A return to a version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is “in sight,” which means that the typical chorus of opponents to the deal are launching a last-ditch effort to prevent an agreement. A letter sent to President Biden by Sen. Ted Cruz and 32 other senators claimed they will use “the full range of options and leverage available” to prevent a deal from being reached. With this context in mind, Sen. Chris Murphy made a blistering speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday making the case for the JCPOA. Murphy aimed at answering one simple question: What is the alternative?
Fortunately, we know the alternative is. Murphy made clear that the policy supported by opponents to a nuclear deal has been tried and tested; “To the extent that there was any silver lining of President Trump’s decision, it’s that it allowed us for four years to test the theory of the opponents…because president Trump implemented the strategy that the critics of the JCPOA wanted President Obama to employ.” Murphy then closely compared the policies of the previous two administrations.
First, on the nuclear issue, Murphy noted that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium gas is currently roughly 11 times what it was during the full implementation of the agreement. Iran also went from a “breakout time” — the time it would take to acquire enough enriched uranium for one bomb — under the agreement of more than a year to two months today, and has restarted its nuclear research program to the point that it is “stronger than it was prior to the JCPOA in some ways.” Rather than “restoring deterrence,” as some have claimed, Murphy said that the “maximum pressure” campaign was a “spectacular failure” on all accounts.
But it isn’t just on the nuclear issue. Murphy also noted that none of Iran’s other malevolent activities in the region have abated either; “Iran continues to support proxy armies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, in fact their connection with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with the Houthis in Yemen is probably stronger today than it was during the JCPOA.” Murphy also pointed to the fact that Iran even restarted attacks on U.S. troops after President Trump tore up the JCPOA. By all accounts, Iran hasn’t been deterred, but rather emboldened.
Murphy hammered home that diplomacy may not always be perfect, but it is far better than the alternative of maximum pressure. “Newsflash,” he said, ”occasionally there are diplomatic agreements that are in the best interests of the United States and the JCPOA was inarguably one of them.”
With the Biden administration’s time window shortening, Murphy showed that the opposition to a nuclear agreement is pure political theatrics. Diplomacy can work, and the lessons of the past decade demonstrate that.
Nick Cleveland-Stout is a Junior Research Fellow in the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute. Previously, Nick conducted research on U.S.-Brazil relations as a 2023 Fulbright fellow at the Federal University of Santa Catarina.
Top image credit: A sapper of the 24th mechanized brigade named after King Danylo installs an anti-tank landmine, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, on the outskirts of the town of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region, Ukraine October 30, 2024. Oleg Petrasiuk/Press Service of the 24th King Danylo Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS
The Biden administration announced today that it will provide Ukraine with antipersonnel landmines for use inside the country, a reversal of its own efforts to revive President Obama’s ban on America’s use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of the indiscriminate weapons anywhere except the Korean peninsula.
The intent of this reversal, one U.S. official told the Washington Post, is to “contribute to a more effective defense.” The landmines — use of which is banned in 160 countries by an international treaty — are expected to be deployed primarily in the country’s eastern territories, where Ukrainian forces are struggling to defend against steady advances by the Russian military.
But much like the Biden administration’s controversial decision to supply Ukraine with cluster bombs — another indiscriminate weapon system whose unexploded ordinance can maim and kill civilians, especially children, for decades after their use — this move may offer limited military upside, but it comes with massive risk to Ukrainian civilians, and it will not turn the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the policy shift to reporters this morning during a trip to Laos, a nation which the U.S. helped turn into the world’s most bombed country per capita. Either blind or indifferent to the irony of making this announcement from a country where 30% of the territory remains contaminated by unexploded ordinance thanks to the U.S. military, Austin prebutted humanitarian concerns with the weapons transfer by arguing that the land mines are “not persistent,” so “we can control when they would self-activate, self-detonate and that makes it far more safer eventually.”
But as arms experts at the Friends Committee on National Legislation have pointed out, drawing a distinction between persistent and non-persistent landmines is “dangerously misleading” because of the well-documented failures of the self-destruct and self-deactivation features that supposedly make these weapons “safer” for the civilians who stumble across them years after a war has ended. In fact, the “smart mines” the U.S. deployed in the Gulf War failed at a rate 150 times higher than the Department of Defense claimed.
