isn’t to suggest that tens of billions of additional dollars won’t have any effect on the battlefield. It most certainly will. The Ukrainian army, for instance, has been heavily outgunned by the Russians since the fall. During testimony to the House Armed Services Committee this month, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. military officer in Europe, told lawmakers that Russia had a 5-1 advantage over Ukraine in artillery shells, a ration that would turn into 10-1 if the House didn’t move on the aid bill. Ukrainian troops, seeing their inventory depleted, had to ration shells and choose targets accordingly. The Russians, in contrast, could blanket an entire area with artillery without hesitation.

The lack of artillery rounds wasn’t Ukraine’s only problem. Kyiv was also running out of the air defense interceptors that were absolutely crucial to destroying Russian missiles. The Russians no doubt understood this and tried to exploit it, launching missile bombardments for the mere purpose of forcing the Ukrainians to use what they had left. The Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which Russia tried but failed to capture during the war’s initial months, is now brutalized on a daily basis with incessant Russian mortar and missile fire. Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is taking a beating as well. All of this is by design. Russia is forcing the Ukrainians to prioritize which targets matter most to them: positions close to the front, civilian areas behind the lines or fuel sources that keep the country’s lights on.

The new U.S. aid will help with all of this. You can bet U.S. officials at the Pentagon drew up a list of gear and equipment months ago. After more than two years of supporting Ukraine with ammunition, air defense systems, tanks and anti-tank missiles, the Pentagon long ago became an expert at delivering this kind of equipment. Once Biden signs the bill into law, it’s full steam ahead.

Yet it would be a gross misreading of the war to assume that military aid alone will fix all of Ukraine’s problems. It won’t.

For one thing, all the bullets, interceptors and shells in the world won’t address Ukraine’s manpower issues. Part of the issue is that Russia simply has a population three times the size of Ukraine and therefore more bodies to throw into the war. (Ukrainian officials assess that Russia is recruiting 30,000 men into the army every month.)

But beyond demographics, Ukrainian politicians have also waited too long to broaden their own recruiting pool. The Rada, the Ukrainian legislature, was in essence frozen in time, unable to come to a consensus on how to enlist more men, how to reform a corrupt and inefficient draft process and whether to demobilize soldiers who were fighting in the trenches for the past two years. Zelenskyy and his former top commander, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, had a very public back-and-forth about the right number of troops that needed to be drafted to fill up the army’s ranks — and it likely cost Zaluzhnyi his job.

This month, Ukrainian lawmakers finally signed a bill that decreased the draft age from 27 to 25, increased penalties for draft dodgers and required all men between the ages of 18 and 60 to update their personal information with draft officials.

Even so, it took about a year and 4,000 amendments to pass the legislation. And the fact that a provision to demobilize troops after three years of active duty was stripped at the insistence of the Ukrainian military’s leadership was a pretty clear indication that Ukraine needs all of the soldiers it can get.

The question on everybody’s minds, whether additional U.S. military assistance will start streaming into Ukraine, is now answered. The next question, which is more important over the long term, is whether Ukraine can use the new kit to good effect. Assuming it does, Zelenskyy will then have to ponder yet another monumental one: Is it time to probe for a diplomatic off-ramp to end the war on favorable terms or should we gamble on another counteroffensive to win it all?

The first is controversial; the second, highly unlikely.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The question was never whether Iran would respond but rather how. The fact the Iranians felt the need to send more than 300 projectiles toward Israel, a salvo that included ballistic and cruise missiles, was as unprecedented as it was dangerous. There have been plenty of Iranian-sponsored attacks against Israeli interests around the world, but never before in history has Iran conducted an overt attack on Israel from within its own borders. The killing of one of its top military commanders, which occurred during daylight hours in the middle of the Syrian capital, was in Tehran’s view such an attrocity that nothing less than a flashy display of force was required. Israel set a precedent by dropping a bomb on an extension of the Iranian embassy in Syria; Iran, in return, decided to set one of its own.

Yet if Iranian officials sought to inflict maximum damage inside Israel, they ended the night disappointed. The drones Iran sent into the air were slow, akin to crows flying straight into the wind, providing Israel and its partners in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Jordan with the opportunity to prepare. The vast majority of the cruise and ballistic missiles couldn’t escape Israeli air defenses; a few landed on Israeli soil but caused only minor damage. It was a miracle nobody in Israel was killed. By the time the hourslong attack was over, the Israelis only registered one casualty — a wounded girl who is now in the hospital.

As the old saying goes, what’s done is done. The most important question over the next day or two is how Israel chooses to respond. 

Competing interests are at play here. For starters, the Iran has packaged last weekend’s operation as an anomaly, a necessary but extremely rare event that was only undertaken because Israel was brazen enough to assassinate high-ranking members of the Iranian military. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has said the matter is over unless Israel takes further action of its own. If Israel does, the Iranian military’s chief of staff said, Iran’s response “will be much larger” than what Israel witnessed on Saturday. 

Additional Israeli retaliation is very much a live topic of discussion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Foreign Minister Israel Katz all telegraphed to the Iranians that any attack by Iran against Israel would result in an Israeli attack inside Iran. Netanyahu’s war cabinet has been spending the last two days deliberating about response options; at the time of writing, the group hasn’t made any decisions. But it’s safe to assume that Netanyahu will have a hard time letting bygones be bygones.

The overall debate in Israel is mixed. Some ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet, such as Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, want to send Iran into the stone age so the Iranians get the message: don’t mess with us. Most, however, haven’t been as strident. Some lawmakers in Netanyahu’s Likud Party want an Israeli response of some kind but are urging Netanyahu to take his time.

