The Growing Incentive to Go Nuclear | Paris Tests AI Surveillance Ahead of Olympics | Forget About Chips—China Is Coming for Ships, and more

The Growing Incentive to Go Nuclear  (Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic)
The United States has made a number of strategic miscalculations since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, but the single greatest may be the message that the Biden administration just sent about nuclear weapons. The U.S. showed that it would protect a nuclear-armed friend, Israel, from an as-yet-nonnuclear enemy (Iran); at the same time, Washington has refused to consider using its forces to defend a nonnuclear friend (Ukraine) against a nuclear-armed Russia.
Other governments will deduce that states with nuclear weapons can barbarically attack America’s friends and bully U.S. leaders into abandoning them. The British government has underscored that sentiment by basically admitting that, precisely because of fears of escalation with Russia, Ukraine won’t get the same help that Israel did. Even if the U.S. and its allies were more coy about their calculations, their conduct will encourage a wave of nuclear proliferation in the coming years.
In their passivity, the U.S. and its allies are acquiescing in the destruction of the post–World War II nuclear order—which in many ways was a great success. Since the Second World War, the two major nuclear powers never used their nuclear weapons to win wars—even when, as with the U.S. in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, they were losing in conventional warfare. And although a small number of other states, including China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea, have built nuclear arsenals, many more governments with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons have so far declined to do so.
The global order is becoming less stable in other ways. The Biden administration’s weak response to Russia is bad enough; a second Trump administration could follow a still more destructive policy of telling even close, longtime allies that they can’t count on American support. When Donald Trump said publicly earlier this year that he would encourage Russians to do “whatever the hell they want” with European NATO member states that don’t spend enough on defense, he was signaling to leaders in Europe and around the world that the North Atlantic Alliance is in jeopardy.
We have reached a dangerous moment. In its desperate attempts to de-escalate tensions with Russia, the Biden administration is reinforcing the message around the world that nuclear weapons provide security and freedom of action. When countries are presented with a clear choice between being shielded from attack and being left to their fate, no one should be surprised at which option they’ll take.

Have Israel and the United States Done Enough to Deter Iran?  (Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig, Foreign Policy)
A good analogy of the Iranian missile attack on Israel against the backdrop of the ongoing tit-for-tat skirmishes between the two countries is two guys have been shoving each other, then, suddenly, one of them unloads an AR-15 at the other, who happens to luckily survive because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for most of the region’s disorder. Iran’s ghastly ideology is responsible. As Henry Kissinger famously said, Tehran needs to decide if it wants to be a country or a cause.
If the clerics hadn’t funded, trained, and armed proxies across the Middle East, the region would be a much more peaceful place. Without Iran, the Hezbollah terrorist group wouldn’t exist. Without Iran, the Houthis wouldn’t be holding international shipping hostage. Without Iran, three American service members wouldn’t have been killed in Jordan in January. And so on.

Forget About Chips—China Is Coming for Ships  (Agathe Demarais, Foreign Policy)
How many of the thousands of ships docking every day at U.S. ports were built in the United States?
The answer may be surprising: U.S. shipyards manufacture fewer than 1 percent of the cargo vessels that ply the global seas. In March, U.S. labor unions decided that Washington had to take bold measures to support domestic shipbuilding and filed a petition to the U.S. trade representative, arguing that the industry’s poor state mostly reflects unfair Chinese practices, including massive subsidies. The unions have a simple proposal: Global shipping firms should pay a fee to dock at U.S. ports if they use Chinese-made vessels. On Wednesday, the Biden administration responded by launching an investigation into Chinese practices in the shipbuilding and maritime logistics sectors.
With around 80 percent of global trade carried by sea and U.S. politicians sensing an opportunity to court blue-collar workers ahead of this year’s elections, an investigation into Chinese shipbuilding practices could well reignite global trade tensions. Yet a closer look at China’s shipyards may also prove to be a useful exercise for Western policymakers: Beijing’s shipbuilding strategy has long been a perfect illustration of China’s playbook for the sectors that it has identified as critical in its Made In China 2025 industrial blueprint, including semiconductors, clean technology, and electric vehicles.

