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Bolivia’s elections marked the collapse of MAS and the rise of Rodrigo Paz with a moderate and inclusive economic discourse, signaling a shift away from extremes toward the political center. Last Sunday, Bolivia went to the polls to elect a president, vice president, and 130 legislators, including senators and deputies. The results were surprising: Rodrigo Paz of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) won with 32.1% of the vote, despite not being ranked as the frontrunner in any of the more than 18 polls conducted. The favorites, Tuto Quiroga and Samuel Doria Medina, received 26.8% and 19.8% of the vote, respectively. Meanwhile, although somewhat expected yet still shocking, the Movement for Socialism (MAS) suffered its most humiliating defeat: after nearly 20 years as a dominant party, it garnered just 3.2% of the vote and secured only one seat in the legislature. What happened? How did Rodrigo Paz manage to win the election? And how did the right-wing opposition end up losing? Throughout the campaign, Samuel Doria Medina of National Unity and Tuto Quiroga of LIBRE consistently led the polls as the main alternatives to MAS. Early this year, there was growing anticipation around a possible opposition alliance to “stand up to MAS.” That effort collapsed, however, and the public’s perception of both candidates deteriorated as their personal ambitions clashed—ironically creating an opening for MAS to potentially cling to power. Once the campaign was underway, Quiroga and Doria Medina, convinced by the polls that they would make it to a runoff, turned against each other. On social media, a smear war erupted with false news and mutual slander. While these two candidates weakened each other, Rodrigo Paz stayed above the fray, managing to deliver his message with little turbulence. Paz offered a platform he described as “capitalism for everyone,” or platita para todos (“money for all”), promising more subsidies, as well as lower taxes and tariffs. This placed him closer to the statist left than to the liberal market-oriented stance of Tuto and Samuel. Amid an ongoing economic crisis, many Bolivians felt that policies were needed to reactivate the economy and stabilize the exchange rate. A significant portion of the middle and lower classes feared that the proposed economic shock measures would worsen their already precarious situation. Both Quiroga and Doria Medina openly embraced the radical proposals of Argentina’s president Javier Milei as their model. Paz, by contrast, offered a more moderate alternative, attracting much of the electorate. Another key dimension of this election was the projection of political renewal. On the left, figures such as Eduardo del Castillo and Andrónico Rodríguez—both under 40 and emerging from the MAS ranks—sought to embody generational change. But del Castillo was weighed down by his association with Arce’s unpopular government, while Rodríguez faced criticism from the right for his ties to Morales, even as Morales himself accused him of betrayal. On the right, renewal was nonexistent: both Quiroga and Doria Medina were veterans of the pre-Evo Morales party system, recycling old formulas such as privatization and free-market economics. In this context, the PDC ticket of Rodrigo Paz and Edman Lara was well positioned. While Paz is a seasoned politician with 26 years of experience, mostly as a subnational leader, Lara—a former police captain—was a classic outsider. With an active presence on social media, he had built a reputation as a crusader against corruption, after denouncing fellow police officers for misconduct. In August 2024, he was permanently dismissed from the Bolivian police force. Looking at the results by region reveals the territorial fault lines in Bolivian politics. The PDC, like MAS before it, secured victories in departments such as Oruro, Potosí, and La Paz, along with the populous city of El Alto, where it won over 45% of the vote. By contrast, Quiroga and Doria Medina performed strongly in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija—the so-called media luna—a region traditionally resistant to candidates from western Bolivia. Rodrigo Paz and Tuto Quiroga will now face each other in a runoff on October 19. Paz’s challenge will be to expand his support in Santa Cruz and wealthier urban areas, while Quiroga must convince middle- and lower-income sectors that market-oriented reforms can serve as a viable alternative to MAS without undermining the poor. After nearly two decades, Bolivians have chosen to close the MAS chapter in power and begin a new one—not defined by extremes, but by a turn toward the political center. This is a positive sign at a moment of deep national crisis. *Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves at Latinoamérica21 (L21)

Dr. Mohmmad Yunus, the Chief Advisor (CA) of Bangladesh’s interim government revealed the “July Declaration” on August 5th, 2025, to commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the student-led revolution that toppled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year Awami League (AL) regime. The essence of the July Declaration is to reflect the ambitions and goals of the Bangladeshi citizens for its future. The July Declaration highlights Bangladesh’s political struggles since its independence in 1971 and emphasizes how that struggle has culminated in the July Revolution and its vision for the future. More specifically, the Declaration outlines the suppression of Bangladeshi people’s political and human rights by Hasina’s regime, after 3 rigged elections, implicating the loss of the people’s mandate. The past year encapsulates a critical period in Bangladesh’s history and a stress-test of the Yunus administration. Although the July Declaration expresses the aspiration to build a country based on rule-of law, upholding human rights, and erasing corruption, the one-year tenure of Dr. Yunus reveals mixed levels of achievements. Since taking power, the interim government faced four crucial goals: to establish domestic security and stability, bring justice for the injured and deceased of the July Revolution, hold the corrupt members of the AL regime accountable, and to create a different economic and political vision for Bangladesh in the 21st century, especially for the young population. It is important to recall that the students, facing bleak job prospects, protested against the Hasina’s regime’s policy that allotted a disproportionate number of coveted government jobs to the descendants of freedom fighters of the 1971 war for independence. After more than a decade of corruption, mismanagement of government funds and bank reserves, Bangladesh was facing a dollar reserve crisis during the last years of the Hasina administration. From the beginning, the interim government’s challenge was to reverse the downward economic trajectory as part of new economic vision for Bangladesh. After Hasina’s fall, the former Governor of Bangladesh Bank also fled the country. The current governor’s policies, combined with increased remittance, have improved dollar reserves. External debts decreased in the fourth quarter of December 2024, compared to the third quarter as a result of the interim government’s cautious approach to foreign loans. The revival of the Chittagong Port and leasing part of the Port to a UAE-based company is intended to make Chittagong the economic heart of a new Bangladesh. The interim government’s initiatives to expand Bangladesh’s semiconductor industry also indicate an economic vision that is technology and youth centric. The underlying theme of the July Revolution was to reinvent the country and its engagement with global partners. There have been significant changes Bangladesh’s foreign policy since the 2024 revolution. One notable change is relationship with Western countries. The Biden administration , the European Union (EU), China, Pakistan, and India were prompt to congratulate Dr. Yunus. Such messages gave legitimacy to the interim government, the student’s revolution, while recognizing Hasina’s removal from power. UN Secretary General António Guterres’s visit during March 2025, brought renewed focus on the Rohingya refugee crisis, giving Bangladesh more agency on the issue. However, the UN (and therefore the U.S.) backed plan to establish a “humanitarian corridor” require tactful balancing between Chinese, American and Indian interests in the region. Admittedly, disagreements within the interim government, among the major political parties, and with the Bangladesh armed forces poses questions on whether the Yunus team can effectively carry out such a plan. Dr. Yunus’s engagement with Western and Asian partners centers on establishing Bangladesh’s autonomy. Meeting with 19 EU delegates, he pushed for moving the visa centers from New Delhi to Dhaka or another neighboring country. Signing a Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Teesta River crisis (after a 13-year stalemate with India) and creating medical facilities in China to treat Bangladeshi patients (after India curtailed medical visas) point to a deepening ties with China and to showcase a more assertive engagement with global partners. The previous examples also signal Bangladesh’s pivot away from India. The flood in August 2024 immediately after the revolution reinvigorated anti-India rhetoric and resurfaced frustration with perceived longstanding asymmetric hydro-diplomacy with India.  But, most importantly, Hasina’s continued presence in India remains a point of contention. Even after one year, India declines requests for Hasina’s extradition citing  safety concerns and whether she will receive a fair trial in Bangladesh. The current India-Bangladesh relationship presents a strategic challenge for India. Over the last few decades, India’s diplomatic relationship with Bangladesh has been limited to cooperative relationship with AL, neglecting maintaining diplomatic overtures with other political parties in Bangladesh. Consequently, significant portion of the Bangladeshi public perceived the AL party being overly friendly with India. Naturally, people’s dissatisfaction with Hasina’s policies were also transferred to grievances against India. The geographic reality implies that to address the persisting security concerns in the northeast Indian states (which includes Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim), the Indian government should pursue cooperative relationship with Bangladesh. In fact, Dr. Yunus connected the revival of the Chittagong Port and its significance for Indian northeastern states. Sheikh Hasina’s pro-India stance had allowed India to address security challenges in the northeastern states, without facing obstacles from Bangladesh. Political changes in Bangladesh necessitates the Indian government to realign its foreign policy and strive to form partnership with the people, instead of a singular political party. Domestic politics is one of the areas where the Yunus administration has shown weak progress. Since the onset, the administration faced frequent protests from garment workers, bureaucrats, and security forces. Even politically, reaching consensus on pressing issues is also becoming increasingly challenging. On the question of elections and electoral reforms, the divergence among the political parties and even splinters within the parties is becoming more visible. Pressure from leaders of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for earlier election raises doubts whether the interim government could accomplish its reform goals before the February 2026 general elections. Fifteen years of AL’s one-party rule has left BNP organizationally weak and divided. The newly created National Citizens Party (NCP) by the student leaders of the revolution is still consolidating its political base. Disagreements between the Chief of Army Staff General Waker-Uz-Zaman and the interim government point to a lack of partnership. General Waker’s insistence of the role of the Bangladesh Riffles (BDR) in the 2009 Pilkhana Massacre stands at odds with the families of the victims who demand justice and answering lingering questions about Awami League regime’s role. Such sentiments from families erode faith in the justice system. The interim government has taken steps to provide financial and medical support for the survivors of the July Revolution suffering from various injuries and permanent disabilities. Unfortunately, the July Declaration does not mention the continuing suffering of the survivors. The role of female students in the July Revolution is also not mentioned in the Declaration, despite being on the frontlines of the revolution. Such omissions do weaken the position of the domestic political reform agenda of the interim government and prevent it from giving these groups of people a sense of justice and inclusion in the new Bangladesh. Ensuring a safe and stable environment, while establishing the rule of law is the biggest shortcoming of the Yunus administration. Awami League has not expressed any remorse in its role in the violence of the revolution despite mounting evidence. The activities of Awami League and its student wing have been banned. Nonetheless, the disgraced political party continues to cast a large shadow. Hasina continues to make inflammatory statements from her exile in India that fuels new violence in Bangladesh. The arrest of Major Sadikul’s wife over allegations of plans to train AL ‘activists’ to destabilize the capital creates bleak prospects of the country’s security and the realization of the July Declaration. Furthermore, the alleged involvement of the spouse of an army major in such nefarious plans creates more questions about whether the armed forces are reliable partners to fulfill the promise of the 2024 revolution. At the one-year anniversary, the dream of the July Revolution remains unrealized. Dr. Yunus and his interim government have shown competence in addressing the economic challenges. Furthermore, changed engagement with Western and regional powers points to the desire to gain more agency over global and regional matters. Nonetheless, on the domestic political and security fronts, the interim government has shown problems with internal coordination and with other political stakeholders. Dr. Yunus has not proven himself to be a savvy politician. The utter corrosion of all institutions after 15-year corruption of Hasina’s regime requires mini revolutions within all political stakeholders. Political rhetoric must go beyond political disagreements for its own sake and making abstract ideological statements to rile up supporters. The political parties must discuss tangible problems faced by the people and offer feasible solutions. Otherwise, the promise of the July Revolution will remain unfulfilled.

Abstract This article examines that the shift in Israeli society and political economy from ethnic socialism to individualistic capitalism was accompanied by a shift from a strategic and collectivist liberal Zionism to a nonstrategic individualistic right-wing populism. It is a shift that made the State of Israel vulnerable to shock and crisis, and turned it “from a startup nation to a shutdown nation.” Unlike the crisis caused by the 1973 war, Israel lacks the tools to cope with the crisis of October 7 and embarks on a path of self-destruction.Keywordssettler colonialism, right-wing populism, Middle East economies 1. Introduction: Zionism’s Transition From Collectivist to Individualistic Settler Colonialism The State of Israel is a settler-colonial project (Robinson 2013), and as such has never been self-sufficient. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion cultivated Israel’s alliance with Western imperialism as part of a strategy to keep the Israeli military supplied with modern weapons and trading partners. Meanwhile, some neighboring Arab states cultivated an alliance with the Soviet Union. The bane of colonial societies is always the same: arrogance, and in Israel’s arrogance the seeds of its downfall were planted. Israeli society, very much like the white population of apartheid South Africa, developed a culture on racist foundations, and the disdain of the Indigenous Palestinian population spread to a patronizing and racist attitude towards Israel’s non-white Jewish population (Mizrahim and black Jews; Ben-Eliezer 2007). The history of Israel’s political economy can be traced along the trajectory of this arrogant approach and the events that confirm, or undermine, Israel’s arrogance. I briefly mention two such seminal events before proceeding to the more contemporary developments. The first was the war of 1967, which has given rise to Israel’s messianic religious right wing, certain that God is on Israel’s side. Israel’s “miraculous” victory against three Arab armies in just six days, commemorated in Israel’s name for the war “The Six Day War,” confirmed every racist stereotype in Israel’s colonialist culture. Popular songs celebrating Israel’s victory hit the radios, and the project of building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, deporting prominent Palestinian leaders, and using collective punishment, such as home demolitions, have put a strain on Israel’s alliance with the imperialist West. Israel’s military industry was transformed by these events. After France, Israel’s biggest arms supplier at the time, imposed a military embargo on Israel because of the occupation, a new school of thought emerged in Israel’s security elite, arguing that Israel does not need to rely on foreign suppliers and could potentially produce all of its weapons and ammunition locally. The victory also gave rise to what Israelis have later retroactively called “the Conception”—the arrogant belief that Arab states will never try to defeat Israel on the battlefield again—having been overwhelmed by Israel’s superiority. The second event worthy of note occurred just over six years later, the war of 1973, also known as the October War. On October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack that shattered Israel’s “Conception.” Israeli forces suffered heavy casualties, lost battles, and were forced to withdraw until the United States intervened with large-scale arms shipments. Israel’s dependency on Western support became undeniable. Even though Israeli forces, with the help of US weapons, eventually pushed back the Syrian and Egyptian armies, Israel was bloodied and traumatized. Israeli economists referred to the following decade as the “lost decade”—in which public resources were diverted to the arms industry and a large section of the workforce was recruited for extended military service with the reserves. The generation who fought in the 1973 war became wary of the danger of colonial arrogance (Bar-Joseph 2003). It was the generation that called for moderation in politics, for strategic thinking. The self-sufficiency illusion was nixed. Instead, Israel worked hard to position itself within global politics as a “bastion” against communism (just like South Africa did), and after the fall of the Soviet Union as a bastion against Islamic terrorism. The Oslo Peace Process was supposed to be Israel’s alibi, a show of willingness to compromise over territory in exchange for Western political legitimacy and normalization with Arab neighbors. Instead of a self-sustaining economy, Israel developed its political economy as a niche economy, becoming the world capital of the homeland security sector, with hundreds of companies exporting Israel’s “security expertise” in the form of surveillance technology, culminating in the export of spyware (Loewenstein 2023: 207). 2. Rise of the Right-Wing Populism in Israel The liberal Zionist project to rationalize colonialism has gradually failed, because of arrogance. In his article in Hebrew “A factory for blind spots” Ran Heilbronn explained the collapse of Israel’s security “expertise” through the reliance on technology and the belief that reality exists in the data, rather than the data being a tool to describe reality (Heilbronn 2024). The Israeli security industry conceived of the occupation as a laboratory for developing tools of oppression and marketing them as “field-tested” (Loewenstein 2023: 49). It has failed to reflect that the identity of the self-appointed security experts as colonizers makes them predictable. This is especially the case in their tendency to repeatedly underestimate Palestinians, because respecting the ability of Palestinians to develop creative methods of resistance and outwit Israeli oppressive measures undermines the racist arrogance that is necessary to justify apartheid (Shlaim 2015: 133–180). The rise of the populist right wing in Israel can be explained through the intergenerational discourse among Jewish Israeli society. The generation that fought in the militias to expel the Indigenous Palestinian population and establish the State of Israel, as well as its children, were raised on the collectivist values and glorifying sacrifice (Feige 2002: v–xiv). As a popular 1948 song by Haim Gouri played on official state ceremonies states, “love consecrated in blood will blossom amongst us once again.” Subsequent generations, those born since 1967, the “euphoria” period (including the baby-boom generation after the 1973 war; Ozacky-Lazar 2018: 18–24) and their children, have been raised on the sense of entitlement to the spoils of war for which their parents and grandparents made great sacrifices. Calls for further expanding the borders, acquiring more land, and building more settlements, which were consistently made by the settler movement, have been perceived by the older elites as an ungrateful disrespect to their own sacrifices, and that Israel is at a risk of overextending itself and losing everything. This has become the main narrative of liberal Zionism (Ayyash 2023). The intergenerational shift from strategic, “rational” Zionism based on calculated sacrifice for the purpose of colonizing Palestine while maintaining both a Jewish majority and good relations with the West, toward a religious populist Zionism built on a sense of entitlement, dismissing threats and obstacles to the Zionist Project, is a shift dialectically inherent to the colonial process and inseparable from it (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022). Every colonial society has a “founders” generation that is honored for its commitment to the collective national project at great personal costs, which is followed by increasingly entitled generations who are born with privileges and do not feel the need to earn or defend them. The colonial mythology exaggerates the significance of the founders’ efforts who “gave their lives to ensure that this land will be ours for posterity.” The demand from younger generations to make efforts to secure the land and the privileges of the colonizers diminishes from the mythology and is therefore rejected. The younger generations simply expect to inherit their privileges (Veracini 2010: 40). The right-wing advocates of collectivist nationalism and sacrifice (following the path of Jabotinsky, who in his Iron Wall manifesto warned that Palestinians will never give up their struggle against colonial domination, and Zionism must engage in an eternal battle (Jabotinsky 1923), have all but disappeared, being replaced by the right-wing populists, led most prominently by Benjamin Netanyahu. The main attraction of the right-wing populism is the idea of impunity: Israel can have its cake and eat it too. Disregard international law and international pressure, underestimate the potential of Palestinian resistance, and not make any sacrifices (Shad 2015: 167–178). As the rate of conscription to the Israeli military plummeted since the 1990s (Arlosoroff 2019; Shalev 2004: 88–101), Israelis became accustomed to justifying military aggression against Palestinians from the comfort of their armchairs. While refusal to serve remains a marginal phenomenon, draft dodging had become the norm, rather than the exception (Perez 2018). Yagil Levy referred to this shift as a capital-intensive warfare, using technology and expensive weaponry to multiply the impact of a smaller number of soldiers, thereby also increasing the negotiating power of those soldiers who were able to make demands for material and nonmaterial rewards in exchange for their military service, which conscripts would normally not be able to make (Levy 2003: 222). The populist right wing conflates the State of Israel with the Jewish people, ignoring both the existence of non-Jewish Israelis and the existence of non-Israeli Jews. Instead of addressing criticism and planning strategic responses, populists use ad-hominem attacks to delegitimize criticism. Netanyahu dismisses critique against Israel’s apartheid and war crimes as “antisemitic” whether it’s the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions; Black 2014), legal action from the International Court of Justice or from the International Criminal Court (Heller 2019), or even recognition of the State of Palestine (Landale 2024). Eventually this populist argument has become mainstream so that even opposition leaders from the liberal Zionist factions adopted it (TOI Staff 2022). The liberal Zionist forces found themselves at a disadvantage after the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, which was seen as a military failure, and was exploited by the far right to accuse the government of weakness (Erlanger 2006). The Israeli attack against Gaza just before the February 2009 elections claimed the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians. The leader of the liberal-Zionist camp at the time, Tzipi Livni, served as minister of foreign affairs. Her position was (and remains) that the liberal Zionist camp is more strategic and has more tools to secure Jewish control over Palestine than the populist right wing (Livni 2018). This argument backfired because the populist right wing grew domestically stronger in the face of threats of international restrictions. The same process occurred in 2022 with the publication of four reports about Israeli apartheid (Abofoul 2022), leading to the collapse of the last liberal Zionist government, which could not come up with a strategy to defend Israel from the accusation of apartheid. Just like the brutal attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008, the government of liberal Zionist parties tried to demonstrate its brutality toward Palestinians accusing six Palestinian civil society organizations of terrorism without showing evidence (OHCHR 2022) and by granting impunity to the soldier who murdered Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11, 2022, in the course of the military campaign in the Jenin refugee camp (Al Jazeera 2022). This tactic failed in the elections of November 2022 just as it failed in the February 2009 elections. In early 2023, with the most far-right government in Israel’s history embarking on the judicial overhaul project, the people who protested the government’s antiliberal policy were the very same who maintain and profit from Israel’s security sector (Goodfriend 2023). Protestors in Tel-Aviv have adopted the slogan of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions) “from startup nation to shutdown nation” and printed it on a huge banner that they carried through the streets (Ben-David 2023), warning that Israel’s economy will shut down because of the policies of the far-right government. The demonstrators holding the sign were likely unaware of the fact that the slogan was coined by BDS, which is another example of blind spots caused by an unsustainable colonial situation. The prediction was prophetic, but interestingly the very same people who argued that Israel’s military strength is directly connected to the economic strength of its security sector, who warned against the economic collapse, did not predict the simultaneous collapse of Israel’s military strength. The rise of right-wing populism in Israel is fueled by elements that are inherent to the Israeli case: the settler-colonial intergenerational conflict, the economic transformation of the social contract, and the shift in the military structure and the role of militarism in society. Nevertheless, a fourth factor cannot be ignored, which is the rise of the populist right wing in the whole world, with the polarization of politics after the dashed expectations following the nineties (Greven 2016). The model of the right-wing populist leader—racist, hedonist, and corrupt—was only known in two countries in the nineties: in Israel with Netanyahu’s first term and in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi, before becoming widespread in the rest of the world starting in 2016. 