For its part, the Biden administration would rather Israel not do anything at all. President Joe Biden spoke to Netanyahu on the phone hours after Iran’s attack and told him in no uncertain terms that while Washington always supports Israel’s security, it doesn’t endorse Israeli offensive action against Iran and would not participate if Netanyahu authorizes any. Biden isn’t alone in his assessment; German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, French President Emmanuel Macron and just about everybody in the Middle East have come to the same conclusion. As did the G-7 grouping of advanced economies: “With its actions, Iran has further stepped toward the destabilization of the region and risks provoking an uncontrollable regional escalation. This must be avoided.”

Netanyahu may not care. Throughout the six-month war against Hamas in Gaza, U.S. advice to the Israeli premier, whether it was over limiting civilian casualties or pumping humanitarian aid into the enclave, have often gone in one ear and out the other. Biden’s personal frustration with Netanyahu is palpable. It took an ultimatum of sorts earlier this month, in which the Biden administration tied future policy toward Israel to Netanyahu meeting certain benchmarks on the humanitarian front, for the president to get through. And even then, Israel’s concessions on the matter haven’t been particularly stellar — aid agencies working in Gaza continue to complain about Israeli restrictions along the Israel-Gaza border.

Let there be no mistake about it: whether Israel decides to counterattack is ultimately up to Israel. All the U.S. can do is express unequivocally, both in private and public, that an Israeli attack on Iranian soil will have a high possibility of dragging out this conflagration. Iran will be forced to respond just as Israel felt forced to respond. The relatively controlled tit-for-tat will get much more difficult to manage, and the Middle East as a whole will be worse off.

Perhaps this wouldn’t matter as much if the United States didn’t have tens of thousands of troops stationed in the region on any given day, within range of Iranian missiles. But it does. Now is the time for reason, not posturing. 

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

To say a lot has changed since October would be a shallow interpretation of events. The last six months has upended the prevailing assumptions that have dominated U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East, delayed big diplomatic initiatives in the region and sparked a series of other conflicts ranging from an undeclared war between the Houthis
and the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea as well as increasingly intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Before the war, the United States was eyeing what would be the most significant diplomatic achievement in the Middle East since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s: normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. President Biden was fully committed to surpassing his predecessor’s Abraham Accords, a series of agreements that normalized Israel’s diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Biden’s attempt to do the same with Saudi Arabia would have topped that previous arrangement given the kingdom’s wealth, stature and political power in the Arab world. Indeed, the president himself was so eager to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together that he was willing to expend considerable concessions to do it, including a offering a firmer U.S. security guarantee to Riyadh and assistance with the Saudis’ domestic nuclear energy program.

The war in Gaza, though, ruined the entire plan. While administration officials are still trying to pull a diplomatic rabbit out of their hat, Israel’s relentless offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian calamity it has unleashed (thousands of Palestinians killed, half of the enclave’s buildings destroyed or damaged, most of the population internally uprooted and imminent famine in northern parts of the territory) has stiffened Saudi Arabia’s spine. Before the war, Riyadh might have been fine with extracting a few token Israeli concessions for the Palestinians such as more land West Bank land transfers to the Palestinian Authority. But this is no longer optimal for the Saudis, who are now demanding nothing short of a full Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel—the very thing Netanyahu has committed himself to blocking.

The war has also shredded individual reputations. Benjamin Netanyahu used to be Mr. Security—that is, the Israeli politician who prided himself on defending Israel. Then Oct. 7 happened, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, tore through small Israeli communities along the border with Gaza and took more than 250 people back to Gaza with them. The veteran Israeli pol is now dealing with a whirlwind of justifiable scrutiny. Mr. Security looks like a deer caught in the headlights, a man who was caught flat-footed as innocent Israelis were being slaughtered in their homes. Just as worse, Netanyahu looks like a narcissist who is seemingly incapable of admitting fault when there’s plenty of blame to go around.

If the war has shown us anything, it’s that Netanyahu isn’t the strong decision-maker he claims to be. Rather, the politician is a risk-adverse ditherer who cares about his political power first and foremost. Every war-time decision is made with one consideration above all else: will this break my extreme, ultra-nationalist coalition apart? If the answer is yes, then the decision will be avoided, even if causes grief among the families of hostages who are pressing for a still elusive hostage deal.

U.S.-Israel relations have taken a big hit in the last six months as well. This might seem strange given that U.S. support to Israel throughout the conflict has been unconditional. On the humanitarian front, the Biden administration continues to make its complaints to the Israeli government known. Yet U.S. policy itself hasn’t really changed
regardless of the daily lectures. To take the most visceral example: on the same day Israeli aircraft killed seven humanitarian aid workers from the World Central Kitchen charity, the administration approved another transfer of U.S.bombs to Israel.

Last week, however, Washington’s shift in tone became notably tougher. There could very well be a policy shift too. Biden’s call with Netanyahu on April 4, was different from all the others, if only because the president explicitly tied future U.S. policy toward Israeli concessions on humanitarian issues. As White House national security spokesman John Kirby articulated after the call, if there’s no changes to their (Israel’s) policy and their approaches, then there’s going to have to be changes to ours.” The Israelis took notice; a day later, Israel announced the opening of a new land corridor to northern Gaza for aid trucks, opened up Ashdod port to humanitarian supplies and accelerated shipments into Gaza at a pace that hasn’t been seen since the bombing began.

Netanyahu remains bullish and confident that Hamas will be destroyed after a military campaign that is now Israel’s longest since the 1980s.

Yet whether or not Israel achieves its maximalist objectives, the war is nothing short of a regional earthquake whose aftershocks will be felt for years, if not a generation, to come.