The reality is that, no matter the mechanisms meant to make these weapons more humane, non-persistent landmines are still packed full of explosive materials — and so their lethality, indiscriminate nature, and ability to harm civilians persist.
In fact, when President Trump first reversed the Obama-era landmine restrictions in 2020, Joe Biden himself recognized the move for what it was — “another reckless act” that would “put more civilians at risk of being injured by unexploded mines.” Biden lived up to his campaign pledge to “promptly roll back” Trump’s move on landmines in 2022 — only to reverse his own position on the way out of the White House doors.
Coming on the heels of Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles to strike Russian territory, this move is presumably aimed at proving Biden’s willingness to do “whatever it takes” to help Ukraine prevail over Russia. But as a battered Ukraine prepares to enter its fourth year since Russia’s invasion, and Ukrainian support for a war-ending diplomacy continues to grow, the question remains: when will U.S. leaders stop searching for a silver bullet weapon that enables Ukraine to win an unwinnable war, and actually pair U.S. military aid to Ukraine with an all-out push to get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table and broker an end to this bloodshed?
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Top image credit: Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attends task force meeting of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 24, 2024. REUTERS/Tita Barros
The city of Rio de Janeiro provided a stunningly beautiful backdrop to Brazil’s big moment as host of the G20 summit this week.
Despite last minute challenges, Brazil pulled off a strong joint statement (Leaders’ Declaration) that put some of President Lula’s priorities on human welfare at the heart of the grouping’s agenda, while also crafting impressively tough language on Middle East conflicts and a pragmatic paragraph on Ukraine.
Key financial issues such as reform of multilateral development banks (MDBs) also continued to make progress.
An organization of 19 states and two regional organizations (the European Union and African Union), the G20 is the high table of global economic governance, which came into its own with annual leaders’ summits in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It inevitably tackles the most prominent issues of security during these summits as well.
In a world racked by two major regional conflicts and several other crises, and with the tectonic power shift underway in Washington, this year’s G20 was shaping up to be a challenge. Although the United States was represented by President Joe Biden, the election of Donald Trump cast a long shadow over the proceedings. This was also the third G20 summit hosted by a Global South state (and South Africa will be the fourth next year), which has led to a concentrated push on “Southern issues” in these summits.
Early in the summit, Argentina indicated it may not sign on to taxing the ultra-wealthy, a cause President Lula had prioritized (though this would require domestic legislation within states to be implemented). Argentinian president Javier Milei’s prior meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago (the first foreign leader the president-elect has met since his reelection) triggered speculation that Argentina was potentially playing a spoiler. But cooler heads prevailed, and Argentina ultimately signed on to the joint statement. Along with another 81 nations, Buenos Aires also joined the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty inaugurated at Rio.
The G20 has historically focused on the more macroeconomic aspects of global economic governance. By placing hunger and poverty squarely within the grouping’s agenda, Brazil has introduced a more clearly human dimension to the elite body that can only help it gain more credibility across the world, especially across the Global South.
The summit’s achievement of consensus on the horror unfolding in the Middle East was also impressive. There has been a wide divide between the Global West and most of the Global South on Israel’s war on Palestine and Lebanon.
But the joint statement demanded “the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale,” strongly backed the “Palestinian right to self-determination,” a two-state solution, and a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza “in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2735.” On Lebanon, the statement, while not mentioning UNSC resolution 1701 (that has been prioritized by the United States), called for a ceasefire that enabled “citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line.”
The Russia-Ukraine war was a major point of contention at the 2023 New Delhi G20 summit and nearly torpedoed the 2022 Bali summit. But the delegates at Rio, perhaps chastened by serious obstacles now evident to maximalist positions on both sides of the war, agreed to a modest paragraph on the conflict.
It mainly cited the UN charter and various dimensions of “human suffering.” Preserving sovereignty and territorial integrity, a consistent point of international consensus on Ukraine, was only mentioned in a separate paragraph that addressed all global conflicts.
Despite Brazil’s current prioritization of the issue in international diplomacy, climate change was one area where the Rio summit could have shown greater muscle. For instance, there was no call to “transition away from fossil fuels,” a major commitment from last year’s COP. Sources in Rio told me that the overlapping dates with the ongoing COP29 at Baku added to the complications, as key climate negotiators of the various nations were holed up many time zones away.