3. The Systemic Vulnerability A key difference between the crisis of the 1973 war, and the crisis that Israel is experiencing since October 7, 2023, is the change in the economic structure of Israel. In its first three and a half decades of existence, Israel had a corporatist economic structure (Shalev 1986: 362–386), in which the government, unions, and the private sector cooperated to bolster and maintain the apartheid economic system, until the neoliberal reforms of 1985 (Ben Basat 2002: 1–22). Israel’s federation of labor unions—the Histadrut—played a central role in keeping Palestinian workers from the occupied West Bank and Gaza as a cheap and exploited labor force both before and after the reforms (Hiltermann 1989: 83–91). The reforms, however, changed the social contract at the base of the settler-colonial state. From a nationalist project in which the privileges of the Jewish population are collectively protected and collectively enjoyed by the Jewish population at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population, the neoliberal reforms turned Israel into an individualistic society in which privileges are enjoyed individually and reproduced by market forces for profit (Shalev 1986). In parallel to the way that a neoliberal order restructures the social contract between state and citizen, it also restructures the contract between state and soldier. As Yagil Levy argues, the Israeli tech sector serves as a reward mechanism to attract recruits into prestigious units, such as the notorious unit 8200, for the prospect of future lucrative employment in the private sector. This “negotiation,” to borrow Levy’s term, creates a military vulnerability. The collapse of Israel’s tech sector impacts the motivation of soldiers to serve in Israel’s technological units (Levy 2012: 47). The capitalist structure is more vulnerable. In the absence of a strong social safety net, individuals are expected to make their own risk assessment (Swirski et al. 2020: 5). Modern finances are a system of management expectation. Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have shown that the depths of crisis in capital can be measured in a time perspective. Cyclical crisis is marked by short-term expectations coupled with a long-term expectation for recovery. Investors attempt to build predictive models based on their assessment of future developments. In a systemic crisis, however—what Kliman, Bichler, and Nitzan call “systemic fear”—the predictive models are built on historical data, and investors are making fewer references to the future (Kliman et al. 2011: 61–118). One of the first voices to herald that the State of Israel has reached a dead-end was Marwan Bishara, who focused on the aspect of Israel’s regional integration into the Middle East, which remains an essential strategic element in Israel’s sustainable existence, but which could not continue after Israel embarked on the onslaught against the Gaza Strip, intentionally targeting civilians (Bishara 2023). The oppressive structure of the State of Israel is vulnerable to the external pressure that is applied by Palestinian resistance, which takes the form of both armed and unarmed resistance. The armed resistance is much less relevant to the discussion here, because the capitalist vulnerability is suspended in times of “security crisis,” framed as a temporary time in which collective mobilization and sacrifice are necessary. The unarmed forms of Palestinian resistance such as BDS expose the vulnerability of Israel’s apartheid and challenge the sustainability of the oppressive structures (Awad 1984). The slogan “they oppress, we BDS” leaves Israelis with no choice but to consider whether the same methods used to crush the Palestinian resistance are in the end self-defeating (Barghouti 2020). Palestinian resistance has developed through stages, searching for means to overcome Israeli oppression. Collective leadership replaced individualistic leadership in order to survive assassinations (Baylouny 2009). Intersectional and progressive alliance building proved effective in creating solidarity in the heart of Israel’s Western support bases, especially North America and Western Europe (Salih et al. 2020). While liberal Zionism excelled in infiltrating Palestinian society and sabotaging its resistance (Cohen 2009), the populist right adopts the dehumanization of Palestinians as a fact, rather than a tool, and is therefore unable to infiltrate Palestinian society effectively. As Major General Amos Gilad said in 2011 “we don’t do Gandhi very well” (Dana 2011)—Palestinians found the weak point in Israel’s oppressive regime. Israel’s closest allies begin to contemplate the unthinkable—the end of the Zionist state. For Germany, whose unconditional support for Israel turned into a quasi-state religion due to an intentional conflation of Judaism and the State of Israel (Moses 2021), the notion that the State of Israel will cease to exist is more controversial than the speculations about the imminent demise of the GDR (German Democratic Republic, which was dismantled in 1990). Nevertheless, even German mainstream media cannot silence the shutdown nation voices when they come from Israeli Jews or former Israeli Jews (Tschemerinsky 2024). Two prominent Israeli economists, Eugene Kandel and Ron Tzur, wrote a scathing report in which they come to the conclusion that Israel will not survive to its 100th year and kept the document a secret, worried that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faced with lack of interest from the government, however, they gave interviews about the report (Arlosoroff 2024). Israeli billionaire Gil Schwed compared Israel to Afghanistan—a state that collapsed under an Indigenous insurgency and abandoned by its US ally, and which does not attract foreign investments (Cohen 2024). The Haaretz newspaper published its editorial on Israel’s Independence Day with the headline that Israel will not survive to celebrate its 100th Independence Day. In the English version of the newspaper, the headline was qualified with the extra text “unless we are rid of Netanyahu” (Haaretz 2024). The expected delayed collapse is meaningless in a capitalist economy. Investors who believe that the State of Israel is a time bomb with a twenty-year timer will not buy Israeli bonds, nor invest in the economy. Parents will not want to raise children into (what they perceive as) an inevitable catastrophe and will exhaust all available options for leaving with their family (Silverstein 2024). Three Israeli historians have also addressed the events of October 7 and their aftermath as the end of the Zionist projects. Moshe Zimmermann, a Zionist scholar of German history and German-Israeli relations, commented in an extended interview that the Zionist project set up to create a secure haven for Jews, but that the State of Israel, the result of the Zionist project, has failed to protect its Jewish citizens on October 7, to take responsibility for the failure, or to develop a strategy to create more security in the future (Aderet 2023). From the opposite perspective, Ilan Pappe, an anti-Zionist scholar of the history of Palestine, published an essay listing six indicators to the demise of the Zionist project (Pappé 2024). Although the State of Israel does not by definition share the same fate of the Zionist project, and can conceivably exist without a Zionist government, Israeli institutions have, nevertheless, in the moment of crisis after October 7, published statements attesting to the centrality of Zionism to Israel’s existence as a state. The strongest example of these statements is the letter written by the Hebrew University to Knesset member Saran Haskel justifying the suspension of Prof. Nadera Shalhouv Kevorkian over her criticism against Zionism, by stressing that the Hebrew University is a Zionist institution (rather than an academic institution in which a plurality of opinions is encouraged) (Odeh 2024). Such unanimous agreement among Zionists and anti-Zionists about the fate of the Zionist project and its significance to the future of the State of Israel is an unprecedented consensus. Six months into the war, a third Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, wrote that Israel is entering an unsustainable phase of global isolation and military defeat, and that only a quick ceasefire and structural change of policy (i.e., a break from Zionism) could save the State of Israel from demise (Noah-Harari 2024). 4. Conclusion It is this vulnerability, a society built on individualism and privilege, which made the October 7 attack a much bigger trauma for Israelis than other disasters that claimed the lives of hundreds, or even thousands, such as the 1973 war. The Israeli discourse cannot imagine a scenario in which the State of Israel and the Zionist project will recover from the crisis. Despite obsessive discussions about recovery (Bachar 2024), the need for national unity (Shwartz 2024), waging war until the “total victory” (Tharoor 2024)—the public discourse is full of Cassandrian predictions of doom—and every failure of the public institutions, whether in education, housing, electricity production, or health care, is seen as the tip of a much bigger iceberg (Motsky 2024). A state, its political economy, and its political culture require more than just institutions de jure to function. It requires a collective belief in a sustainable political project with a perspective into the future. The future of the people living in historical Palestine, between the river and the sea, whether Palestinians or Israelis, is very uncertain, but one thing seems almost certain—the current political system will not stay in place for long—and the process of its collapse carries a tremendous economic significance. It is too early to say how exactly the political changes effect the economic changes. The threat of economic crisis is tremendous, just as economic efforts are needed to recover from the war, rebuild the Gaza Strip, and treat the physical and mental injuries suffered. It can lead to default on the debt, hyperinflation, and pauperization of thousands. But the potential for ending Palestine’s isolation in the Middle East and opening trade, the resources diverted from security and the military to civilian purposes, and a recovery of the tourism sector can paint a positive scenario as well. Liberal Zionism developed an effective, albeit highly immoral, strategy of settler colonialism. It cultivated a strong Jewish collective around a myth of individual sacrifices for the sake of the nation. This strategy contributed to Israel’s ability in its first decades to expand its territory through illegal occupations while maintaining good relations with the West. But in the long run, it contained the dialectic seeds of its own destruction. Younger generations were taught to accept the achievements of liberal Zionism as permanent, so why should they sacrifice anything? For decades, liberal Zionists warned that the populist right wing undermines the foundations of the Zionist project itself. But even though these warnings were accurate, liberal Zionists failed to acknowledge how the system of Jewish supremacy and apartheid that they have established eventually and unavoidably led to the takeover of the Zionist project by an entitled and unstrategic generation. An important caveat must accompany this article. The weakness of Israeli institutions is in their ability and their willingness to perceive reality. All three historians quoted here for their texts about the imminent end of the Zionist project share a common blind spot: they do not acknowledge the role of the Palestinian resistance in bringing down the Zionist project, and speak in terms of tragedy (the tragic hero bears responsibility for his own downfall). The caveat here is that I too, the author, may not necessarily be in a better position to perceive reality. Speaking the same mother tongue, coming from the same cultural background and education system as Pappé, Zimmermann, and Harari, I cannot help but wonder what is the missing element of the puzzle that I am unable to see in its entirety. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ReferencesAbofoul Ahmed. 2022. Sound but insufficient: The mainstream discussion on the question of applicability of apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Opinio Juris March. Accessed at: https://opiniojuris.org/2022/03/21/sound-but-insufficient-the-mainstream-discussion-on-the-question-of-the-applicability-of-apartheid-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/.Aderet Ofer. 2023. 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AbstractThis article seeks to examine the behavior patterns of the Arab society in Israel since the Israel-Hamas War began in October 2023. The uniqueness of this population is the ethnic-national and religious differences between it and the Jewish majority and their identification with the Palestinians. Theoretically, the behavior patterns will be analyzed using a model of three variables: religion, citizenship, and nationality. This qualitative study, based on interviews, media clips, and public statements by Arab public leaders, identifies several opposing trends: an increase in the scope of terrorism, protests on a limited scale, and the lack of a uniform response by the Arab leadership to the Hamas attack and the war that followed it.KeywordsArab society in Israel, terror, protest, leadership, Hamas, citizenship, identity Introduction On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,100 Israelis, including at least 20 Arab citizens. The Israeli response was a declaration of war on Hamas, which led to mass destruction within the Gaza Strip. As of December 2024, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces (AP, 2025). This is the highest number of victims on the Palestinian side since 1948. This figure raises a question regarding the reaction of Arab society in Israel, whose ethnic-national identity is the same as that of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Scholars dealing with majority–minority relations, as in the case of Jews and non-Jews in Israel, tend to agree that 1948 was a turning point that affected the mutual relations between the parties. Israel became a sovereign state for Jews, which obliged it to establish a policy toward the non-Jewish minority, also called the Arabs in Israel. The established policy was based on two pillars: First, Israel sought to be a democracy, and hence, basic rights, such as citizenship, were given to the Arab minority. Second, Israel saw the Arab minority as a security threat due to its ethnic and religious affinity with the larger Arab world. This concern led to the imposition of a military administration (1948–1966) on the Arabs in Israel, which led to the creation of, on the ground, the following reality: a Jewish majority lives alongside an Arab minority. Both sides held common citizenship but differed in two characteristics, religion and nationality. This is how majority–minority relations revolve around a fixed triangle that serves as a basis for analyzing mutual relations both in routine and in cases of tension between the parties (Boimel, 2007). Historically, the Arabic society in Israel has recorded many incidents of protests on national, religious, or civil grounds. Protest events that degenerated into violence included 1958 events in Nazareth; on Land Day in 1976; in 1982 after the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon (Sabra and Shatila); in the case of Umm el-Fahem lands in 1998; in the events of October 2000, and in May 2021 (Hitman, 2023). The ongoing war between Hamas and Israel since October 2023 is another case study that makes it possible to analyze the behavior of Arab society in Israel. Theoretical Framework The interaction between the state (or regime) and the people, namely, civilians, residents, illegal immigrants, and foreigners, is among the prominent topics that have been studied in recent decades (Coutin, 2011; Nyers, 2018). The existing sociological, political, anthropological, and legal literature delineates and analyzes case studies of confrontations between these parties worldwide. When case studies of mass protest or collective violence are discussed, the relevant questions are why, when, or what led to the clash between the state and the people and what led to an escalation. Every group of people has six potential methods to use when it is forced to respond to a regime’s policy or when it strives to achieve its goals through self-initiative: dialogue, separatism, indifference, identification, protest, and violence (Hitman, 2020). Israel is a multicultural country with a heterogeneous population consisting of Jews and non-Jews. Within these two categories are cultural subcategories: among the Jews, there are ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional, and secular communities. Among the non-Jews, there are Arabs (Muslims and Christians), Druze, and other religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities who have cultural freedom. As far as this study is concerned, the analysis distinguishes between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish or Arab minority, whose religious and national identity is not that of the Jews. The cultural, religious, ethnic, and national diversity in such diverse societies raises questions about minority rights and how to achieve them. The differences between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish minority are religious and national. The common denominator is that they are all citizens of Israel. The differences between the groups within Israel and the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet come to a solution create a basis for friction between the parties on religious, national, or civil grounds. The last outbreak in May 2021 came after more than two decades of peaceful relations between the Arab minority and the Jewish majority following the events of October 2000 (Barnea, 2024). During these decades, Israeli Arab citizens, most of whom define themselves as Palestinians, had several opportunities to escalate the security situation within the state and challenge the regime: Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin (2002), the Second Lebanon War (2006), Operation Cast Lead (2008), the Marmara Flotilla (2010), Operation Pillar of Clouds (2012), Operation Protective Edge (2014), and the Nation-State Bill (2018) passed by Knesset. In all these cases, the Arab Israeli citizens’ response was to protest within the framework of the law (Frisch, 2017). The conceptual framework and the brief historical overview allow a discussion of the action patterns of Arab society in Israel following the war that began in October 2023. Even if the end date of the war is still unclear, it seems that after more than a year of ongoing hostilities, certain trends within this population can be pointed out. This article seeks to assert two preliminary claims. First, the scale of protest by Arab society in Israel in response to the war in Gaza is low and offers several explanations for this. Second, there has been a moderate increase in the scope of terrorism by individuals within Arab society, apparently due to the influence of the war. The article also aims to analyze the public statements of the Arab leadership in Israel and examine whether there is a consensus or differences in approaches that originate from different ideologies. Based on the triangle model of citizenship, nationalism, and religion, the study hypotheses are: 1) The increasing number of terrorist attacks, as noted below, carried out by Israeli Arabs since October 2023 indicates identification with the Palestinians in Gaza on a national basis. 2) The limited number of protests within the framework of the law reflects a tendency of most of the Arab public to prefer Israeli citizenship over national or religious identification with the Palestinians and with Hamas. 3) The public positions of the Arab leadership reflect ideological differences: Mansour Abbas adheres to a civil partnership, while his political opponents from the Joint List cling to their Palestinian national identity. Methodology This study adopts a combined qualitative and quantitative methodology based on the three hypotheses it seeks to confirm or refute. In the quantitative aspect, it maps the cases where there was a possibility of protest or violence on the part of the Arab society in Israel following the outbreak of the war in October 2023. Such events could be protests against the delivery of the law, clashes with the security system, or terrorist acts against Jews. Qualitative research aims to examine feelings, ideas, and experiences that are often impossible to translate into quantitative numerical data. The religious, national, or civil narrative is the most common tool to examine feelings and thoughts in qualitative studies because it allows researchers to analyze testimonies from their statements and activities. Thus, qualitative methodologies are likely to be used when seeking perceptions, opinions, and approaches, as in this specific study (Ugwu & Eze Val, 2023).In the qualitative aspect, statements were collected from the Arab society on social networks, leading Israeli and global news websites, and statements from public figures at the national level. It was then analyzed according to keywords relevant to this study, such as Israeli occupation, jihad, condemnation of Hamas terrorism, support for Palestinian terrorism, and identification with the victims in Israel and Gaza. Incidents of Terrorism In general, the number of Israeli Arabs involved in terrorism since 1948 is low (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). Despite ethnic-national and religious diversity, which creates significant potential for sparking violence, various reasons have led to a trend of low-volume terrorism. An analysis of the data in the decade preceding October 2023 reveals the following picture: 1) According to the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), in 2013, the involvement of Israeli Arabs in terrorist attacks continued to be minor. The characteristics of terrorism in this case were twofold: going to Syria and joining ISIS or connecting to terrorist infrastructures of Palestinians in the West Bank (Shabak, 2013). 2) Most terrorist incidents involving Israeli Arabs in 2014 (a total of 10 cases) were related to outbreaks of protest and disorder, which included the use of Molotov cocktails attacks against Jewish drivers and setting fire to their cars. One case of the murder of a young Jewish woman by a Bedouin taxi driver stands out (Shabak, 2014). 