Ambassador George Krol is a senior U.S. foreign officer, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Belarus, from 2003 to 2006, to Uzbekistan, from 2011 to 2014, and to Kazakhstan, from 2015 to 2018. He completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard, as a resident of Quincy House, in 1978 and began his career in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1982 and was posted to Poland, India, USSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. He served as Special Assistant to the Ambassador-at-Large for the New Independent States and as Director of the Office of Russian Affairs. Prior to his nomination as Ambassador to Uzbekistan, he also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. He retired from the Foreign Service in 2018 after completing 36 years of service. Today, he teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the U.S. Naval War College and is a Local Affiliate of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Central Asia is positioned at the crossroads of major powers’ interests, including Russia, China, the U.S., Turkey, and the EU. How do you assess the current balance of different influences in the region, and what dynamics are most likely to shape that balance in the future?

At the current time, Central Asia is important to Russia—it is a mutual dependence that they have. But Russia had somewhat taken Central Asia for granted before the war and before all the sanctions. This despite the fact that it was attempting to bring Central Asia, its economies, and trade into the Eurasian Economic Union, which comprises Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. China, of course, has been developing economic ties readily and has made announcements of major investments, including for the construction of pipelines and railways. However, it is uncertain how long this will last if the Chinese economy will have to pull back on its external investments in order to address its own economic challenges. Similarly with Russia too. Overall, Russia and China, being the immediate neighbors, still have a great deal of influence in the region, though that influence may be weaker than in the past.

Central Asia was never a critical region of interest for the United States, except when it came to its policies on Afghanistan, Russia, or China. But the current American administration is looking at it as a place for obtaining and making deals for rare earth minerals in particular, and as an area for business in general.

The European Union is one of the largest investors in Kazakhstan, and it is also very interested in Uzbekistan. It even has a special envoy for Central Asia to promote its interests. Individual European countries also have their own interests in the region. Spain, for example, has been especially successful in selling railways and railway equipment to Uzbekistan. The EU may be seen as less of a power in itself, because it is not so much a centralized player like the other states in the region. Turkey also appears to be trying to improve its position in Central Asia.

Although the important thing to consider is that Central Asians themselves are starting to work more as a region, among themselves. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, they all prioritized independence and sovereignty within their own countries, thus they did not really get along with each other. All of those connective tissues of the Soviet period that brought them together were frayed or done away with. They did not want to talk about integration. They wanted to talk about their own independent economies as sovereign states. That, of course, made them vulnerable to outside influences aimed at keeping them apart.

Now, things are different. The Central Asian leaders just recently held their seventh consultative meeting in Tashkent, in which they also included Azerbaijan. They have been able to resolve their own conflicts and work more closely together. Institutionalization of these relations will be a major development, where it will be Central Asians working in concert with each other to pursue their own benefits. Of course, they have internal problems. There is Turkmenistan, which does not really want to play along, but perhaps feels that it has to. Although this is still an evolving situation.

So the relationships of outside powers with Central Asia have evolved, but more importantly, the ties between Central Asian states have evolved in such a way that they have emerged as players in their own right in determining the future of the region.

Central Asian leaders made a decision to formally expand the C5 framework to include Azerbaijan. What other role do you expect Azerbaijan to have within the broader US considerations for its engagement in Central Asia? What do you think a C6+1 framework implies for future international engagement, and do you foresee any other neighboring countries joining the group in the future?

The addition of Azerbaijan certainly comes from the central Asians themselves, after all, it is a mutual framework, though it was originally suggested by the United States. The United States was rather a latecomer to the C5+1 format. The Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and other states had long had this kind of cooperation program. At first, these meetings were largely just an opportunity for the United States to speak with all of the Central Asian states and show some level of interest. It was only the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, who visited the region for the first time and met with all the regional leaders. But what were the results of this meeting? There were some small projects that were financed partly through already-existing programs that USAID was financing that were included in the C5+1 rubric, and efforts to develop some cooperation among the five countries, with some input from the United States. But this changed over time. Azerbaijan’s membership in the framework has largely been facilitated by the growing interest in the Middle Corridor, some US encouragement, and sustained Azerbaijani lobbying for inclusion. Azerbaijan previously had a more strictly bilateral relationship with the United States, so the inclusion in a broader regional cooperation effort is likely perceived as beneficial.

At first, the Central Asians were rather uninterested in including anybody other than the five selves, especially the US effort to include Afghanistan in the C5 framework. Though the Central Asians did not want to do that, the United States really was pushing this idea, believing that it could be helpful for Afghanistan to be integrated into the regional group. So who knows, perhaps in the future Afghanistan may become part of at least the regional C6 group, which now also includes Azerbaijan—this is the framework for regional cooperation that facilitates the yearly Consultative Meetings of Heads of State of Central Asia and that the states have been working on for the last seven years, which looks like it may become something more institutionalized than a simple meeting place for the leaders. Though the group has made announcements that sound very impressive, it mainly functions as a forum for bilateral meetings.

There was recently a meeting at the White House in Washington celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the C5+1 that did not, however, include Azerbaijan. It promoted trade with and investment in the United States by the Central Asian countries, rather than limiting engagement to US involvement with the regional states, giving the initiative a more dynamic character. Furthermore, the fact that US President Donald Trump met with the Central Asian leaders in the White House over dinner was considered an important development. Though most of this could just be for show. What will really come of this relationship? Will there be actual contracts signed? And what will be the format of including Azerbaijan into the framework? After all, in the US Department of State, Azerbaijan is still in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs while Central Asia is in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

At the same time, Azerbaijan is not in the same bureaucratic framework. This makes dealing with and bringing Azerbaijan into the program a little difficult. Furthermore, Azerbaijan is within the purview of the US European Command, whereas the Central Asian states fall under the US Central Command. So, if there is to be a security dimension to the framework, then the American bureaucracy will have to sort out these matters first. That adds another wrinkle to the issue. However, if it simply remains a matter of trade and investment—which seems to be the focus of the current administration—that may be easier to deal with through the Department of Commerce.

On November 6th, 2025, Trump hosted the leaders of five Central Asian republics at the White House for the tenth anniversary of the C5+1 group—the result was the signing of various deals worth billions of dollars. How do you evaluate the Western policy toward Central Asia over the past two decades? What adjustments would you recommend to strengthen American engagement in a region that is often overshadowed by its neighbors?

Aside from the meeting that Trump had, the US delegations have also held meetings with Central Asian heads of state. Sergio Gor, who holds both hats as US Ambassador to India and the Special Envoy for Central Asia, met with his Kazakh and Uzbek counterparts this past October. It's business—they want to develop business ties. And the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, has been deeply involved in trying to negotiate a deal between an American company and Kazakhstan on a mineral deal. But the devil, as we say, is in the details. Will there be contracts that will come out of these announcements of the intentions for developing relations? Whether these billions of dollars will actually materialize for both sides remains to be seen.

Looking back, when there was a great deal of interest in Central Asia and its mineral development in the 1990s, many foreign companies came to the region. Some of the American companies were partnering in mining in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, while the Canadians were involved in the Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan. However, all those deals fell apart because they came from companies that wanted to control their investments, and they were basically forced out by their local partners, which were trying to ensure that the gold mines would be controlled by the Uzbek and the Kyrgyz governments, respectively. Early enthusiasm and investment turned sour because the American mining companies had to litigate to get compensation after their shares had been nationalized. There is no firm guarantee of a deal going a certain way. The government can say “We guarantee you this sort of deal,” but what the government giveth, it can taketh away. So these kinds of companies tend to be very wary of doing business in places where they do not feel that there are adequate security guarantees for their investments, especially because the legal system is controlled by the government’s interests, and the government will not grant full control to a foreign entity.

The exception to the rule was when Chevron and Exxon Mobil—the main energy companies—were able to sign the “deals of the century” in the early 1990s with the Kazakh authorities, which gave them a great deal of privileges and benefits, which they have been reaping over all these years. But those deals are now up for renewal, and there are questions from the Kazakh government as to whether they want a greater share of these deals, which they apparently did not from the 1990s on. When I was in Kazakhstan, these companies were always faced with a certain form of extortion from local governments, wanting more from them by denying them licensing, all to obtain more money. Many of these businessmen had to go to the President of Kazakhstan himself to resolve the issue if it became that serious. Otherwise, they would just chalk it up as the price of doing business in Kazakhstan. Since the United States does not have a government-directed economy, the businesses themselves have to decide whether or not they will risk their capital and investments in these places.

During Donald Trump’s first administration, when I was ambassador to Kazakhstan, there were also trade missions that came from the United States, thinking that they could do business in Central Asia, particularly in Kazakhstan. But nothing really came of it. They came, they looked, and they decided: no, not now. I do not know what has changed that will cause them to invest a lot without knowing the security of their investment. So that still is an issue for Western, and particularly US, development of economic interest in these countries. The same goes for the Europeans. Even the Chinese have often complained about this themselves. But since their businesses are more tightly controlled by the government, their government can say “Thou shalt invest, thou shalt build,” and the companies have to oblige, even if they incur a loss—that is the Chinese business model. They are business people, and they would like to make money, but if they have to lose money in order to secure a geopolitical advantage for China, they will do so because they must. The same applies to Russia. As for Turkey, its economy is becoming more and more controlled by the government as of late. So there is a particular interest as well for Turkish businesses, whether or not it will benefit them. That is something that I think is still an issue for the attractiveness of doing business in Central Asia.

