European 'electric shock'

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Washington (AP) – Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was wrongly imprisoned in Russia, was released in a diplomatic thaw of the White House, who was in a position to drive the negotiations to finish war in Ukraine.

Steve Witkoff, a special representative for President Donald Trump, left the Russian airspace with Fogel, a history teacher from Pennsylvania, and he is anticipated to be reunited along with his family by the top of the day.

Fogel was arrested in August 2021 and served a 14-year sentence. His family and supporters said that he was on the road with medically prescribed marijuana and was arrested by the administration of President Joe Biden as mistaken.

Michael Waltz, Trump's national security advisor, said that the United States and Russia had negotiated an exchange to make sure Fogel's release. He didn't say what the US side of the cut price brought with him. Earlier negotiations have occasionally involved mutual publications by the United States or its allies.

Waltz said that the event was “a sign that we move in the right direction to end brutal and terrible war in Ukraine.” Trump, a Republican, promised to search out a technique to end the conflict.

Trump also spoke about having a very good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched an entire invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Last month Trump said that his government had “very serious” talks with Russia concerning the war.

Fogel's relatives said they were “not grateful, relieved and overwhelmed” that he got here home.

“This was the darkest and most painful time of our lives, but today we start healing,” they said. “For the first time in years, our family can look forward to the future.”

There was no immediate comment from Moscow to Fogel's publication on Tuesday.

The United States, Russia and other nations carried out great prisoner in August, which, amongst other things, led to the publication of the Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich reporter and American corporate security.

However, this deal has ignored quite a few other Americans who’re detained in Russia, including Fogel. Some then didn’t let up within the publication on Tuesday, including several, which have had large milestones of their cases since then.

Among them is the US Russian dual National Ksenia Khavana, which was sentenced to a non-profit Ukraine to a non-profit Ukraine for a donation of around $ 52 two weeks after the betrayal last August. The then Weißhaus von Biden described the conviction and convicted “nothing less than vengeful cruelty”.

In October in October in October, the American Robert Gilman was convicted of greater than seven years in prison in Russia because he allegedly attacked law enforcement officers, while the American Stephen Hubbard was sentenced to prisons in a closed procedure for allegedly merchants in Ukraine.

Since the Russia Ukraine War approaches the top of its third 12 months, Trump's plan stays to finish an end of the conflict the least one territory. Fogel's publication and Trump's announcement that he’ll send the finance minister Scott Bessent to Kyiv's leaders for talks with the leaders of Ukraine could signal that plans could begin to take shape.

Vice President JD Vance, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Trump's special representative for Russia and Ukraine, the retired General Keith Kellogg, will later travel to the Munich Security Conference this week, where the situation in Ukraine shall be a very important topic of debate.

Kellogg informed The Associated Press on Monday that he and the others would seek advice from European officials concerning the very comprehensive outlines of what Trump would love to see and measure their interest.

“We will deliver our expectations to the Allies,” said Kellogg. “When we come back from Munich – we want to give the president the options. So if he is (directly) involved in the peace process, he knows what it will look like for him.”

“Much too late”

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has largely played out on land and within the air. It is a bitterly contested, grueling ground war, accompanied by brutal Russian airstrikes on civilian infrastructure and a slow but increasing response from Ukraine.

But a less appreciated but essential focus of the war is on the water. There, a Competition for control of the Black Sea saw Russia amazingly defeated.

And this loss has potentially far-reaching consequences. Not only does this limit Moscow's ability to increase its power through naval forces across the globe, but it surely has also resulted in Russia being compromised growing cooperation with Chinawhere Moscow is becoming one Junior party on the high seas to Beijing.

Battle of the Black Sea

The tradition of geopolitical theory tends to oversimplify world politics. Theories dating back to the late nineteenth century categorized countries as either land powers or sea powers.

Thinkers just like the British geopolitician Sir Halford Mackinder or the US theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan characterised maritime powers as countries that possessed characteristics of democratic liberalism and free trade. In contrast, land powers were often portrayed as despotic and militaristic.

While such generalizations have served to demonize enemies previously, there remains to be a man-made tendency to divide the world into land and sea powers. The associated view that naval and military warfare were one way or the other separate has continued.