3) In 2015, there was an increase (a total of 41 Israeli Arabs joined ISIS; a total of 15 terror attacks) in the scope of terrorism committed by Israeli Arabs: shooting and stabbing attacks in which 2 Israelis were killed and 13 wounded. This was also a year in which ISIS was at its peak, and this affected dozens of Israeli Arabs who joined its ranks. ISIS terrorist cells were exposed in several Arab communities, and Israel’s security forces arrested 41 Israeli Arabs (Shabak, 2015). It was likely due to the influence of propaganda by ISIS, which included calls to harm infidels. Between 2018 and 2022, the trend of terrorism by Israeli Arabs continued on a low scale (Abu Mookh, 2023; Kobowitz, 2019). An exception was the month of May 2021, in which violent clashes occurred between Arabs and Jews and security forces (Wall Guard incidents). These attacks resulted in the deaths of 14 Israelis, the vast majority of them members of the security system, such as soldiers and police (Nassar, 2022; Schlesinger, 2018). Regardless, the average number of attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs was four per year, significantly lower compared to the number since the war in Gaza began in October 2023. This indicates that the majority of Arab society has chosen to uphold the law and not risk punishment on criminal or security grounds that have the potential to harm the chances of integration into Israeli society. In this case, the civil element prevailed over the other elements in the relationship triangle. Based on media reports, since October 7, 2023, there has been a real increase in terror attempts and attacks by Israeli Arabs against Jews (mainly security forces). Based on various media and newspaper sources, one can identify that at least 13 cases were registered since October 7, of which Israeli Arabs executed 9 attacks and 4 were thwarted by the Israeli security forces. An analysis of these cases leads to the following insights. First, most of the perpetrators chose to commit stabbing attacks (six cases). In other cases, there were mob attacks, throwing stones, and one an attack that was a combination of a mob followed by an attack with an ax. Second, all involved were males between the ages of 13 and 28. An unusual case involved 9- to 10-year-old children throwing stones in the city of Lod (central Israel). Third, two Jews were murdered, and at least ten were injured, some of them severely. Fourth, all the attacks that were not thwarted were carried out by a single attacker and without the support of institutionalized terrorist organizations. Most of the victims were killed, and most of the perpetrators were affected by the security escalation in Israel, which is also a combination of religious (Hamas) and national (Palestinian) identification of the perpetrators. Finally, a geographic analysis of the attacks indicates diverse areas that include the north of Israel (4), the center (3), and the south (2) (Elbaz et al., 2024; El-Hai & Zeitoun, 2024; Eli & Moghrabi, 2024; Lalotashvili, 2023). An analysis of the terrorist attacks by the Arab population in Israel would not be complete without referring to terrorist attempts that the security forces in Israel managed to thwart. In March 2024, the Israeli media revealed that the Shin Bet and the police had uncovered a cell headed by Muhammad Khaled and Muhammad Yosef, residents of the city of Sakhnin (northern Israel). They intended to carry out terrorist acts in Israel, and members of their group purchased weapons originating from the West Bank. Khaled was in contact with the Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, which provided him with instructions for preparing explosives and directed him to recruit more members to promote terrorist activity (Alkalai, 2024). A senior police officer estimated that the events of the war in Gaza led to the decision of several individuals to establish a terror cell as part of their identification with Hamas. As part of the cooperation with the Palestinians (Hamas members from the Gaza Strip), the possibility of damaging strategic facilities within Israel was also examined (Hachmon, 2024). In July 2024, three young civilians from Kalansawa (central Israel) were arrested on suspicion of having contact with Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank and supplying weapons to terrorist elements. As part of the investigation, among other things, a pipe bomb, an M16 rifle, a Carlo rifle, another gun, and ammunition were seized (Diaz, 2024). In April 2024, a terrorist network consisting of Arab Israelis and Palestinian residents of the West Bank was exposed for conspiring to carry out serious and extensive terrorist activity throughout Israel (Koriel et al. 2024). The head of the cell is Bilal Nasasara, an Israeli Arab living in Rahat in the south of the country, who was responsible for recruiting operatives from Israel. During their investigations by the ISA, it was revealed that the suspects planned to carry out attacks near IDF bases and secure facilities, including the Ben-Gurion Airport. They also planned to assassinate the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after obtaining an RPG missile and kidnap IDF soldiers (Hacohen, 2024). Casualties among Israeli Arab Society following Hamas’ Attack The analysis of the terrorist data is only part of the characteristics and phenomena of the Arab society in Israel since October 2023. Close to 30 Muslim Arabs, citizens of Israel, were also murdered by Hamas (Goldman & Koplewitz, 2023) despite a fatwa from Hamas itself that forbids harming them (Izz al-din al-Qassam, 2022). Among the murdered were pregnant women (Sharon, 2023). These figures and the cases presented below illustrate the shared fate of living together as citizens of Israel. In this respect, the terrorist attack by Hamas did not distinguish between Jewish and Muslim victims. One of the prominent phenomena observed during the Hamas attack on Israel was the mutual guarantee between Jews and Muslims, all citizens of Israel. The story of Amer Abu-Sabila illustrates the shared fate of Muslims and Jews on October 7. Abu-Sabila, a 25-year-old father of two toddlers and an Israeli citizen from the Bedouin community in the Negev, saw Hodaya, the mother of two young daughters, in her car trying to escape the scene after her husband had been murdered before her eyes. Due to the intensity of the trauma, she was having difficulty driving, so Abu-Sabila got into her car to take her and her daughters to what he thought would be a safe place—Shderot police station. No one knew that at that time, armed terrorists were surrounding the police station building to take it over. When they arrived at the police station, Amer and Hodaya were murdered by Hamas terrorists, while the two little girls, aged 3 and 6, lay on the floor of the car in the back seat, witnesses to the horror (Times of Israel, 2023). Eventually, the two girls were rescued by the Israeli security forces who arrived at the scene a little later (Gabai, 2023). Abd al-Karim Nasasara from the Bedouin settlement of Kseifa in the Negev was also murdered by Hamas terrorists when he tried to rescue young people from the Nova music festival in Re’im (October7memorial, 2023). The 23-year-old Awad Musa Darawshe, from the northern Israeli village of Iksal, was in the festival complex as an ambulance driver and paramedic. When the terrorists entered, he found himself being approached by many wounded. He chose to stay and care for them until he was murdered (Hauzman, 2023). Yosef al-Ziadna, a resident of Rahat, was a minibus driver who took young people to the Nova festival on Friday. When frightened young people called him on Saturday morning at the start of the Hamas attack, al-Ziadna did not think twice and went to rescue them despite the entire area being under attack. With extraordinary bravery and despite continuous gunfire, he tried to save as many young people as possible. He managed to get 30 survivors of the massacre into his vehicle and save their lives. Al-Ziadna himself lost a relative who was murdered, and four of his family members were kidnapped to Gaza (Kidon & Cohen, 2023). Condemnations of the Hamas Attack among Arab Leaders The Arab political leadership in Israel is divided upon ideological lines: there are communists, Islamists, and nationalist parties. Among the Islamic parties is the United Arab List or the southern branch of the Islamic Movement (hereafter: Ra’am), headed by Knesset member Mansour Abbas. Ra’am represents the southern faction of the Islamic Movement in Israel. In contrast, the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, was outlawed by the State of Israel in 2015. On the other side, there are nationalist parties—Balad, led by Sami Abu Shehadeh, and Ta’al, led by Ahmad Tibi—and the communists (Hadash), led by Ayman Odeh. This section examines some of the statements of Arab leaders in the wake of the October 7 attack (Hitman, 2018). Mansour Abbas was the first Arab leader to condemn the Hamas attack as early as noon on October 7, when the dimensions of the disaster were not yet so clear. On his Twitter account, he denounced the “unfortunate, tragic, and obscene” events and called on all citizens of the country, Jews and Arabs, to behave responsibly and not be drawn into incitement. On October 10, he called on Hamas to release the abductees in their hands because “Islamic values command us not to imprison women, children, and the elderly” (Abbas, 2023). On November 6, he became the first Arab leader to meet with the heads of the families of the abductees (Shavit, 2023). On November 10, Abbas said in a TV interview that since the beginning of the war, he had been working as hard as possible to help free the hostages by appealing to religious leaders in the Muslim world. He watched the documentary Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre to feel the pain of the victims (Shinberg, 2023). Abbas also called for the removal of Knesset member Iman Khatib Yassin from his party, who claimed there was no massacre. He came out against the Balad demonstration that took place the day before—November 5, 2023—and claimed that Balad does not represent the mindset of Arab society. What does represent the mood in Arab society, according to Abbas, is the survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in November 2023, which showed an unprecedented record of 70% identification of Israeli Arabs with the state (Abu Mookh, 2023). He concluded by saying that the goal is for Jewish and Arab societies to overcome this crisis together in peace (Oko, 2023). Statements and actions of this kind reflected Abbas’s choice of a civil partnership between Jews and Arabs in Israel, a position he has been advocating in recent years and stands in contradiction to the position of other political parties that prefer to highlight the Palestinian national identity. In another survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute (December 25, 2023), more than half of Arab society supported the positions of Abbas, according to whom the Hamas attack does not reflect Arab society and the values of Islam. Furthermore, most Arab societies supported the war effort (As’ad & Kaplan, 2023). Ahmad Tibi condemned the harm to civilians (but not fully), hurled accusations at the government and the Israeli right wing, and wrote about the need for an end to the occupation and peace for all parties (Tibi, 2023). On October 11, Tibi spoke about the efforts he was making to prevent incitement in the mixed cities, and on October 13, he addressed the Knesset, speaking about the difficult times and the horrific acts of murder committed in the South. He also spoke about the fact that there were Jewish victims as well as Arabs (Muslims) and condemned the events, but at the same time, he stated that revenge in the Gaza Strip was not the solution to the conflict (Tibi, 2023). Ayman Odeh wrote on his Twitter account on October 10, 2023 that the blood of the innocent was crying out and that there was another way, the way of peace, to be realized through the vision of two states (Odeh, 2023). In another post on the same day, he wrote that he had made calls to console his Jewish friends from Netiv HaAsara, his Arab friends from the Negev, and his friends from the Gaza Strip for the loss of their loved ones (Odeh, 2023). On October 11, Odeh, like Tibi, wrote that he was trying with local leaders in mixed cities and with the police to prevent violence and called on the Arab public to show restraint and responsibility. On October 13, in his speech in the Knesset, Odeh stated that nothing in the world, not even the occupation, justified harming civilians. He claimed that revenge in the Gaza Strip is not the solution and that only a political solution aimed at peace would bring security (Odeh, 2023). Theoretically and empirically, these statements reflected rhetorics to merge authentic sympathy for the Israeli (Jew and Arab) victims and, at the same time, to call for a solution to the ethno-national conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Sami Abu Shehadeh did not condemn the atrocities of October 7. Instead, he accused US President Joe Biden of giving Israel the green light to carry out ethnic cleansing of Gazans, expressing his pain about this (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). On October 17, Abu Shahadeh wrote on Twitter of the hypocritical Western approach toward Israelis and Palestinians. Given Biden’s visit to Israel on October 18, he asked whether Biden intended to pass through the Gaza Strip and see the Israeli damage or talk to the families of the injured Gazans (Abu Shahadeh, 2023). Raed Salah, the leader of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, distributed a video on Al-Jazeera in which he addressed the international audience and asked every Muslim, Christian, and Jew to call for an end to the war (YouTube, 2023). He called on the public to spread peace, oppose damage to mosques, churches, and synagogues, and allow freedom of prayer. He spoke against harming the innocent: the elderly, women, and children (Al-Jazeera, 2023). In this video, Salah used general phrases about harming innocent people. There was no reference in it to the massacre committed by Hamas on October 7 or its condemnation. A month after the start of the war, Salah appealed in an interview on Al-Jazeera to every person of conscience in the world to call for an end to the humanitarian disaster in the Gaza Strip. In addition, he praised the European nations, who, unlike their governments, showed humanity and took to the streets (YouTube, 2023). Sheikh Salah’s activity reflects full religious identification with Hamas (both movements emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood). His call for a worldwide protest against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip was the maximum he could do. He chose not to incite a protest inside Israel because the faction he heads was outlawed, and he knew he risked another indictment. In this case, he took advantage of his right as a citizen in a democratic country to raise his voice without breaking the law. Kamal Khatib, Salah’s deputy within the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, also ignored Hamas’ atrocities and focused on accusing the Israeli side. On October 11, he wrote on Facebook that there was Jewish incitement against Arab Israeli leaders and that Jewish groups had distributed lists with the names and addresses of Arab leaders in Israel and defined them as a fifth column (Khatib, 2023). He said that the threats would not affect them or change their identity. He signed off the post with the following sentence: “We are getting closer to salvation, be happy” (Khatib, 2023). On October 24, he uploaded a video to the YouTube channel of Muwatini 48, a channel associated with the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, under the title: “Has the military government returned?” In the video, he said: “Since 7 October, what has happened in Israel, our people in the Palestinian interior have been exposed to an unprecedented attack.” He talked about gagging, preventing demonstrations, and preventing freedom of expression, as well as about the hundreds arrested and indicted. He concluded by saying he was not afraid of any threat and was proud of his Palestinian and Islamic identity (YouTube, 2023). In terms of reviewing the statements of the leaders of the Arab public after the massacre of October 7, their statements are not uniform and reflect personal (and collective) identity and ideology. The Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch was careful about expressing support for Hamas but emphasized religious and Palestinian identity. The nationalists focused on the Palestinian side being the victim of the conflict, and the communists called for a peaceful solution and coexistence between the parties. Anti-war Protests among the Arab Public Hamas attempted to recruit Israeli Arabs to its ranks as early as on October 7. In a recorded speech published on that day, Muhammad Deif, the commander of the military wing of Hamas, called on the Arabs of Israel to join Hamas (YouTube, 2023). Hamas sees the Israeli Arabs as a significant force that can help them in any conflict with Israel due to their proximity to major traffic routes and population concentrations (MEMRI, 2023). Previously, in May 2021, Hamas managed to mobilize the Israeli Arabs, who broke out in violent riots all over the country, especially in mixed cities (Hitman, 2023). Scholars in the Muslim world affiliated with Hamas also tried to harness the Muslim citizens of Israel for war against the State of Israel. For example, on November 7, 2023, the International Union of Muslin Scholars (IUMS) issued a fatwa regarding the duty of the governments of Arab countries and Muslims worldwide concerning the war in Palestine. They stated that all Muslims have an obligation to go out and fight for the victory of Gaza; according to the circle theory, with the first circle being the Palestinians in the West Bank, the second being the 1948 Arabs living in Israel, followed by the Arab countries neighboring Israel and, finally, the other Arab and Muslim countries (Ijtihad & Fatwa Committee of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, 2023). All these efforts were made based on a common national and religious identity. Unlike May 2021, when Israeli Arabs erupted in violent riots all over Israel, the religious leadership of the Muslims in Israel, namely the Islamic Movement’s two factions, did not respond to this call by IUMS. The Arab society in Israel responded to the war in Gaza with demonstrations and manifestations of protest. An exception in this context is the story of teacher Rami Habiballah from the north of Israel, who contacted Hamas operatives abroad to promote terrorist attacks in Israel during the war (Senyor & Mughrabi, 2024). The constant dilemma of the Arab residents of Israel, based on the triangle model presented in this article, was also expressed in the manifestations of the protest. On the one hand, some lost their family members in the war, and, on the other hand, some called for an end to it, claiming identification with Gaza. On October 12, 2023, the police dispersed a 15-vehicle Hamas support convoy in Umm el-Fahem and detained four people for questioning (Machol, 2023). On October 18, before the IDF’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Arab demonstrators took to the streets of Haifa Um el-Fahem and Taiba, calling for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip. Following the demonstrations and clashes with the police, several protesters were arrested (Khoury, 2023). On November 9, 2023, senior figures in the leadership of the Arab public, including Muhammad Barakeh, head of the Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Leadership, and senior members of Balad (Abu Shehadeh, Hanin Zoabi, and Mtanes Shehadeh), organized a demonstration against the war in the northern city of Nazareth. The senior leadership of the Arab public in the country was invited to the demonstration. The demonstration was dispersed because the police claimed it was illegal (Sha’alan, 2023). In January 2024, a protest was held in Haifa to stop the war. This protest was the first of its kind, as both Jewish left-wing activists and Israeli Arabs from Haifa attended it. The protesters called for peace, an end to the war, and a stop to the cycle of bloodshed (Al-Jazeera, 2024). Unlike previous protests, the participants were asked to demonstrate their shared citizenship and concern for the victims and express their hope for ending the conflict. On March 2, 2024, a demonstration was held in Kafr Kanna. The demonstration was organized by the Supreme Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab Public after many difficulties in obtaining the necessary approvals from the Israeli police. In this demonstration, calls were heard for an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, identification with the Palestinians, and resistance to the occupation. In addition, Barakeh addressed the common national identity of the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians, stating that the Arab public would not forget what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and that the Arab public was best suited to protecting Al-Aqsa and the holy places from “the occupying Zionists” (Halevi, 2024). It can be observed that despite the severe war in the Gaza Strip, the destruction, and the many Gazan casualties, there was no escalation in the reaction of Israeli Arabs. Unlike the violent events of May 2021, they chose to maintain a low profile and limit their actions to calling for an end to the war through nonviolent demonstrations. This pattern of sporadic demonstrations led residents of the Gaza Strip to accuse Israeli Arabs of not participating in the protests, not supporting Gazans, and remaining silent throughout the war (Zbeedat, 2024). This situation can be understood considering that Israeli Arabs were also affected by the Hamas attack. Two additional reasons for the lack of violent incidents between Jews and Arabs are the enforcement policies of the Israeli police and the Ministry of Justice against expressions of support for Hamas or Gaza and the informational campaign by the Israeli government aimed at the Arab public (Sha’alan, 2024). In practice, the Israeli establishment implemented a stringent enforcement policy against anyone suspected of supporting Hamas or encouraging terrorism within Israel, particularly on social media. This was the case in November 2023, when the police arrested 103 suspects for expressing support for Hamas, with 46 indictments filed. In comparison, from 2018 to 2022, only 88 indictments were filed (Ma’anit et al., 2023). The fact that in the summer of 2024, the number of demonstrations by Arab society against the war has significantly decreased shows not only a routine in the shadow of war but a growing understanding that despite identification with the Palestinian nation, life has its own dynamics, and being citizens of a democratic state creates opportunities for them (alongside threats due to being a minority group). In almost all cases, the decision to stick to peaceful demonstrations is an expression of the clear preference of the Arab public to stick to their citizenship. The fact that the police arrested a few hundred out of a population of 1.5 million is also evidence that the majority of Arab society in Israel sympathizes with the Palestinian nation but remains indifferent when it is required to act in protest or violence to promote Palestinian national interests. Finally, the ongoing war has increased the lack of trust between Jews and Arabs. It is a common phenomenon in majority–minority interaction, especially when the political–identitarian conflict is intractable (Vered & Bar-Tal, 2017). The two cases below illustrate this argument: • Maisa Abd Elhadi, an Arab citizen of Israel from Nazareth, is known for her roles in numerous Israeli series and films and for representing Israel at international festivals. After the Hamas attack, Abd Elhadi posted content on social media expressing support for the terrorist organization and showing enthusiasm for the abduction of Israeli soldiers and civilians to the Gaza Strip (Sever & Machol, 2023). As a result, she was detained for questioning by the police, the broadcasting company HOT announced the termination of its association with her, and her representation agency, Kafri ended its contract with her (Mish’ali, 2023). Ultimately, she was released after 1 day of detention and placed under house arrest with restrictive conditions until December 2024 (Moshkovitz, 2023). • Dr. Abed Samara, the head of the cardiac intensive care unit at Hasharon Hospital, was suspended from his position in mid-October after the hospital’s management interpreted posts he made on Facebook expressing support for Hamas (Drucker, 2023; Efrati, 2023). After a month and a half of suspension and a battle to clear his name with the hospital administration, Samara decided in early December to leave the hospital where he had worked for 15 years due to the hostile atmosphere and the breach of trust between him and the management. The war between Israel and Gaza since October 2023 was another opportunity for Hamas to mobilize Arab society in Israel to support it on the basis of a common national identity. The long duration of the war resulted in reactions within the Arab society that highlighted identification with the Palestinian victims which was mainly expressed in support from afar through social platforms. Along with this, there was a minor increase in the number of terrorist attacks, although the protest was in low numbers. The Israeli government, against the backdrop of the war, took a rigid approach toward Arab demonstrators in an attempt to deter any escalation. Yet, the vast majority of the Israel Arabs did not participate in protests or engage in violence. Conclusion Like previous conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, the war in the Gaza Strip once again illustrated the complexity of Israeli Arabs’ reality and identity. They have Israeli citizenship and live among Jews. At the same time, their national and religious identities are different from the Jewish majority. This permanent situation and their activity since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip in October 2023 lead to several conclusions. First, they have no immunity against possible harm from terrorism. Second, their national and religious identity led a small number of them to act illegally and violently and carry out terrorist attacks against Jews. Third, compared to 2014, there has been an increase in the number of terror attacks carried out by Israeli Arabs. It is an outcome of shared national (and sometimes religious) identity with the Palestinians. Fourth, the vast majority of Arab society in Israel did not take part in protests or violence in response to the war. They remained passive and continued their lives without risking punitive measures from the government. In this context, it is worth noting that there has been an increase in the Arab society’s level of fear of the Israeli establishment, and some of the elements representing it have announced strict enforcement in the case of identifying with Hamas or breaking the law. Finally, the Arab leadership is not united in its attitude to the war. Their public statements reflect a traditional ideological difference, which puts an insurmountable barrier to forming a unified front of a minority society that constantly asks to improve its standard of civil life. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ORCID iDGadi Hitman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9018-1241ReferencesAbbas Mansour. (2023, October 7). 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Abstract It has been over a decade since the emergence of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI was launched, highlights the immense complexity not only of the idea itself but also of China's global influence and the varied attitudes and responses towards it. We hope that these studies, with their diverse approaches and evidence bases, contribute to enriching the expanding literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to wane anytime soon as China continues to be a major global force in the twenty-first century. It has now been over a decade since Xi Jinping first announced the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (丝绸之路经济带, sichou zhilu jingji dai) on land in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in September 2013. Later that year, in October, he also announced a new “twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road” (21世纪海上丝绸之路, ershiyi shiji haishang sichou zhilu) in Indonesia. These announcements marked the beginning of what is now best known as the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI; 一带一路, yidai yilu). For several years in the early first decade of the twenty-first century, as China's economy grew exponentially in size following its entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, there were increasing calls for the country to clarify its global ambitions now that it was a genuinely global economic power. The short-lived notion – around the period between 2003 and 2005 – of China enjoying a “peaceful rise” (和平崛起, heping jueqi) didn’t help much in this regard, with the US and others calling on Beijing to state more clearly its commitment not just to multilateral trade agreements and arrangements, but to their underpinning values (Glaser and Medeiros, 2007). Hu Jintao's presidency from 2002 to 2012 coincided with a period of spectacular gross domestic product (GDP) growth and diplomatic silence. When China did indeed surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy in overall GDP terms in 2010, the need to clearly articulate its view on its global role became more urgent. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the era of the “China Dream” (中国梦, zhongguo meng) and of “telling China's story well” (讲好中国故事, jianghao zhongguo gushi), both internally and externally, has finally begun (Wang and Feng, 2016; Xue Er Shi Xi, 2021). The BRI, therefore, was a core part of the messaging that the country was now engaged in. The initial policy document jointly issued by three ministries of the State Council in 2015 talked of connectivity, a zone of free trade, people-to-people links, and greater cultural communication, all of which were predicated on win–win outcomes (National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Commerce, 2015). That was met increasingly, however, with external criticisms, which ranged from the general vagueness attributed to the BRI to its role in creating indebted partner countries as well as the suspicion that this was about attempting to acquire power, rather than being a cooperative, constructive member of the international community (Perlez and Huang, 2017). Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for instance, labelled the initiative something that did “harm” and framed it as the primary vehicle by which Beijing was extending its malign influence across the world to support authoritarianism and push back against democratic values (Murray-Atfield and Staff, 2020). With over a decade now in existence, this is a good time to reflect on and review what the BRI has meant to the world so far. In 2015, there was no real track record, beyond alluding to China's growing energy and economic interests in Africa, Latin America, and what became labelled as the “Global South.” Since then, a plethora of different treatments and studies have emerged, utilising various metrics, conceptual frameworks, and datasets (e.g. Garlick, 2020; Garlick and Havlová, 2020; Gerstl, 2020; Shakhanova and Garlick, 2020; Turcsanyi and Kachlikova, 2020; Vangeli, 2020). This Special Edition contributes to that literature with a set of contrasting approaches and geographical focuses regarding the BRI. This is a testament to the complexity of the phenomenon itself and its multidimensional character. The one thing that each contribution has, for all their differences, is a recognition of how complex the BRI is, and how it quickly evades straightforward frameworks and unilinear approaches. In Africa, as Ajah and Onuoha (2025) write in their study of Nigerian experiences with the BRI, the record shows that things are not as simple as to support the notion that China is using its newly acquired economic assets solely to assert its power in its own interests. Acknowledging the often critical analysis offered by subscribers to neocolonial, neo-realism and dependency prism theorists, they opt to use complex interdependence theory, stating that the BRI has “provided Nigeria with an opportunity to secure funds for rehabilitating and upgrading its railway infrastructure” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 134). Based on detailed interviews and field research in the country, they show a situation in which the BRI, not just in railways, but in ports and airports, has “yielded tangible results in addressing Nigeria's infrastructural deficits” (Ajah and Onuoha, 2025: 137). That issue of tangibility is essential, with empirical data on both the amount Chinese partners have spent and the results they have achieved.  Recognising the issues around lack of transparency by Chinese partners at some points, and the problems around terms of funding and how these are negotiated and settled, the authors nonetheless conclude that the BRI offers Nigeria more opportunity than vulnerability, providing a cogent corrective to the blanket accusation of one-sided deals where “win–win” for China means that it gains twice. Comerma (2024) addresses the issue of values and frameworks in the differing context of the European Union, and in particular, how normative language emanating from the Chinese government appeared in the eighty Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) issued between China and various European governments since 2018. To some, this was a clear attempt by China to gain validation more widely for its signature foreign policy initiative, and ultimately, for its own desire for influence, recognition, and status. It was linked, as Comerma argues, to a push for a form of soft power with Chinese characteristics, which was popular in the first decade of the twenty-first century and which lingered during the early Xi era. However, leaving aside those MOUs that were impossible to get hold of, in the two that she offers detailed analysis of – those with Italy and Hungary – the outcomes proved very different in the end. Despite adopting some of China's normative language, its soft power was limited, particularly with an audience that holds European values (Comerma, 2024: 242). As she concludes, even if governments did accept Chinese normative language, which overrode their subscription to market values and democratic principles, in implementation, things have not gone smoothly. This is further testified to by the fact that Italy allowed its agreement on the BRI to lapse in 2022. Lin's (2024) approach looks not at a region or territory and its experience and engagement with BRI, but at the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As this article shows, China has shown interest not so much in soft power, but in what is labelled as “soft connectivity,” recognising that there were issues and responsibilities in terms of engagement and management of its overseas interests through the BRI that needed to be considered. As Lin writes, historically, China has “found itself at the receiving end of norms diffusion” (Lin, 2024: 154). With its own celebrated “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” adopted in the 1950s, China stands by a position of non-interference in the affairs of others. That should mean that its investments and engagements in the outside world do not seem to have overt social and political aims, despite the accusations made to the contrary by the country's critics. Lin argues that while China, of course, does not compromise on observing its own mode of doing things domestically, it has proven a “rational and pragmatic” actor externally (Lin, 2024: 172). In environmental issues, in particular, it has found at least a relatively non-contentious space by which to explore CSR-related actions in ways which are seen as mutually beneficial and acceptable, even as its stance on labour rights has been far fainter. The BRI land route was, as noted at the start of this introduction, initially announced in Kazakhstan. It is therefore timely that this volume includes a contribution by Primiano and Kudebayeva (2023) on how students at a university in Almaty view the BRI and Chinese influence generally. Their findings make sobering reading. Despite Central Asia being a key focus of BRI activity and often regarded as a region of largely positive relations with China, the views revealed through the surveys are largely negative and critical. Unsurprisingly, those with greater adherence to liberal and democratic values are the most critical of China, viewing the latter's investments as a threat to the country's oil and gas interests and displaying high levels of unease. At the same time, it is interesting and perhaps significant to note that the study also found a general lack of knowledge regarding the BRI and China's presence in Kazakhstan. Finally, shifting our attention to the sea, Schmitz (2024) offers an assessment of China's historical statecraft in the context of BRI, with a specific focus on the instrumentalisation of the Chinese notion of tianxia (天下, all under heaven) by the country's political and academic elites to narrate both China's past and present as a maritime power and legitimate its claims over various maritime territories. Drawing on textual materials sourced from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, one of the largest databases of academic publications in the country, Schmitz analyses the resurrection of memories of the now-celebrated Ming-era eunuch admiral Zheng He, as well as the archaeological and historical records of Zheng's extensive explorations up to the coast of eastern Africa in the early fifteenth century. For Schmitz, the BRI embodies this expansive thinking of tianxia, which maps out a world where there are the “core region” and “surrounding, concentric zones of influence” (Schmitz, 2024: 215). Acknowledging that “[d]espite the ambitious narrative that frames it, in practice, BRI is a patchwork […],” Schmitz argues, the narrative of tianxia under the sea should be understood as “more than simply a strategy used to calm fears” (Schmitz, 2024: 214), but presenting a different notion of what international space might be, and of how, at least from China's perspective, it seeks to operate within that space. This Special Issue, a decade after the BRI appeared, shows the enormous complexity not only of the idea itself, but also of China's global influence and the range of attitudes and responses to it. That the contributions contain perspectives from Africa, Europe, Central Asia, and the Asian region itself proves how expansive the reach of the project is, as well as how many different issues, from values to CSR, notions of power and dependency, and intellectual frameworks, are involved with it. We hope that these studies, with their very different approaches and evidence bases, help to enrich the growing literature on the BRI – a trend that is unlikely to disappear anytime soon as China continues to be a global force in the twenty-first century. Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.FundingThe authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ORCID iDsKerry Brown https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3472-2357Sinan Chu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9518-1953ReferencesAjah Anthony Chinonso, Onuoha Jonah Isaac (2025) China’s Belt and Road Initiative and infrastructure development in Nigeria: unveiling a paradigm shift or repackaging of failed ventures? 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(2007) The changing ecology of foreign policy-making in China: the ascension and demise of the theory of “peaceful rise.” The China Quarterly 190(June): 291–310.Lin Yue (2024) Evolving normative dynamics: understanding China’s varied approaches to overseas corporate social responsibility in the Belt and Road Initiative era. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 54(2): 149–182. https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241283916.Murray-Atfield Yara, and Staff (2020) Ambassador intervenes after Mike Pompeo warns US could “disconnect” from Australia over Victoria’s Belt and Road deal. ABC News, 24 May. Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-24/mike-pompeo-warning-over-victoria-belt-and-road-deal/12280956 (accessed 01 July 2025).National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce (2015) Vision and actions on jointly building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China. March. Available at: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/zy/jj/2015zt/xjpcxbayzlt2015nnh/202406/t20240606_11381659.html (accessed 01 July 2025).Perlez Jane, Huang Yufan (2017) Behind China’s $1 trillion plan to shake up the economic order. The New York Times, 13 May. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/business/china-railway-one-belt-one-road-1-trillion-plan.html (accessed 01 July 2025).Primiano Christopher B., Kudebayeva Alma (2023) A bumpy ride for China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Kazakhstan: findings from a university survey. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 54(2): 183–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026231211354.Schmitz Frederik (2024) Tianxia under the sea: China’s quest for maritime history. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 54(2): 212–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026241283070.Shakhanova Gaziza, Garlick Jeremy (2020) The Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union: exploring the “greater Eurasian partnership.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 49(1): 33–57.Turcsanyi Richard, Kachlikova Eva (2020) The BRI and China’s soft power in Europe: why Chinese narratives (initially) won. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 49(1): 58–81.Vangeli Anastas (2020) Belt and Road and China’s attempt at region building in central-east and southeast Europe. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 49(1): 14–32.Wang Long 王龙, and Dapeng Feng 冯大鹏 (2016) 关于 “中国梦”, 习近平总书记是这样描绘的 [General secretary Xi Jinping describes “China Dream” as such]. 新华网 [Xinhua Net], 29 November. Available at: http://www.xinhuanet.com//politics/2016-11/29/c_1120016588.htm (accessed 01 July 2025)Xue Er Shi Xi 学而时习 (2021) 习近平：讲好中国故事，传播好中国声音 [Xi Jinping: Tell China’s story well, spread China’s voice well]. 求是网 [QSTheory], 02 June. Available at: http://www.qstheory.cn/zhuanqu/2021-06/02/c_1127522386.htm (accessed 01 July 2025). 

Abstract This article analyzes the challenges and threats to global peace and stability, derived from the unipolar geopolitical vision of the United States and the application of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”, promoted during the Trump administration and characterized by the “Maximum Pressure” strategy promoted by the America First Policy Institute. Through a methodology of documentary review of primary and secondary sources, together with a prospective analysis of risk trends, the strategic and leading role of CELAC in the defense of the interests of Latin America and the Caribbean is dimensioned, highlighting how this organization opens opportunities to strengthen trade relations with Asia and Africa, contributing to the construction of a multipolar world order by promoting initiatives such as China's Belt and Road as an alternative mechanism to the global economic war of the United States and its “US-CUM” project, framed in its foreign policy based on national security interests. Introduction 21st-century geopolitics has undoubtedly been characterized by strong pragmatism in the exercise of states’ foreign policy, balancing between two visions — specifically between the Unipolar Geopolitical Vision and the Multipolar Geopolitical Vision — which have categorized the praxis of international relations of the so-called Global North and Global South, respectively; a context that clearly shows a fervent struggle for political control of resources and for hegemony, where the United States competes for global supremacy with emerging poles of power such as Russia and China. Given the current international scenario, it becomes increasingly imperative to identify and understand both the needs and the challenges for the planet’s sustainable development, from a global perspective in all areas (economic, political, social, geographic, cultural, environmental, and military). In this regard, the present research prospectively analyzes the administration of President Donald Trump as part of the multidimensional threats that the U.S. represents not only for Latin America and the Caribbean but also for Africa and Asia, considering the impact of current U.S. foreign policy both on the American continent and for Africa and Asia. All of this is with a view to highlighting, through debate, the importance of rethinking CELAC as an international organization that systematically advances in a transition process from “Community” to “Confederation,” as an intergovernmental entity with the capacity to confront the threats of a unipolar geopolitical vision foreign policy, and in line with the goals established as development projects under the so-called “CELAC 360 Vision” [1], aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, adopted by the United Nations (UN). Regarding the referred geopolitical transition, it is worth noting, as Guendel (2024) states: “The rising multipolarity will provoke, starting from this first decade of the 21st century, the emergence of historical events that mark the reaction to the expansion of Western geopolitical power to those old regions that were under another geopolitical influence. Among the most notable events, we must consider the processes of de-dollarization of the world economy, the war in Ukraine, the tension in the Taiwan Strait, and, of course, the war in Palestine. Under this reference, it is possible to characterize the current international geopolitical scenario as a moment of transition between the previous form of unipolar power and the new multipolar relations (123) [2]. Building on the above, the current geopolitical transition is a systemic process sustained by the multipolarity of international relations, driven by the struggle for power and the quest for economic dominance in both domestic and international markets. This has given rise to a growing trend in states’ foreign policy toward the construction of a multipolar world, where territorial governance over strategic resources forms part of the necessary geopolitical counterweight in regional dialogue, cooperation, and integration to face the challenges of the present century. The changes in the world order require Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia to promote an idea of continental unity, framed within an anti-imperialist mindset, allowing progress toward Latin American, African, and Asian continentalism, compatible with the multipolar geopolitical vision, under the sustainable development approach put forward through the BRICS. Regarding this last international actor, Guendel (2024) notes: “In the development of a new phase of the globalization process after the end of the Cold War — what was geopolitically a new scenario for consolidating unipolar power relations — new lateral actors emerged, the so-called BRICS, which, by proposing alternative ways of thinking and economic relations favorable to Third World countries, would foster the emergence of a new global geopolitical scenario of multipolar relations (123). According to this scenario, the trend toward multipolarity in international relations —strengthened by globalization and technological advancements — will allow for the consolidation of a multipolar world, though not without first becoming a causal factor of various conflicts and challenges on a global scale, specifically in all spheres of power (economic, political, social, geographic, cultural, environmental, and military). Hence the importance of formulating a strategy for regional integration of Latin America, Asia, and Africa that aligns with global sustainable development plans — such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative — which, combined with the BRICS, constitute two fundamental pillars in strengthening the multipolar world. However, this will also accentuate the differences in geopolitical interests between the strategic agenda of the Global North (led by the U.S. through the G7) and that of the Global South (BRICS countries) regarding the projected economic growth of each. Having this in mind, the present research aims to analyze the challenges and threats to global peace and stability as a consequence of the U.S. unipolar geopolitical vision and the application of the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” promoted by President Donald Trump and the policies advanced by his main think tank, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), characterized by the “Maximum Pressure.” Development U.S.: Foreign policy oriented toward a new global fundamentalism The new White House administration, under the presidency of Donald Trump, challenges the so-called conservative Establishment [3] in the U.S., and according to Myriam Corte (2018), in her article on “Analysis of the U.S. ‘Establishment’” [4], the following statement is mentioned: “The residence of the current president is the site that houses political power, but at the same time reflects migratory power, since it is a construction built in the 18th century by African slaves, based on Irish architecture. As for the cabinet, it is made up of wealthy white men, who are responsible for administering power, but in the current administration some members have been accused of domestic abuse and misogynistic practices; therefore, it is important to identify whether Trump represents that old, conservative, and rigid establishment, or if there is any change” (1). According to what has been stated, there is undoubtedly a perception of a different stance associated with the “Deep State” Establishment in the U.S., with relevant structural changes that have a strong impact on both domestic and foreign policy. An example of this, according to Myriam Corte (2018), is represented in the very fact that: “Another variant is the Bible study group that was formed in the White House, as well as the group of fellows made up of 147 young people between the ages of 21 and 29, with a characteristic profile: all are wealthy individuals, among them the son of the president of the World Bank, who represent the new generation that will inherit power…” (1). In this context, the U.S.’s status as a major power revolves around a scenario of geopolitical conflict, even prioritizing its national interests over those of its main strategic allies, as a consequence of the systemic deterioration of its hegemony vis-à-vis Russia and China. This has generated hostile political actions as strategies to justify its territorial ambitions, in an attempt to counter the exponential growth of the BRIC and the crisis this represents for the global dollar system. A clear example of some hostile political actions is reflected in what happened with its European (NATO) partners recently, as well as with Canada, Mexico, and Greenland, becoming part of the geopolitical pragmatism promoted by the Donald Trump administration. Now, in direct relation to the unipolar geopolitical vision that characterizes U.S. foreign policy, it oscillates between defending the interests of the conservative Establishment and the postulates and ideals promoted by the AFPI [5], which maintain a clear influence in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, acting as a think tank. Regarding this matter related to the influence of AFPI in the Donald Trump administration, it is worth mentioning some aspects associated with the practice of U.S. foreign policy for a better understanding of its current dynamics, which revolve around a new global fundamentalism with a marked unipolar geopolitical vision. Among them, we have the following: New global fundamentalism against the conservative national security establishment The AFPI serves as the main think tank for the Trump administration, according to Seibt (2024), who in his article “The America First Policy Institute, a discreet ‘combat’ machine for Donald Trump” [6], states the following: “America First” is often associated solely with Donald Trump’s isolationism. But behind the scenes, it is also linked to an ultra-conservative think tank with growing influence, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI)” (1); a fact that justifies the appointments made before and after Donald Trump’s swearing-in as President of the U.S., as he has been using an increasingly influential group in high-level decisions, subtly and systematically modifying changes in strategic agendas from the so-called “Deep State,” starting from what Seibt (2024) also refers to: “…the election of Brooke Rollins marks the consecration of AFPI’s influence, of which she is president, and which has been described by the New York Times as ‘a group as influential as it is little known’ in the orbit of Trumpism… Brooke Rollins is not the only person from AFPI that Donald Trump has chosen for his future government. Linda McMahon, chosen to be Secretary of Education, is the director of this think tank. And let us not forget Pam Bondi, who has been called to replace the too-controversial Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, and who oversees all the legal matters of the America First Policy Institute” (para. 5). In this context, there is clear evidence of AFPI’s influence within the Trump administration; therefore, to understand where the unipolar geopolitical vision recently adopted by the U.S. is headed — together with its prospective analysis — it is necessary to understand, from the very foundations of AFPI, how this organization envisions the path of what it calls, from a supremacist perspective, “America First.” To this end, it is enough to review the main AFPI website [7], where both its vision and analysis of what the U.S. should be, as well as how it should approach the exercise of foreign policy, are broken down and organized — with a curious detail that sets it apart: placing the interests of the American people above the interests of the conservative National Security establishment, stimulating the need to create a nation different from what they consider a “theoretical United States.” As AFPI (2025) states and describes: The Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute defends Americans rather than a “theoretical United States” imagined by Washington’s national security establishment. The exercise of American power requires a clear justification, and an “America First” approach ensures that such power is used for the benefit of Americans. To promote this objective, the Center seeks to ensure the rigorous advancement of policies that constitute an authentically American alternative to the increasingly obsolete orthodoxy of Washington’s foreign and defense policy… (para. 2). As outlined, AFPI both promotes and warns about the exercise of power, prioritizing U.S. interests, as long as these remain distant from what it considers the “obsolete orthodoxy of foreign policy” that has characterized the U.S. for decades and centuries. In this sense, the likelihood increases of perceiving the presence or formation of a different establishment in the U.S., one that rivals the Anglo-Saxon conservatism rooted since the nation’s very founding. Domestically, the perception of a new global fundamentalism in U.S. foreign policy grows — one with an even more marked unipolar geopolitical vision of an imperialist nature — based on what AFPI (2025) doctrinally dictates in terms of foreign policy: The phrase “America First” refers to an approach rooted in the awareness of the United States’ unique role in the world and its unparalleled ability to do the most for others when its people are strong, secure, and prosperous. It means that any commitment of American lives or dollars abroad must bring concrete benefits to the American people. Every investment of U.S. resources must generate a substantial security benefit (para. 3). From this, it is possible to infer the direction of the U.S. strategic agenda under the current administration and doctrinally supported by AFPI as its main think tank. However, the deep changes that are occurring — both inside and outside the U.S. — and how the global economic and financial situation fluctuates because of these changes, in a certain way, compel major economies to reconsider new mechanisms for economic and financial coordination and cooperation. This includes strengthening regional integration frameworks that allow them to navigate the ongoing process of reconfiguring the current world order, laying the groundwork for the construction of a multipolar world. Proxy Control of Global Territorial Governance, Backed by the “Donroe Doctrine” The exercise of current U.S. foreign policy, characterized by a unipolar geopolitical vision under the new Trump administration, is the result of the application of a doctrine carefully designed and reformulated from its dogmas, supported by a strong religious fundamentalism and associated with racial supremacism; wherein the U.S. seeks to perpetuate its global hegemony by returning to its original imperialist character. All of this turns the exercise of U.S. power toward National Security, but with a practical approach different from the so-called “obsolete orthodoxy of conservative foreign policy.” As AFPI (2021) has emphasized since its founding: Religious freedom is a fundamental human right guaranteed not only in the Constitution of the United States but also in Article 18 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a natural right inherent to all of humanity (para. 3). With the above, at first glance, AFPI appears to delineate its religious fundamentalism, oriented toward the promotion of a new global fundamentalism through the exercise of foreign policy that justifies its actions in favor of U.S. supremacist interests, in line with what AFPI (2021) reiterates as its mission on its platform: AFPI exists to promote policies that prioritize the American people. Our guiding principles are freedom, free enterprise, national greatness, U.S. military superiority, foreign policy engagement in the interest of the United States, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities in all we do (para. 1). To this, we must add the disposition — regarding national security — of driving U.S. supremacism through the application of Hard Power [8], economic warfare, and the increased implementation of Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs) against any country that contravenes U.S. interests, by perpetuating interventionist policy in all spheres of power (economic, political, social, geographic, cultural, environmental, and military). An example of the above is referred to by AFPI (2025) on its website [9], as follows: The American victories in World War II and the Cold War established our country as “the last best hope for man on Earth.” The cause of freedom everywhere in the world depends on a strong United States. With our country secure, we can, with greater confidence, promote American security abroad. U.S. security is exemplified by a strong military, fair trade agreements, alliances that are equitable, aggressors who are isolated, and those who harm us, destroyed. The AFPI views American security abroad as a prerequisite for peace at home: always putting American interests first. This includes moving away from endless and unnecessary wars to rebuild the homeland, while also understanding our indispensable role in maintaining a peaceful world… (para. 4). With a brief reading of the above, it is possible to see at first glance the practical description of current U.S. foreign policy, starting from the fact of recent attempts to end the Ukrainian conflict; however, skepticism when addressing both the geopolitical feasibility and the reliability of the proposals made by the Trump administration reveals a hidden objective, particularly associated with proxy control of global territorial governance through hostile policies and the use of the government itself as a weapon. An example of this is the stimulation of a trade war by the U.S. against Canada, Mexico, and the European Union (NATO allies), all with the aim of establishing as a rule the use of Hard Power for political persuasion over strategic resources — an example of this being the recent (and forcibly) signed rare earths agreement by Ukraine — in favor of the United States. U.S.