On the other hand, compared to the rest of the world, Central Asia is a pretty stable region. It has not seen major disruptions or violence. And as I said, they are resolving their own border issues and conflicts among themselves, through their own mediation efforts, which I think is important, and they could also resolve the kind of economic barriers they themselves had directed against each other—the customs, the border controls—to have more of a free market within the region. Including Azerbaijan in the group could contribute to this process. Furthermore, the creation of an institution that can guarantee the reforms could make the whole region more attractive, and not simply individual countries. Such a development would be important for foreign and local investors because it would show that the region is able to resolve its own problems while maintaining social and economic stability. These regimes, while they may be authoritarian, have been pretty successful in maintaining their overall stability—both domestically and externally—and in managing relations with their big neighbors, north, south, and east, including the United States.

Looking ahead, what role do you see Central Asia playing in global security, whether in counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, or regional conflict mitigation? How should the international community support this role?

The Central Asian countries evolving as a region and resolving their conflicts among themselves will perhaps lead to the development of common diplomatic and cooperative policies to deal with the mentioned issues of global security, particularly counter-terrorism and counter-extremism. They may develop a cooperation strategy for their security and intelligence services to deal with the influence of Islamic fundamentalism, which has already infiltrated neighboring Afghanistan.

One concern that arises is whether Islamic fundamentalism has infiltrated Central Asia. There has been some sense that it might have, but the regional governments are focused on assessing and controlling the domestic situation, and they share information with one another to ensure none of them become hotbeds for these types of ideological groups. The local leadership knew that there were some Central Asians who would go to Syria or Iraq and join ISIS, and they have been trying to re-educate some of those returnees and their families. The Central Asian states are quite assiduous in trying to control influences they believe could encourage citizens to join such groups and later return with the intention of promoting Islamic State-related activities within Central Asia. The Uzbeks have always been concerned because they have a large population, particularly in the Fergana Valley, which was highly religiously motivated for decades. So much so that even the Soviets struggled to keep it under control.

Another prominent issue is that of non-proliferation. There are still remnants of the Soviet nuclear and biological experiments on Central Asian territory. In the case of the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have been working together to protect and restore the area. Incorporating Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and perhaps even Azerbaijan into this collaborative framework would be a major development for Central Asia that could transform the region into a player rather than a playground for outside powers.

The United States has programs with each individual Republic, though it has long supported the regional approach. The idea behind the C5+1 framework was to facilitate conversations among the countries. The Trade and Investment Framework Agreement signed in 2004 was meant to ease trade and reduce restrictions between the Central Asians, to prevent them from being hived off from or pitted against one another, and to increase their prosperity through cooperative work.

This sort of framework still appears to be attractive to the Central Asians, and it could facilitate them taking charge of their region, better equipped to manage their economic and political trajectories. This will be particularly pertinent if the recent meeting in Tashkent leads to the creation of institutions that will actually produce tangible effects, rather than simply being a space where the bureaucracies can converse while still pursuing their own national interests. In the end, these countries will still want to ensure their independence and sovereignty. Much like in the EU, there will still be tensions between the countries that have their own interests in mind.

Krol spoke with Benedejcic on December 19, 2025.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

Ambassador George Krol is a senior U.S. foreign officer, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Belarus, from 2003 to 2006, to Uzbekistan, from 2011 to 2014, and to Kazakhstan, from 2015 to 2018. He completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard, as a resident of Quincy House, in 1978 and began his career in the U.S. Foreign Service in 1982 and was posted to Poland, India, USSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. He served as Special Assistant to the Ambassador-at-Large for the New Independent States and as Director of the Office of Russian Affairs. Prior to his nomination as Ambassador to Uzbekistan, he also served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. He retired from the Foreign Service in 2018 after completing 36 years of service. Today, he teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the U.S. Naval War College and is a Local Affiliate of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Based on your experience serving in Central Asia, how has the region’s strategic importance evolved since the post-Soviet 1990s, and what do you see as the most significant drivers of that evolution today?

I first came to Central Asia in the 1990s, shortly after it became independent, when I was the Special Assistant to our then Ambassador-at-Large for the newly independent states formed after the breakup of the Soviet Union. That was the first time I traveled with Ambassador James Collins. We traveled throughout Central Asia between 1995 and 1996. Thus, I did have some insight into that early period where, from the perspective of the United States government and much of the outside world, Central Asia was really a terra incognita. It was not a place that was visited by diplomats, and there was not much international engagement with those Soviet Socialist Republics. They were basically closed zones and would be opened up only on rare occasions for cultural exchanges in Tashkent. At the time, Uzbekistan was the window to Soviet Central Asia that the Soviets wanted to demonstrate to the rest of the world, as it would show how the Soviet Union had developed the region in the Soviet style as opposed to imperialistic colonialism in other parts of the world.

When these republics gained independence, they were still largely unknown. So, there was a great deal of curiosity in much of the world as to what the region has to offer. American energy companies were particularly interested in oil, gas, and minerals because they understood that Central Asia was a rich and unexplored area. Other countries, such as China, also took an interest in the region’s resources. Turkey took an interest in bringing the states into the orbit of the Turkic world. The Islamic states—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and others—saw this as an opportunity to bring what they considered to be historic Muslim countries into the Islamic world.

One of the reasons why Russia decided to break away from the Soviet Union was the feeling that the Central Asian republics drained resources from the rest of the Soviet Union and that they were practically subsidizing them. There was a feeling in the Western Soviet republics that they were rich and powerful, and that the Central Asians were a drag on their economy. They felt that the Central Asians needed them more than they needed them. Other Soviet Republics perceived Central Asia as the most backward part of the USSR. In the 90s, it seemed as though independence came to Central Asia out of nowhere since it was not something that any of the republics were advocating for. They had to immediately become responsible for their economics, their security, their social welfare, and the like. After an utter economic collapse caused by the breakdown of the ties that bound the different units of the Soviet centralized economy together, a period of rebuilding followed.

Central Asia was an area of interest to the outside world, but it was also an area of concern because it was thought of as an ethnic powder keg, especially places like the Fergana Valley, where borders had been drawn by the Soviet authorities. It was believed that this area could become a center for inter-ethnic violence. The Chinese were concerned that Uyghur minorities in Central Asia could become a crucible for Uyghur separatism. So, there was some apprehension from the outside world as it was looking at Central Asia’s development. At the same time, Central Asians were developing their own sense of identity and their own politics, and they became very distinct, leading to them splitting apart. The integrated schemes of the Soviet era shaped the electricity grid and the transportation networks that connected the people across the region. Borders becoming actual borders, the civil war in Tajikistan, and the isolationist policies in Turkmenistan led to the division of populations.

The big change came after 9/11, when American and NATO coalition forces entered Afghanistan. Central Asia became important for US security because it could serve as a secondary transit area for bringing troops and material into Afghanistan. The two developed a security relationship with transit routes; there were military bases in Uzbekistan and later in Kyrgyzstan. Thus, Central Asia grew in importance for the United States and also became the focal point of policies aimed at developing the north-south trade route in order to integrate Afghanistan with Central Asia and South Asia. In the State Department, Central Asia was therefore moved from the European to the South Asia Bureau. Preventing Russian domination of this region, as well as allowing the states to develop ties with the external world and the global economy, was also a policy pursued both by the United States and the European powers.

China, meanwhile, was developing its economic and political relationships with these countries quietly. It viewed the region as rich in resources and as a viable alternative transit route. That became an important element for the evolution of Central Asia’s importance after the United States left Afghanistan.

The region became particularly important after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. For Russia, Central Asia was crucial for access to goods and technologies after sanctions had cut many of the direct ties with Europe. China continued its development of the transit routes, and the United States pulled away from Central Asia after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it is still trying to push for it to become more resilient. There was no substantial effort underway, despite the discussion of the Middle Corridor that the United States supported at the time. The southern route fell out of favor not only because of Afghanistan, which is now in the hands of the Taliban, but also Iran, which has always been a problem for the United States.

With the new US administration, there seems to be a renewed interest in Central Asia as a source of critical minerals, rare earths, and hydrocarbons—resources that would be necessary for US military spending. The region has moved into a phase of heightened interest from the United States and continued interest from Russia and China. Central Asians have pushed away the embrace of the Islamic world, but they do still want the economic investments from these countries, so long as they do not lead to the spread of religious influence on the population.

In 2013, you received the Order of Friendship from President Islam Karimov, and in 2018, you were awarded the Order of Dostyk by President Nursultan Nazarbayev for your contribution to the development of bilateral relations between Kazakhstan and the U.S. Given your experience engaging with Central Asian governments, what internal challenges pose the greatest risk to stability in Central Asia?