And this division gives us a misunderstanding of Russia's progress within the war with Ukraine. While Moscow has definitely seen a number of Successes on land And within the airThis shouldn’t distract from the stunning Russian defeat within the Black Sea that occurred Russia must withdraw from the Ukrainian coast and keep his ships away from the front.

As I describe in my most up-to-date book: “Waters Near and Far: The Geopolitics of Sea Power“Maritime countries have two concerns: they must seek to control the parts of the sea relatively close to their shorelines or their “near waters”; Meanwhile, those with the power and desire to achieve this are trying to project power and influence into “far waters” across the oceans, that are the near waters of other countries.

The Black Sea is a tightly enclosed and comparatively small sea that features the near waters of the countries surrounding it: Turkey to the south, Bulgaria and Romania to the west, Georgia to the east, and Ukraine and Russia to the north.

Control over the nearby waters of the Black Sea has been disputed over the centuries and played a task in the present Russo-Ukrainian war.

of Russia Capture of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 allowed him to regulate the naval port of Sevastopol. What was near waters of Ukraine became de facto waters near Russia for Russia.

Control of those nearby waters allowed Russia to disrupt Ukraine's trade, particularly grain exports to distant African waters.

But Russia's move was thwarted through the cooperation of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey to permit the passage of cargo ships through their nearby waters after which through the Bosphorus to the Mediterranean.

Ukraine's use of the nearby waters of those other countries allowed export Ukraine's exports amounted to between 5.2 and 5.8 million tons of grain per 30 days in the primary quarter of 2024. However, this was a decrease from Ukraine's exports of about 6.5 million tons per 30 days before the war, which then fell to only 2 million tons in the summertime of 2023 due to Russian attacks and threats.

But efforts to limit Russia's control over Ukraine's nearby waters within the Black Sea, and Russia's unwillingness to face the implications of an attack on ships in NATO countries' nearby waters, left Ukraine still within the capable of access distant waters to generate economic profit and keep the Ukrainian economy afloat.

For Putin, this depressing feeling

Not only is Russia prevented from disrupting Ukrainian exports, but it’s also exposed to direct naval attack from Ukraine. Since February 2022, Ukraine has successfully sunk or damaged Russian ships and dismembered the Russian Black Sea Fleet using unmanned attack drones. decreases by 15 Its pre-war fleet of around 36 warships was destroyed and lots of others damaged.

Russia was forced to limit the usage of Sevastopol and station its ships within the eastern a part of the Black Sea. It cannot function effectively within the nearby waters it gained by occupying Crimea.

Russia's maritime setbacks against Ukraine are only the newest in its historic difficulties projecting naval power and its resulting tendency to focus totally on defending nearby waters.

In 1905, Russia was shocked by one dramatic naval loss against Japan. However, even in cases where it was not completely defeated, Russian naval power has historically been limited. During World War I, Russia worked with the British Royal Navy to limit German industrial activities within the Baltic Sea and Turkish trade and military reach within the Black Sea.

In World War II, Russia was depending on material support from the Allies and was largely blockaded in its Baltic and Black Sea ports. Many ships were brought near home or stripped of their cannons as artillery or offshore support for the territorial battle with Germany.

Although the Soviet Union built fast missile boats and a few aircraft carriers through the Cold War, their range prolonged into wide waters depending on submarines. The principal purpose of the Soviet Mediterranean Fleet was to forestall NATO from entering the Black Sea.

And now Russia has lost control of the Black Sea. It cannot operate in these once protected waters. These losses reduce its ability to project naval power from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Cessation of captaincy to China

Therefore, faced with a glaring loss in its backyard and a weak position in its near waters, Russia can only bring its power to distant waters through cooperation with China, which itself is investing heavily in a distant waters naval capability.

Together Naval exercises within the South China Sea in July 2024 bear witness to this collaboration. Wang Guangzheng of the Southern Theater of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy said the driller that “the China-Russia joint patrol has promoted the deepening and practical cooperation between the two in various directions and fields.” And I stay up for he claimed The exercise “effectively enhanced the ability of both sides to jointly respond to threats to maritime security.”