-CUM, a New Nation-State and Persuasive Technology: Utopia or Global Geopolitical Threat? Geopolitical changes in the 21st century are advancing in parallel with technology, the economy, and global energy interdependence. For this reason, the use of Persuasive Technologies [10], through various media and information channels, plays a fundamental role in creating opinion frameworks and the mass manipulation of perceptions on a global scale. In other words, in the Era of Disinformation, technology is the primary tool, stemming from the communication needs of modern society. In this regard, Tusa et al. (2019) state the following: “…fake news has always existed. What is happening now is a greater emergence on open and free access platforms, which causes this type of information to grow exponentially in a matter of seconds. Therefore, fake news creates a wave of disinformation, a fact that motivates academia and civil society to counter it, to achieve the return of good journalism and truthful information” (20). [11] In this context, current disinformation processes respond to pre-established objectives by power poles linked to fluctuating geoeconomic interests in the world order, in which the Global North with a unipolar geopolitical vision and the Global South with a multipolar geopolitical vision are in open confrontation. In relation to this, Valton (2022) points out: “…economic globalization, finance, and the development of new technologies have opened spaces for the new geoeconomy. Thus, geoeconomy as part of the process of change plays an essential role that affects international relations, with an impact on international trade, global markets, and conflicts in the quest for capital accumulation. Geopolitical interests are closely linked to the economic gains of major capitalist powers and transnational corporations in their eagerness to increase their revenues, maintain and expand their area of influence in other regions, at the expense of the indiscriminate exploitation of the natural resources of underdeveloped countries, with high poverty rates and environmental damage” (2). [12] Now, considering the unipolar geopolitical vision of U.S. foreign policy and the doctrinal influence of the AFPI in the new Trump administration, there is a curious growing communication campaign on different digital platforms, specifically associated with persuasive technologies, that fosters the perception of the creation of a new State called U.S.-CUM. While this corresponds to a very subtle disinformation campaign and somewhat utopian in nature, it is nonetheless surprising that, in the facts and actions of the new White House administration, they have not stopped flirting with certain ideas related to the mentioned State in question.   To be more specific, the U.S.-CUM is a utopian idea of a territorial expansion of the current United States, adding the territorial spaces of Canada and Mexico with the goal of increasing the economic, political, financial, and military capacities of the U.S., to counter emerging powers and prevent the consolidation of a multipolar world. An example of this can be found in some posts made on the Reddit platform, a social network popular among the U.S. population, similar to Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook, among others. The U.S.-CUM utopia has now moved from a mere concept to a possible threat to global geopolitics, the moment the foreign policy of the Trump administration suggests the possibility of territorially adding Canada, turning it into the 51st state of the United States. Colvin (2025), in his AP article titled “Trump says he is serious about making Canada the 51st U.S. state,” refers to the following: President Donald Trump said he was serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state of the United States in an interview aired Sunday during the Super Bowl pregame show… The United States is not subsidizing Canada. Americans purchase products from the resource-rich nation, including raw materials such as oil. Although the goods trade deficit has grown in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, it largely reflects U.S. imports of Canadian energy… (paras. 1-4). [13] In relation to the same policy undertaken with Canada, the Trump administration began a very dangerous strategy against its territorial neighbors, with the following actions: declaring Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups (knowing how the U.S. has manipulated the concept of terrorism to justify military interventions), implementing migrant deportation policies, waging a fight against fentanyl, and additionally launching a tariff war with both Mexico and Canada. It has also reiterated its intention to annex Greenland, accompanied by threats of tariffs and a trade war against Denmark and other EU countries, including undermining the existence of NATO. All the above is carried out under the close advice and influence of the AFPI, clearly reflected in its supremacist doctrinal positions and aspirations to create a large imperialist nation. An example of these ambitions has been openly published by various international media outlets, including the news channel FRANCE24. In this outlet, Blandón (2025) refers to the following: During a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated that control of Greenland is necessary to improve international security, while once again confirming his interest in annexing this territory… Outgoing Greenland Prime Minister Mute Egede responded on the social network Facebook: “The U.S. president has once again raised the idea of annexing us. Enough is enough!”, and added that he will call on the leaders of all parties to convince them to prevent it… (paras. 1, 2).   In other words, it is appropriate to infer that the direction and intentionality of the foreign policy of the new Trump administration is aimed at territorial expansionism and the promotion of proxy control of global territorial governance, supported by the “Donroe Doctrine” and enhanced through the use and development of Persuasive Technology, aligned with a global strategic agenda (influenced by the AFPI), which seeks to counter the strengthening of a multipolar world and perpetuate U.S. imperialist hegemony under a global supremacy fundamentalism. CELAC as a Geopolitical Counterweight to the Real Threat of the U.S. and Its New Imperialist Format for Hegemonic Survival The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), as an intergovernmental organization, currently acquires strategic value for the entire continent and its sustainable development, within the framework of creating new mechanisms for coordination, cooperation, and regional integration with Africa and Asia — especially China — through the Belt and Road Initiative, considering the entire current geopolitical context where markets play a predominant role in defining internal policies and in directly influencing the strategic agendas of each nation's foreign policy, according to constantly changing global challenges, heightened by the stance adopted by the Global North, led by the U.S., against the Global South, led by BRICS countries. Once the real threat posed by the U.S. has been identified — based on the unipolar geopolitical vision that has characterized the exercise of its foreign policy — this is compounded by the supremacist trend in implementing Unilateral Coercive Measures (UCMs) [14] against free and independent nations that, upholding the principle of self-determination, do not submit to or share the interests of the Anglo-Saxon establishment, promoted by the new U.S. administration. Now then, conducting a prospective analysis of how and on what grounds the U.S. sustains and describes its current hegemonic behavior, it is possible to predict, with certain elements and data, what its courses of action will be — courses that Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Africa and Asia (especially China), should consider. Among these, the following stand out: Territorial Expansion of the U.S. Trade War The current trade war declared between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico — initially through the reciprocal imposition of tariffs — considering the influence of the AFPI as a U.S. Think Tank, is clearly perceived as territorial expansion, in search of proxy control over territorial governance previously mentioned, of all strategic resources in Latin America and the Caribbean. This comes because of the fiscal, economic, and financial weakening the U.S. is experiencing through the increase of public debt, which is practically unsustainable. In this sense, the actions taken by the Trump administration in appointing certain cabinet positions can be understood to some extent. However, it is curious and at the same time causal that many appointments obey and are related — directly and indirectly — to the training of officials associated with and linked to the AFPI, as part of its strategic objective. An example of this are the words of Colonel Robert Wilkie, co-chair of the Center for American Security, member of the AFPI, quoted by King (2025) in his press article titled “AFPI Welcomes President Trump’s Renewal of the American Dream”, where the following was stated, making direct reference to peace through strength: President Trump proclaimed that America is back, which means our Armed Forces are back: the greatest force for peace in the history of the world. He has restored the highest combat standards so that our soldiers fight, win, and return home to their loved ones as soon as possible. President Trump has restored the place of honor our warriors hold in the hearts and minds of the American people. He has restored America’s deterrent power and told the world that the most powerful words in the language are: “I am an American citizen.” Our borders are stronger, our seas safer, and every wrongdoer knows that the eagle is watching them. (para. 6) The above statement does not set aside its imperialist and supremacist character, denoting the philosophical and doctrinal thinking deeply rooted in the officials who hold government functions at all decision-making levels, promoting pro-U.S. policies that disrespect international law and encourage the establishment of a rules-based world order, with full disregard for the international rule of law. This is, in fact, a very complex and dangerous geopolitical situation, which threatens not only the self-determination of peoples, but also the ability to advance in areas of coordination, cooperation, and integration to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, to which CELAC countries adhere through the implementation of development plans seeking mutual benefit. Now then, the world order is in permanent change, with a tendency toward the consolidation of a multipolar world because of the crisis of capitalism and the Anglo-Saxon economic model represented in the Bretton Woods System. This situation favors the opening of new mechanisms supported by the multipolarity of international relations, depending on the behavior of the world economy, as a result of the policies of both the U.S. and emerging powers—especially the BRICS countries. However, it is precisely the economic pulse that will redefine the hostile actions of the U.S. in defense of its global hegemonic power, equally and in parallel influenced by the energy capacities of the world powers in conflict — an element that is preponderant in geopolitical influence. An example in this chapter is Russia’s advantage in gas and oil during the Ukrainian conflict. The exponential economic growth of the BRICS compared to the G7 is the clearest expression of the multilateral influence trend of member countries, in line with the multipolarity of international relations, where the geopolitical positioning of both the Global North (G7) and the Global South (BRICS) can be clearly observed. This economic and financial disparity accelerates the weakening of the Bretton Woods System and, consequently, the collapse of the dollar system within the Anglo-Saxon economic model, leading to the loss of hegemonic influence of the Global North countries — especially the U.S. as its main exponent. Other data are relevant when conducting a prospective analysis, with the aim of identifying growth and sustainable development opportunities, as well as understanding the challenges to achieving strategic objectives for comprehensive development by nations. Among the data to consider in the prospective analysis, we have the following chart, associated with excessive global consumption in the 21st century compared to the 20th century:   According to the chart on excessive global consumption, in only six years of progress into the 21st century, modern society has exceeded more than half of what it consumed in the 20th century, with a 75% increase above the average recorded over the last 100 years — a truly alarming percentage with a tendency to increase, as a consequence of economic activity, technological advancement, and the increase of armed conflicts worldwide. Within this context, the U.S. will increasingly seek to influence countries that significantly represent an economic interest in terms of territory, population density, manufacturing and industrial capacity, and geographic position. Through proxy control of territorial governance, it will aim to increase its hegemonic capacity in the economic and financial spheres against its main geopolitical rivals in the struggle for global supremacy — namely Russia and China — whose multipolar geopolitical vision entirely rivals the unipolar geopolitical vision of U.S. foreign policy. Given this scenario, CELAC presents a fundamental characteristic that allows it to move forward as a geopolitical counterweight to the U.S., broken down as follows:Territorial extension: all member countries together cover an enormous territorial space rich in strategic resources, with common areas of influence and mutual interest for sustainable development. Shared future, based on history, language, customs, and other cultural expressions that strengthen Latin American and Caribbean identity, which can be leveraged in the processes of regional consultation, cooperation, and integration with Africa and Asia. The increase in the hostile trend of U.S. foreign policy worldwide will require greater effort from CELAC to advance in consolidating full regional integration. However, the current progress of the intergovernmental organization has been limited to certain and specific areas, namely the economic, cultural, social, and political spheres of its members. Transition toward the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean States as a strategy for geopolitical counterbalance and sustainable development For CELAC to consolidate itself as a geopolitical counterweight to U.S. hegemonic ambitions in the region, it must be grounded in the exercise of a foreign policy with a multipolar geopolitical vision, compatible with the mutual sustainable development interests of the Global South. In this regard, Palacio de Oteyza (2004), in his essay "The Imperial Image of the New International Order: Is This Political Realism?" states the following: “The second realistic image of the international order, partially compatible with the geoeconomic image, consists of a return to a traditional multipolar system of balance of power, but with a decisive weight given to the military factor. The multipolar system is characterized by the absence of a hegemon and a flexibility of alliances among the great powers, aimed at restraining any potential challenger” [13]. In this context, the geopolitical counterweight that CELAC needs to confront the U.S.’s hegemonic ambitions in the region — and even globally — is regional integration in other areas not currently contemplated by the Community of Nations due to its nature. That is, increasing integration in the military, geographic, and social spheres through the transition toward a confederation of nations would enhance international relations capabilities, contributing to the adoption of deterrent measures for the prevention of armed conflicts and even facilitating its integration into other centers of power with a multipolar geopolitical vision, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to further strengthen relations with both Russia and China and their respective sustainable development plans. Economic opening and new formulas for regional integration with Africa and Asia An economic opening is the result of the globalization process, the advancement of new technologies, and the effects of the exercise of states’ foreign policies in accordance with their interests and the geopolitical vision they adopt, for geopolitical analysis that enables the identification of risks, threats, and opportunities in the international arena. That said, within the framework of regional integration, CELAC must also prioritize investment sectors for the establishment of common development interests among CELAC, Africa, and Asia. One of the most notable current realities is the fact that the Global South’s economy began systematically, setting challenges and then experiencing growth in less time compared to the growth of the G20, led by the U.S., with China taking the lead according to the percentage value recorded in 2024. In this scenario, CELAC, by reconsidering its transition toward a Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean States, would allow for greater autonomy in its integration into the global architecture implied by the strengthening and consolidation of the BRICS at the global level as an alternative system to the Bretton Woods System. In doing so, advances toward strengthening regional integration — embedded within a new multipolar world, with the combined capabilities of the Global South — can become, more than a reality, a necessity to confront the real threats posed by the U.S., serving as a geopolitical counterweight and a tool for insertion into the multipolar world through continental alliances between Latin America and the Caribbean, with Africa and Asia. Conclusions It was possible to assess the leading role of CELAC and its strategic nature in defending the regional interests of Latin America and the Caribbean, opening a world of opportunities in trade relations with Asia and Africa for the construction of a multipolar world through the promotion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative as an alternative mechanism to confront the U.S. economic war on a global scale and its project to create the so-called “U.S.-CUM”, as part of its foreign policy based on its national security interests. In this regard, in an environment of geopolitical changes and international crisis, as part of the transition process toward the consolidation of a multipolar world, CELAC can promote or drive significant advances aimed at the creation of a Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Nations (CONLAC) as part of a strategy for integration with Asia and Africa, considering the multipolar geopolitical vision shared by the Global South, where the concept of shared development represents a key point for international dialogue and cooperation — specifically in the economic, social, political, geographic, cultural, environmental, and military spheres. All of this would serve to act as a geopolitical counterweight to the threats and global challenges promoted by the U.S., in the exercise of its unipolar geopolitical vision in foreign policy, of an imperialist, hegemonic, and supremacist nature. Notes [1] Fuente: https://celacinternational.org/projects/[2] Revista Comunicación. Año 45, vol. 33, núm. 1, enero-junio 2024 (pp. 120-133). Fuente: https:// www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1659-38202024000100120[3] Conjunto de personas, instituciones y entidades influyentes en la sociedad o en un campo determinado, que procuran mantener y controlar el orden establecido. Fuente: https://dpej.rae. es/lema/establishment[4] https://gaceta.politicas.unam.mx/index.php/poder-estadounidense/[5] https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/security/national-security-defense[6] https://www.france24.com/es/ee-uu-y-canad%C3%A1/20241126-el-america-first-policy-institute-una-discreta-m%C3%A1quina-de-combate-de-donald-trump[7] https://americafirstpolicy.com/centers/center-for-american-security[8] El poder duro se da cuando un país utiliza medios militares y económicos para influir en el comportamiento o los intereses de otras entidades políticas. Es una forma de poder político a menudo agresiva, es decir, que utiliza la coerción. Su eficacia es máxima cuando una entidad política la impone a otra de menor poder militar o económico. Fuente: https://www. jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-isthe-difference-between-hard-power-and-softpower-1608095574-1[9] https://americafirstpolicy.com/centers/center-for-american-security[10] La tecnología persuasiva está concebida para permitir que los usuarios voluntariamente cambien sus actitudes o comportamientos por medio de la persuasión y la influencia social. Al igual que la tecnología de control, utiliza actuadores y un algoritmo de influencia para ofrecerle información eficaz al usuario. Fuente: https://osha.europa.eu/es/tools-and-resources/eu-osha-thesaurus/term/70213i#:~:text=Context:,ofrecerle%20informaci%C3%B3n%20eficaz%20al%20usuario[11] https://revistas.usfq.edu.ec/index.php/perdebate/article/view/1550/2661[12] Fuente: https://www.cipi.cu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/1-elaynevalton.pdf[13] https://apnews.com/article/trump-canadagolfo-america-super-bowl-bret-baier-musk-cc8848639493d44770e60e4d125e5a62[14] Medidas Coercitivas Unilaterales.[15] Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, núm. 64, p. 7-28 References Colvin, J. (2025, 9 de febrero). Trump dice que habla en serio al afirmar que Canadá sea el estado 51 de EEUU. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/trump-canada-golfo-america-super-bowl-bret-baier-musk-cc8848639493d44770e60e4d125e5a62Corte, M. (2018, 7 de mayo). Análisis del ‘establishment’ estadounidense. Gaceta UNAM. https://gaceta.politicas.unam.mx/index.php/poder-estadounidense/Guendel Angulo, H. (2024). Escenarios de transición: De la geopolítica mundial unipolar a la multipolar. Revista Comunicación On-line. https://www.scielo.sa.cr/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1659-38202024000100120Palacio de Oteyza, V. (2003). La imagen imperial del nuevo orden internacional: ¿es esto realismo político? Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, (64), 7-28. https://www.cidob.org/publicaciones/la-imagen-imperial-del-nuevo-orden-internacional-es-esto-realismo-politicoSeibt, S. (2024, 26 de noviembre). El America First Policy Institute, una discreta máquina de "combate" de Donald Trump. France24. https://www.france24.com/es/ee-uu-y-canad%C3%A1/20241126-el-america-first-policy-institute-una-discreta-m%C3%A1quina-de-combate-de-donald-trumpTusa, F., & Durán, M. B. (2019). La era de la desinformación y de las noticias falsas en el ambiente político ecuatoriano de transición. Perdebate. https://revistas.usfq.edu.ec/index.php/perdebate/article/view/1550/2661Valton Legrá, E. (2022). La geopolítica de la tecnología: una visión sistémica. CIPI. https://www.cipi.cu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/1-elaynevalton.pdfZelada Castedo, A. (2005). Perspectiva histórica del proceso de integración latinoamericana. Revista Ciencia y Cultura, (17), 113-120. Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo, La Paz, Bolivia.