Stability in Central Asia largely depends on how well the governments can control the population and meet their needs. One of the challenges facing the entire region is the increase in population. The majority of the population is very young and has not experienced the Soviet period of the existence of these republics—this is a different generation that may have different needs and desires. There is also the economic challenge: the leaders of these countries want to satisfy the economic needs of the growing population, which they need to do by developing their economic base, but that is difficult because it requires opening up their economies. Furthermore, because public goods, such as education and health care, tend to be very expensive, the countries have to find ways of financing them while also avoiding the emergence of political competition.

There has traditionally been fear that political competition will only bring about insecurity and instability as various groups and peoples mobilize to express their needs, often citing Kyrgyzstan as an example. What happens if you have a system that, on the face of it, appears democratic but is then challenged in such a dramatic way? Changes of government would largely follow demonstrations and overthrows rather than proper elections. Furthermore, popular dissatisfaction could be manipulated by other parties that have the resources to remove their competition from the government. We have seen this happen in Kyrgyzstan and almost in Kazakhstan as well. Questions of how to manipulate the populations are therefore very much on the minds of regional leaders.

Furthermore, it is understood that the development of nationalism and national identities in these countries can bring about ethnic turmoil, as it did in Kyrgyzstan with the deadly clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyzs that took place in the southern part of the country in 2010. There is also the issue of the Fergana Valley, the most populous part of Central Asia that contains a variety of ethnic groups wedged together in a relatively small area. The borders created under the Soviet Union created many enclaves within states in the Valley, and have divided up important resources. Thus, the larger cities in Uzbekistan depend upon the water coming from Kyrgyzstan. This is another area of potential instability. Although it is important to note that the countries themselves seem to be finding ways of resolving their problems without seeking external intervention.

There is also the concern of religion—as the population becomes more influenced by religion, in particular Islam, the chances of a confrontation with the secular government authorities, which often seek to control or eliminate certain forms of Islam that they feel are threatening to the domestic peace and tranquility of society. Overall, there appears to be a confrontation between an evolving society and the controlling regime, which has to respond to the challenge one way or another. The way these governments handle the situation could lead to violence and to greater instability, which may invite foreign intervention in one form or another and can lead to unforeseen consequences.

Central Asia is rich in natural resources, which have long been a key reason for its geopolitical relevance. However, the region remains particularly vulnerable to global warming, grappling with increasingly severe droughts. To what extent do you believe global energy transitions—renewables, diversification, and decarbonization—will impact the region’s leverage?

With regard to the droughts, the melting of glaciers in the Kyrgyz and Tajik mountains in particular will lead to greater uncertainty in the future. The water that flows down the mountains provides hydroelectric power for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which they can then sell to other states. This is also one of the reasons why Central Asia is important for South Asia, because it could export the additional electricity through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. Though this could be quite problematic since the necessary infrastructure is not there. The topic of energy transition is also concerning for Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, since the three were known before for their large hydrocarbon resources. Turkmenistan possesses the fifth-largest reserve of gas in the world. Uzbekistan used to have a lot of gas, but this has diminished over time.

As for Kazakhstan, most of its oil reserves are located in the western part of the country, and a large part of the oil has been shipped abroad for refinement through the northern Russian pipeline. Though these exports have been suspended due to a Ukrainian strike on the Novorossiysk oil-exporting infrastructure. One of the main challenges facing Central Asians is therefore also the so-called land law. Exporting all of these ores, minerals, gas, and oil overseas requires the construction of pipelines that go through other countries to reach ports. Ports in the Persian Gulf, particularly the Bandar Abbas port, which can be reached through Iran, make the most sense. But seaport access routes that go through other countries create political problems. Take, for example, the Novorossiysk port. The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has made the Black Sea a contested and unstable route. As such, another issue that the Central Asian region faces is the surrounding conflicts, which hinder its trade relations.

To be sure, the region’s energy resources are diminishing over time, and the countries do not have the capacity or the industry to fully replace them with other renewable forms. Kazakhstan, which has a lot of uranium, is planning to build nuclear power plants with help from the Russians. The nuclear energy industry and the refining of uranium in Kazakhstan still greatly depend on Russia. Uzbekistan, meanwhile, is looking at solar power. When I was in Uzbekistan, I could see that, even in isolated villages, practically every house had solar panels—Chinese solar panels—and generators, which would provide them with energy for their household appliances. I think that this was a reaction to the fact that they were cut off from the main electricity grids. It is likely that Uzbekistan has since embraced the use of solar energy even more strongly.

Wind power is also gaining prominence, though it is particularly popular in poorer countries, like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Other than hydro power, these two countries have large reserves of coal, which is very dirty and largely unfavored, and if they are unable to find alternatives, they would have to return to using it as an additional source of energy. In the eastern region of Kazakhstan, near Astana and Almaty, there are still huge reserves of coal, though the Kazakhs do not want to use them because of the pollution effects they have on their cities. If you have ever been to Almaty, you will know that when there is an inversion, it is hard to see through the smog. I imagine they do not want to continue with this. So they have to overcome the challenges of finding renewables and exploiting them for their domestic use.

The Central Asians also face problems when it comes to exporting their resources. There is as of yet no pipeline that would stretch across the Caspian Sea to bring the vast reserve of Turkmen gas westward to European markets. The question is, where would all of the infrastructure go? After all, the Caspian Sea was once a barrier, but it could join the countries together. It is true, however, that the Caspian Sea has been an area of contention, because it is not only Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that have access to it—Iran, Russia, and Azerbaijan also share the coast. So, from the standpoint of their resource base, these are all matters one has to keep in mind. If the United States wishes to invest, then a big challenge will be how to get the ores out of the region. The most efficient means have been through railway networks that go through Russia—extraction through other means, even across the Caspian, is difficult.

Kazakhstan is trying to ship its oil across the Caspian through barges, but it is not as efficient as a pipeline. However, building a pipeline is very expensive. At the same time, the water level in the Caspian Sea is decreasing, which is making shipping, particularly in the northern area, where all the installations are, a major problem. A solution, then, is using small ships to bring the oil to the market. Though the falling level of the Caspian Sea may nevertheless impede the ships’ trajectories. So climate change is having a pronounced effect, in many respects, on the water resources, but particularly the Caspian region.

Initiatives such as China’s Belt and Road, the Middle Corridor, and new trans-continental rail links have revived the idea of Central Asia as a global trade hub. From your perspective, what challenges must the region overcome to realize its economic potential?

Even more than a trade hub, Central Asia’s strategic importance mainly derives from its role as a global transit hub. I doubt that any of the cities or the like will become large trade hubs. As much as Tashkent would like to be a trade hub, Astana a financial and trade center, and Baku to assume a similar position, the region continues to be used largely as a railway transit zone. The Chinese have been instrumental in building these routes through Central Asia. The question has thus always been: is it cost-effective? The Chinese ship most of their exports by sea, which they dominate, also through their Merchant Marine. But they've often seen this transit through Central Asia as an alternative route, which would facilitate the development of the Xinjiang province in China and then use it as an entrepot for sending goods out westward through Central Asia.

Another issue to consider is that the global economy and the economies of the countries that end up consuming these products are beset by problems. First, there is the war in Ukraine, which creates challenges in the Black Sea area. Then there is an overall economic decline, which is also present in China and Russia. This diminishing global economic activity will affect Central Asia and its use as a transit route—the required infrastructure, particularly in the Caspian region, would need to be justified economically. If there is a glut of gas, then it makes little sense to invest in a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Baku, as it would be unlikely to be cost-effective for any company that would want to build it. This pipeline would likely also be contested by the Russians and the Iranians. The Russians, in particular, would much rather see the gas and oil going through Russia, unless they get benefits from the resources crossing the Caspian Sea instead.

There is also the aspect of the north-south direction, which could be very important for Central Asia. But this route depends on connecting the region’s resources to the demands of the economies of Pakistan and India, though even these two countries are experiencing a period of political crisis. Afghanistan is trying to revive itself, and it is interesting to see that Central Asian and Afghan authorities have been meeting together to discuss projects of bringing electricity and development from Central Asia to Afghanistan. Uzbekistan, which views Afghanistan as a key component in developing and extending infrastructure southward, is particularly involved in this plan.

Thus, the Central Asian countries are faced with the surrounding international climate, their domestic economic situation, and also the geopolitics of the neighboring countries on which their role as a transit and trade hub depends. As a result, there are some uncertainties about future developments, though to be sure, the potential certainly has always been present, especially under the conditions of peace and security. Iran coming out of isolation could benefit the region. However, since they cannot control the surrounding situation, the Central Asians will have to remain patient.

Krol spoke with Benedejcic on December 19, 2025.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

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With 3.5 billion fans across five continents, football is the world's most-followed sport. At the center of this US$3.41 billion industry are thousands of football players who migrate to Europe in hopes of becoming the next big star. The monopoly that European clubs have on talent is apparent even to those not interested in the sport. Beneath this overt inflow of athletes, however, lies a darker transfer of human beings.