This cooperation makes purely military sense for Russia, a mutually helpful sea power projection project. But it mainly advantages China.

Russia may help China defend its northern waters and secure access to distant waters across the Arctic Sea – on increasingly essential arena as global climate change reduces barriers attributable to sea ice. But Russia largely stays the junior partner.

Moscow's strategic interests will only be supported in the event that they coincide with Chinese interests. More specifically, sea power is concerning the projection of power for economic gain. China will likely use Russia to guard its continued economic reach in African, Pacific, European and South American waters. However, these interests are unlikely to be compromised for Russian objectives.

Russia definitely has economic interests within the Far East particularly within the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. And securing Russian interests in Africa complements China's growing naval presence within the Indian Ocean to secure its own and broader global economic interests. But cooperation will proceed to be at China's behest.

Russia is bogged down within the waters off the Black Sea as a result of its war in Ukraine, and the one way it could currently display its naval power is by accessing the waters off Africa and the Indian Ocean as China's junior partner, which agrees to the terms and conditions will dictate. Even if Russia achieves a victory in its land war against Ukraine, it’s going to not compensate for its continued inability to project its power across the oceans alone.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on October 3, 2024 to correct a geographic error that occurred within the editing phase.

TALLINN, Estonia — When Mikalay began school in Belarus this 12 months, the 15-year-old discovered that his teachers and faculty administrators now not called him by that name. Instead, they called him Nikolai, the Russian equivalent.

In addition, classes at his school – among the finest within the country – are actually taught in Russian somewhat than Belarusian, the language he has spoken for many of his life.

Belarusians like Mikalay are experiencing a brand new wave of Russification as Moscow expands its economic, political and cultural dominance and overtakes its neighbor's identity.

This isn’t the primary time. Russia imposed its language, symbols and cultural institutions on Belarus under the tsars and within the Soviet era. But with the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the country began to say its identity and Belarusian briefly became the official language, with the white-red-white national flag replacing a version of the hammer and sickle.

But that modified in 1994, when Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm official, got here to power. The authoritarian leader made Russian the official language alongside Belarusian and abolished nationalist symbols.

Lukashenko has now ruled the country for over thirty years, allowing Russia to dominate all facets of life in Belarus, a rustic of 9.5 million people. Belarusian, which like Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, is barely heard on the streets of Minsk and other major cities.

The official language, utilized by most media outlets, is Russian. Lukashenko speaks only Russian and government officials often don’t use their native language.

The country relies on Russian loans and low cost energy and has a political and military alliance with Moscow, allowing President Vladimir Putin to station troops and missiles on Ukrainian soil, which served as a staging area for the war in Ukraine.

“I understand that our Belarus is occupied. … And who is the president there? Not Lukashenko. The president is Putin,” said Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 and lives in de facto exile in Germany. “The nation has been humiliated and it will be very difficult for Belarusians to recover from this.”

Belarusian cultural figures have been persecuted and a whole lot of nationalist organizations have been closed. According to experts, Moscow is attempting to implement in Belarus what the Kremlin planned to do in neighboring Ukraine when the war began there in 2022.

“It is obvious that our children are being deliberately deprived of their native language, history and Belarusian identity, but parents are strongly advised not to ask questions about Russification,” said Mikalay's father, Anatoly, who spoke to The Associated Press provided that his last name not be used for fear of retribution.

“We were informed about the synchronization of the curriculum with Russia this year and were shown a propaganda film about how the Ukrainian secret service allegedly recruits our teenagers and forces them to carry out acts of sabotage in Belarus,” he said.

Mikalay's school was one among the few where paperwork and a few classes were conducted in Belarusian. In recent years, nevertheless, dozens of teachers have been fired and the Belarusian-language section of the web site disappeared.

Human rights activist Ales Byaljatsky, who was sentenced in 2023 for his work that won the Nobel Peace Prize, demanded that his trial be held in Belarusian. The court refused and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Lukashenko mocks his native language and says: “You can’t express anything great in Belarusian. … There are only two great languages ​​in the world: Russian and English.”

Speaking to Russian state media, Lukashenko said Putin once thanked him for making Russian the dominant language in Belarus.