A new maritime chessboard is emerging across the Indian Ocean. Over the past decade, China has transformed several African ports into strategic outposts. What began as trade-focused infrastructure under the Belt and Road Initiative has evolved into a network of dual-use facilities with both commercial and military potential. At the forefront is Djibouti, where China established its first overseas military base in 2017, located just a few miles from the US Camp Lemonnier. Positioned at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint through which nearly ten percent of global oil flows, the base grants Beijing critical surveillance and logistical capabilities. Since its establishment, the base has supported PLA Navy operations, including anti-piracy missions and amphibious training exercises, signalling a shift toward power projection. Further south, Tanzania’s Bagamoyo Port and Kenya’s Lamu Port underscore China’s ambitions across the western Indian Ocean. Though Bagamoyo was suspended in 2019 amid sovereignty concerns, the project’s blueprint remains an ongoing strategic ambition for Beijing. China’s strategic ports in Africa: from commerce to control  China’s port investments along Africa’s eastern seaboard are part of a broader plan to embed influence at key maritime chokepoints. The Djibouti base enables far-seas naval operations and intelligence reach. Kenya’s Lamu Port, while not Chinese-controlled, holds strategic potential as a future logistics hub aligned with Beijing’s maritime ambitions. Other reports suggest interest in Equatorial Guinea’s Bata Port, Sudan’s Port Sudan, and Mozambique’s Nacala, indicating a westward expansion of China’s Indian Ocean footprint. These ports offer China access to vital transit routes and reinforce its capacity to sustain long-range naval deployments. The combination of civilian infrastructure with military potential—known as dual-use facilities—grants the PLA Navy flexibility in both peacetime and contingency operations. This growing footprint represents a subtle yet steady attempt to lock in strategic leverage across one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. Together, these facilities provide China with a triangulated presence across the Red Sea, Horn of Africa, and Mozambique Channel—impacting vital Indian trade and energy routes. They also provide Beijing with the means to gather maritime intelligence, secure sea lines of communication, and possibly influence regional political calculations. India’s ocean strategy: recalibrating amid encirclement  India’s response is strategic and distributed. Under the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) doctrine, India promotes inclusive maritime development and regional stability. Rather than build permanent bases, India pursues access agreements. It is upgrading Agalega Island (Mauritius), maintaining interest in Seychelles’ Assumption Island, and enjoying naval access to Oman’s Duqm Port. Since 2017, mission-based deployments have ensured near-continuous presence in the Gulf of Aden. These deployments allow the Indian Navy to maintain a forward presence in key hotspots while avoiding the political baggage of foreign bases. They also improve responsiveness to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, anti-piracy missions, and regional crises. For example, during the 2023 Sudan crisis, the Indian Navy swiftly launched Operation Kaveri to evacuate over 3,800 Indian and foreign nationals. Similarly, India’s proactive anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden have ensured the safe passage of thousands of merchant vessels over the past decade. This mobile posture reinforces India’s reputation as a reliable first responder in the region. India also prioritises multilateral cooperation. It hosts the Milan naval exercise and participates in engagements like IBSAMAR (with Brazil and South Africa) and La Pérouse (with Quad plus navies). Coordination with France has deepened, with joint patrols near Réunion Island under a logistics agreement. Such engagements are not only tactical, they are political statements of alignment and trust. They underscore India’s growing capability to coordinate complex maritime missions and signal its intention to lead from within regional frameworks rather than dominate them. In 2023, India launched an expanded outreach through its Information Fusion Centre, Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), collaborating with East African coastal states on maritime domain awareness, hydrography, and port call diplomacy. The IFC-IOR serves as a hub for sharing real-time data, boosting early warning capacity, and deterring illegal maritime activities such as trafficking, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, and piracy. While China’s approach emphasises large-scale infrastructure development, India is constructing a maritime presence that places greater emphasis on trust-building, transparency, and regional alignment. In a space increasingly shaped by port politics, India’s focus on utility over ubiquity signals a long-term commitment to maritime stability. Indo-African Arc: diplomatic realignment  India’s diplomatic vision is evolving into an Indo-African maritime arc. The Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), co-developed with Japan, aims to offer transparent, locally owned alternatives to China’s model. Though still aspirational, it signals India’s strategic intentions. India’s engagement in the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) further anchors its presence through initiatives on disaster relief, fisheries, climate resilience, and blue economy development. India’s hydrographic cooperation with Kenya—through naval surveys, nautical chart hand‑over, and personnel training—as well as similar support for EEZ surveillance in Tanzania, all reinforce a partnership‑driven maritime presence. In Madagascar, Comoros, and Mozambique, Indian assistance in capacity building and climate adaptation has strengthened India’s maritime diplomacy by projecting it as a credible development partner Beyond government initiatives, India’s increasing outreach through Track 1.5 and Track 2 dialogues demonstrates a broader understanding of strategic influence. Narratives of South-South cooperation, shared colonial histories, and inclusive development resonate deeply across African coastal nations. India’s strategy diverges from China’s in both intent and execution. While Beijing favours physical infrastructure, India offers capacity building and cooperative frameworks. This appeals to regional states increasingly wary of debt diplomacy. The emphasis on skill-sharing, maritime governance, and local ownership reflects India’s confidence in a more horizontal model of engagement. Should India opt for counterbalance or coexistence? As China deepens its Indian Ocean presence, India must remain agile. It is not matching China port-for-port but building coalitions, enhancing indigenous capability, and advancing a maritime order rooted in rules and reciprocity. Strategic cooperation with France, the US, Japan, and Australia—including the India-France-Australia trilateral—widens India’s operational theatre without hard alignments. Domestically, initiatives like Make in India and institutions like the Naval Innovation and Indigenization Organisation foster autonomy and modernisation. These reforms enhance India’s ability to sustain blue water operations and reduce dependency on foreign suppliers. Strategic horizons beyond the harbor  The evolving maritime landscape in the western Indian Ocean is more than a competition over ports; it is a contest over norms, access, and the architecture of regional security. China’s approach, anchored in infrastructural assertiveness and long-term presence, represents a significant shift in Indian Ocean geopolitics. India, in contrast, is building a decentralised yet durable framework of partnerships, access agreements, and institutional trust. India’s strategy is not merely reactionary; it is rooted in its vision of a free, open, and inclusive maritime space. By blending strategic realism with normative commitment, India offers coastal African states and island nations an alternative that emphasises sovereignty, sustainability, and shared development. This layered maritime engagement, ensures that India remains a credible and constructive player in the region. In the long run, strategic patience may prove more effective than infrastructural ambition. While China’s port-led strategy seeks control through presence, India is cultivating influence through principles. As regional nations assert agency and seek balanced partnerships, India’s maritime model could become not only preferable but indispensable. Moreover, the Indian Ocean’s future will not be determined solely by naval strength or economic muscle, but by who can foster the most resilient and inclusive partnerships. The contest is as much about ideas as it is about assets. India’s model, grounded in cooperation rather than coercion, is increasingly well-suited to the aspirations of coastal African nations navigating a multipolar maritime environment. If the Indian Ocean is to remain a space of peace, prosperity, and pluralism, it will require leadership anchored in legitimacy and cooperation. In choosing that path, India may well secure more than maritime advantage-it may shape the very character of the Indo-African seascape for decades to come. Dr Amit Kumar Singh is a researcher in International Relations with core specialisation in India’s foreign policy, Indo-Pacific studies, maritime security and geopolitics. This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

When Hezbollah makes headlines, it’s usually in reference to its military entrenchment in southern Lebanon, its alignment with Iran, or its influence on the internal politics of Beirut. Rarely does the Western Hemisphere—let alone South America—enter the discussion. And when it does, the framing tends to follow a familiar arc: Hezbollah, in search of hard currency, has plugged itself into narcotics, smuggling, and money laundering networks across the continent, particularly in the Tri-Border Area of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. This framing is not entirely wrong—but it is incomplete. The prevailing analysis treats Hezbollah’s South American activity as an opportunistic extension of its Middle Eastern operations: a way to fund the real action elsewhere (Sánchez-Azuara 2024). But this view underestimates the strategic thinking behind the group’s presence in the region. It also overlooks what Hezbollah has built. This is not a haphazard criminal sideline. It is a strategic redundancy network—a deliberately constructed system that enables Hezbollah to replicate key elements of its logistical, financial, and operational architecture outside the Middle East. In engineering, redundancy is the backbone of resilience. Critical systems—airplanes, power grids, even satellites—include backups not because failure is likely, but because failure must not be catastrophic. Hezbollah has applied this principle to its global infrastructure. In South America, it has established a parallel network that functions as an insurance policy. When borders close in the Levant, when sanctions bite into banks in Beirut, when surveillance escalates in Damascus or Baghdad, Hezbollah’s South American infrastructure absorbs the shock. It keeps the lights on. Quietly. Hezbollah’s footprint in South America must be reinterpreted in light of this logic. Its operations are not merely about funding jihad, nor do they reflect simple criminal diversification. Rather, they represent a strategic adaptation: a forward-looking response to growing constraints in the Middle East and a model of globalized insurgency capable of surviving geopolitical disruption. By embedding itself in regions with weak enforcement, complex diasporas, and pliable state actors, Hezbollah has created a system that mirrors and supplements its core operational capacities in Lebanon. The implications ripple outward to multinational corporations, humanitarian NGOs, diplomatic missions, and financial institutions operating in the Western Hemisphere. More Than a Militia: A Low-Burn Threat with High-Stakes Implications for South America Most strategic planning in the Americas does not seriously account for Hezbollah. But Hezbollah includes the Americas in its strategy—and has for years. Reports by the U.S. State Department, regional intelligence agencies, and investigative journalists have traced its fundraising and logistics operations as far back as the 1980s. The group’s involvement in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires shocked the region and revealed its operational reach. Yet even after those attacks, Hezbollah’s local infrastructure remained largely untouched. Over time, it adapted—becoming quieter, less kinetic, and more commercially embedded. Today, Hezbollah’s presence in the region extends beyond Argentina. Its operatives and facilitators maintain networks across Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela, and increasingly, Panama and Chile. In some areas, the group benefits from corrupt municipal officials and overburdened law enforcement. In others, it leverages familial ties within Lebanese diaspora communities—many of which have resided in South America for generations and engage in wholly legitimate commerce. This duality allows Hezbollah to move seamlessly between legal and illegal domains, between visibility and invisibility. What is more, Hezbollah’s activities in South America illustrate a critical shift in how non-state actors pursue durability. The post-9/11 focus on active cells, kinetic operations, and centralized command has obscured the ways in which militant groups evolve under pressure. Hezbollah’s Latin American strategy reflects not just persistence, but future-proofing. It prepares the group to operate, fundraise, and survive—even if Lebanon’s political landscape collapses or U.S. and Israeli countermeasures grow more precise. This is what makes Hezbollah’s Latin American footprint so consequential—and so misunderstood. It does not need to launch attacks from Buenos Aires or Caracas to matter. Its function lies elsewhere: in logistics, in mobility, in backup planning. Its value is latent—until it isn’t. This article reexamines Hezbollah’s presence in South America as a strategic redundancy network—a global infrastructure designed to insulate the organization from volatility in its home region. It maps Hezbollah’s key nodes across the Tri-Border Area, Brazil, and Venezuela; analyzes how this network blends ideology, crime, and strategic depth; and assesses the risks these structures pose to multinational companies, diplomatic missions, and local governance. By shifting the analytical lens from terrorism-as-attack to terrorism-as-infrastructure, we gain a more accurate understanding of Hezbollah’s evolution. We also sharpen our ability to assess long-term risks that don’t always announce themselves through violence. The threat is not just in what Hezbollah does—but in what it has already built. To understand Hezbollah’s long game in South America, we must stop treating its regional footprint as a patchwork of illicit side hustles and begin seeing it for what it is: a modular system, designed to flex and absorb pressure. Its parts do not function in isolation. They interlock—geographically, financially, and politically—to provide resilience against external disruption (Fanusie and Entz 2017). The Tri-Border Area and Venezuela anchor this network. One provides operational depth; the other, state-enabled sanctuary. This networked approach reflects a deliberate organizational logic: decentralization without disintegration. Hezbollah doesn’t need to command every operation from Beirut to exert control. Instead, it builds regional capacities—trusted facilitators, revenue-generating enterprises, covert logistics—that can operate semi-autonomously while remaining ideologically and financially tethered to the core. The value lies in the system’s adaptability. South America’s legal pluralism, infrastructural gaps, and uneven political allegiances allow Hezbollah to embed itself in multiple jurisdictions, each contributing to a broader architecture of operational continuity. The redundancy isn’t accidental—it’s engineered to allow Hezbollah to absorb disruption without systemic collapse. At the confluence of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina lies the Tri-Border Area, a notorious gray zone where Hezbollah has operated with continuity for over three decades (Marinides 2021). Since the 1990s, the group has leveraged this region’s smuggling economy, its cash-based transactions, and its thin rule of law to generate income and obscure its footprints (Giambertoni March 2025; Singh & Lamar 2024). More than a staging ground, the region functions as a logistical twin to Hezbollah’s Levantine infrastructure: cash businesses, hawala systems, safe houses, and a deep bench of operatives linked by blood, marriage, and communal identity. The Lebanese diaspora, concentrated in cities like Ciudad del Este and Foz do Iguaçu, provides both legitimacy and opacity. While most community members engage in legal commerce, Hezbollah operatives exploit social and familial networks to build financial pipelines and conceal movement. Individuals like Assad Ahmad Barakat—an alleged financier whose web of import-export businesses stretched across Paraguay and Brazil—reveal the sophistication and scale of these operations (BBC 2018). But what makes the Tri-Border Area especially valuable is not just what Hezbollah can do there—it’s what it can replicate. This zone mirrors the group’s operational core: informal financial tools, plausible cover, limited state oversight. It offers a plug-and-play platform that persists even when international pressure tightens elsewhere. If the Tri-Border Area is Hezbollah’s logistical limb, Venezuela is its political lung—a place where the group doesn’t just operate despite the state but, increasingly, through it. Under the leadership of Hugo Chávez and now Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has extended cover to Hezbollah-linked actors in ways that surpass tolerance and verge on partnership. Evidence abounds. In 2015, reports emerged that Venezuelan authorities had issued passports, national ID cards, and even birth certificates to individuals with suspected ties to Hezbollah and other extremist groups (Humire 2020). These documents grant mobility across Latin America and even into Europe. Meanwhile, direct flights between Caracas and Tehran—often operated by Iran’s Mahan Air, a U.S.-sanctioned airline with alleged ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—further illustrate the depth of coordination. Financial networks also interlace. Venezuelan state-owned banks, particularly under Chávez, were reportedly used to move funds on behalf of Hezbollah-aligned entities, sometimes in cooperation with Lebanese banks later implicated in terror financing (Testimony, U.S. Congress 2011). This alignment is less ideological than pragmatic: Hezbollah gains security, access, and mobility; Venezuela gains a partner in sanctions circumvention and international leverage. Crucially, Venezuela adds a layer of strategic camouflage to Hezbollah’s hemispheric model. While the TBA offers discretion, Caracas offers impunity (Berg 2022). The group can move assets, people, and ideas through Venezuelan channels under the guise of diplomatic exchanges or dual-national transactions. This is state-enabled redundancy: not merely a lack of enforcement, but the active insulation of Hezbollah’s operational flexibility. Together, these zones demonstrate that Hezbollah’s South American presence is not improvised—it is layered. When Argentine prosecutors expose a cell in Buenos Aires, networks in São Paulo remain untouched. When Brazil clamps down on a hawala chain, cash still flows through real estate deals in Caracas. The system is designed to endure partial failure, the way cloud computing routes around downed servers or insurgent groups retreat into sympathetic terrain. The architecture matters because it reveals the logic behind Hezbollah’s global adaptation. This is not a franchise operation outsourced to disconnected local actors. It is a strategic mesh that functions like a second operating system: invisible unless you’re looking for it, vital when the primary network goes offline. And increasingly, Hezbollah seems to assume that its primary network will face pressure—from war, collapse, sanctions, or surveillance. Its bet on South America is a bet on resilience: that geography, corruption, and complexity will give it space to breathe, to rebuild, to persist (Vianna de Azevedo 2018). If Hezbollah’s operations in South America offer strategic redundancy, then its model of action is what enables that redundancy to function. Hezbollah is no longer simply a militant group with a sideline in organized crime—it is a criminal-security complex, able to blend ideological loyalty, transnational finance, and illicit commerce into a coherent infrastructure. This hybridization is not an accident of globalization. It is an intentional adaptation: a convergence of warfighting, financing, and shadow governance designed to give the group longevity across regions and regimes. The group’s operations across South America exemplify this logic. Hezbollah traffics in cocaine not because it is drifting ideologically, but because narcotrafficking enables financial independence (Cengiz and Pardo-Herrera, 2023). It launders money through construction firms, front charities, and black-market trade not just to enrich itself, but to diversify revenue streams that are otherwise vulnerable to sanctions, asset freezes, and regulatory scrutiny. The criminal activity is not peripheral—it is integral. It funds social services in Lebanon, underwrites salaries, and maintains Hezbollah’s standing as both a state within a state and an actor without borders. Although Hezbollah’s operations in South America often emphasize logistics, finance, and redundancy, this does not mean the group has abandoned violent ambitions in the region. It has a bloody legacy. In more recent years, several planned attacks have been foiled. In 2023, Brazilian police stopped a Hezbollah-linked plot to assassinate Jewish community members in São Paulo (Ottolenghi 2024). In 2024, Peruvian police arrested Majid Azizi, who was linked to Iran’s Quds force and a plan to kill Israelis (Associated Press 2024). These incidents reinforce that Hezbollah’s South American presence is not merely infrastructural—it remains strategically capable of violence, should conditions allow or directives come from the group’s central leadership. Critically, Hezbollah’s integration into South America’s illicit economies also offers another layer of camouflage. In regions like the Tri-Border Area or peri-urban zones of São Paulo and Caracas, Hezbollah-linked actors look indistinguishable from the broader ecology of criminality—traffickers, smugglers, forgers, corrupt customs agents. This horizontal integration into shared logistics chains, financial systems, and market ecosystems makes it harder to isolate and disrupt Hezbollah’s footprint without simultaneously challenging broader organized crime structures. The result is a kind of strategic opacity: Hezbollah disappears not by hiding, but by blending in. For multinational corporations, humanitarian NGOs, and diplomatic missions operating in South America, this criminal-security complex presents a growing, if largely unacknowledged, threat. The risk does not lie in direct targeting—there is little evidence that Hezbollah seeks to attack Western firms or consulates on South American soil. Rather, the danger lies in proximity and entanglement (Giambertoni April 2025). Financial institutions may unwittingly process laundered money that ultimately funds Hezbollah’s activities. Logistics companies may contract with Hezbollah-linked freight operators (FinCEN 2024). NGOs operating in diaspora communities may encounter pressure, coercion, or exploitation. Extractive industries—especially in energy, mining, and infrastructure—face particular exposure (Chehayeb 2023). These sectors rely on subcontractors, regional supply chains, and informal agreements that can overlap with Hezbollah’s facilitation networks. The opacity of ownership structures in some Latin American business environments makes it difficult to know where one entity ends and another begins. A subcontractor in Brazil with access to port logistics might also be part of a shell company system that channels funds back to Beirut. A bonded warehouse in Ciudad del Este may function both as a legitimate import hub and a conduit for hawala-based financing tied to Hezbollah’s broader network. For diplomats, the risks are different but no less concerning. In states with fragile institutions or politicized security services—such as Venezuela or parts of Paraguay—Hezbollah-linked actors may enjoy informal protection from scrutiny. Intelligence-sharing becomes inconsistent. Local officials may be compromised. Embassies may be surveilled—not just by hostile governments, but by non-state actors with access to state resources (Giambertoni March 2025). In these contexts, the lines between criminal enterprise, political patronage, and extremist logistics begin to blur. These risks remain under-assessed. Most private-sector risk management strategies focus on regulatory compliance, physical security, and reputational threats. Few include Hezbollah in their risk matrix—particularly outside of the Middle East. Similarly, many Western diplomatic missions in Latin America treat terrorism as a foreign concern, rather than an embedded dimension of local security dynamics. This leaves a strategic blind spot: a low-visibility, high-impact network capable of exerting pressure not through acts of violence, but through slow, systemic infiltration of commerce, finance, and institutional space. Hezbollah’s strength lies not only in its weapons, but in its ability to move undetected through legal and illegal spheres (Realuyo 2023). Its South American network functions because it is underestimated—because it doesn’t look like a threat until it’s too late. For governments and global businesses alike, failing to recognize this hybrid model is not just an analytical error. It is a real vulnerability. Policy Recommendations If Hezbollah’s operations in South America represent a strategic redundancy network, then our policy responses must move beyond traditional counterterrorism frameworks. We can no longer afford to treat Hezbollah as a regionally bounded threat or assume that the absence of direct attacks in the Western Hemisphere equates to the absence of risk (Williams & Quincoses 2019). What’s needed is a recalibration of threat assessment tools—across intelligence, diplomacy, and corporate risk management—that recognizes Hezbollah’s global infrastructure as a durable, layered, and often latent system of power. Four policy recommendations are set out below. (1) Reframe Counterterrorism to Include Redundancy Networks. Current counterterrorism paradigms often emphasize active cells, plots, and kinetic capability. But Hezbollah’s South American presence thrives in the space between categories—not as an imminent military threat, but as a strategic platform for financing, mobility, and long-term resilience. Intelligence agencies and regional policymakers should explicitly include redundancy mapping in their threat assessments. This means tracing not only individual actors but also financial pipelines, logistics corridors, and diaspora-based facilitation networks.Tools developed to combat transnational organized crime—such as financial intelligence units, sanctions compliance structures, and asset-tracing software—should be integrated into counterterrorism workflows. This is particularly important in countries with weak institutional capacity. Regional partnerships, including within the Organization of American States, should prioritize shared methodologies for identifying overlapping illicit economies that enable both criminal and extremist actors to operate with impunity. (2) Build Strategic Partnerships with the Private Sector. Hezbollah’s infrastructure often intersects with legitimate commercial activities: shipping, construction, hospitality, real estate. As such, private sector actors—including banks, insurers, freight companies, and law firms—are essential stakeholders in any meaningful containment strategy. Governments should expand existing public-private initiatives, like those managed through financial transparency task forces and corporate compliance alliances, to include modules specific to extremist logistics and terrorism-financing risk in the Americas.This also means equipping multinational corporations with the right conceptual frameworks. Current risk matrices focus on political instability, cyber threats, and reputational harm. Few companies assess whether their contractors, vendors, or local partners may serve as inadvertent facilitators of a terrorist redundancy system. Governments can assist by anonymizing and sharing case studies, refining due diligence protocols, and funding third-party investigative work through credible local partners and NGOs. (3) Close Gaps in International and Interagency Coordination. Despite ample documentation of Hezbollah’s activities in the region, international coordination remains ad hoc and episodic. U.S., European, and Latin American enforcement agencies often operate on different threat models, timelines, and political sensitivities. For example, while the U.S. Treasury has sanctioned several Hezbollah-linked individuals and entities in Paraguay and Brazil, host governments have sometimes been reluctant to pursue follow-up action due to domestic constraints or regional geopolitics.To close these gaps, threat fusion centers and regional counterterrorism dialogues must prioritize cross-agency and cross-border approaches. This includes better integration of customs, immigration, and financial enforcement authorities—not just traditional intelligence bodies. Multilateral cooperation should also include non-traditional allies, such as financial technology platforms, compliance software firms, and investigative journalists, all of whom bring unique capabilities to mapping and disrupting Hezbollah’s hemispheric infrastructure. (4) Recognize the Role of State Complicity and Use Diplomatic Leverage Accordingly. Where Hezbollah has flourished, state complicity or neglect has often played a role. Venezuela’s documented provision of false identification documents and banking channels illustrates how strategic partnerships—whether ideological or transactional—can deepen terrorist networks’ resilience. The United States and its allies must tailor their diplomatic messaging and aid strategies accordingly, making clear that support for terrorist-enabling behavior comes with long-term costs.Sanctions regimes must be selective but targeted. Blanket restrictions can alienate host populations and drive illicit actors further underground, while targeted designations—such as those aimed at specific facilitators or entities—can disrupt network nodes without provoking state backlash. Where possible, quiet diplomacy should accompany enforcement, ensuring that pressure is matched by the offer of capacity-building or reputational incentives for cooperation. A smarter approach to Hezbollah’s South American infrastructure doesn’t require new tools so much as a new lens. This is not a traditional terrorist threat—it is a system of persistence, one that blends into markets, moves through paperwork, and grows in spaces where governance is uneven (Biersteker 2016). If left unchallenged, it will not just endure. It will adapt. Conclusion: The Quiet Power of a Backup Plan Hezbollah’s presence in South America is not incidental, improvised, or peripheral. It is engineered. For decades, the group has invested in a hemispheric infrastructure that does not rely on violence to assert its importance. Instead, it does something more dangerous in the long run: it endures. By embedding itself in transnational supply chains, black-market economies, diaspora communities, and state-permissive jurisdictions, Hezbollah has constructed a strategic redundancy network—a system designed not for visibility, but for survivability. This network operates on a different frequency from the one to which most counterterrorism frameworks are attuned. It does not seek attention. It does not announce itself through spectacular attacks. It functions in latency—ready to fund, shelter, transport, or regenerate Hezbollah’s central operations when other routes are disrupted. Like any sophisticated backup system, it exists precisely because failure elsewhere is assumed to be inevitable. The danger lies in underestimating this architecture. Policy models that focus solely on immediate threats—explosives, plots, active cells—miss the strategic significance of a group that is thinking in decades, not news cycles. Hezbollah has learned to operate across borders, sectors, and enforcement regimes. It has turned globalization into a defensive perimeter. And it has done so largely beneath the radar of both policymakers and corporate risk officers. To respond, we must broaden our conception of what constitutes a threat. Hezbollah’s South American operations do not simply reflect a terrorist group looking for cash—they reflect a networked actor preparing for disruption, building flexibility into its geography, financial systems, and political alliances. This demands more than sporadic sanctions or headline-driven crackdowns. It requires an integrated strategy that sees terrorist groups not only as fighters or financiers, but as strategic planners. The lesson of Hezbollah in South America is not that terrorism has gone quiet—it’s that it has gone infrastructure-first. If we continue to ignore the scaffolding in favor of the storm, we will continue to be surprised not by what Hezbollah does—but by how ready it is when the time comes. ReferencesBiersteker, Thomas J. 2016. “The effectiveness of United Nations targeted sanctions.” In Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of United Nations Action. Edited by Thomas J. Biersteker, Sue E. Eckert, and Marcos Tourinho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Berg, Ryan. “Venezuela’s Mystery Plane Shows Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America,” U.S. Army, Training and Doctrine Command G-2, Foreign Military Studies Office, July 1, 2022.Cengiz, Mahmut, and Camilo Pardo-Herrera. “Hezbollah’s Global Networks and Latin American Cocaine Trade,” Small Wars Journal, April 26, 2023.Chehayeb, Kareem. “US sanctions Lebanon-South America network accused of financing Hezbollah.” Associated Press. September 12, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-sanctions-hezbollah-ofac-c1e66bb0941ee01832aafbcc448856ceFanusie, Yaya J., and Alex Entz. “Hezbollah Financial Assessment,” Terror Finance Briefing Book, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance, September 2017.