Across Africa, boys vie for a chance to play in Europe’s leagues. For them, football is more than just a game—it is a way out of poverty. Despite only one in a thousand players achieving even a fraction of this dream, they remain undeterred. But often in their chase after the ball, stardom, and a contract that can secure their and their families’ livelihoods, these children instead become victims of sports trafficking. Transporting athletes across borders for profit, sports trafficking is the exploitation of individuals in, through, and around sport.

Linking Africa and Europe, sports trafficking through football comprises a global network of traffickers who profit off young boys' dreams. Annually, an estimated 15,000 boys hoping to play football are trafficked to Europe from West Africa. Promised lucrative contracts and a successful career, these children pay for a voyage overseas and the chance to realize their dreams. Effectively purchasing boys from their families, traffickers pose as licensed agents and promise to arrange training and a contract for a fee. Although these athletes consent to travel, they are unaware of the coercion, deception, and exploitation they will face both en route and upon arrival. Families sell heirlooms and empty savings to secure their child’s dreams and escape from poverty. More often than not, however, they are ceding their sons and funds for opportunities that do not exist. Upon arrival, the “agents” disappear with their money, and the players are subsequently abandoned. Penniless and with few prospects, these boys are left alone on the streets of an unfamiliar country—a far cry from the football fields they dreamed of.

A Passport to Modernity

Luxury cars, designer clothes, supermodel girlfriends—football’s star-studded returns are just one of many factors drawing boys to the sport. This career provides material wealth, but also social currency, prestige, and the opportunity to help others. Players can achieve social recognition through giving back to those at home: African footballers Didier Drogba, Samuel Eto’o, and Sadio Mane are revered not only for their talent but also for their humanitarian efforts in their home communities. For the boys longing for such affluence and altruism, migration to Europe is both an escape from impoverishment and a path to social becoming.

Migration as a mobility-enhancing and livelihood-securing tool is not a new phenomenon. For decades, travel to Euro-American and urban centers for education was seen as the ideal avenue for success. Across accounts of envisioning their futures, African youths primarily characterized success by the ability to support their families, achieve independence, and maintain modern lifestyles. Offering the economic security to sustain the lives they desired, a formal education was believed to manifest this highly sought-after adulthood.

This meritocratic outlook on education was largely due to decades of its international promotion. Global campaigns prioritized expanding education, with policies such as the United Nations’ Education for All program asserting guarantees of security and national development. In the current world, a nation’s success rests on innovation, productivity, and intellectual output; education thus provides human capital that is equally important to economic growth as any natural resource. A developing state’s upward trajectory, therefore, increasingly relies on its successful participation in this information-based world. In the words of scholar Paul Richards, education is essentially a ‘passport to modernity.’

On the individual level, however, Western-style schooling has often failed to deliver the futures it promised. In Africa, many graduates are unable to translate their educational credentials into workforce success, instead exiting schooling and entering adulthood in poverty. Education across the continent is becoming increasingly commercialized, and its job markets are ill-equipped to employ the rising number of graduates produced by Western education’s rapid global expansion. For the economically disadvantaged, the returns on schooling thus fail to justify its high fees. Undergraduate degree-holders in Nigeria have an unemployment rate of 23.1 percent, and it takes an average of five years for university graduates to find employment in Kenya. Rather than education, migration for football is increasingly perceived as the new passport to modernity.

Foul Play

However, football’s high-profile success stories occlude its much more common outcomes: failure to meet the demands of the European football machine, poverty, and sports trafficking. Although Ghana contributes 10 percent of Europe’s African footballers, only 40 players are officially transferred from Ghanaian clubs each year. Instead, the majority of these migrants are trafficked boys discarded by their agents, sleeping in overcrowded apartments and forced to take odd jobs to make ends meet.

Even when traffickers fulfill their promises, players are extremely vulnerable. With their wages and passports confiscated, they are placed under exploitative contracts that reserve as much as half of their earnings for their agent. Players’ documents are withheld to constrain their movement, and accumulated fees from their training keep them in a state of debt-based coercion. Exploited, their dreams almost always fail to be realized—regardless of whether or not their agent’s promises are true.

(Un)official Business

This exploitation is mediated by the failure of football’s leading institutions to protect players. Governing football internationally, FIFA’s regulations are designed to facilitate cross-border and cross-club player transfers. Enabling teams to increase their competitiveness, transfer has become especially lucrative as corporations' capacity to invest in global sports and the value of media rights and sponsorships increase. There is thus concern that transfer may prioritize financial gain at the expense of athletes, violating their human and labor rights, free movement, and contractual stability. With athletes being viewed as investments that clubs are eager to maximize returns on, trafficking and its continuous provision of recruits are highly incentivized.

This profitability is not only subject to exploitation by low-tier clubs. In 2014, four-time European champion and Europe’s second-ranked team, Futbol Club Barcelona, was sanctioned by FIFA after being found guilty of repeatedly violating Article 19 of FIFA’s Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players. Designed to prevent child trafficking, Article 19 prohibits the transfer of underage players. Barcelona’s La Masia academy is widely considered the best on the continent—it was, however, also found to have illegally signed 10 minors.

Beyond its lucrativeness, sports trafficking is able to persist due to a lack of oversight. Compared to other forms of human trafficking, trafficking in sports is vastly under-researched, insufficiently prevented, and, consequently, highly misunderstood.

Furthermore, sports trafficking often goes unreported and undetected due to the deceptive nature of its migratory patterns. Although the few sports trafficking cases that manage to attract widespread media attention—such as former Premier League player Al Bangura, who was deceived into male prostitution after being brought to the United Kingdom, or Olympian Sir Mo Farah, who worked as a servant after being trafficked to Europe—often feature smuggling and illegality, a large majority of football trafficking cases consist of boys following legal migration channels.

Entering destination countries on short-term visas purchased at exploitative prices from their agent, the extent of the deception and danger the athletes face becomes apparent only when they are abandoned and their visa expires. This lack of documentation then makes them vulnerable to detention by law enforcement, which processes their cases through migration-control frameworks and treats them as instances of illegal migration rather than exploitation. With their precarious legal status, the athletes are often misclassified as immigration offenders rather than victims. Under-enforcement of sports trafficking and the prioritization of border security enforcement thus coalesce to create a uniquely precarious situation for trafficked athletes.

Conclusion

Whether through official or unofficial channels, the movement of athletes between clubs and across borders is an issue that remains exploited. Although they have been tightened, lax licensing laws enable agents to deceive athletes with false promises, and regulations governing player transfer remain highly contentious. Combined with these oversights, the lure of a successful football career—wealth, social recognition, and a path to independence amid the uncertain outcomes of higher education—continues to attract young boys and increase their vulnerability to trafficking through the sport.

As countries spur nationalism by establishing athletic dominance, fans stoke rivalries, and bookies oversee international transactions, sports are more significant and lucrative than ever before. Combined with existing policy oversights and the unending supply of athletes dreaming of stardom, this profitability has made sports trafficking highly appealing to criminals. Sport has always relied on the successes and suffering of young talent. But in our increasingly interconnected world, where national borders can covertly be crossed in a matter of days or even hours, the pomp of sport has developed into a new threat for children across the globe.

Anita Dunn most recently served as Senior Advisor to President Joe Biden at the White House. She held a senior advisory role on the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign. She was also Chief Strategist and White House Communications Director for President Barack Obama. A longtime Democratic strategist, Dunn has held senior roles advising leaders such as Tom Daschle, Bill Bradley, and Evan Bayh. Notably, she is the only person to have served as a senior advisor on winning presidential campaigns for two different U.S. presidents. For Spring 2026, Dunn was named a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.

Your career has been quite expansive, starting with the Carter administration and more recently working for both Obama and Biden. What do you look back on as the highlights or defining moments of your work?

Certainly, one of the highlights of my career was getting the Affordable Care Act passed. I had left the White House by then but was still very active in working towards it. I had worked on both the attempts by then First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 to 1994 to get health care passed and then Senator Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign in 2000, [where] we had a comprehensive health care platform. President Obama’s commitment to getting this done and actually getting it done was certainly one of the largest policy highlights of my life.

Can you think of a policy you didn’t expect to work, but that ended up being successful and surprising you?

By the first two years of the Biden administration, we had an incredible legislative record of achievement. People had talked about doing a massive infrastructure program as long as I had been in Washington, and Biden got it done in a bipartisan way through the CHIPS [and Science] Act. Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, did an amazing job. Something that the President was able to get through in a bipartisan way again, was on the climate, with the Inflation Reduction Act, which was extraordinary. The stimulus that he did at the beginning was the [American Rescue Plan] Act. You still have towns that are spending that recovery money on projects. The first two years of the Biden administration were incredible to watch and to see him get these things done in a bipartisan way in a polarized Washington.

What enabled those bills to happen since not only did they happen, they also happened in a bipartisan way?

