Having reviewed the history of Cold War 1, and the major attributes of economic and military power wielded by the leading protagonists of Cold War 2.0 and their principal allies, it now remains to address where the dynamics of the current cold war will play out. In other words, where will the currency of economic and military power, so carefully assembled by the democracies and the autocracies, be spent? The following discussion has to begin in Ukraine, where the unprovoked, unjustified invasion by Russia in February 2022 proved (if proof was even required) that the world is indeed in the midst of Cold War 2.0.
The second focal point is Taiwan, which, if Cold War 2.0 goes fully hot on and around the island, would also be a major—the major—geopolitical event in the 21st century, overshadowing even the current Russo-Ukrainian War, given that the United States (and possibly other democracies) would send military forces into this war, not just supply weapons, as is the case in Ukraine. Ukraine and Taiwan are big, meaty strategic subjects to digest, and take up the bulk of this chapter. It would be a major deficiency, though, if some light wasn’t also brought to bear on the relations of the democracies and the autocracies with the Global South, which was an important theater of hot and cold operations in Cold War 1, and invariably will be so again, but with a renewed set of dynamics and drivers revolving in large measure around technology and innovation.
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, with Russian army groups crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border in the north, northeast, east, southeast, and south of Ukraine. The one from the north was launched from Belarus, as Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, is only 150 kilometers from the Belarusian border. Russia’s war aim was to capture and decapitate Ukraine’s government, and to bring its territories and population into Russia—essentially, to wipe Ukraine off the map as an independent country. The 2022 invasion was a continuation of Russia’s partial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when Moscow both (a) implanted irregular/Russian troops and mercenaries into the Donbas region of Ukraine to foment a movement there to join Russia, and (b) illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula through armed force. (Crimea being a land mass of 27,000 square kilometers, about the size of the state of Massachusetts.)
In 1954 (during Cold War 1) the supreme Soviet government in Moscow transferred Crimea Oblast (province) from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The transfer made sense to Moscow as the Crimean peninsula needed to better connect with the contiguous mainland (which was under the administration of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic) for purposes of irrigation, transport connections, and the like. In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were referendums in each oblast of Ukraine (including Crimea and the two in the Donbas, namely Luhansk and Donetsk). In each oblast a majority of the people voting supported Ukraine and their oblast, leaving the Soviet Union and Russia, and becoming part of an independent Ukraine. In 1994, Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum, whereby Ukraine agreed to give up to Russia the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory in exchange for Russia agreeing to recognize and respect the 1991 borders of Ukraine.
When it started its hot war against Ukraine in 2014, Russian president Putin breached Russia’s obligations under the Budapest Memorandum (as well the Charter of the United Nations), thereby starting a new hot war against Ukraine and a cold war against a host of other democracies, especially the US, the UK, and the other members of NATO. It was not, though, simply the resumption of Cold War 1, because there are a number of new factors today that didn’t exist between 1945 and 1989. The principal difference between then and now is that Russia is not the leader of the autocracies, China is.
That is why, two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin flew to Beijing to discuss with Xi Jinping Putin’s plan to invade and assimilate Ukraine. Xi was supportive for two major reasons. First, Putin and Xi anticipated (wrongly, as it turned out) that the West’s reaction to the invasion would be a shambles, largely because they thought the United States and Europe would disagree on how to respond to the invasion. Xi and Putin also believed that there would be massive divisions even within Europe—for example, the former East Bloc countries, led by Poland, would want to help Ukraine as much as possible, while Germany, which at the time was heavily dependent on Russian gas for its energy needs, would be reluctant to assist Ukraine at the risk of upsetting the Russians. Overall, then, Xi and Putin figured invading Ukraine would weaken the West, which was an important objective for both of them.
Xi’s second reason for supporting Putin is that Xi has something akin to his own Ukraine, namely China’s stated intention to “repatriate” Taiwan into China. Therefore, Xi believed that Putin’s quick capture and annexation of the whole of Ukraine would be a good precedent militarily and diplomatically for China’s takeover of Taiwan. Driven by these types of considerations, on February 4, 2022, a mere two weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Xi and Putin stood side by side in Beijing and issued an eye-popping 5,364-word statement, signed by both countries, in which they pledged to work together in a host of areas, including joint military exercises. The statement concluded that, “The friendship of Russia and China knew no limits.”
The signing of this document in Beijing by Xi and Putin confirms that in Cold War 2 China is the senior autocracy and Russia is the junior partner. This is a complete flip from Cold War 1. In 1950, before North Korean autocrat Kim Il-Sung invaded South Korea, and later before Chinese autocrat Mao Zedong sent 700,000 Chinese troops to save President Kim’s untenable position, both autocrats got permission from the autocrat Stalin in Moscow. Equally, Russia did not ask China’s permission in 1956 before sending Russian tanks into Budapest to put down the Hungarian independence uprising, nor did Russia seek China’s permission in 1968 when it sent tanks into Czechoslovakia to snuff out the Prague Spring. The world’s two leading autocratic powers—Russia and China—have switched places, and this will have important ramifications for Cold War 2.0 (and for Russia’s execution of hot wars like those in Ukraine).
Still, one critical factor experiencing continuity between the two cold wars is the central role played by technology in the creation and deployment of national military and economic power. Although there is still no end in sight for the war in Ukraine, some conclusions can be made about the immense importance of state-of-the-art high-tech weaponry, particularly to the Ukrainians, and hence the nomenclature for the current rivalry as Cold War 2.0 is entirely appropriate. A few examples of the role of the new technology on the Ukrainian battlefield include the following.
In the early days of the full-scale war, hundreds of Russian armored vehicles raced toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Observers were reminded of the Nazi autocrat Hitler’s Blitzkrieg (“Lightning War”) in World War II, when highly mobile tank units crashed into northern France and subdued a huge French army (and a sizeable British expeditionary force) in a matter of weeks, to the immense shock of the democracies. In February 2022 no Western military analyst or think tank gave the Ukrainian government any chance of survival. The United States apparently offered to airlift Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of Kyiv and to a safe exile somewhere in a democracy. Zelenskyy, in a phrase that will rank among the great war pronouncements of history, reportedly replied: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
In those first few days and weeks of the war, the weapons that saved Ukraine were high-tech, portable, precision-guided anti-tank missiles, primarily the American Stinger and Javelin and the British NLAW. Wielded by incredibly brave Ukrainian soldiers, these missiles could be fired from a range of about 2,500 meters, but because of their software-enabled guidance system they were deadly accurate. The previous generation of anti-tank missiles were not smart, and hence they had to be fired from much closer range. With the new computer technology in the current anti-tank missiles, a soldier merely had to fire them sufficiently in the direction of the target. After launch they would home in on the tank in the course of their flight.