“FinCEN Alert to Financial Institutions to Counter Financing of Hizballah and its Terrorist Activities.” U.S. Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. October 23, 2024. https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FinCEN-Alert-Hizballah-Alert-508C.pdfGiambertoni, Marzia. “Hezbollah’s Networks in Latin America.” RAND. March 31, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA3585-1.htmlGiambertoni, Marzia. “Hezbollah’s Network on America’s Southern Doorstep.” RAND. April 1, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/hezbollahs-network-on-americas-southern-doorstep.html“‘Hezbollah treasurer’ Barakat arrested in Brazil border city.” BBC. September 21, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45610738Humire, Joseph B. 2020. “The Maduro-Hezbollah Nexus: How Iran-backed Networks Prop up the Venezuelan Regime.” The Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/the-maduro-hezbollah-nexus-how-iran-backed-networks-prop-up-the-venezuelan-regime/“Judge orders preventative detention for Iranian and 2 Peruvians in thwarted plot to kill Israelis.” Associated Press. April 24, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/peru-iran-killing-plot-detention-israeli-b89d6b69b182feafb96b44cbdefa190aMarinides, Demetrios. “Hezbollah in Latin America: A Potential Grey Zone Player in Great Power Competition.” William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University, September 2021.Ottolenghi, Emanuele. 2024. “Hezbollah Terror Plot in Brazil.” International Institute for Counter-Terrorism. https://ict.org.il/hezbollah-terror-plot-in-brazil/Realuyo, Celina B. “Rising Concerns about Hezbollah in Latin America Amid Middle East Conflict.” Weekly Asado. Wilson Center. December 1, 2023. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/rising-concerns-about-hezbollah-latin-america-amid-middle-east-conflictSánchez-Azuara, Raúl. “Hezbollah, Entrenched in Latin America,” Diálogo Américas, March 15, 2024.Singh, Rasmi, and Jorge Lamar. “Underworld Crossroads: Dark Networks and Global Illicit Trade in the Tri-border Area Between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.” Small Wars Journal. August 6, 2024. https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/08/06/underworld-crossroads-dark-networks-and-global-illicit-trade-tri-border-area-between/Vianna de Azevedo, Christian. 2018. “Venezuela’s toxic relations with Iran and Hezbollah: An avenue of violence, crime, corruption and terrorism.” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Policiais 9(1): 43-90.Williams, Phil, and Sandra Quincoses. 2019. “The Evolution of Threat Networks in Latin America.” Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. Florida International University. https://gordoninstitute.fiu.edu/research/research-publications/evolution-of-threat-networks-in-latam.pdf

In a landmark advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on 23 July 2025 that all UN member states have legal obligations under international law to address climate change, which the court described as an existential threat to life on Earth. Powerful countries too must be held responsible for their current emissions and past inaction. Possibly in anticipation of such a ruling, Chris Wright, the US Secretary of Energy and former chief executive of Liberty Energy (an oilfield services company), published an article in The Economist a week earlier, arguing that “climate change is a by-product of progress, not an existential crisis”. Whereas the ICJ relied primarily on the IPCC reports, “which participants agree constitute the best available science on the causes, nature and consequences of climate change”, Wright’s view is based on a particular temporal logic.  According to the IPCC reports, most greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels, with additional emissions from agriculture, deforestation, industry, and waste. They drive global warming, which is projected to reach 1.5°C between 2021 and 2040, with 2°C likely to follow. Even 1.5°C is not considered safe for most nations, communities, and ecosystems, and according to IPCC, only deep, rapid, and sustained emission cuts can slow warming and reduce the escalating risks and damages. The 2024 state of the climate report, published in BioScience, presents even more worrying assessments. Among other things, the report cites surveys indicating that nearly 80% of these scientists anticipate global temperatures increasing by at least 2.5°C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, and nearly half of them foresee a rise of at least 3°C.  Wright’s article suggests that the issue of amplifying doubt about climate change may have little to do with engagement with science but rather reflects a deeper temporal logic. This logic is rooted in a Whiggish account of progress to date, a resistance to the reality of the future and the desire for nostalgic restoration. I will explain these elements one by one. The first tier: Whiggism Wright disagrees with most scientific anticipations. His views are likely representative not only of the Trump II administration but also of conservative right-wing populism more generally. It is difficult to understand their climate denialism without an analysis of their views on time and temporality. The most important question concerns the reality of the future. At the first level, Wright provides a kind of textbook example of Whig history, portraying progress as linear, inevitable, and driven by liberal values. Herbert Butterfield introduced the idea of Whig history in his influential 1931 book The Whig Interpretation of History as a critique of a specific way of writing history that he regarded as flawed and intellectually dishonest. Focusing on inevitable progress distorts historical analysis by promoting simplified cause-and-effect reasoning and selective storytelling, emphasising present-day evaluation (and glorification) over understanding the real causes of historical change. In a Whiggish manner, Wright claims that the last 200 years have seen two big changes to the human condition: “human liberty” and affordable energy. As a result of these two things, life expectancy has nearly doubled, and the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has dropped from 90% to 10%. However, Wright’s argumentation is based on non-contextual and, in that sense, timeless representations of the world, despite its “progressivism”.  For example, consider the claim that extreme poverty has dropped from 90% to 10%. It is based on using a fixed dollar threshold, such as USD 2 per day, to measure poverty over 200 years. This is misleading because most people in the 19th century lived in largely non-monetised economies where subsistence needs were met outside of market exchange, and monetary income was minimal or irrelevant. These metrics also obscure shifting and context-bound definitions of basic needs; rely on incomplete historical data; and ignore the role of colonial dispossession and structural inequality in shaping global poverty. While it is true that life expectancy has doubled, largely due to improvements in hygiene and healthcare, the idea that extreme poverty has plummeted from 90% to under 10% also ignores the fact that the global population has grown eightfold, affecting the entire Earth system with devastating ecological and geological consequences. It further ignores that the rise in life expectancy and poverty reduction has come not only from liberalism or economic growth more generally but from ethical and political struggles and public health interventions. Often, these struggles have been fought in the name of socialism and won despite capitalist incentives, market mechanisms, and related political forces. The second tier: blockism At a deeper level, Wright’s views seem to presuppose what Roy Bhaskar calls “blockism”: the postulation of a simultaneous conjunctive totality of all events. This may sound abstract, but it has been a common assumption among many 20th-century physicists and philosophers that the universe forms a static, closed totality. This view stems from an atomist ontology, where individuals are seen as abstract, events follow regular patterns, time is viewed as spatial, and laws that can be expressed mathematically are considered reversible.  In such a conception, time appears as just another “spatial” dimension. According to the block universe model, the past, present, and future all exist equally and tenselessly. The universe is imagined as a four-dimensional geometric object, like a “block” of spacetime. Time is not something that “flows” or “passes”; instead, all moments are spatially extended points in a timeless whole. Blockism suggests that change and becoming are not truly real but are simply parts of our subjective experience.  The real challenge is to reconcile Whiggism and blockism. Wright is not a theorist and might not need to worry about the coherence of his ideas, but the issue is that Whiggism assumes movement, direction, and a normatively positive evolution of change, whereas the block universe denies real temporality: there is no becoming, no novelty, no agency – only timeless existence. Some versions of the block universe attempt to preserve development by proposing that the block grows. The “block” expands as new events are added to reality, but in this view, the present defines the upper boundary of the block, and the future is not truly real. This appears to be consistent with what Wright says about climate change. Everything he has to say about global warming is limited to one short paragraph: We will treat climate change as what it is: not an existential crisis but a real, physical phenomenon that is a by-product of progress. Yes, atmospheric CO2 has increased over time – but so has life expectancy. Billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Modern medicine, telecommunications and global transportation became possible. I am willing to take the modest negative trade-off for this legacy of human advancement. From the ICJ’s perspective, this interpretation is dreadful, as the current impacts of climate change are already at odds with the rights of many groups of people. It also exhibits basic injustice, as many of the groups that suffer the most from these impacts have done next to nothing to cause the problem. However, here I am mostly concerned with the temporality of Wright’s claims. This temporality is a combination of Whiggism and blockism: so far, history has exhibited progress, but time and processes stop here, in our present moment. The third tier: nostalgia Wright’s view of time is not limited to an ultimately incoherent combination of Whiggism and blockism. There is also more than a mere hint of nostalgia. This is evident in the appeal of a Golden Age at the outset of his article: I am honoured to advance President Donald Trump’s policy of bettering lives through unleashing a golden age of energy dominance – both at home and around the world. The appeal to the Golden Age somewhat contradicts Whiggism. From a nostalgic perspective, it seems that society has been on a downward trajectory instead of progressing. In other words, regression must be possible. Within an overall Whiggish narrative, one can blame certain actors, such as the Democrats in the US political context, for causing moral and political decline.  A nationalist narrative of a “golden age” and a return to a better past (“making us great again”) is essentially connected to the denial of planetary-scale problems, such as climate change, that would clearly require novel global responses. Climate change from a real-time perspective By merging Whiggism with a block-universe ontology (either static or growing), one ends up with a pseudo-historicism that speaks of “progress” while erasing real time. In a way, such a view “performs change” through a highly selective historical narrative, while denying the ontological preconditions of real change. Real change – emergence, transformation, causation – requires a temporal ontology, where the future is real though not yet fully determined. Thus, there is no mention of global emissions that have continued to rise, their delayed effects, feedback loops, or emergent risks given multiple processes of intertwined changes. Are the basic IPCC models based on real historical time? IPCC models often treat the climate system as a bounded system with internally consistent and deterministic dynamics. The IPCC relies on modelling and uses Bayesian methods to assess uncertainties in climate projections. Bayesian statistics involve updating the probability of a hypothesis as more evidence becomes available, based on prior knowledge (priors) and new data (likelihoods). Such an approach tends to be conservative (based on moving averages, for example) and assumes the quantifiability of uncertainty. It may also convey illusory precision, especially when the underlying models or data are uncertain or incomplete. The IPCC models nonetheless indicate – in contrast to Wright – that the future is real, though the future is approached in a somewhat cautious and deterministic manner. However, many climate scientists go beyond the IPCC consensus by assuming that global heating may reach 2.5 °C or even above 3 °C degree warming by the end of the century.  From a critical scientific realist viewpoint, even such anticipations may be too circumspect. Assuming exponential growth (involving cascading events etc.) and given that recent data shows a rise from 1.0°C to 1.5°C in just 15 years (actual data taken on an annual basis, not moving averages), and using this as a basis for anticipating the future, we seem likely to reach the 2 °C mark in the 2040s and the 3 °C mark in the 2060s.  The plausibility of anticipations depends significantly on how the real openness of the future is treated. Anticipations are reflexive and can shape the future. Real time and historical change involves human freedom and ethics. The evolving universe, where time is real, is stratified, processual, and open-ended. Time involves genuine processes, real possibilities, agency, and emergent structures. Such characteristics indicate that the future is not predetermined but can be shaped by transformative agency.  To sum up, from a real historical time perspective, Wright’s combination of Whiggism, blockism, and nostalgia is a recipe for reactionary politics. Glorifying the present, thinking in a timeless way, and longing for a golden age of the past can play a major role in bringing about a dystopian planetary future.

Where is the "East" for Russia? This is the central question of the "pivot to the East" policy. Throughout Russian history, the debate over East and West has never ceased, embodied most clearly in the opposition between Slavophiles and Westernizers. Their discussion unfolded mainly within the framework of the "East–West" problem. However, it would likely be incorrect to view their debate through the lens of today’s understanding of East and West. The "East", as understood by the Slavophiles, was not Asia in the usual sense of the word—neither geographically nor culturally. The Slavophiles called for a "return to Asia," but by "Asia" they meant Slavic civilization in contrast to Europe, in other words, Russia itself—not the East Asian Confucian civilization led by China. They argued that Russia’s traditions and history were distinct from those of Europe and self-sufficient, and that Russia should follow its own path—one that is Slavic, not Asian. Moreover, the Slavophiles did not consider Russia part of Asian civilization. The views of Slavophiles and Westernizers on whether Russia belongs to Europe are diametrically opposed, but on the question of whether Russia belongs to Asia, their opinions coincide: neither considered Russia to be part of Asian civilization. Thus, the subject of their debate does not lie in choosing between Europe and Asia, but in choosing between Europe and Russia. In the context of their dispute, the "East" refers to the Asian part of Russia and Russia itself. Russian Eurasianism emerged in the 1920s and, according to its ideas, Russia has both European and Asian features but is neither Europe nor Asia. Instead, it represents a “closed and complete geographic, economic, and ethnic whole” [1]. In other words, from the point of view of Eurasianist philosophy, Russia was seen as a unique civilization — a notion that echoes Slavophile thinking. After the collapse of the USSR, neo-Eurasianism appeared in Russia, which includes various strands. Unlike classical Eurasianism, neo-Eurasianism goes beyond theoretical discussion and has a practical orientation. When the former Soviet republics began gaining independence, neo-Eurasianism also started to carry certain political and geopolitical meanings. The idea of Eurasia’s self-sufficiency was inherited from classical Eurasianism. Thus, neither Slavophilism, nor Westernism, nor Eurasianism actually turns to Asia. Westernism is by nature outward-looking and advocates integration with Europe. Slavophilism and Eurasianism are inward-oriented, calling for a return to one's roots. How, then, did the turn to the East happen if none of these major currents focused on Asia? Does this not present a contradiction? In fact, there is no contradiction. The essence of the debate among Russian intellectual traditions concerns the characteristics of Russian civilization and its development path, while the pivot to the East relates primarily to foreign relations and external policy. In the first case, it is about the spiritual East and West — or the civilizational and cultural East and West. In the second, it is about the East and West in terms of international relations, where specific countries and regions matter more than the civilizations they belong to. There is no conflict between these two planes: the first one emphasizes the civilizational position of the country, while the second concerns the direction of its foreign policy. Civilizational position and diplomatic position are not the same. The civilizational position of a country reflects its value system and spiritual orientation. The diplomatic position reflects key aspects of its foreign policy at a given moment. The civilizational aspect influences foreign policy, but it does not determine a permanent shift in foreign policy priorities. A country’s official foreign policy is shaped not only by its civilizational identity, but also by its actual political, economic, and security interests. The last factor usually plays a decisive role in a complex international environment. The civilizational position is also not necessarily closely tied to interstate relations. Although Russia belongs to European civilization, this does not mean that its relations with Western countries will necessarily be better or worse than with non-Western ones. In practice, many of Russia’s friendly relations are with non-Western countries, while it has very few friends among Western states. The historical context of Russia’s pivot to the East. Russia’s modern pivot to the East is not the first in the country’s history. It should be noted that throughout the history of Russian foreign policy, the meaning of the term “East” has changed from one era to another. As a rule, the East was understood to mean Asia — geographically separate from Europe and culturally different from it. However, in different contexts, the meaning of “East” varies significantly. Typically, the East refers to the Asian region surrounding Russia — not only geographically to the east of the country (such as China and East Asia), but also in a broader sense. Culturally, the East was perceived as a non-Christian region: the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus, the Qing Empire, and the Central Asian khanates — all of these were outside the Christian cultural sphere. The Russian language includes a popular expression: “The East is a delicate matter.” This phrase comes from the main character of the Soviet film White Sun of the Desert, Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov. His line became a well-known saying used to describe the East. In this context, “the East” refers to Central Asia, which apparently was part of the “East” in the Russian mindset of the 1920s (i.e., the time in which the film is set). However, Central Asia is not part of the current concept of the “pivot to the East.” It is often said that Russia has turned to the East many times, but there is no consensus on when this first occurred. Even during the imperial period, the East was an important direction in Russian foreign policy — the Ottoman Empire and the Caucasus were an inseparable part of this eastern vector [2]. After the 16th century, Russia continued to focus on the East by developing relations with the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese Qing Empire, the Central Asian khanates, and others. Emperor Peter I not only “opened a window to Europe,” but also paid significant attention to the East. In 1716, he ordered a military expedition to Khiva and Bukhara, although it ended unsuccessfully [3]. From the late 17th century onward, ten Russo-Turkish wars were fought over more than 200 years. And although the Ottoman Empire was considered part of the East, the regions where the wars were fought — the Caucasus, Lower Volga, Crimea, Western Ukraine, Moldova, Bessarabia, Istanbul, and the Balkans — are today typically viewed as part of the West. These warm, fertile regions close to Europe cannot be called the East in the true sense of the word. Indeed, this was a major shift in Russian foreign policy, but it was not a pivot to the East — it was more accurately a pivot from the North to the South. Since the Middle Ages, the Grand Duchy of Moscow had exported furs and timber through the Baltic Sea in the north. However, this alone was not enough, and Russia came to understand that in order to become a powerful state, it needed to look southward and gain access to the Black Sea. The development of this southern foreign policy reached its peak during the reign of Catherine II (1762–1796) and continued up until the start of the Crimean War (1853–1856) [4]. Some researchers believe that Russia’s first true pivot to the East began in the late 19th century and was closely associated with the name of Count Sergei Witte. During the reigns of Emperors Alexander III (1881–1894) and Nicholas II (1894–1917), Witte held several high-ranking positions in government: Minister of Transport, Minister of Finance, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Chairman of the Committee of Ministers. Thanks to Witte’s efforts, the pivot to the East was formalized as an economic, trade-investment, and transport-logistics strategy. He supported the idea of building the Trans-Siberian Railway; under him, the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway — stretching from northeastern China to Vladivostok — was planned and completed; and the Russo-Chinese Bank was created in connection with this project. Although Witte’s plans were not fully realized, he was the first to propose a clear eastern strategy. Some scholars argue that until the late 19th century, Russia did not have a clearly formulated strategy toward Asia. Many significant Russian actions in Central Asia and the Far East were not directed from the top but were undertaken independently on the ground. When these expansionist actions succeeded, the imperial government not only acknowledged them but also accepted their outcomes. For example, under the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) between Russia and China, the Amur River basin (Heilongjiang in Chinese) belonged to China. Even before the Crimean War, Russian troops were already present in that territory, taking control of settlements and establishing outposts. Although the imperial authorities understood that this violated the bilateral treaty and encroached on Chinese territory, Emperor Nicholas I (1825–1855) famously declared: “A Russian flag once raised must never be lowered.” [5] There is also an opinion that Russia’s first pivot to the East took place in the early years of the Soviet Union and was reflected in the foreign policy of People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin. The author is convinced that the first pivot of Russia to the East — in the modern sense of the term — occurred after the end of the Crimean War and continued until the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). The eastern strategy proposed by Sergei Witte emerged precisely during this period [6]. The main content of this first pivot to the East was territorial expansion and colonization of the East, while economic interests played a secondary role. Central Asia, the Far East, and the Caucasus were the primary directions. As a result, Russia took control of the Caucasus in the west, conquered all of Central Asia in the south, and expanded its influence eastward to the Pacific coast. Russia had already been present in Central Asia in the early 18th century, and by the time of the Crimean War had penetrated deeper into the region — for example, the Vernoye Fortress was built by Russian troops in 1854–1855, which became the foundation for the city of Verny (modern-day Almaty). After the Crimean War, in order to be able to deter a potential war with Britain in Central Asia, a strategy of southward advancement was adopted. This strategy involved the incorporation of parts of Central Asia, the conquest of Turkestan and the Central Asian steppes, and approaching the borders of Afghanistan. The development of this strategy was assigned by the emperor to Colonel N.P. Ignatiev [7]. During Russia’s advance in Central Asia, expansion and colonization became an end in themselves, while the goal of containing Britain faded into the background. From 1858, under the command of General M.G. Cherniaev — whom the press dubbed the "Yermak of the 19th century" — Turkestan was annexed, and the cities of Chimkent, Semipalatinsk, Tashkent, and others were captured. In 1867, the Turkestan Governor-Generalship was established, led by K.P. Kaufman, who had previously served as the Vilna Governor-General. In the following years, the Bukhara Emirate, the Khanates of Khiva and Kokand came under Kaufman’s control. At that point, the Russian conquests and colonization of Central Asia were effectively completed. China became the most important direction of this wave of the "pivot to the East." Several years after the Crimean War, taking advantage of the situation in which Beijing was occupied by British and French troops and internal unrest was growing, Russia forced the Qing government to sign a series of treaties. As a result, China lost over 1.5 million square kilometers of land in the northeast and northwest of the country. The person responsible for this was the Russian Empire’s envoy to China, N.P. Ignatiev. Russia’s advance eastward did not stop there. It crossed the Amur River, moved into northeast China, and attempted to annex all of Manchuria by realizing the idea of “Yellow Russia” [8] — turning this territory into a second Bukhara [9]. This idea ultimately failed, mainly because the great powers entered into disputes and conflicts over dividing spheres of influence in China. In 1896, the Russian Empire and the Qing government signed an alliance treaty (the Aigun Treaty), which included a clause on joint military actions against Japan if it attacked either side or Korea. The treaty also granted Russia the right to build a railway through northeastern Chinese territory — nominally for troop transport in wartime — but in reality it became a tool for implementing the idea of Yellow Russia. In 1897, Germany occupied the port of Qingdao. The Qing government turned to Russia for help. The Russian Empire refused, citing its obligation to help only in case of a Japanese attack, and instead used the opportunity to force the Qing to cede Port Arthur (Lüshun). In 1900, Russia joined the Eight-Nation Alliance and deployed troops in China, which was essentially an act of war. Russia occupied all of northeastern China, and in the 64 villages of Jiangdong, it carried out “numerous cleansings” of the Chinese population. The Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904–1905 due to the rivalry between Russia and Japan over Manchuria and Korea. The main theater of military operations was northeastern China. After the war, Russia supported the independence of Outer Mongolia, as a result of which China lost control over this territory. It is evident