Part of the reason came from Biden’s experience, having served 36 years in the Senate and then eight years as vice president. He understood how to pass legislation, and he respected members. Biden genuinely liked members of Congress, having been one himself for 36 years. Both he and Obama shared an important trait for a president: playing the long game and understanding that a setback today doesn’t mean it’s all over. You regroup, keep your eye on the ball, and get it done in the future. Those were also things I felt very fortunate to be part of.

I also feel honored to have worked with some of the people I did. I worked for Senator Tom Daschle when he was majority and minority leader, and he is a great human being and a strong leader. I felt fortunate to work for President Jimmy Carter, even though I was just answering phones. He was a fine human being and a president who was underrated at the time. I was also fortunate to work for Senator Bill Bradley, both on his Senate staff and his presidential campaign. It was an experience that taught me so much and helped me succeed later on. From the campaigns I worked on to my colleagues at my firm, very talented people, I had the chance to work on so many great political campaigns and projects. I feel very lucky.

What do you think is the future of the long game you have mentioned, given recent, quite major pushbacks?

Right now, our politics is a pendulum swaying rapidly from side to side. In the future, some policies, particularly around climate, will need to be discussed in the context where they belong: energy technology is a critical part of this country’s economic growth. You see it with China, with Europe, and around the globe. These energy technologies are the clean technologies we want and the technologies of the future. You don’t have to make people feel as though they’re dirty. We need to move some of the political rhetoric away from “I’m right, you’re wrong” and toward what makes sense for us all to accomplish together for our future, since this country needs a heavy dose of optimism and a sense that people can figure out how to work together again for the common good.

How have you seen political rhetoric change over the course of your career? And how has your approach to strategy, thinking about which policies and levers to pull, evolved?

There was a quaint time in this country when you couldn’t, for instance, use the word liar in talking about your opponent. You worked your ways around it. [Politicians might say that their opponent] “isn't being candid” or “isn't telling you the entire truth,” but it was seen as harsh rhetoric that would rebound negatively on you. Of course, now, [liar] is the first thing most people call their opponents. There’s no question the rhetoric has gotten coarser, cheapened, and hotter.

The people in the center of this country, in their local communities, in their day-to-day lives, don’t act like that, and they don’t especially like seeing their elected officials act that way. One of the challenges for the next group of leaders in this country will be figuring out how to take what’s working at the local and community level, where people can cooperate and disagree without it turning into the vitriol seen nationally, and bring some of that back to national politics. How can you rebuild a sense of consensus around certain issues? It’s a huge challenge for the next generation of leaders. Both parties are seeing generational change in their congressional and presidential leadership, and it will be a challenge for both.

How do you see this domestic shift with rhetoric and presidential leadership fitting into the United States’ relationship with the world and a more international story?

I don’t have a great sense of what happens next in terms of our international narrative. It is going to be interesting to see what the next president, whether they are Democrat or Republican, does in terms of rebuilding or reinventing an international strategy unless, of course, it is someone who decides to follow the current administration’s track, [which is] obviously one option. I tend to think that the world is changing rapidly. The United States has changed a great deal, and anyone who sees the next president as somebody who will go back and restore the former order is probably being very naive, because I don’t think there’s a restoration piece. I think there is a reinvention and [questions] of “where do we go next” and “how do we do it differently and better?” but perhaps achieve many of the same goals.

What goals would you identify for the next 10 to 20 years for this reinvention?

I’ve never been a foreign policy expert, but I think that both the economic competition and the spheres of influence are going to be important for the next administration to figure out.

Looking back, what advice would you give to people, especially young people, entering politics today, and what are your thoughts on the future direction of American politics?

My advice for people is work for causes and people you believe in. Take a few jobs at the beginning of your career to learn the skills, but work for the people you believe in and the causes you believe in. At the end of the day, even if you have not won a lot, you’ll feel very good about how you spent your career.

In terms of American politics, it is going to take a great degree of courage for people to enter elective office, and they should not forget why they entered elective office, and it’s to represent people in this country. There are people in this country [who] see both political parties, to some extent, as not representing them any longer. How do you fix that?

There are a lot of people who talk about the problems with democracy, [and] they’re thinking about voting rights, and election reform, and January 6. Those are all very real, scary issues. But there are a lot of people who see the problem with democracy in this country as a government that doesn’t represent their interests or do anything about their problems. As you look at the growing economic divide in this country, very disturbing and upsetting, that is going to be the challenge. How do you have a government that really does go address those issues in a way that people see as meaningful? It’s going to take courage, and it’s going to take a willingness to take positions that aren’t always popular.

Dunn spoke with Black on March 26, 2026. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

Paul Ryan was the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In office from October 2015 to January 2019, he was the youngest speaker in nearly 150 years. Prior to becoming Speaker of the House, Ryan served as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. From 2011 to 2015, he also served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee. In 2012, he was selected to serve as Governor Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential nominee. Paul was first elected to Congress at age 28 and represented Wisconsin’s First District for two decades. For Spring 2026, Ryan was named a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.

You were Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019. What do you think were your biggest accomplishments or key moments during your speakership?

In my second term as speaker in the 2017 and 2018 session, it was the most productive session in Congress in a generation, passing 1,172 bills, and it’s because [House Republicans] ran out a very broad agenda that we promised to enact if we got elected, and we did almost every bit of it. Getting Congress to be a very productive Congress, from a legislative standpoint, to me, was a very important macro accomplishment, because I was worried that Congress just wasn't performing as well as it should have.

I’d say the biggest singular accomplishment was rewriting the tax code. I had been Chairman of [the House Committee on] Ways and Means and spent my career on this issue. Our tax code had become so uncompetitive from a global economy standpoint that we needed to redesign our tax code so that our businesses could be globally competitive, [since] we are at a massive disadvantage. We were able to accomplish that, and those reforms have persisted and been successful. That particular reform was probably the singular, best legislative achievement but getting Congress back into the business of drafting legislation, passing legislation, and getting that muscle memory retrained was really important to me.

What were the main issues that you sought to address with that bill? What did it specifically accomplish?

We were at a stage in the global economy that was going through a lot of transformation, and our economic policies were legacies of the 20th century that weren’t as well suited for the economy of the 21st Century. We needed to change our regulations and our tax policies to reflect that. The one big issue that we didn't accomplish was reforming our health care entitlements, which were written in the 20th century and that are proving to be unsustainable as they’re currently written in the 21st Century. That’s a bill we passed out of the house, but it failed to get through the Senate. Of all of our major agenda, which we called the Better Way agenda, it’s the one thing that didn’t pass. Everything else did. We were able to restructure a lot of institutions to get the US economy and the US military wired for the 21st Century. Part of the overhaul of our plans was to overhaul our military as well. We were able to accomplish that.

From your perspective, how have the major political challenges evolved since you left office?

We don’t pass as many bills anymore: It’s not that productive. Congress has relapsed into much less legislative production. That's just a result of the kind of political era and time we’re in and the way our politics are played these days.

What do you see as the turning point for the trend away from government productivity?

It’s the people. Generally, the type of person that runs Congress these days is not exactly the type of person that ran for Congress 20 [or] 30 years ago. The difference in between is the internet. It’s social media, [including] the way elections are run, the way campaigns work, and the way people interact with constituents.

When I first came to Congress in 1998 the majority, the vast majority, of members of Congress were legislators and people who went because they believed in a cause. They wanted to advocate as a legislator to do something. A minority of members of Congress were what I would call “be-ers.” They wanted to be a congressman, they wanted to become famous, and they wanted to build a brand for themselves and be sort of an entertainer. Now that that is flipped. The majority of people in Congress that are going to Congress, that are in Congress, are more “be-ers” and entertainers than doers and legislators. That’s just the way society has evolved with respect to how politics works. The primary, not only, reason for that is the way social media has evolved.

How has that changed the relationship between the legislative and the executive or are they still working together?

The legislative branch has ceded a lot of its power to the executive branch in a structural way, and for the left that’s kind of a natural progression ideologically. For conservatives, it’s against core principles. I would say my party right now is much more of a populist party led by a populist and therefore, the dominant faction of the Republican Party is more of a populist faction that is not tethered to constitutional conservatism and therefore a strict separation of powers. That’s just the era and the moment we are in right now.

What does it mean, then, to tackle populism? Does it fit into a global trend, or is the American case distinct?

It is part of a global trend. It is on both sides, for sure. It’s not just Trump and Republicans; It’s the left, it's progressivism, it’s [Alternative for Democracy] AfD in Germany, and Nigel Farage ascending in Great Britain. There’s a populous populist wave running through democracies. The change that has happened in the late 20th century has dislocated a lot of people and left a lot of people frustrated, and democratic societies have not responded quickly enough to address their concerns. People have resorted to more populist tendencies. The question that matters most is: are the populist movements tethered to core principles that produce solutions, that produce policies, that solve problems or not? If they are, then it’s going to be successful and those democracies will thrive. If they’re not, you’re going to have more rounds of populism without delivering solutions and even more frustrated voters.