The Javelin, for example, is made jointly by Raytheon (now RTX) and Lockheed Martin, the two leading US defense contractors. Due to intense computer miniaturization over the past few decades (courtesy of high-performance semiconductor chips), the entire unit weighs only fifty pounds, allowing it to be carried and handled by a single soldier. They are not cheap, costing around $80,000 apiece, which means that training soldiers on them has required the development of a simulator, which generates images of real terrain and a very authentic experience. The high-tech training simulator (using very advanced software and computer graphics) saves bundles of money, which allows more Javelin units to be purchased, in this case by the Ukrainian army. It is estimated that in the first three weeks of the war, Ukrainian soldiers were able to destroy 550 Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers with these missiles, allowing the Ukrainians to win the Battle of Kyiv. By the end of March 2022 the remaining Russian columns in northern Ukraine retreated from the battlefield. These fairly inexpensive but incredibly powerful computer-guided shoulder-launched weapons saved the government of Ukraine from an early and ignominious defeat. High-tech weapons were decisive in the first phase of the war.
A second critical high-tech weapon in the war has been the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), an “artillery rocket” system made by Lockheed Martin that launches fairly large precision-guided missiles at land-based targets. The HIMARS is the size of a medium-sized shipping container, and is pulled around by a truck cab. It is a “shoot and scoot” weapon. It launches one or more rockets, but then the operator quickly drives away so the enemy doesn’t detect their location and counter with their own missiles. What HIMARS shares with the Javelin is that it is stuffed full of SCs. These allow the HIMARS rocket to be self-guided, but at a much longer range than the shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles. A HIMARS-launched missile can fly up to fifty miles and precisely hit a target, like an ammunition depot, an enemy command headquarters, or an army barracks. The HIMARS were critical in “softening up” the Russian defensive line in eastern Ukraine when, in September–October 2022 the Ukrainian army launched a successful counteroffensive and retook some 30 percent of the territory gained by the Russians at the beginning of the war, including the regional capital Kharkiv. Again, the Battle of Kharkiv could not have been won by the Ukrainians without high-tech precision weapons.
In the fall/winter of 2022–2023, when military ground operations decreased, Russia began a major campaign of firing missiles and drones into Ukraine to take out electrical and other utilities, but also to hit civilian apartments and community buildings (like museums) in order to try to break the spirit of Ukrainians—notwithstanding that firing weapons at nonmilitary targets constitutes a war crime. To defend against these illegal attacks, the Ukrainians deployed the Patriot (Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target) air defense system (ADS), which is made by Raytheon (with Lockhead Martin making some advanced missiles for it). The Patriot is a very sophisticated multicomponent system that costs in the range of $1.1 billion for a typical configuration, consisting of $400 million for the general system and typically $700 million for the initial inventory of interception missiles. A radar unit detects and tracks incoming threats, and then sophisticated computers, and very complicated software, provide targeting direction for the launch of the intercept missiles.1 While expensive, the user tends to get what they pay for, in that the Patriot has an about 95 percent success rate. In Ukraine they have even shot down Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, which Putin had claimed previously was impervious to ADS intercept missiles.2 The Patriot uses a lot of artificial intelligence capability, especially when it is in “automatic” mode.
A number of other high-tech weapons and devices have also proven to be very important in the Ukraine war. The Ukrainian army relies heavily on drones for reconnaissance, especially for targeting their own (non-smart) artillery fire. Traditional artillery, like 155 MM howitzer cannons, continue to play an important role in the war, repulsing Russian forces in the Battle of Kyiv. Some drones have also been rigged so they can drop a small bomb. Ukrainian troops are exhibiting superior innovation skills in crafting custom technology solutions that fit the needs of the battlefield. Ukraine’s prewar strength in civilian information technology capacity is playing an important role during the war. Chapter 1, in discussing the sources of military and economic power, highlighted the increasing fusion of the civilian and the military realms when it comes to technology. Ukraine’s use of drones in its war with Russia is a good example of this trend.
Simultaneously with military campaigns in the physical battle space in Ukraine, this war has seen a massive information war extending from the smartphones used by the troops on the front lines to various social media platforms (including the many Russian “military bloggers” on the Telegram channel), to television screens in apartments all around the world, but especially in Russia. Putin’s autocratic propaganda purveyors spend enormous effort using television, social media, and even low-tech outdoor advertising to convince the Russian public of a range of mistruths justifying his brazen military campaign in Ukraine. At the beginning of the war, Putin labeled his full-scale invasion merely a “special military operation,” so as not to frighten middle-class Russians. This is critical for Putin, because as an autocrat his core social compact with Russian citizens is that he will ensure a steadily improving lifestyle for them, and in return they will not concern themselves with Putin’s personal corruption nor the general corruption of the government and military, and they will allow him to run domestic politics and Russian foreign and military policy as he sees fit. Therefore, Putin must continue to devise a positive narrative about the war, even if it doesn’t reflect reality.
Putin’s primary technology for propagating his domestic disinformation is television, which is very much an information channel that dates from Cold War 1. Nevertheless, it is a very effective communication medium for about 80 percent of Russians, especially seniors, who obtain most of their awareness of current affairs from evening TV news, which of course is crafted entirely by the Kremlin’s propaganda department. Quite literally, every day around 3:00 P.M. the newsroom at Russia Today and other government-controlled news outlets get a notice from the Kremlin as to what Putin wants on the evening news and how it must be presented. The supine media outlets dutifully package the request into stories to be broadcast a few hours later. To be clear, a number of governments in the democracies fund publicly owned media properties, like the BBC in the United Kingdom, the CBC in Canada, NPR in the United States, and ABC in Australia, but in each of these (and similar) cases in the democracies there is a firm wall separating the government of the day from exercising any editorial control or influence over the reporters and other content creators at these media outlets, which is how they maintain editorial independence.