“I said, 'Wait, what are you thanking me for? … The Russian language is my language, we were part of an empire and we participate in the development of this language,'” Lukashenko said.

Belarus was a part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years and have become one among the 15 Soviet republics after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Everyday use of the Belarusian language declined and was only utilized in the west and north of the country and in rural areas.

In 1994, about 40% of scholars were taught in Belarusian; today, this figure is lower than 9%.

Although Belarusian is an East Slavic language like Russian, its vocabulary differs considerably. In 1517, the Belarusian publisher Francysk Skaryna was one among the primary in Eastern Europe to translate the Bible into his native language.

Simply speaking Belarusian is seen as an indication of opposition to Lukashenko and a commitment to national identity. This played a key role within the mass protests after the authoritarian leader won a sixth term within the disputed 2020 elections. The crackdown that followed saw half 1,000,000 people flee the country.

“The Belarusian language is increasingly perceived as a sign of political disloyalty and is being abandoned in favor of Russian in public administration, education, culture and the mass media – on the orders of the hierarchy or out of fear of discrimination,” said Anaïs Marin, United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Belarus.

At the identical time, “more and more people want to speak Belarusian, which has become a symbol of freedom, but they are afraid to do so in public,” says Alina Nahornaja, writer of “Language 404,” a book about Belarusians who’ve experienced discrimination for speaking their native language.

As in Ukraine, Belarusians also share nationalist feelings and a desire for rapprochement with Europe, says Belarusian analyst Valery Karbalevich.

“But the Kremlin quickly recognized the danger and began the creeping Russification of Belarus,” he added.

This has led to pro-Russian organizations, joint educational programs and cultural projects “springing up like mushrooms after the rain – against the backdrop of harsh repression against everything Belarusian,” said Karbalevich.

Censorship and bans affect not only contemporary Belarusian literature, but in addition its classics. In 2023, the prosecutor's office declared the poems of Nineteenth-century poet Vincent Dunin-Martsinkevich, who opposed the Russian Empire, to be extremist.

When the Kremlin began supporting Lukashenko against anti-government protests in 2020, it secured his loyalty and received carte blanche in Belarus.

“Today Lukashenko is paying Putin with our sovereignty,” said exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. “Belarusian national identity, culture and language are our strongest weapons against the Russian world and Russification.”

There is now a “Russia House” in 4 cities in Belarus to advertise the country’s culture and influence and to supply seminars, film clubs, exhibitions and competitions.

Almost the complete troupe of the Yanka Kupala Theater, the oldest within the country, fled Belarus amid political repression. Former director Pavel Latushka, now an opposition figure abroad, said the brand new management was unable to recruit enough recent actors and needed to invite Russians, “but it turned out that no one spoke the Belarusian language.”

“Putin published an article back in 2021 denying the existence of an independent Ukraine, and even then it was clear to us that he was pursuing similar goals in Belarus,” Latushka said.

“The main course should be Ukraine,” he added, and for dessert a Russified Belarus.

Public Diplomacy – the art of winning a foreign audience over to a nation’s interests – used to involve winning support through charm, values ​​and cultural exports. It is what political scientists Joseph Nye initially known as “soft power”.

But Our peer-reviewed study Russia’s attempts to make use of foreign media as a diplomatic tool within the run-up to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 show that this art has been adapted into what we call “hard soft power.”

In this kind of public diplomacy, governments use subtle threats to steer residents of the goal countries feel unsafeThe overarching goals of such a technique are to sow or exacerbate existing divisions, promote social chaos, and expand the geopolitical influence of the responsible country.

Our study examined how Russia uses hard and soft power to win over Russian-speaking populations in the previous Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia while undermining democratic institutions and societal trust within the United States and its NATO allies.

A content evaluation of over 2,700 news stories from media sources from February to July 2021 showed that Russian-language media based in Georgia and Ukraine consistently presented anti-Western narratives. Prominent narratives included portraying NATO and the European Union as an existential threat to each countries.

These findings correspond with the Expansion of Russia's global intelligence networks within the Vladimir Putin eraincluding RT, formerly Russia Today, and Sputnik, which aim to influence populations and media outside Russia. The study's findings also reflect the close ties that exist between the Kremlin and pro-Russian politicians or local business tycoons who run pro-Russian news media.