A good example of this is [President Javier] Milei in Argentina. In my opinion, he is a very principled populist who is applying his principles, which I share, to his country's problems, and doing it in a way where he's bringing his country along politically and selling liberty, freedom and free enterprise and property rights and limited government. He’s selling it in a very popular way and delivering quick results. There’s an example of populism that’s constructive and producing results. It’s going to make his country succeed. In my opinion, there’s a lot of left-wing [forms of] populism that don’t work because they move to the left. I’m not a fan of left-wing principles to begin with, but there are a lot of right-wing populist movements that scratch some kind of frustration but don’t end up solving underlying problems.

The question at the end of this populist wave that is moving through democracies is do we have the stuff that it takes in our systems to solve the big problems we have? I think the answer is yes: it’s going to happen. I think democracy is being stress tested from within and from without. We're being stress tested from within because of the things I just described, problems going unsolved, populations polarized, and politics getting uglier and more populistic. Part of that is social media has digitized moral relativism. Populist movements that have gravitated toward moral relativism, in that they subscribe to the notion that might makes right and the ends justify the means, is not going to produce good results. We're being stress tested on the outside by the tyrants, by the tyrannies of China [and] Russia and illiberal factions of government that are trying to undermine our democracies by using our freedoms from within us to more deeply polarize us.

Where do you see the possibilities for responding to powers like China and Russia and negotiating those relationships?

Agreements and allies. Free societies and friendly countries coming together to pull the resources and their power together to put up a front against illiberalism [and] against these dictatorships on behalf of freedom and democracy. I still think we win this fight at the end of the day, such that there is an end of the day, meaning there’s these things are continuously fought, state-driven capitalism on top of a surveillance state and zero liberty and freedom will never stand up and produce the kinds of results that private property rights, liquid capital markets, and innovation produce in free societies. For instance, in AI quantum computing [and] these tech races we have, I will bet on the American system of deep and liquid capital markets, private property rights, and freedom to produce better results than managed state capitalism in tyrannical societies like China. We’ll win this at the end of the day, but we’re going through these stress tests.

Looking forward, what policies or broader priorities should be given renewed attention?

Our national debt is getting out of control, and it is going to do great damage to our economy and to our dollar, our currency, [and] our living standards. Number two, we need to redesign the social safety net to reflect the 21st Century realities and to embrace 21st century technologies. Those things are basically an acknowledgement that the social contract in American society is something we have a great consensus on, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. This took a century of debate; we all believe that we should have healthy retirement security for all Americans and a social safety net for the poor to help them get on their feet. The problem is these programs were designed in the 20th century in ways that have proven to be unsustainable and ill-equipped to deal with those realities in the 21st Century.

If we can redesign our social safety net to deal with upward mobility and the dislocation that will come with new technologies like AI, and if we can redesign our social contract, our retirement programs, our health care programs, in a way that doesn’t bankrupt the country, then there is nothing stopping America. There’s nothing stopping our country from succeeding, and we have to overcome those challenges. Right now, our politics are not serious enough to deliver those kinds of reforms. But those reforms are in need.

Ryan spoke with Black on March 26, 2026. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

Dr. Robert Habeck served as Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action from 2021 to 2025, leading economic and climate policy during a period of accelerated renewable buildout and energy-security pressures. Habeck spoke with Solicits Associate Ben Schnalke at Harvard’s Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies about European security, the Arctic, and why energy independence may be the fastest route to climate progress.

Mr. Habeck, how are you these days? What does it feel like not to be in office anymore?

My life is fantastic – really, super good. Personally, I am doing very well. I am doing and experiencing great things, and of course I have much more time for the things that matter in life than before. That does not mean I am happy with the political state of the world as it currently stands. But who is?

What are you most passionate about right now and what projects are you working on?

I am being invited abroad quite a lot, and I enjoy that. I spent one month at the Hebrew University in Israel before coming here, and I will be in Toronto soon. In the spring I will be going to Berkeley. At all these places, my role is often to explain to students how politics – and European politics in particular – is developing right now, what decision-making feels like from the inside, and how you turn academic insights into workable policy. And, conversely, I am also trying to keep learning myself and gain this outside perspective on Europe – and on Germany.

Meanwhile, my work is centered in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for International Studies, a kind of think tank that is publicly funded. Therefore, security policy, security strategies and geopolitics are the main focus of my work. At the moment, I am particularly focused on Arctic research: What is happening up there as global warming thaws the frozen Arctic and suddenly makes it accessible and what conflicts then come into play? These days, that has a lot to do with the geopolitical situation. Trump saying he wants Greenland, China, Russia – everyone is “on the move”. I analyze that and then try to explain it to political decision-makers or to the public.

Alongside the Arctic, the state of liberal democracy is, of course, a guiding question for me. I am working on that too – reading a lot of studies and books, joining panel discussions, and, whenever I can, speaking about it and trying to give something back.

Has your perspective changed now that you are looking at politics a bit more from the outside?

Well, I would say it is a work in progress. First of all, I would say that many things you experience as exceptional when you are inside your own political sphere are not actually that exceptional. There is a right-wing populist movement everywhere in the world – in Israel, the United States, and Germany. Many things that seem very unique are not, in fact, all that unique.

In Germany, for example, there was this claim that the AfD is gaining because climate policy was “too radical”. That narrative was out there, but I think you can now safely reject it.

If you really want to get to the root of the problem, you have to start from a completely different place. What has become very clear is that Europe and Germany are part of a global trend. And conversely, when you look at European debates from the outside, especially through the lens of security policy, you realize that many of the issues that generate enormous outrage in Europe – and that I was part of – look comparatively marginal in the grand scheme of things.

When you see what is really happening in the world, the great arm-wrestling match among the major powers, you think: Europe could do it this way or that way, but that is not the decisive debate. The decisive point is that Europe finally has to get off its backside, if I may say so, and become visible as a global political actor.

So, Europe should not roll back climate action out of deference to right-wing populist forces. But with the United States now having withdrawn from the Paris Agreement again, what is the path forward for climate policy globally – and in Europe?

On climate policy – quite apart from my firm view that it is actually the decisive question of our time – it is not at the very top of the political agenda right now. Security and geopolitical issues are. And then the world is preoccupied with Donald Trump’s whims.

This has changed very significantly. Governments everywhere are thinking about becoming more resilient, more independent. And energy plays a decisive role in that. From China to India to Germany, states do not want to be dependent – neither on Russia, nor on Donald Trump, nor on Iran, Venezuela, or Saudi Arabia. Everyone is moving toward electrifying their economies, and everyone is trying, as far as possible, to build out renewable energy – and China most of all.

Then suddenly you realize that, through the lens of security policy, the strategies we previously developed for climate protection are the same ones. I would strongly urge Europe and Germany to stay on this path and pursue it with determination. Europe spends €400 billion a year on fossil-fuel imports – money that often goes to people who do not have Europe’s best interests at heart. If we invested part of that money in Europe in expanding hydrogen production, renewable energy, grids, and so on, we would weaken our adversaries and strengthen ourselves.

So does reframing climate policy around Europe’s legitimate security interests of resilience and independence generate new momentum to move things forward again?

The momentum is there. If you look at the markets, investment in renewable energy has been rising in recent years. Most of the money is going into renewables, and not always with the explicit goal of protecting the climate.

I already told you that I was in Israel. One of the places with the highest density of solar panels is Lebanon, Syria has a lot as well. And in Gaza, before the war, there were also many solar installations. Not because they wanted to protect the climate, but primarily because they wanted an affordable form of energy that they could control themselves. And suddenly renewables become a way of securing energy supply for many people, reducing dependence, whether on unreliable supply or on the petrostates that keep heating the world.

Regardless of how individual states can advance climate neutrality at home following their own security interest, you have countries like the United States that are not currently willing to go along. Is this simply a matter of time until that changes, or is there a way to bring everyone back to the table internationally?

The United States produces so much fossil energy – gas and oil – domestically that it could, in effect, supply itself. That is not true for Europe, it is not true for China, it is also true for Russia. And that is why you often see that autocratic governments are closely aligned with the fossil fuel lobby and fossil energy companies. The security argument mainly applies to countries that would otherwise be dependent on imports.

Then there is the economic question: if you put all the “climate protection is important” rhetoric to the side, what is the cheaper energy system? The petrostate model of the United States that Donald Trump wants? Or the renewables-based state that China may become, and that I hope Europe becomes as well? Every indicator I have seen suggests that renewables will be the cheapest form.

Mobility will be cheaper, heating will be cheaper, simply because of the much higher efficiency. In a combustion engine, only about 12 to 30 percent of the energy ends up as motion, everything else is heat and is wasted. With batteries, it is well over three quarters. And a heat pump can deliver three to five units of heat for one unit of electricity. That is why I believe the bet is one you can only lose if you stick with fossil fuels. Accordingly, over time, the economies that electrify more decisively will be stronger.

So as long as the United States does not independently decide to join the global community on this path, there is nothing the rest of the world can do to advance climate policy internationally?

That is difficult, because the United States is such a powerful player. If it does not allow itself to be held responsible, and if it does not act out of insight – neither economic insight nor climate insight – then you will hardly be able to force it. And it does not adhere to agreements, or at least the Trump administration does not concern itself with them.