The role of television in an autocracy should not be underestimated. In Russia, almost two years into the Ukraine war, 80 percent of the population believes that Putin is working hard to de-Nazify Ukraine. Putin has also convinced a majority of Russians that NATO started the war in Ukraine. These results are not surprising—what else can be expected when a person’s only information source is the evening news doled out by the Kremlin’s disinformation department. The experience of other autocracies corresponds with this state of affairs in Russia. In North Korea, as a result of unrelenting disinformation by the autocratic regime in Pyongyang, seventy-four years after the brazen invasion of South Korea by the armies of North Korea under the leadership of the North’s dictator Kim Il-Sung, the vast majority of North Koreans still believe that it was South Korea that attacked North Korea, and that North Korea was only fighting the three-year-long war in self-defense. (Strictly speaking, this war is still ongoing as a peace deal was never signed between North and South Korea.)
Putin is also well equipped to spread propaganda on more digitally oriented platforms. Since the start of the Internet revolution, Russia has invested in, and fostered, large troll-farm operations located within Russia that specialize in distributing massive amounts of disinformation to the Internet and social media users around the world, with specific messages and memes targeted at Western audiences, other messages at people living in the Global South, others in Asia, and so on. For instance, the Mueller report gives a good sense of how these Russian troll farms operate, and what they managed to achieve in respect of the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Therefore, when Putin started the war in Ukraine in 2014 it was simple to have these Internet troll businesses start propagating disinformation about the war, which has simply continued to the present day.
Using these information distribution channels, Putin has scored some big successes, such as when pollsters report that in countries like China, India, and South Africa a majority of the respective populations believe that it was actually Ukraine, propped up by NATO, that started the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Equally, Putin has been very effective at spreading the lie that grain prices have increased worldwide because of Ukraine raising prices unilaterally, the reality being that grain prices rose because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut off shipments from Ukraine (thereby tightening supply) as Russian naval vessels blocked the use of Ukraine’s grain ports on its coast along the Black Sea.
At the same time, though, what is also fascinating about the new social media and related communications technologies and data dissemination techniques is how quickly they can be spun up from a standing start. For his part, President Zelenskyy did not have preexisting Internet troll farms to take advantage of, but he was equally keen to launch a major information campaign on social media. Indeed, given Ukraine’s heavy, some would argue even existential, reliance on assistance (both military and financial) from the democracies, it was necessary for Zelenskyy to make a deep connection with tens of millions of citizens in the donor countries, and to keep them engaged, so that their politicians would see in their public opinion polls that support for Ukraine ran high. For the most part, President Zelenskyy has achieved this objective with impressive success.
Even though the Russo-Ukrainian War has not yet concluded, after one and a half years of fighting the huge Russian army, the excruciating toll on Ukraine is clear. Ukraine’s economy is devastated. Roughly 14 million refugees (largely women and children) have fled the country’s worst war zones, of which 6 million have left Ukraine altogether. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children have been abducted by the Russian occupiers of eastern Ukraine. Hundreds of schools, hospitals, museums, and other places of Ukrainian culture have been specifically targeted by Russian missiles. Thousands of war crimes are being documented, including the senseless murder of noncombatant civilians in Ukrainian towns occupied by Russian troops. The vast horrors of modern warfare have been severely inflicted on Ukraine and its people by the invading Russians. Supported by military equipment, and financial and humanitarian assistance from the democracies, the Ukrainians have been able to fight back valiantly against the Russians, but at great cost—estimates of the number of dead and wounded Ukrainian soldiers hover in the range of 130,000. All of this murder and mayhem came in order to satisfy the whims of a Russian autocrat. Such is the awful, bloodstained calculus of Cold War 2.0, because autocrats feel threatened by the mere existence of democracies.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Ukrainian leadership is united behind the position that they will only negotiate a peace deal once all Russian troops have left Ukraine as its borders were constituted before Putin’s 2014 infiltration of the Donbas and annexation of Crimea (referred to as “1991 Ukraine”). Some influential commentators, including Henry Kissinger, have stated that it would be worth it for Ukraine to give up this territory—which, including the additional territory captured by the Russians in the 2022 invasion, comprises about 20 percent of 1991 Ukraine—in return for firm security guarantees from key democracies or even NATO membership. One suggestion: any politician in a democracy making a similar proposal should be prepared to voluntarily give up 20 percent of their own country to one or more neighbors before they are allowed to recommend that President Zelenskyy do the same for Ukraine. Does anyone think India’s prime minister Modi would give up 20 percent of India (or even 20 percent of just the northwest province of Kashmir, or even the Ladakh portion of it) to get a lasting peace deal with China for the border dispute between the two Asian giants? And if that’s not reasonable for India, why is it reasonable for Ukraine?
Even if the Russo-Ukrainian War has not ended, there are nevertheless a few important lessons to be drawn from it for Cold War 2.0. Digital and computer-based technologies, deployed in weapons systems but also in a myriad other ways, have come to play a significant role in this conflict. Moreover, the weapons systems resulting from innovation in the democracies are superior in their functionality and performance to those emanating from autocracies. Economic sanctions levied by the democracies on Russia as a result of the war have crimped Russia’s war-fighting effort, but additional measures must be taken on sanctions to make them more compelling. Importantly, notwithstanding a pledge by China’s paramount leader that China’s friendship with Russia knows no limits, in practice the Chinese have circumscribed their assistance to Russia. For instance, the Chinese have not been willing to supply the Russians with weapons, presumably because they fear their economy being subject to broad-based sanctions by the democracies. These lessons will presumably be helpful to the democracies as Xi contemplates his own plans and timetable for attempting to bring Taiwan back into the Chinese fold.
To the extent Cold War 2.0 has another major current flashpoint, it is the island of Taiwan. China, the world’s second-largest country by landmass (9.33 million square kilometers) and one of the two largest by population (with 1.4 billion people), considers Taiwan an indivisible part of China. For its part, Taiwan, 139th on the list of countries by size (Taiwan is 36,197 square kilometers, a bit bigger than the size of the Netherlands), with a population of 23.5 million, does not see itself as a part of China, and the vast majority of Taiwanese citizens do not wish to become citizens of China.
Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, has a fascinating history.3 The island was first populated by aboriginals from islands in the South Pacific, not Han Chinese. The Dutch established a colony in the 1600s, when Han Chinese immigration picked up pace as well. Later in that eventful century Zheng Jing, a supporter of the Ming dynasty, escaped to the island when the Qing dynasty was establishing itself on the mainland under the influence of the Manchu. (Zheng couldn’t abide by many of the practices of the Manchu.) Interestingly, the island was used as a sanctuary from social developments on the mainland—sound familiar? Two hundred years later Taiwan was under the control of the Qing dynasty. The Qing lost a disastrous war with the Japanese in 1885. Indicative of how little the mainland Chinese valued Taiwan, the Qing emperor ceded Taiwan to the Japanese as part of the peace treaty, though the local residents of the island refused to be ruled by the Japanese and they declared independence. The resulting six-month war of independence against the Japanese was bloody, but ultimately in vain due to Japan’s superior army.4 Again, while history doesn’t repeat itself precisely, it sure does rhyme from time to time. The Japanese eventually crushed the resistance and ended up governing and colonizing the island for the next forty years.