that Russia and China view the history of their bilateral relations — and its key figures — in very different, even opposite ways. In the historical consciousness of the Chinese people, Russo-Chinese relations of that period are seen as part of the "century of humiliation," which brought suffering to China and left deep wounds in the hearts of the Chinese people. The complex history of Russian-Chinese relations includes both dark pages and times of friendship and mutual assistance — particularly the Soviet Union’s military support during the war against Japan (1938–1945) and the large-scale assistance provided after the founding of the PRC (1949). These pages, too, have a lasting place in China’s historical memory. In the nearly half-century that passed since Russia’s first pivot to the East, its expansion in this direction reached its peak, resulting in vast territorial gains and reaching the natural limits of expansion in the Far East and Central Asia. This process culminated in the formation of the eastern borders of the Russian Empire, which remained in place until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Modern Pivot to the East Russia's turn to the East now has different content and character. It is often linked to the Ukrainian crisis that broke out in 2014 and the conflict with the West. There is some truth in this, but not completely. The shift was driven by a set of factors: first, the shift of the global political and economic center to the Asia-Pacific region; second, Russia’s need to develop Siberia and the Far East; third, the influence of the international situation. In the early 21st century, the Asia-Pacific became home to many economic powers with growing political and economic influence. This attracted Russia’s attention and pushed it to develop closer ties with Asia-Pacific countries, strengthening its position in the region. This reason has been stated repeatedly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The development of Siberia and the Far East is a key part of the “turn to the East” policy. All measures in this direction aim at this goal. In 2012, when Putin presented the strategy of turning East, he outlined the goal of developing Siberia and the Far East. These regions are rich in natural resources, which have been sought after since the days of tsarist Russia. This is important not only for the regions themselves but for the entire Russian state. Russia sees the potential of these regions and believes they will be a source of wealth and drive the country's prosperity in the 21st century. In this regard, Vladimir Putin set a priority for the entire 21st century — the development of the Far East. At the IX Eastern Economic Forum in September 2024, he again stressed the importance of developing Siberia and the Far East, saying the future of Russia largely depends on it. There is a gap in development between the western and eastern parts of Russia. A visible socio-economic divide causes problems for both the economy and national security. Siberia and the Far East are vast and rich in resources, but sparsely populated and economically underdeveloped, with outdated infrastructure and population decline. These regions border China, Japan, and South Korea — economically stronger, densely populated countries with high demand for resources. Russia believes that if it does not develop Siberia and the Far East, the economic and social gap between its western and eastern parts will grow, and the population in the eastern regions will shrink. These trends could later deepen regional imbalances and reduce the appeal of these territories for residents, weakening the influence of the political center and risking a loss of control. The Ukrainian crisis played a significant role in Russia’s geopolitical and territorial reorientation. All past turns to the East happened after setbacks in the European direction. The turn in the second half of the 19th century came after the defeat in the Crimean War, and early Soviet eastern development also began due to difficult relations with the West. In such cases, as European powers moved East, Russia, losing chances in the West, turned to the weaker East, which it could dominate more easily. This helped it look away from Europe’s pressure and gain in the East to offset losses in the West. The Ukrainian crisis became the most serious conflict between Russia and the West since the Cold War’s end. It changed their relations fundamentally. The West imposed strict and broad sanctions on Russia after the start of the conflict, cutting almost all political, economic, financial, technological, transport, cultural, sports, educational, and humanitarian ties — something that never happened before in Russia-Europe relations. Even during the Crimean War, Europe did not fully cut economic ties with Russia; trade continued through neutral countries. Now, a wall separates Russia from the West, dividing Europe in two, with almost all European countries on the other side. The shadow of war now looms between Russia and the West. Russia began focusing on the East to break the Western political blockade and replace lost markets and resources in Europe. But this only sped up the turn to the East; it did not cause it, since the policy began before the Ukrainian crisis. The turn to the East has been developed both as a scientific concept and a political strategy in academic circles for a long time. One viewpoint holds that the initiator of this idea was Yevgeny Primakov: in 1996, while serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he proposed a corresponding concept. In 2012, the Valdai International Discussion Club published an analytical report titled “Toward the Great Ocean, or the New Globalization of Russia,” which promoted the idea of Russia’s development in the direction of the Asia-Pacific region. The authors of this study — Professor S.A. Karaganov and T.V. Bordachev — are among the most active supporters of the turn to the East and later published a series of reports and articles on the topic to shape public opinion accordingly. Professor A.V. Lukin, a leading Russian expert on China, also published a work on the subject of the turn to the East back in 2014. Many other Russian researchers have written a large number of articles addressing this issue. The state policy of the “turn to the East” was proposed later than the concept itself but also before the start of the Ukrainian crisis. The idea of turning East emerged during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (2008–2012). In his 2010 address to the Federal Assembly, he stated that Russia faced the task of regional integration into the Asia-Pacific economic space and that expanding ties with countries in the region was taking on strategic importance. After Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, the “turn to the East” strategy took its final form. As already noted, this direction began to be developed in 2012, and in his 2013 address to the Federal Assembly, President Putin used the phrase “Russia’s pivot to the Pacific Ocean,” which essentially means the same as the turn to the East. At different times, the term “turn to the East” has had different meanings in terms of goals and direction. Even within the same period, its content changed and was supplemented depending on circumstances. In Russian foreign policy, the turn to the East was initially seen as a supplement to the Eurocentric direction. Its main function was to reduce dependence on Europe without changing the structure of Eurocentric foreign policy. Until Medvedev’s presidency, this was the ideological content of the turn. Later, the eastern vector in Russia’s foreign policy became as important as the European one, aiming for symmetrical development. After 2012, the balance between the eastern and western directions became the central idea of the turn to the East. With the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict in 2022, the ideological meaning of the turn was adjusted again. As the road to the West was blocked, the turn to the East (including to the Global South) became the only option. In this context, it started to represent the center of gravity and support for Russia’s foreign policy. The turn to the East no longer just balanced the European and Asian directions — it became the main direction of foreign policy, with Europe becoming secondary, at least for the time being. However, in Russian academic circles, there are also more absolutist views on this matter. Some believe that with the beginning of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, the 300-year journey of Russia through Europe, which began with Peter the Great, came to an end. The “window to Europe” closed for a long time, and Russia “returned home” — to the East. This conclusion was drawn a century and a half ago by the great writer Fyodor Dostoevsky: back in the 19th century, he argued that Russia had completed its historical path in Europe and should go its own way. But let us remember that in the early post-Soviet years, Westernism was extremely popular, and Russia rushed into the embrace of the West without hesitation (here the author understands “Westernism” more as admiration for the West). After the September 11 attacks, Russian-American relations quickly warmed, and optimistic forecasts were voiced: Russian society had chosen its path — the European one, and the easing of relations with the U.S. drove “the last nail into the coffin” of Eurasian values. Clearly, that scenario did not work out. Time will tell whether predictions about a final separation between Russia and Europe will come true. However, considering historical events, it seems unlikely. In 1697–1698, Peter the Great organized the Grand Embassy — a diplomatic mission to Europe, and after Russia’s victory in the Great Northern War (1700–1721), the country became a great power and from then on actively participated in European affairs, sometimes as a partner of European states, sometimes as an adversary, but always inseparable from Europe. The current confrontation with Europe is a result of the Russia–Ukraine conflict and sanctions. It is not expected to become the norm in Russia’s foreign policy, as it does not align with the patterns of international politics and economics. The present situation is caused by a political conflict, not by a loss of Europe’s importance to Russia. Europe still matters to Moscow in political, economic, and security terms. Russia and Europe remain connected by geography, culture, and religion. President Vladimir Putin has stated that Russia is still part of European civilization, and Europe is an important player — cutting ties with it would be politically unwise, economically undesirable, and impossible from a security standpoint. Russia–Europe relations may go through different phases, but Russia is a European country and cannot ignore Europe or abandon the development of its European direction. If given the opportunity, it will return to it. Russian scholars argue that both Europe and Asia are key directions in the country’s foreign policy. Russia has always approached both regions based on the need for a multi-vector foreign policy and diversified economic cooperation with its external partners. It is possible to predict that the end of the Russia–Ukraine conflict and the lifting of Western sanctions will be followed by a gradual normalization of relations. After that, business ties between Russia and Europe will slowly begin to recover, although this process may take a long time, and relations may not return to their pre-conflict state. As history shows, when Russia goes too far in one direction — West or East — it eventually turns the other way. The success or failure of the turn to the East can only be judged by the goals it sets for itself. It is no longer just a foreign policy and economic concept, but a comprehensive national development strategy. Therefore, its success should be assessed accordingly. Three key criteria can be identified: socio-economic development of the Far East and Siberia; the degree of Russia's integration into the Asia-Pacific economy; and the strengthening of Russia's discursive power in the Asia-Pacific. Progress in all three areas will indicate success, while setbacks will suggest stagnation or regression. These indicators must be evaluated based on long-term data — short-term results show only temporary trends and are not sufficient to judge the overall effectiveness of the strategy. The turn to the East is a long process, inevitably accompanied by difficulties and setbacks. Russian history shows that each shift in foreign policy direction has taken decades and gone through many ups and downs, sometimes even failures. Yet Russia has always stood up again, showing resilience in pursuing long-term goals. In today’s world, development happens at a faster pace. The completion of the turn to the East cannot wait another hundred years, but structural transformation will still take at least ten years, and success is not guaranteed. Much has been achieved over the past decade, but many challenges remain — most of them within Russia itself. Understanding the East holds intangible but important meaning. In the minds of Russians, especially Westernizers, the East and West are opposites. The West symbolizes civilization and progress, while Asia is seen as barbaric and backward. The word “Aziatchina” in Russian carries negative connotations linked to cultural backwardness, roughness, and lack of civility. Europe, by contrast, is viewed positively — for example, by Vissarion Belinsky: “Everything great, noble, human, and spiritual has risen, grown, flourished, and borne luxurious fruit on European soil.” This perception still exists to some extent and traditionally forms a cultural bias in Russia, especially against modern Asia. Because of this cultural barrier, Russia cannot fully become either a European or an Asian country. To truly become part of Asia, Russia must entirely and objectively rethink its understanding of it. The efficiency of Russian government agencies is extremely important, and that of local governments is even more so. Government institutions at all levels are key to implementing the turn to the East strategy. The enthusiasm and effectiveness of local officials play a large role in determining the success of the strategy. Bureaucratic red tape and apathy can ruin even the most promising programs, while weak governance and corruption can destroy any successful policy. Finding a rational and effective model for the development of Siberia and the Far East is a difficult task. The situation in these regions is unique. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean models do not suit Russian conditions. The global economy is currently undergoing changes, and Russia needs to adapt, take advantage of its strengths, and form its own development path. The internal turn to the East requires innovative development. The task is not simple — to ensure the prosperity of Siberia and the Far East while considering their rich natural resources, underdeveloped infrastructure, labor shortages, limited markets, and small-scale processing and scientific industries. Significant efforts are needed for Vladivostok — the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District — to stand out among Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and other regional and global financial, tech, innovation, and logistics hubs. Excluding the energy and defense sectors, Russia will find it difficult to carve out a niche in the Asia-Pacific market, which already has a stable structure, well-defined labor division, and strong competition. Russia will need to demonstrate extraordinary competitiveness to enter the Asia-Pacific market successfully. Attracting foreign investment is an important tool for the development of Siberia and the Far East. However, its application requires greater openness to the outside world, a favorable investment climate, reliable legal guarantees, appropriate political measures, rational tax policy, efficient customs procedures, pragmatic labor policy, and a mentality that views foreign capital positively. State policy must be consistent and coordinated, and there must also be an increase in the awareness of the business community [population — translator's note] about market-based rules of economic cooperation. The Ukrainian crisis contributed to the turn to the East, but at the same time brought unforeseen challenges to its implementation. As a result of tough political and economic Western sanctions, foreign investment opportunities have been greatly reduced. Not only were Western investment channels blocked, but investment from other countries has also become severely limited. Scientific and technological cooperation with many countries cannot proceed due to the threat of Western sanctions. Bilateral trade also faces restrictions, and there are serious difficulties and problems with financial settlements. Changes in the global geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape after the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict have affected the original concept of the “turn to the East.” First, the Ukrainian crisis narrowed the geographical scope of this process. Major Asian economic and technological powers — Japan and South Korea — played an important role in the turn to the East, but they imposed sanctions on Russia following the United States, and trade cooperation was suspended. As a result, Japan and South Korea are no longer considered part of the turn to the East, which has created challenges for the strategy. Second, the scale of some important projects associated with the turn had to be reduced. For example, the development of the Northern Sea Route. The Northern Sea Route is a key project in the context of the turn to the East: it is a transport artery connecting East Asia and Europe. It is much shorter than the sea route from East Asia to Europe via the Indian Ocean (Suez Canal), which allows for significantly lower shipping costs and shorter delivery times. With the acceleration of global warming, the navigational period — when the Arctic Ocean can be traveled without an icebreaker — is expected to increase. Completion of transport infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route would change the system of international shipping, bringing economic benefits to Russia and raising its geopolitical and geoeconomic significance. However, after the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, European sanctions against Russia blocked transport routes to Europe, putting the functioning of this corridor in question. Now, transportation operates only to Murmansk, which supports Russian-Chinese trade but causes difficulties on the European side. In addition, sanctions impact the construction of infrastructure and icebreaking ships. Despite this, in the long term, the value of the Northern Sea Route as a new Eurasian shipping corridor remains, though the restoration of this function should be expected only after an improvement in Russia–Europe relations. China in the context of the turn to the East Russia’s turn to the East does not mean a turn solely to China — the strategy also includes other Asia-Pacific countries such as India, Vietnam, and Southeast Asian states. Japan and South Korea are temporarily not considered due to sanctions. Russia aims to diversify its relationships in Asia while carefully balancing them with China, given its significant role in the current world order. The turn to the East does not carry emotional weight; it is a state strategy based on national interests and needs, not driven by affection for Asia or China. Some opinions — whether intentional or not — equate the turn to friendship with China, which is an emotional interpretation, though it is true that friendly ties help strengthen cooperation between Russia and China. Nevertheless, China is undoubtedly the main direction of Russia’s turn to the East. China is the world’s second-largest economy, second only to the U.S. in nominal GDP. It is a strategic partner of Russia and the world’s largest exporter. Border regions between the two countries require strengthened economic cooperation. Because of all these factors, China holds a central position in Russia’s eastern strategy. China has vast potential for economic collaboration. Trade relations between Russia and China are actively developing — China has been Russia’s top trading partner for 14 years, though there is still room to grow in bilateral trade. China is one of the largest markets for Russian energy exports: in 2023, Russia exported 107 million tons of oil and 8 million tons of LNG to China. By 2025, gas exports to China are expected to reach 38 billion cubic meters. China is also a key player in Arctic development and the Northern Sea Route. It is the second-largest shareholder in the Yamal LNG project, which involves dozens of Chinese companies. The Northern Sea Route requires significant infrastructure development and a fleet of icebreakers, as well as companies responsible for cargo management. China is involved in all these areas and has the capacity to play a major role in infrastructure development across Siberia and the Russian Far East. It is a global leader in fields such as artificial intelligence, ICT, digital economy, and e-commerce. Expanding bilateral cooperation in these areas is essential for regional development. China is also a major market for Russian agricultural, forestry, and seafood products. Due to geographic proximity, economic interaction between Northeast China and the Russian Far East has become very close, directly impacting the lives of local border populations. Despite the fact that the turn to the East is now an established state strategy, Russian public opinion on it is mixed. The once-popular “China threat,” particularly the fear of demographic expansion, has faded. While some fears remain, they are no longer dominant. These fears stem from various sources. One is deep-seated distrust of China and uncertainty about its intentions — concerns over whether China will be a friend or foe in the future, reflecting a lack of confidence in the long-term trajectory of relations. Another factor is the entrenched ideology of Westernism, which clashes with the turn to the East. Advocates of this worldview believe Russia’s future lies in the West and argue that China cannot provide technologies, equipment, or capital on par with the West. They see the pivot as a last resort after being shut out by the West, with little to gain from it. The greatest concern influencing public opinion is the fear of overdependence on China. Some believe it could result in Russia becoming China’s “junior partner,” a “raw material appendage,” or a vassal of China’s economy; that rising reliance on China’s energy market threatens Russia’s energy security; and that Russia may lose neutrality and freedom of maneuver in a possible conflict between China and Asian nations. At the Eastern Economic Forum in September 2024, a moderator even asked a Chinese delegate what was being done to ensure that Chinese businesses remained in China and did not enter Russia. The various sources of these viewpoints share a common background: the asymmetry in development between Russia and China. A key feature of modern Russian-Chinese relations — which have taken shape since the collapse of the USSR in 1991 — is that China’s growth has outpaced Russia’s. For the first time in over 300 years of bilateral ties (dating to the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689), China has surpassed Russia in national power. In 2023, Russia’s GNP was $2.02 trillion, while China’s reached $17.79 trillion — more than eight times higher. Russia’s per capita GDP is only slightly above China’s: $13,800 vs. $12,600. China’s armed forces outnumber Russia’s, are better equipped with modern weapons, and benefit from higher military spending. In 2022, China’s military budget was about $292.2 billion, compared to Russia’s $86 billion. While China’s budget is much smaller than the U.S.’s $877 billion, it still exceeds Russia’s by more than three times. Since the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, Russia’s military budget has increased annually, mainly to meet the needs of the special military operation. However, when measured in U.S. dollars, this increase has been less noticeable due to the sharp devaluation of the ruble. Adequate military spending is crucial to building a modern and capable army. Technological rivalry lies at the core of modern international competition. China is confidently leading the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is radically transforming the global landscape. The country produces an enormous variety of goods and is often referred to as the “world’s factory.” It possesses strong investment potential and engages in active investment worldwide, especially in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Despite encountering challenges and difficulties, China’s steady development trend remains intact. Its capacities in investment, technology, and equipment continue to grow. Due to the vast size of the Chinese economy, the scale of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation is also significant, and its share in Russia’s foreign trade is inevitably increasing. This is a natural and non-negative process. It indicates that economic cooperation is becoming increasingly beneficial and important for both countries. Neither the Russian nor Chinese governments express concern about the scale of economic interaction. On the contrary, both sides believe the full potential of their economic cooperation has yet to be realized. China may not provide Russia with everything that Europe can, but likewise, Europe cannot offer what China can. Both Europe and China have their own economic strengths and weaknesses. Trends show that Chinese technologies can replace European products such as automobiles, high-speed rail, communication systems, alternative energy sources, computers, and mobile phones. Europe, in turn, can only substitute for certain Chinese goods. To gain economic benefits, it's not only investments, equipment, and technologies that matter, but also the ability to purchase essential goods and services from abroad, as well as to earn foreign currency through exports and service trade. In 2023, Russia earned $90.5 billion from energy exports to China, generating considerable economic benefits. Economic cooperation is a relationship of mutual dependence. In such relationships, countries both give and take. The more interdependent they are, the more their interests align and the greater the benefits. The level of interdependence varies between bilateral partnerships. While countries strive to diversify their foreign relations, economic interdependence does not necessarily lead to stagnation. A major trend in the global economy today is increasing interdependence between nations. Globalization, regional integration, and cooperation mechanisms are accelerating this process. Typically, countries seek to expand economic cooperation and deepen ties based on equality for mutual gain. There is indeed a power gap between large and small economies. The same trade volume can have very different weight in economies of different sizes. But this doesn’t imply inequality, nor does it mean that one country becomes the vassal of another. If economic relations between unequal economies were inherently unfair, true economic cooperation would not exist. China is the largest or main trading partner of more than 150 countries, all of which — except the U.S. — have smaller economies. If none of those countries became China’s vassal, then how could Russia, as the world’s fourth or fifth largest economy, become one? The issue of overdependence is complex and relative. On one hand, it can be positive — strengthening ties and increasing benefits. On the other, it can cause negative outcomes like loss of economic sovereignty or national security concerns. But what counts as “overdependence” is hard to define because each country’s relationships are unique. In some cases, economic independence is essential for security; in others, full autonomy isn’t pursued. For example, in the EU, the goal of multilateral relations is to create an economic community where overdependence isn’t considered a problem. Moreover, the conditions under which overdependence emerges can vary and are not always within a country’s control. Overdependence has negative consequences only when relations become antagonistic and countries “weaponize” their economic ties, turning them into tools of sanctions and conflict. The clearest example is the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after the start of the Russia–Ukraine conflict. However, this is not a typical situation in international economic relations. China holds the most prominent position in Russia’s foreign trade structure. In 2023, Russia’s total foreign trade turnover amounted to $710.2 billion, with trade with China accounting for $240 billion — more than 30%. The most important sphere of economic cooperation between the two countries is energy. In 2023, Russia exported 234 million tons of oil, of which 107 million tons (45%) went to China. The same year, Russia’s natural gas exports totaled 139 billion cubic meters, with 34 billion cubic meters (about 25%) going to China. However, these numbers are not stable. They reflect a sharp decline in Russia–Europe trade since the onset of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, a significant drop in Russia’s overall foreign trade, and a rapid rise in trade with China. Influential factors include dramatic changes in the structure of Russia’s energy exports, a reduction in natural gas exports in particular, structural shifts in trade flows, the relegation of the European vector to a secondary role, and the potential suspension of Russian gas supplies to Europe. Still, China remains far from the role once held by Europe in Russia’s foreign trade and energy exports. As great powers, both Russia and China strive to avoid excessive dependence on external players, especially in strategically important areas. This concern is naturally embedded in their national security thinking. In energy, Russia seeks to diversify its export markets, while China aims to diversify its import sources. At the same time, maintaining friendly and stable long-term relations is a necessary condition for developing mutual dependence in a positive and productive direction. Yet whether out of rational caution or political reasoning, the notion of “overdependence” does not accurately describe current Russia–China relations. Modern bilateral economic cooperation is based on objective conditions and internal needs, and most importantly, it brings significant benefits to both countries. After losing its European partners, Russia must urgently complete its pivot to the East and expand its presence in Asian markets — especially in the energy sector, which is of strategic importance. Russia’s current policy agenda prioritizes active development of cooperation with Asian countries, especially energy partners, rather than reducing its scale. Unlike ordinary goods, energy impacts national economic growth and population well-being. Supply and demand in energy create a two-way dependence, not a one-sided one. In this context, fears of overdependence are largely misplaced. Typically, exporters are more proactive than importers. Historically, it is the exporting country that has been more capable of using energy as a political instrument. China has no intention of being a “big brother” to any country, nor of having “little brothers.” This concept is inconsistent with both its political philosophy and policy. 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