But that can also be an opportunity for Europe. The European economy needs momentum and innovation, and we are in competition with the United States, and of course with China as well. Deciding on a clear strategy, being better and faster and cheaper, and producing in more innovative ways can also be an advantage.

So you are saying that Europeans can also derive an advantage from the current international turmoil by moving forward constructively?

That would be too euphemistic. First of all, everything that is happening at the moment is bad: the destruction of the international order, the threat of violence, the domestic political violence the United States is experiencing, the unreliability… I cannot find anything good in it.

Yes, global capitalism has also had problems and negative effects, but overall globalization has helped to bring prosperity to the world, and to give more people access to water, health care, and education. And of course, Europe has benefited enormously from it – Germany above all from open markets.

So I think you have to put it differently. Even if that old world is gone now, we should not bury our heads in the sand. We should accept the challenge. But it is a challenge without question, and we have to fully play to our strengths and quickly address our weaknesses.

What strengths does Europe have? The world’s largest single market – though not yet complete. No banking union, no capital markets union. Regulation is still very national in character. The market is simply fragmented, and many start-ups go to the United States because the market is larger: you have one license and you can operate across the entire United States. That does not apply in Europe.

Second, we need to provide stronger financial support to growth sectors. We have to overcome our risk aversion, and all the capital that companies, private individuals, and pension funds have needs to be put to work. It cannot simply lie idle.

Third, we should think more economically about decisions we have already made – above all the military spending. Done right, that could significantly strengthen Europe’s innovative capacity.

So those are strengths: we are financially strong, we have a large market, but we have to be willing to use them. And then we have to remove the obstacles that stand in the way.

Does Europe have the strength to pull this off?

Yes, absolutely! This is not magic. Everything I have said is simply political technique. It requires two things. First, you have to know how laws are made. You need the know-how and the people who have it. There is no shortage of that in the ministries, and certainly not at the European level. We see this whenever a crisis becomes acute: suddenly you can pass legislation at breakneck speed and push things through.

Second, you need political decision-makers who are willing to stay the course. And I can only say this from my own experience: whenever you do something, you will also disappoint someone else. There is no law that gets 100 percent support or applause. The question is: do you do it anyway because it is right?

That is, in a sense, the decisive question – one that I fortunately no longer have to answer myself. But it will not work without resistance and without friction. And, oh well, I do not want to go further and comment on politics in Germany.

You recently said that Russia, China, and the United States articulate their security and resource interests very clearly, whereas Europe often limits itself to symbolic statements. If Europe starts speaking more explicitly in terms of security and resources, does it risk further accelerating the erosion of the international order? Or has that order already fully collapsed anyway?

At the moment, it no longer exists, because if the United States and Russia do not adhere to it – and they do not – then there is no order. You can restore it. Above all, you can form an alliance of those committed to it. But for that, it is necessary that such an alliance exists on the basis of shared interests, otherwise it falls apart immediately.

I will give you an example. Our shared interest in organizing global trade policy was laid out in detail through the WTO and for a few years it functioned reasonably well. And then the United States, the Trump administration, says: “Now we impose tariffs.” Why did we not succeed in having an alliance of the representatives of this rules-based order say: “We stand together here”?

The same applies to what Europeans did with Greenland. Why was it not possible to confront Trump and say: Europe, India, Brazil, all of South America – perhaps the MENA region, although not attacked as strongly, the Southeast Asian states, Japan, Korea, and so on – we say, if you do this, we will not let ourselves be divided? Then it becomes a power game.

That is what I mean by organizing interests. This can also function as a defensive mechanism, and in that way defend the rules-based order. For example, it would be completely acceptable, and even desirable, if all these states – the Europeans first, and then everyone else – said: “One thing should be clear: We will not destroy the Arctic. The ice may disappear, but we neither want to ruin fish stocks nor exploit and burn the oil and gas reserves, because then the world is beyond saving. Our interest is that all of it stays in the ground.” But then they also have to say it.

Are you confident that things will settle again on their own, or will it take a major shock?

I am more confident now than I would have been half a year ago, because I have the feeling that people have already woken up. Political leaders have understood it now. But it has to translate into political action. Beyond simply saying “Europe has to stand together,” Europe has to discuss and decide on a common defense-industrial base, on reforms within Europe, on new states joining Europe – perhaps Norway and Iceland will consider joining the European community. That debate has suddenly emerged in both countries.

There is also the European Arctic: how do we even define it? Is that a geological question? Do we say that the wedge between Greenland and Norway is ours and that we want to stake out our interests there, but what lies above the Pole itself – or what belongs to Russia – is not ours? Perhaps it belongs to China or Canada or the United States? Questions like these finally have to be answered.

Have you gained other new perspectives since leaving office, especially in Israel and Norway?

Israel was intense.

What were some impressions that stayed with you?

Well, Israel was extraordinary in every respect. I was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not only a very old city shaped by history, but also a city full of contradictions. In Israel, so many people are simply deeply traumatized.

I taught at the Hebrew University, whose mission it is to bring the country’s contradictions into harmony, or at least into dialogue. That means you see young students in uniform, sometimes with machine guns if they are reservists, on campus next to Palestinian students in traditional Arab clothing. They are on the same campus, they stand in the same line to get their coffee, and sometimes they even sit in the same course.

And that is what the cityscape in Jerusalem feels like too, with all the tensions and all the wounds of recent years. Both societies, the Jewish and the Palestinian, are traumatized and worn raw. The country has become more conservative and more religious. The pressure that the Netanyahu government exerts is palpable everywhere.

For me personally, the most moving experience was a trip, an overnight stay, in the West Bank together with activists who non-violently protect Palestinian shepherds from attacks by radical religious Israeli settlers. I know that a great deal of injustice is happening there. But when you sleep in their tent, sit with them around the campfire, and talk with them, and they tell you the stories of being arrested, of how they cannot defend themselves at all, and how brutally these settlers act – it goes very deep.

In that month I experienced so much – and had so much to reflect on – as I might otherwise have experienced in an entire year. There are so many stories there that are worth telling. I have to think about what I will do with them.

That is very moving. And what are you now hoping to take away from your time here in the United States and in Canada?

I spent a month in Philadelphia in October, at the University of Pennsylvania. And unlike in Israel, where the mood really kept becoming more and more despondent, my sense here is that civil society is more motivated. People see that civic resistance, protest, and communication can make a difference – from people in the streets of Minnesota to Bruce Springsteen songs. All of a sudden, the vibe in the country has shifted. That is good to see.

I think that, at the moment, the Trump administration will lose the midterm elections. Of course there is still a long way to go until then, but right now it feels that way. I can clearly feel that over the past four months the mood in civil society has changed somehow.

In this global environment, how do you think our generation can have the greatest impact? Would you advise students to go into politics, or to try to make change from somewhere else in the job market?

Oh well, advice… I do not know whether a 56-year-old should be giving advice to people in their mid-twenties. But I can say one thing: in the end, politics is also a market. Politicians tend to follow the majority. That is the point of democracy: people determine where the journey goes.

And if it becomes more attractive again to stand up for progressive, liberal politics – as is happening in the United States now, and perhaps one day again in Germany and Europe, and I do believe it is happening now – then that will have an effect. We have seen, for example, that in Minnesota a Republican candidate withdrew because of protests in the streets, because he no longer thought these ICE measures were right. So even Republican lawmakers can be impressed when people raise their voices.

That is what I would wish for. You do not have to want to become chancellor, vice chancellor, or a minister right away. You have time. But getting involved, raising your voice for a good international order, for climate protection, for justice, for peace; building networks, staying in contact, supporting one another – we need everyone.

And I do not know what it is like at Harvard, but as a student you do still have some resources, at times, to engage socially beyond your studies. That would be my hope.

Throughout your political career, how did you manage to remain true to your values?

For me, it was always helpful to have a profession that gave me the security of not being economically, or even intellectually, dependent on politics. In the good phases of my political career, I offered what I genuinely believed in, with the attitude: take it, or I will leave. That always helped me a great deal.

Second, I think it is important to keep in mind that, for all solidarity with your own party, people elect people. So you become approachable and real as a person. That comes at a price, because you also become more vulnerable. If you speak like a robot, look like a robot, show no facial expression, and never allow yourself to share a personal joke, an anecdote, or a bit of humor, then you are more immune to attacks. If you do make yourself visible, it sometimes hurts more. But I would say, in the end, that was me – and I enjoyed it.

Third: do not be surprised when it hurts, when the headwinds come. Politics is completely different from academic study. In politics it is not about having the better argument, but about winning the argument, which sounds like the same thing but is often quite the opposite.

And none of your competitors wants you to win the argument. Knowing that global warming is a huge problem, having the data at hand, knowing the efficiency of renewable energy – that does not, by itself, mean you will win the argument. You have to expect that, because of the dynamics of the system, people will say: he wants to make us poor, he wants to destroy Europe, he wants to destroy Germany, he is just a lobbyist, he is an ideologue – whatever it is. It all comes, and you have to know that in advance.