Taiwan today is one of the most contested regions in the world because in 1949, when Mao’s Communist forces completed taking over all of mainland China, Chiang Kai-shek and 2 million of his supporters (the Kuomintang, or KMT) fled to Taiwan. Chiang had ruled mainland China as an autocrat between 1928 and 1949, and was instrumental in dislodging the Japanese at the end of World War II, a fight in which he was joined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Mao Zedong. After losing the civil war to Mao and fleeing to Taiwan in 1949, Chiang’s intention was to regroup his forces on the island, and then eventually launch an attack against the communists and regain power in Beijing.
That never happened, but neither was the CCP successful taking over Taiwan. In 1949 the CCP landed three divisions on the Kinmen island group, which was part of Taiwan but very close to the mainland—only ten kilometers from the mainland’s coastline. (The Chinese city of Xiamen can be seen clearly from Kinmen.) Taking Kinmen was seen by the CCP as a first step to taking the bigger island of Taiwan. This attack on Kinmen was repelled by the KMT forces. In 1950, though, the CCP and the PLA were successful in taking the large island of Hainan after an amphibious assault of some 100,000 troops. In late 1954 the CCP was also successful in capturing the Yijiangshan Islands from the Taiwanese. The Taiwanese also abandoned the Dachen Islands a little later. After these actions, which are collectively called the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, Taiwan consists of the main island of Taiwan and the smaller islands of Kinmen, Penghu, and Matsu.
The First Taiwan Strait Crisis was brought to an end when the United States sent the Seventh Fleet, including an aircraft carrier, into the Taiwan Strait to protect Taiwan, and to make sure the KMT didn’t attack mainland China either. It must be remembered that between 1950 and 1953 the South Korean and US militaries (with a number of US allies under the banner of the United Nations) fought a bloody war to keep South Korea out of the hands of the North Korean communists, who were supported by about 700,000 Chinese communist soldiers fighting on behalf of North Korea. This US-led force eventually saved South Korea, just as the US navy saved Taiwan a few years later. And of course, all this conflict took place during a period where the US did not recognize the legitimacy of the CCP as the government of China.
In 1955 Taiwan and the United States signed a mutual defense treaty, which committed the US to defending the island if it were attacked by the CCP. Importantly, this treaty did not apply to the defense of the smaller islands closer to China, such as Kinmen and Matsu. This treaty also required the US to agree to any attack on the mainland by the KMT. In effect, the treaty froze the new status quo, which essentially secured Taiwan from CCP attack while restraining the KMT from doing anything rash to mainland China. By the mid-1950s the Eisenhower administration had concluded that there was no way the KMT could make a meaningful attempt at retaking mainland China.
At the height of the First Taiwan Strait Crisis, the US secretary of state publicly announced the US was considering using nuclear weapons against the PLA, though NATO allies, including Winston Churchill argued firmly against such action. Presumably this nuclear brinksmanship had some impact on Mao’s decision to de-escalate from the crisis, as China did not yet have nuclear weapons at that time. Also playing a role was Moscow’s unwillingness to agree to retaliate against the US with Russian nuclear missiles were the US to use nuclear weapons against China. This decision is the final impetus Mao needed to start developing his own nuclear weapons. In 1964 China successfully detonated its first atomic bomb, and three years later its first hydrogen bomb. The dynamics are reversed today. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia each are under an American “nuclear weapons umbrella.” Were the US to signal at some point that it was withdrawing this nuclear weapons guarantee, very likely one or more of these four countries would pursue its own nuclear weapons program. History’s rhyming sometimes reverberates in a somewhat different key, but the core rhythm is the same.
Fighting between the PLA and the Taiwanese army broke out again in August 1958 when the PLA started firing artillery shells into Kinmen and Matsu islands. This is referred to as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. There were also serious aerial dogfights between the two air forces. The US-supplied AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles proved superior, with the result that thirty-one PLA planes were blown out of the sky by these new weapons (which used heat-seeking technology to lock onto their target), while the Taiwanese lost only two planes. The US army also sent long-range M115 howitzers to Kinmen Island to give the Taiwanese the edge in their artillery duel. In October 1958 the PLA declared a unilateral ceasefire, largely because they had run out of ammunition for their artillery, though right up to 1979 the PLA and the Taiwanese exchanged artillery fire, usually on alternating days. (In June 1960, however, when President Eisenhower visited Taiwan, the PLA lobbed over 100,000 artillery shells into Kinmen, killing thirteen and wounding seventy-four.) When Eisenhower departed Taiwan, the Taiwanese fired thousands of shells into mainland China.
There was yet a Third Taiwan Strait Crisis when, in May 1995 the US issued a visa to Taiwanese presidential candidate Lee Teng-hui to visit his alma mater, Cornell University in upstate New York. Beijing was very angry over this visit and during the summer of 1995 it conducted missile firings and naval procedures, including amphibious landing exercises, in the vicinity of Taiwan. Moreover, just days before Taiwan’s presidential election in March 1996, Beijing decided to show the Taiwanese that voting for Mr. Lee would mean very difficult relations with China, possibly including military conflict. The PLA again conducted missile firings around Taiwan, this time sufficiently close to Taiwanese ports to disrupt merchant container shipping. The US responded by moving two aircraft carrier groups into the vicinity of Taiwan (one passing through the Taiwan Strait) in order to prove America’s determination to defend Taiwan; the naval armada amounted to the largest show of American military strength in Asia since the Vietnam War. Ironically the Chinese missile firings and other flexing of military muscle backfired, given that the PLA intimidation actually increased Mr. Lee’s support by about 5 percent and helped him win the election. Autocrats regularly shoot themselves in the foot when they roll out their stocks of weapons to scare the democracies. In this case the show of armed force by China also further strengthened the military alliance between the US and Japan, the latter country increasingly realizing that its own defense hinged on the successful defense of Taiwan.