Russia’s hard and soft power might be seen as a part of the Russian “Gray area” tacticswhich involve a broader range of coercive or manipulative measures, resembling the dissemination of false representations and Change images.

It also complements Russia’s hard power – the usage of military and economic measures to exert pressure on other countries.

The Russian-speaking population in the previous Soviet states has been a specific goal of the Kremlin's soft power campaigns within the post-Soviet years. This tactic is in step with Moscow's goal of strengthening the loyalty of the Russian diaspora and reinforcing the concept of ​​a “Russian World” or “Russkiy Mir”.

As Russia's neighbors, each Georgia and Ukraine are targets of Moscow's soft power diplomacy in addition to its military aggression. During the period of our investigation, Russia was conducting a preliminary buildup of its forces in Crimea and on Ukraine's eastern border, ahead of the total invasion in February 2022.

Our study found that in this era, a narrative emerged within the Russian media, local Ukrainian media, and native Georgian media emphasizing Russia's ability to counter the military power of Western countries.

Why it is necessary

Our research shows how domestic media will be used as a tool to Russia's propaganda script.

As the US presidential election approaches, the Kremlin and its proxies once more appear Amplify narratives about sensitive issues resembling immigration, race and the Ukraine war. On September 5, 2024, US prosecutors will Charges against two Russian media managers about secretly funding right-wing Americans to supply videos that promote Moscow's interests and “reinforce domestic divisions to weaken American opposition.”

While Russia is the country that conducts most propaganda and disinformation campaigns, There is evidence that China and Iran have participated in such malicious efforts.

What shouldn’t be yet known

Despite the investments by countries like Russia in hard and soft power techniques, whether these strategies have been successful in influencing people's considering and behavior requires further investigation.

Measuring the tangible results of hard-soft power initiatives is difficult, especially in relation to social media. Nevertheless, our study and other research suggests that decentralized social media platforms could also be less effective for foreign influence operations than more traditional media platforms.

What happens next?

Our research team plans to review the phenomenon of hard soft power within the context of other countries. In addition, we plan to make use of focus groups and experimental studies to look at in depth the patterns of hard soft power use and its impact on people within the goal countries.

President Joe Biden’s recent approval of a significant change in US nuclear weapons strategy underscores the eye that the country's national security authorities are paying to China's ambitions for influence on the earth.

As threats to the United States change, the American military adjusts its strategic focus, budgets and planning. After September 11, for instance, Realignment of the US military A shift away from the main focus of war preparations on fighting a strong nation – the Soviet Union – and towards fighting small terrorist and insurgent groups.

Over the past decade, the Pentagon has refocused on preparing for what authorities call “Competition between the good powers” under the USA, Russia and China.

The most vital strategic shift evident within the planning of competition between great powers is the deal with deterrence. In classical military strategy Deterrence focuses on to make the enemy imagine that he can never achieve his goals by military force since the response could be overwhelming and decisive. National Defense Strategy The document, published in October 2022 and outlining the country's goals, objectives and resource allocation for the subsequent two years, explicitly acknowledges the potential risk of tensions and open conflict with Russia or China and calls for “integrated deterrence” to forestall this. That means joint efforts by the military, intelligence and diplomatic services across your complete US government.

The National Military Strategy – the military a part of the overarching National Defense Strategy – sets out how the U.S. military will contribute to this effort. former Deputy Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff of the PentagonI see the military focused on three foremost goals: achieving integrated deterrence and stopping conflict with Russia or China.

New deployment plans

For the military, integrated deterrence signifies that it depends each on where forces are positioned and what they’ll do in the sphere to influence adversaries' decisions about when, where, how – and whether – to make use of military force against the United States or its interests.

As it moves away from counterterrorism and prepares for great-power conflict, the Defense Department has developed latest methods to cope with the indisputable fact that, unlike small terrorist groups, Russia and China can fight one another anywhere on the earth within the air, on land and at sea – and in addition online and in space.

The first of those methods is what the Pentagon calls “dynamic use of force”, wherein U.S. military forces are deployed around the globe quickly and without predictable rotation schedules. This approach can reassure allies facing threats from Russia or China.

