The Post-Iran-Nuclear-Deal World | The Unwinnable War | Europe’s Energy Risks, and more

Russia’s blatant violation of those assurances and its threats to use nuclear weapons to deter outside intervention in Ukraine, according to many analysts, sends a powerful signal to nonnuclear states: get nuclear weapons as fast as you can, lest you become the next Ukraine. As Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution have argued, if Washington doesn’t help Ukraine defend itself and ensure that it remains territorially intact, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s prediction that the world could see up to 25 nuclear-armed states “may wind up just being premature, not wrong.” These concerns are shared by more than just nongovernment experts. At a meeting of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in August, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent “the worst possible message” to any state considering nuclear weapons for its security.
But although Russia’s war has created nuclear risks, the risk that it will unleash a wave of nuclear proliferation is lower than many believe. There are good reasons to fear the spread of nuclear weapons and related technologies, particularly among Washington’s allies and partners. Some have begun to question the credibility of U.S. security commitments, for instance, and the United States’ ability to dissuade these countries from going nuclear by providing (or denying) civil nuclear energy assistance has diminished as Russia and China have become more competitive providers of such technology. Finally, strained relations among great powers have made cooperation on nonproliferation far more difficult. But these challenges predate the crisis in Ukraine. And far from making them worse, the war may actually offer the United States an opportunity to halt or at least ameliorate some of the most worrying proliferation trends.

The Unwinnable War  (Laurel Miller, Foreign Affairs)
On August 2021, Afghanistan was thrust back into the headlines. Taliban forces rapidly closed in on Kabul, and the United States began making its final military withdrawal. Suddenly, the world was confronted with images of desperate people squeezing their way into Kabul’s airport for a chance to flee. Almost overnight, nearly everything that the United States and its allies had accomplished in 20 years of fighting, spending, and building in Afghanistan disintegrated. For the one million or so Americans who had taken part in those failed endeavors, and for the millions of young Afghans who had grown up under a Western-backed democracy, flawed though it was, such losses were head spinning. With their livelihoods imperiled, and with many fearful for their lives, hundreds of thousands of Afghans sought to leave the country, posing a new challenge for withdrawing Western forces.
The United States didn’t expect to mount such a large evacuation, or at least not so quickly. Over ten days, the U.S. military and its allies airlifted about 120,000 people, including 80,000 Afghans, from Kabul, mostly to military bases in the Middle East, from where they eventually left for the United States and elsewhere. The effort was chaotic. For those without a U.S. passport or visa, often the only ticket out was a personal connection to someone who could pull strings with U.S. personnel on the ground. American veterans, former diplomats, aid workers, and journalists scrambled to find passage for vulnerable Afghans. Many Afghans who wanted to leave were turned away. Amid this crisis, many Americans who had served in Afghanistan were angry that the evacuation was so haphazard and left behind so many Afghans they believed to be at risk.