Circumstances changed significantly, though, after Mao’s death in 1976. In the late 1970s and early 1980s mainland China came out of its diplomatic hibernation, and reached out to the world, looking for diplomatic recognition and trading relationships. China, however, presented potential economic partners with an important condition: any country that wanted commercial relations with China had to agree with China’s “One China Policy,” whereby it recognized mainland, communist China as the only China, and that country had to break off diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Like many countries desirous of doing business with China, in 1980 the US terminated its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan (under which it had been obligated to defend Taiwan), and instead adopted the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA). Under the TRA, the US is entitled to sell military equipment to Taiwan, but, importantly, under the TRA the US does not pledge to defend Taiwan, but it doesn’t say that it cannot defend Taiwan either. It leaves this critical question unanswered, and therefore ambiguous.
The Chiang regime focused on developing Taiwan’s economy. In the 1970s, the military government instituted a massive infrastructure-building program. This continued after Chiang’s death in 1975, which also precipitated a loosening of political control, and a slow shift to democracy. Taiwan instituted a modernization program, building universities and new business parks. By the 1980s Taiwan had a prosperous middle class, and a middle-income economy. In a stroke of genius, the president of the day, Sun Yun-suan, managed to lure Morris Chang to Taiwan from his job in Silicon Valley, where he was president of General Instrument Corporation. Shortly after arriving in Taiwan, Chang started a new SC company, called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Based in the business park of Hsinchu, TSMC had modest beginnings, starting with only one facility.
TSMC’s growth in the 1980s and 1990s (eventually building other fabs in Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung) mirrored Taiwan’s development. While not a full member of the OECD (China won’t allow that under its One China Policy), Taiwan does participate on three OECD committees. Although Taiwan has diplomatic relations with only fourteen countries, it has informal trade offices in many more. Ranked by income per capita, Taiwan’s is $33,907, slightly behind Japan ($35,385) and somewhat ahead of South Korea ($33,393). In July 1987, martial law was terminated. Importantly, in 1996 Taiwan had its first presidential elections, and in May 2000 it experienced its first peaceful transfer of power by political parties, when previous President Lee Teng-hui (of the KMT) handed the gavel of power to incoming President Chen Shui-bian (of the Democratic Progressive party, the DPP). Since that election, Taiwan has had five further peaceful elections, and two additional peaceful transfers of power. Democracy has become firmly entrenched in Taiwan.
Since Mao’s death, China has not acted militarily to snuff out completely the reality of Taiwan, and Beijing has not indicated any specific timeline by which it expected Taiwan to be integrated back into China. Beijing has said, however, it would take military action if Taipei declared independence, and many actions could constitute such action, including another country selling arms to Taiwan (though, interestingly, the US sells huge quantities of weapons to Taiwan) or another country opening an embassy in Taipei (trade and cultural exchange offices are okay, etc.). There is a lot of nuance in the diplomatic language around the One China Policy as well. Beijing says most countries “oppose” Taiwan’s claim to independence. Many countries, though, don’t actually say they “oppose” it, they simply say they “don’t support it.” In other words, these countries don’t take a view of the matter, so long as whatever transpires does so peacefully. China also views a referendum on the question within Taiwan as a declaration of independence, regardless of the outcome of such a vote. Again, it must be remembered that autocratic regimes don’t believe in deciding anything through voting.
For the past several decades China’s overall strategy toward Taiwan was premised on the expectation that eventually a mass movement of Taiwanese would form that would demand integration back into China, and that China could wait out the time required for this endgame to unfold peacefully. In turn, the US found the core ambiguous compromise between Taiwan and China acceptable (i.e., China would not invade Taiwan so long as Taiwan did not declare independence). Therefore, Washington never officially articulated whether it would protect Taiwan if China invaded it, all with a view to discouraging Taiwan from declaring independence. Taiwan would never be entirely certain that the US would come to its defense, so the tortured logic goes, if China invaded in response to a Taiwanese declaration of independence. Finally, for its part the ambiguous arrangement worked well enough for Taiwan as it could go on doing its own thing in the knowledge that the status quo allowed it to effectively do as it pleased on the world stage so long as it didn’t declare independence. Taiwan’s current president, Tsai Ing-wen, doesn’t accept that Taiwan is part of China; moreover, she likely believes Taiwan is already “independent,” which in many ways it already is, but she is careful not to articulate this in public.
This unorthodox and highly unusual arrangement could have carried on indefinitely, except that over the past few years a number of factors have been threatening its viability. First, China’s waiting game (hoping that a government supporting integration would eventually come to power in Taipei) is not working. Over the last twenty years support in Taiwan for integration with China has been falling steadily. In a major tracking poll in June 2022 only 6.5 percent of Taiwanese supported integration with China, either immediately (1.3 percent) or eventually (5.2 percent).5 This is bad news for Beijing, and is causing Xi to lose patience. Apparently he has told the senior officers of China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) to prepare to take the island by force by 2027. In response, President Biden has on three separate occasions broken the “ambiguity protocol” by stating, in clear terms, that if China attacked Taiwan, the US would come to the defense of Taiwan. (Albeit after each such utterance, White House staff walked the statement back, “clarifying” that US official policy is still not to guarantee military support of Taiwan.)
Given that Xi presumably does not have unlimited patience, it is worth considering the technological dimensions of the various scenarios for how China’s attempt to take over Taiwan might unfold. The most direct action would be an invasion by a large Chinese naval force with hundreds of amphibious craft carrying thousands of soldiers—think the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944. It is likely that such an operation would be preceded by a vast naval and aerial bombardment, or a massive missile strike on Taiwan’s defenses to “soften up the island” before the Chinese troops come in on their landing craft. (Such a missile attack scenario is depicted in the introduction.) Or, would the first wave of attacks be carried out by Chinese air forces almost exclusively, including by thousands of drones vying to establish air superiority?
In either of these direct, highly kinetic scenarios, the quantity and quality of Taiwan’s air and missile defense systems will be key. The AI-enabled command and control systems used by Taiwan, either alone or along with the US (and other potential allies among the democracies), will be critical, perhaps even determinative of the outcome. The Strait of Taiwan is roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) across, which means the average current cruise missile (flying at about 500 mph, or 800 km/h) will take about twelve minutes to cross the water and slam into a target on the island. The missile engagement zone, as far as Taiwan is concerned, is therefore about forty to sixty miles off shore Taiwan’s west coast, which means Taiwan has only about six minutes to detect the launches of missiles from China’s east coast, or only a couple of minutes for missiles launched from China’s ships at sea or aircraft even closer to the island. Then they must decide on the specific countermeasures required for these Chinese missiles, and then launch intercept missiles quickly enough to give them sufficient time to hit the incoming missiles well over water. Human intelligence will simply be inadequate—and too slow—to take in all the streams of sensor and targeting information, decide what to do, and then respond quickly enough to achieve the goal of intercepting Chinese missiles at some distance away from the island. Incredibly reliable and high-performance AI and extremely powerful SC technology will be required, and at massive scale, likely bolstered by quantum computers if they are sufficiently advanced at that point. And then the process has to be repeated when the second, third, and subsequent waves of Chinese missiles are launched against the island. Not a job for the faint of heart—or for second-class armaments.