For example, the USA has at times 10,000 soldiers to PolandThe troops should not permanently stationed there, however the constant presence of U.S. forces keeps Russia guessing concerning the size and capabilities of the force and shows that it’s willing to support nervous NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

Secondly, a shift of personnel and skills to the so-called “Multi-domain operations”, wherein units with different missions within the air, land, sea, space and cyberspace plan and train together. In this manner, they might be prepared for close cooperation in actual conflicts.

This type of cooperation allows the country to answer threats in a wide range of ways. For example, challenges to American naval power on the high seas do not need to be met directly with naval operations, but will also be met with cyberattacks or from space.

This approach could cause the Chinese People's Liberation Army to reconsider military operations against Taiwan. Not only would the Chinese potentially face a fierce direct conflict, but U.S. cyber and space operations could also disrupt or destroy Chinese military communications, hampering their attack.

Investments in modernization

Recent research has shown that China's investment in its military personnel and capabilities – particularly in its air, naval and nuclear forces – has increased exponentially over the past twenty years. Level is estimated to be near parity with the United States. This has prompted the US to modernize the relevant capabilities of its own military. For the 2024 budget, the Department of Defense allocated a whopping $234.9 billion for programs to support integrated deterrencewhich probably a rise of 10% above previous spending plans.

Part of this money can be invested in the event and acquisition F-35 fighter jets and buildings Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarinesIf the United States and its allies within the Pacific, similar to Japan, South Korea and AustraliaBy deploying these aircraft and submarines, they are going to remind potential adversaries of American military power – which itself is a deterrent against foreign aggression.

In the last 10 years China's rapid expansion of its nuclear weapons stockpile has alarmed senior policymakers within the United States Although then-President Barack Obama urged countries to a world without nuclear weaponshe approved most expensive and extensive upgrade ever to the US nuclear arsenal. In 2022, the Biden administration renewed a financial commitment for “field a contemporary, resilient nuclear triad“, consisting of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles and long-range nuclear bombers.

Advanced technology

In 2019 Space Force was established as an independent branch of the armed forces and tasked with defending American space assets and upholding international law. Due to the importance of satellite communications to military operations and civilian life – including web connectivity – the Space Force works closely with Cyber ​​Commandthe military organization tasked with defending the nation against cyberattacks to forestall malicious hackers from disrupting systems vital to the world, similar to the Global Positioning Systemcommonly often called GPS.

Recent findings suggest China plans destructive cyber attacks against critical U.S. infrastructure, including the ability grid, during a conflict. To counter these plans, Cyber ​​​​Command continues to enhance its capabilities, Defend US systems and protect firms from cyberattacks, in addition to perform attacks on systems in other countries.

The Pentagon can also be attempting to counter China’s rapidly growing military forces through the use of artificial intelligence in a program called Replicator InitiativeThe goal of the project is to construct 1000’s of low-cost, AI-controlled autonomous aircraft and boats that might be utilized in combat to “meet the mass of the (Chinese military) with one’s own mass“, said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks.

Integration with allies and partners

The U.S. military has also sought to strengthen its alliances with other countries, particularly throughout the past 4 years of the Biden administration.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led NATO to expand its membership and the number and capability of troops available to the organization. The United States has reaffirmed its commitment to NATO, Increasing troop deployment in Eastern Europe and supporting European defence initiatives through the commitment nearly $3 billion in funding for added fighter aircraft, anti-aircraft batteries and ammunition.

In Asia, across the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific Ocean, an enormous region that the federal government often refers to as “the Indo-Pacific“The United States has strengthened its alliances with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines through numerous military exercises and increased military aid.” Efforts similar to the annual Marine Aviation Support Exercise aim to counteract China's military and political influence.

The US has also sought to strengthen its alliances with Britain and Australia, with a commitment to five conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian Navy by 2030.

Together, the United States has combined all of those efforts right into a coordinated approach to avoid open conflict with China and Russia. But the work will not be done yet: the worldwide political and military landscape is always changing, and latest security challenges are always emerging.

Grace Jonesa master's student in public policy and research fellow on the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, contributed research to this text.