But the challenge also symbolizes an overall weakening of international climate action and an increasing paralysis of the UNFCCC process.
On reforming international institutions, the New Delhi G20 summit provided a substantive push on MDB reform, an issue the Global South has been pushing vigorously. The Rio process took the next step by producing a comprehensive roadmap on the question. The joint statement also pushed for greater Global South inclusion in the UN Security Council by inclusion of “underrepresented and unrepresented regions and groups (in) Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean”
Brazil’s success at Rio demonstrated that, in a world in which the forces of fragmentation are ascendant, the G20 remains the one forum that can still bring the world’s key states together in one room and engage with each other. That may sound like a low bar, but it is, in fact, an achievement.
As I wrote recently, even America Firsters in the United States will likely find the grouping useful due to its informality, lack of a permanent bureaucracy, and the ample opportunity for bilateral meetings with strong global leaders.
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Top Photo: Ukrainian military returns home to Kiev from conflict at the border, where battles had raged between Ukraine and Russian forces. (Shuttertock/Vitaliy Holov)
A new Gallup study indicates that most Ukrainians want the war with Russia to end. After more than two years of fighting, 52% of those polled indicated that they would prefer a negotiated peace rather than continuing to fight.
Ukrainian support for the war has consistently dropped since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022. According to Gallup, 73% wished to continue fighting in 2022, and 63% in 2023. This is the first time a majority supported a negotiated peace.
Throughout the country, Kyiv polled the highest in support of a continued fight with Russia at 47%, and the eastern regions of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhya all polled just 27% in support. Every region in the country polled below 50%.
Of the majority who supported a negotiated end, 52% agreed that “Ukraine should be open to making some territorial concessions as a part of a peace deal to end the war.” Additionally, of those polled who supported continuing the fight, 81% said that a victory should occur “when all territory lost between 2014 and now is regained, including Crimea.” But that number is down from 92% and 93% in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
The polling was conducted from August through October. During this period, President Volydmyr Zelensky ordered troops into Russia for the first time, taking a portion of Kursk in August, followed by a string of Russian battlefield successes in October in eastern Ukraine, and news that North Korean troops would soon be present on the battlefield, fighting for the Russians.
Even before these developments, however, the Ukrainian consensus around the war has been complex. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a poll in June, which found 46% of respondents supporting an end to the war if Russia withdrew from the territories occupied since 2022, and 50% supporting an end if Russia withdrew from everywhere, save Crimea.
“These realities of Ukrainian public sentiment sadly weren't widely known until recently, but they were knowable,” said the Quincy Institute’s Mark Episkopos in a June article in The Nation. “This widespread sentiment in favor of peace provides President Zelenskyy with a powerful mandate to work with the incoming administration toward a shared strategy for reaching a negotiated settlement.”
In addition to the Ukrainian public, members of the military and government have also spoken in support of negotiation with Russia. Battery commander Mykhailo Temper told The Financial Times in an early October interview that “it’s quite hard to imagine we will be able to move the enemy back to the borders of 1991.”
According to FT, European diplomats noticed that Ukrainian officials were more open to agreeing to a ceasefire, even while Russian troops occupied parts of the country. One of the diplomats said, “We’re talking more and more openly about how this ends and what Ukraine would have to give up in order to get a permanent peace deal.”
As the war continues, life in Ukraine has gotten more difficult for the average citizen. A summer study from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 77% of respondents had experienced a loss of family members, friends, or acquaintances and two-thirds indicated that their wartime income was insufficient.
Additionally, an October report from Florence Bauer, head of the U.N. Population Fund in Eastern Europe, pointed to a population crisis in Ukraine, as 10 million (25% of the population) had either fled the country or been killed as a result of the conflict. In addition to the population loss, Bauer also highlighted a steep decline in fertility: “The birth rate plummeted to one child per woman – the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world.”
The Gallup report also found that more Ukrainians preferred that the European Union or the United Kingdom play a significant role in the peace process over the United States, with 70% preferring the EU and 63% the UK, compared to 54% supporting the United States under a hypothetical Harris presidency, and 49% under President-elect Trump.
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