A second strategy that China might employ for taking Taiwan by force involves a more incremental use of military power. China would impose a blockade of the island, with Chinese naval vessels (including submarines) and aircraft enforcing a perimeter around Taiwan that no foreign or Taiwanese shipping or cargo aircraft would be allowed to cross (think the Berlin Blockade, but with a much more powerful military laying in the siege). The Chinese could also cut fiber-optic cables that connect Taiwan to the outside world. China might also take out those satellites detected to be assisting Taiwanese and American (and allied) troops. The Chinese goal would be to encircle Taiwan in a physical and digital noose, and then squeeze the island into submission. Presumably Taiwan (with the assistance of its allies) would respond by trying to break the embargo, by shooting down the offending aircraft, and sinking or disabling the relevant Chinese ships. This scenario would take longer to unfold, which might work in Taiwan’s favor, as it would give the US (and potentially other allies, especially the Japanese and South Koreans) longer time to muster military support for Taiwan.
Both of these war scenarios have political and military thought leaders on Taiwan debating heavily what type of modern weaponry is best suited for the defense of the island. To date, emphasis has been placed on advanced fighter aircraft, such as the 4th generation F-16, and the 5th generation F-35. There is a strong argument, however, that rather than all the defense budget going for these very high-cost elite armaments, Taipei should buy more of the “hedgehog weapons” that are very robust when used in tight defensive situations in conjunction with excellent command and control systems, and especially those that use the latest AI software for operating or optimizing them, as well as AI systems for overall battle management.
The Taiwan standoff raises a further important issue related to TSMC, which is headquartered in Taiwan, and where most of its production facilities are still located, notwithstanding a number of TSMC plants in the US, China, and Europe. Put simply, TSMC is an indispensable player in the global semiconductor market. It would be devastating for the economies of the democracies if in any invasion of Taiwan the fabs operated by TSMC on the island were damaged or harmed. Even worse would be if in the course of the Battle of the Taiwan Strait hundreds of senior scientists and technologists (70,000 in total) that TSMC employs in Taiwan were injured, let alone killed in the hostilities. The market for high-end SCs can get incredibly tight—witness the massive SC shortages in the entire global economy in 2020 and 2021, especially in industries like the auto sector. It would be devastating not only for TSMC, but indeed the entire global economy, if China damaged, let alone completely destroyed, TSMC’s SC plants—or its staff—in Taiwan. A technological winter would descend on the global economy that would make the SC shortages in 2021–2022 look like a walk in the park. Again, this concern might prompt China to use exclusively AI-based guided weapons in Taiwan, including only AI-enabled high-precision artillery shells and drones against Taiwanese targets.
There are a number of lessons to be drawn from the foregoing discussion about Taiwan. In the long run, the skill with which China and the democracies, respectively, integrate and deploy AI into their militaries will be determinative of success in any military conflagration over the island nation. At the same time, in an attempt to prevent such a hot war, during Cold War 2.0 it is imperative that the US make it clear that it will participate in the defense of Taiwan. Over time, it would be extremely helpful if the other principal democracies in the region, especially Japan, but eventually South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, also pledged their commitment to come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack. Finally, at a minimum, the key European powers, namely the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, should clearly signal to Beijing that their economic relationship with China would decline precipitously—indeed, come to a halt—if China were to move against Taiwan. If these nine democracies cannot come together into a formal global “GATO,” or at least an Asian-oriented “PATO,” then a “built-for-Cold War 2.0 coalition” of these most powerful democracies needs to remind China—and themselves—in a more ad hoc manner that when it comes to Cold War 2.0, “none of us is as strong as all of us.”
There may be another way to deal with the menace that China poses for Taiwan. Many on the island see their high-tech companies, and especially the jewel-in-the-crown TSMC and its 70,000 employees, as a “shield” against any Chinese invasion. “Surely,” the reasoning goes, “China won’t attack Taiwan militarily because it would not want to do any damage to TSMC facilities or harm any of its staff.” This argument seems very weak, particularly if China’s missiles, drones, and artillery are made “smart” through AI, such that they only do damage to military targets. Indeed, the counterargument seems stronger, namely that the very presence of TSMC on Taiwan makes taking the island more attractive to China, because (1) with precision firing (missiles, drones, and smart artillery) the island can be taken without causing a lot of collateral damage, and (2) the day after securing control over the island China could embargo the shipment of high-performance SCs to the democracies, or at least they could extort enormous financial sums out of the democracies to keep the flow of SCs going to them. On the other hand, it is precisely the fact that 90 percent of the high-performance SCs in the world are made on Taiwan that will lead the US to fight fiercely to ensure that China does not take control of the island. In either scenario, however, the presence of TSMC fabs in Taiwan raises the stakes over Taiwan to a very dangerous level.
Therefore, what would happen if the democracies collectively offered asylum, right now, to millions of Taiwanese, and especially high-tech workers and their families? Entire fabs (of TSMC and other companies in Taiwan) and their staff could be relocated to the democracies. There is some recent precedent for this. In the decade before Hong Kong reverted to China (in 1997), about 1 million Hong Kong residents decamped to a number of other countries, including Canada, the US, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and another 200,000 residents of Hong Kong have left since China imposed its national security law in 2020. If the SC fabs are inexorably driving China to effect a violent military takeover of Taiwan, then remove the incentive for them to do so by denying them the crown jewels of the island before any war has broken out. The buildings would remain, but the people and critical equipment would be removed.
There is another precedent for this sort of responsible emigration from Taiwan. In 1895, when the Qing emperor ceded Taiwan to the Japanese, the new Japanese occupiers of the island gave every resident a two-year window in which to sell their land and move off the island; those that didn’t exercise this option had to become Japanese citizens. The democracies would effectively facilitate such a process for the Taiwanese people. It is an attempt to find a peaceful solution to what otherwise appears to be a fairly bloody war to be fought, eventually, at China’s insistence. The economic emigration plan is not perfect, but neither is the massive loss of life in a prospective Sino-Taiwan War, even if such a conflict were to unfold primarily with AI precision weapons.