How Nongovernmental Entities Are Tailoring Their Outreach to Address Nuclear Escalation  (Clara Sherwood and Jamie Withorne, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
The Russia-Ukraine war has demonstrated that open and reliable communication between nuclear experts, government officials, and the public is imperative. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the use of nuclear weapons more probable, and policy makers, scholars, and international organizations alike are warning that the risk of nuclear weapons use is on the rise. As Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling continues, it is important to understand that governments are not the only actors contributing to nuclear narratives.
While much attention has been paid to official government accounts’ online footprints, comparatively less research has focused on the role nongovernmental entities play in this digital ecosystem and how they are tailoring nuclear-related messages to address the public. Indeed, analysis shows there is little consensus in systematically categorizing and assessing the impact of nongovernmental entities on nuclear weapons issues.
Through our research on social media use, we sought to better understand how Western nongovernmental entities responded to Russian nuclear escalation in the aftermath of the invasion in Ukraine. We studied three episodes of escalatory nuclear rhetoric between February 2022 and June 2023, analyzing the Twitter content posted by individual experts, think tanks, and open-source accounts. We found that social media posts by nongovernmental entities can help inform the public and shape the narrative during periods of nuclear escalation—especially when those posts are corroborated by government accounts.

Paris Tests AI Surveillance Ahead of Olympics  (DW)
Police in the French capital Paris have given rail company SNCF and transport operator RATP authorization to conduct surveillance tests at four different train stations near two large events this weekend as a way to fine-tune their abilities ahead of this summer’s Olympics.
The companies will have access to images from more than 100 cameras. Those images will then be analyzed using artificial intelligence to run “intelligent and algorithm-based technology” that will surveil crowds attending a pop concert by the Black-Eyed Peas as well as a soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Lyon.

U.S. to Withdraw Troops from Niger: Officials  (DW)
The US has agreed to withdraw its troops from Niger, officials said.
Washington has more than 1,000 troops in the West African nation and also operates a major drone base there. 
US officials told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity that a call to remove troops by the leader of Niger’s military junta, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, was accepted by US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.
A US delegation is expected to travel to the country’s capital, Niamey, in the coming days to organize the withdrawal, officials said. Niger’s state television announced the visit would happen next week, but the US State Department has not made any official announcement.

Tajikistan Striving to Convince the World That It Can Contain Terrorism  (Eurasianet)
Tajikistan, a Central Asian state with limited means, is trying to project a get-tough-on-terror image following the late March attack at a Moscow concert venue, in which Tajik militants are accused of killing over 140 people. But the government steps being taken appear to address the symptoms of the domestic challenge, not the disease. The March 22 terror tragedy prompted a wave of retribution against Tajik citizens in Russia and placed President Imomali Rahmon’s regime in an unwelcome spotlight, reminding the world of its numerous flaws in governance. Rahmon’s damage-control efforts have included a mixture of denial and a “round-up-the-usual suspects” approach that does not address the underlying causes of economic and social discontent fueling the spread radical Islamic ideas in the country.

Miscalculation Led to Escalation in Clash Between Israel and Iran  (Ronen Bergman, Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmitt, Adam Entous and Richard Pérez-Peña, New York Times)
Israel was mere moments away from an airstrike on April 1 that killed several senior Iranian commanders at Iran’s embassy complex in Syria when it told the United States what was about to happen. Israel’s closest ally had just been caught off guard. Aides quickly alerted Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser; Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser; Brett McGurk, Mr. Biden’s Middle East coordinator; and others, who saw that the strike could have serious consequences, a U.S. official said. Publicly, U.S. officials voiced support for Israel, but privately, they expressed anger that it would take such aggressive action against Iran without consulting Washington. The Israelis had badly miscalculated, thinking that Iran would not react strongly, according to multiple American officials who were involved in high-level discussions after the attack, a view shared by a senior Israeli official. On Saturday, Iran launched a retaliatory barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel, an unexpectedly large-scale response, if one that did minimal damage.

Switzerland’s Lower House Moves to Ban Use of Nazi and Extremist Symbols That Could Stir Violence  (Jamey Keaten, AP)
The lower house of Swiss parliament on Wednesday followed in the footsteps of the Senate, or upper house, in approving a measure that would ban the use of, public wearing or display of Nazi and racist symbols that could foment extremist hate or violence. The proposal — years in the making — goes beyond a simple ban on Nazi memorabilia, which had failed in the past in parliament, to include other forms of extremist symbols that could stir hatred or violence. The National Council in the capital, Bern, in a 133-38 vote with 17 abstentions, passed Most political groups backed the measure and overcame opposition from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in the two chambers. The vote puts Switzerland on track to join other European countries that have enacted similar bans. Efforts to push for tougher legislation have accelerated in recent months in the wake of a surge of antisemitic attacks across Europe and beyond that accompanied the start of the latest Israel-Hamas war in Gaza more than six months ago.