The danger with the economic migration plan is that it precipitates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once China gets wind of the plan to move the critical mass of some of Taiwan’s leading companies off the island, China may well attack Taiwan to prevent the plan from moving forward. At the same time, though, the PLA has told Xi that the PLA will not be ready to carry out a successful campaign against the island until 2027 at the earliest. Therefore, this plan has a narrow window of opportunity, essentially the next few years. Time is of the essence.
There is yet one other scenario, related to the emigration option noted above, that might be intriguing for a solution to the democracy-autocracy impasse over Taiwan. The precedent for it is in the way the country of Czechoslovakia split up into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Rather than a referendum, the leaders of the two communities within Czechoslovakia held a series of secret meetings, and simply decided to settle their various disagreements over social, political, and economic issues by agreeing to part company; one day the people of Czechoslovakia woke up and they now lived in either the Czech Republic or Slovakia.
In a somewhat similar vein, the leaders in Beijing and Taipei would secretly agree on the following. China and Taiwan would suddenly announce an agreement whereby Taiwan would revert to China on the fifth anniversary of the agreement, but upon the announcement of this deal China would offer to buy out the property and businesses of all citizens and companies that did not wish to stay in Taiwan after the reversion of the island to China. The price of homes, land, businesses, and other assets would be set as the greater of the price the day before the announcement or one year after the announcement. This would give Taiwanese one year to check out their prospects in other countries and to decide whether to leave.
During the second year after the announcement, the prices for the buyouts would be finalized, and by the end of that year Taiwanese citizens would have to give their decision whether they are leaving or staying. If they are leaving, China would have to deposit the purchase price for the buyouts in escrow (with a neutral country, like Switzerland) by the end of the second year. If China failed to do this, the deal would be off, and China would relinquish its claims to Taiwan in perpetuity—and Taiwan would be entitled to declare independence and enter into a mutual defense treaty with the United States (or join GATO or PATO if they were in effect then). If China did put the required funds into escrow by the end of the second year, the reversion of the island to China would go ahead on the fifth anniversary as originally contemplated, and the citizens who chose to leave would receive their payments from the escrow fund as they turned over their assets to the Chinese government. While not a perfect solution for the Taiwan challenge of Cold War 2.0, it would avoid a very bloody war.
The actual war in Ukraine, and the potential war over Taiwan, present a very delicate challenge because Russia, China, and the United States have nuclear weapons. The obvious question is how to avoid either of these conflicts escalating to the point where nuclear weapons are used. In the Ukraine war, the Biden administration did this by very early on signaling to Putin that neither American troops, nor soldiers from any other NATO country, would be deployed into the conflict. Put another way, while the US and NATO would supply Ukraine with weapons, intelligence, and other military, financial, and humanitarian assistance, US and NATO soldiers would not engage with Russian troops. This ban on direct participation would include US-NATO air forces; no US-NATO “no fly zones” would be implemented over Ukraine. Biden was widely criticized in some circles for this “signaling,” with the criticism summed up in the question: “Why would we ever take any military option off the table? If we keep the Russians guessing, that might temper their behavior.”
Biden did the right thing. Putin, and the rest of the world, needed to know what the rules of engagement were for the defense of Ukraine. In the result, Putin made threats to use his nuclear weapons, but the reasonableness of the US position made Russian nuclear saber-rattling appear only irresponsible (and downright desperate), especially to the Chinese, whose approval Putin (as China’s junior partner) would have to secure for the release of nuclear weapons. In effect, Biden was able to construct and impose a model for the war in Ukraine where only conventional weapons were allowed to be used, thereby neutralizing the fact that of the two combatants, Ukraine and Russia, only the latter possessed nuclear weapons.
The Americans (and their allies in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and especially Taiwan) would need to arrive at some similar understanding with China regarding nuclear weapons if Cold War 2.0 turned hot over Taiwan. Given direct American involvement in such a war, constructing a “conventional weapons only” model will prove more difficult than in Ukraine, but not impossible. Washington could propose a deal along the following lines: neither China nor the US would use, nor threaten to use, nuclear weapons in the conflict so long as the other side adheres to the following “rules.” No militaries of any of the combatants would target civilian assets of the opponent; if a combatant breached this rule the opposing force could target those military assets but would use reasonable efforts to avoid collateral civilian damage and civilian loss of life. Each combatant would agree to use only precision-guided firing, including smart artillery, and no traditional (“dumb”) artillery would be allowed to be used.
There is a risk that signaling such a set of “terms of engagement” would have the effect of making war over Taiwan more likely, because nuclear deterrence is taken off the table by the Americans. This risk is very modest, however, because the Americans using nuclear weapons against China over a conflict involving only Taiwan is simply not a credible possibility. Therefore, it is worth giving up something not worth much for the much more important deterrence posture, namely: “We, the Americans, and several of our allies in the Pacific, will absolutely intervene directly militarily on behalf of Taiwan, albeit limiting our war-fighting to conventional weapons so long as China agrees to abide by the mutual restrictions in the model we propose.” This has greater deterrent effect than the current “ambiguity” as to whether the US would intervene at all on behalf of Taiwan if China attacks the island. It is the current American ambiguity that increases the likelihood of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan because it encourages China to think there is still a scenario for attacking Taiwan where the Americans don’t come to its defense. The Americans, by signaling this nuclear weapons posture on Taiwan, make it clear that China should disabuse itself of the thought that there is any scenario in Cold War 2.0 where the Americans leave the Taiwanese democracy to face the Chinese autocracy on its own.
A final word about the seeming absurdity of contemplating a scenario where China, Taiwan, and the US can work out rules of engagement for a war but seemingly cannot continue the same process to then work out a deal to avoid the war altogether. It seems perverse indeed. Unfortunately, Cold War 2.0 will be full of such ironic conundrums. Here, the risk of war looms over Taiwan because while the democracies argue, “Hey, let’s just have a fair, free, and credible referendum by the people of Taiwan as to whether they want to be independent or a part of China, and everyone agrees to abide by the result,” Chinese autocrats don’t believe in citizens voting on anything. Rather, in their view, the CCP has determined that Taiwan is to return to be a part of China, and that’s simply the end of the discussion. Period. Hence the high likelihood that this democracy-autocracy Cold War 2.0 impasse over the small island of Taiwan will be decided by force of arms.
In Cold War 1, Russia was active in the Global South (it was called the Third World in those days) making development loans for various projects like building dams to promote electricity generation, or roads or railroads. The democracies also extended this sort of financial, engineering, and construction assistance to countries in the Global South. The hope by both camps was to leverage this form of help into diplomatic support at the United Nations. In addition, the democracy or autocracy hoped that by providing such support their mining, agricultural, engineering, and construction companies would be better placed to exploit economic opportunities in the country receiving the aid.
This form of competition between the democracies and the autocracies still goes on during Cold War 2.0, but with two important differences. First, China is able to offer a great deal more of this assistance than Russia ever could simply because China’s economy is fifteen times larger than Russia’s. Also, China is much better at building physical infrastructure than Russia was (or is). It is no surprise, therefore, that under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has loaned more than $1 trillion to some 150 countries and international organizations in Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and Central and South America for major infrastructure projects ranging from railways to entire ports. Some of these deals have proven to be very controversial, because if the borrower goes into default, China can receive favorable access to the underlying infrastructure. (An example of such “debt trap diplomacy” is the loan China made to Sri Lanka, which, when it went into default, gave China favorable access to the Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka through a ninety-nine-year lease.) But then again, the democracies are not that different in their lending terms for similar projects.
Where China in Cold War 2.0 is very different from Russia in Cold War 1 is with China’s technology-oriented deals for communications and surveillance systems with customers in the Global South. The buyers for these systems are invariably autocracies themselves, and they really appreciate receiving state-of-the-art means for tracking and monitoring their citizens, and for suppressing democracy or any other movement that would potentially unseat the autocrat. The first objective for any and every autocratic ruler is to ensure they stay in power indefinitely. Therefore, any computer-based system that helps with this goal is very welcome.6 Moreover, the AI software supported by these surveillance systems allows autocrats to undertake a wide range of oppressive activities against their citizens. To date China has sold such systems to at least sixty countries.7
There is an added benefit to the buyers of these autocratic oppression systems from China. China doesn’t ask questions about the state of human rights, or the rule of law, in the buyer’s country. Indeed, the fact that the buyer is installing such a system without worrying about privacy norms tells China all it needs to know, namely that the buyer is as uninterested in human rights as China is. A similar system purchased from a democracy would elicit all sorts of probing queries about how and when the system would be used, and what legal, security, and other safeguards would be implemented in conjunction with the system. Then there could be a nosy press reporter or activist from an NGO gathering facts for a story on how the buyer misuses the system to monitor and harass citizens, or worse. With China there is none of this. There are some democracies in the Global South that would not buy such technology from China for just these reasons, and they end up purchasing a system from a fellow democracy that has controls and constraints built into it (is designed and operates according to “Standards of Democracy”). Still, there are many countries in Central and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa ruled by strongmen who want an AI-based tech system useful for controlling citizens.
There is another dynamic in Cold War 2.0 that is playing out in the Global South that is new, namely the use of private mercenaries by Russia. Russia’s Wagner Group has played a significant role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wagner was a “private military company” (PMC) owned and operated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who years ago was a convict in a Russian prison (serving nine years for armed robbery). He then became Putin’s private caterer, and then talked his boss into hiring him to recruit and operate a private security company. In Ukraine he was notorious for recruiting 50,000 convicts from Russian prisons, offering them pardons for their crimes if they survived the war for more than six months. Another PMC used by Putin in Ukraine is the private militia operated by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, Wagner had been active in Syria, Libya, and a dozen other countries in Africa. Wagner benefits Russia because they allow Putin to disclaim knowledge and responsibility for their actions, not count their dead and wounded in the “official losses” of Russian military personnel, and maintain greater secrecy of Russian military activities. At the same time, though, the world, and especially Wagner’s clients in the Global South, know that Putin and Prigozhin are coordinating efforts behind the scenes, and in particular Wagner group contractors (who are almost all ex–Russian military between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, except for the recent prison recruits for the Ukraine war). They share bases with the Russian military, are transported by them, use Russian military medical services, and are awarded Russian military medals. Wagner represents a model of private military contractors that Putin believes increases his options, and his effectiveness in many parts of the world; at least up until the dramatic falling-out between Prigozhin and Putin in June 2023 (and Prigozhin’s untimely death, likely at the hands of the Kremlin).8 Wagner also affords the kleptocratic tendencies of Putin and many of his oligarch enablers free rein, as Wagner often gets paid a percentage of the output from the mines and other facilities they capture or protect. It is modern privateering for serious profit—and as always, Putin and his Russian government enablers receive a material cut of the profits. Incidentally, it is not correct to compare Wagner to Blackwater (later Academi), the American security contractor, because Blackwater performed largely security details, like guarding the American ambassador in Iraq, and they didn’t fight in frontline military operations.
These efforts by the two leading autocracies are having an impact on the hearts and minds of the 6.3 billion who live outside the world’s democracies. In these countries of the Global South 70 percent and 66 percent feel positively toward China and Russia, respectively.9 On the other hand, of the 1.2 billion people living in the democracies, 75 percent and 87 percent hold negative views of China and Russia, respectively. Moreover, the proportion of people living in the democracies who view Russia positively has fallen from 39 percent to 12 percent, a precipitous drop, indeed. This is reflected even in Hungary, the most pro-Russian country in the European Union, where support for Russia has fallen from 45 percent to 25 percent. Clearly Russian disinformation has its limits during Cold War 2.0.
Outside of the democracies, though, public opinion continues to be solid in favor of Russia, still at 75 percent in South Asia, 68 percent in Francophone Africa, and 62 percent in Southeast Asia. In these countries, and in many others, the democracies need to up their game if they hope to prevail in Cold War 2.0 in the Global South. One such channel of assistance is to provide sustained media coverage of world events through reputable international providers of news and information, such as the BBC World News (which has a program focused on Africa, Africa Daily) and the Voice of America (the VOA provides programming in many local languages in Africa). Here are other measures the leading democracies among the OECD need to be focusing on, especially in challenged democracies in the Global South:
Just as the autocracies have created and deployed mercenary armies like the Wagner Group, the established leading democracies must take full advantage of their partners in supporting fledgling democracies, namely the philanthropies and NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, CARE, Oxfam International, Plan International, Rotary International, Lions Clubs International, Kiwanis International, and the Nature Conservancy. Businesses in the democracies can also play important roles, such as the philanthropic arms of large pharmaceutical companies, or the similar group within Starlink, which makes Internet uplink devices available to low-income communities). If the leading democracies are going to compete effectively against the autocrats in the Global South during Cold War 2.0, they must bring a whole-of-society strategy to bear on the effort.