So if you choose the political path seriously – going into party politics, perhaps one day holding government office – you have to be clear beforehand that you will not have 100 percent support, but, at best, 51 percent. You always have to aim to build a majority. And people will criticize you. And that sometimes hurts, depending on how much of your personality you put into it. But it is worth it.

Thank you for the interview, Mr. Habeck.

Habeck spoke with Schnalke on February 6, 2026. The interview was conducted in German and has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee's own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

It is hard to pinpoint the number of stops that electronic devices make before reaching their final consumer. For most phones, the average can be traced through more than 70 international borders before being delivered to your nearest Apple Store. The most vital component of these devices is often the most underestimated: the chip. These chips, or semiconductors, are embedded into virtually every device used today and represent the future for new technologies – including the artificial intelligence push that is taking the market by storm. These small devices, some only 7 nanometers in length, form the backbone of most technology available today, including LED lightbulbs, solar panels, refrigerators, and ultrasound modules, enabling their incredible processing power and efficiency.

With its broad usages, these semiconductors have grown to become a crucial point of leverage in international trade and relations.  However, recently, governments, including the major global players of China and US, have tried to pull more of the process inside their borders and control the supply chain. While this push towards self-sufficiency has clear political appeal, historical precedent has shown the dangers of this. Drawing upon lessons learned from the Soviet Union’s failures to achieve economic self-sufficiency, it is evident that past attempts to localize complex technologies have raised costs, slowed innovation, and created new bottlenecks rather than eliminating them.

Structure and Dynamics of the Semiconductor Supply Chain

The semiconductor supply chain is transnational and tightly coupled: each stage—design, materials, tools, fabrication, and assembly—relies on contributions from different countries, so small disruptions can reverberate widely.

Semiconductor manufacturing begins in design, where a blueprint of the chip’s architecture is developed with highly specialized software. Thus, core intellectual property, called core IP, has proliferated to lessen the burden of design and assert greater control over the market by private firms that invest thousands of dollars in generating that initial step. The raw and manufactured materials, such as silicon wafers, photomasks, and photoresists, along with minerals such as tungsten and magnesium, that make up the semiconductors, are often in high demand. However, only 5 companies controlled roughly 95 percent of the market in 2020. Fabrication facilities, or fabs, are one of the most critical components of manufacturing, carefully printing the circuits by layering transistor elements whose sizes are measured in atoms onto raw silicon wafers. The precision, scale, speed, purity, and dependability required of semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) are expensive and difficult to create. As such, the market for this specialization is enormous, with a current valuation of $105 billion and expectations for growth of up to $200 billion by 2030-2033. Wafer fabrication facilities, in particular, are increasingly difficult and expensive. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has estimated that a 3 nm fab, the most advanced model, costs more than $20 billion.

Given the complicated steps to produce chips, there has been a clear division of the roles between countries. The United States and South Korea are focused on design and development, Taiwanese giants such as TSMC lead production, Japan and the Netherlands provide manufacturing equipment, and Silicon Valley serves as an overarching hub for talent. With an estimated global market size of $681 billion in 2024 and expectations to grow to $2.06 trillion by 2032, countries are each vying for a larger stake in the sector.

In short, the process to create a single semiconductor is incredibly complex and capital-intensive, with a few choke points that matter outsizedly. With the market growing quickly and governments competing for larger shares, any weak link – whether a materials shortage, an export curb, or a factory outage – can stall output and trigger economic and political tension. Recently, difficulties have emerged as countries increasingly seek to build their semiconductor industry within their borders.

The Dual Move Toward Self-Sufficiency

Although this system of transnational chips has worked over the last decades, questions regarding its future viability have arisen. Competition is becoming increasingly apparent as countries such as the US and China begin consolidating their power to gain an economic stronghold over the industry. Growing individualism has led these major world powers to seek dominance through domestic semiconductor manufacturing. This is especially relevant as semiconductor sales are concentrated in just a few countries. 46 percent of the market goes to the US, 21 percent to South Korea, 9 percent to Japan, 8 percent to Taiwan, 7 percent to China, and only 9 percent to the rest of the world.

In recent months, the Trump administration has been moving toward reducing its foreign dependence. The administration is communicating with Taipei to shift investment and chip production to the US so that half of the chips sold to America are manufactured domestically, although discussions are being complicated by tariff discussions. Specifically, Washington has been working with Taiwanese giants such as TSMC to encourage further investment. TSMC has been building manufacturing facilities in the US since 2020 and has already announced plans to invest an additional $100 billion, bringing total investment to $165 billion. Larger goals seek to reach around 40 percent domestic semiconductor production by the end of President Trump’s term – a move that would require over $500 billion in local investments.  

Meanwhile, China has been aggressively pursuing domestic production across the supply chain. On September 15, 2025, the Chinese government banned the use of NVIDIA semiconductors, ordering companies, including TikTok parent company ByteDance and Alibaba, not to buy Nvidia’s country-specific chip. The ban came after Chinese regulators asserted that domestically manufactured chips had attained performance comparable to those of Nvidia’s China-specific chips. Companies such as Huawei, which had previously been struggling due to US export restrictions, have seamlessly stepped in to replace Nvidia. At a Huawei conference, Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s vice chairman and rotating chairman, claimed that current chips are comparable to what was previously on the market and unveiled a three-year release schedule for new chips, which are expected to double their computing power with each new release. While there are still concerns about the validity of China’s technology in comparison to America’s – Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei downplayed expectations in June, saying, “Huawei’s chips are still a generation behind the United States” – initial investments and interest indicate potential for future growth.

Many of these individualistic tendencies are set against the backdrop of mounting economic tensions between China and the US, with tariffs, trade wars, and other economic levers strategically deployed. While not to the same extent, many argue that China and the US are approaching a financial Cold War.

Looking to the Past Through Soviet Autarky

History offers a cautionary parallel: the Soviet drive for economic self-sufficiency. The height of the Cold War took place between the 1960s and 1980s, a time of peak tension between the Soviet Union and the US. While these tensions played out in different contexts, a key similarity is the remnants of Soviet autarky that served as a critical backdrop for the conflict, as well as for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Through the mid-1920s, the autarkic beliefs of the Soviet Union appeared to be a fundamental characteristic of its economy. Plans such as the First and Second Five-Year Plans deliberately pursued domestic heavy industry and machinery production. The USSR aimed to limit imports from capitalist countries and to replicate Western technologies domestically. Although this buffered the country from the worst effects of the Great Depression overtaking the rest of the globe, it left it weakened to future economic growth later in the 20th century. It had achieved extensive military and industrial power, but lagged in consumer goods and innovation due to a lack of resources. Thus, during the Cold War, their economic growth was notably stagnant. In January 1964, the American CIA reported that the Soviet growth rate had dropped from between 6 to 10 percent in the 1950s to less than 2.5 percent in 1962 and 1963. Inefficiencies through the system, a lack of innovation, and resource depletion across the supply chain left the Soviet Union exposed, and its collapse 30 years later could be seen as a foreseeable consequence.

Thus, Soviet autarky, while extreme, presents a warning of the effects of severe nationalism and individualism. Lack of global trade and scientific collaboration has resounding effects across both individual nations, but also for more neutral parties caught between competing powers.

The Strategic Dilemma of Producers in the Middle

With current tensions between East and West powers, smaller countries, including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, are caught in the crossfire, forced to navigate dual dependencies. As it stands, though, neither the U.S. nor China dominates manufacturing. Instead, Taiwan, through TSMC, produces 90 percent of the world’s most advanced chips and 41 percent of processor chips. However, the U.S. dominates key choke points in the supply chain, and China’s geographical threat grants substantial influence. Thus, Taiwan is forced to adopt a “silicon shield” to protect itself from both parties, hoping that the US would militarily defend Taiwan from possible invasion to protect its critical supply of technologies. It is precisely Taiwan’s current dominance over this critical market that allows it substantial political representation in current discussions, but increasing individualism threatens this “shield” and decreases the small country’s influence.

In addition, South Korea has the second largest share of design revenue globally, controlling 21 percent of the market, and has the second largest share of sales, with over $117M in 2021. Korean companies such as Samsung have significant decision-making power in markets and are tightly interwoven into the supply chain. However, South Korea is facing a similar dilemma to Taiwan. In the past year, China declared its chip technology had surpassed South Korean manufacturing and announced a desire to pull back from South Korean dependence. Meanwhile, the US is proposing annual approvals for exports of chipmaking supplies to Samsung Electronics, alongside SK Hynix’s China-based factories. The country is thus caught in the middle of both parties, facing jeopardy in both of its alliances and leaving strategic vulnerabilities in one of its largest industries.

Implications for Future Semiconductor Corporation

The semiconductor industry will continue to grow at unforeseen rates – far surpassing previous technologies and presenting new challenges for countries to tackle. In our global economy, it is difficult to imagine retracting manufacturing into individual countries. However, current policies across the East and West appear to be making efforts toward centralizing their production of this valuable technology. This can have dire consequences for the smaller East Asian countries left in the middle. Companies based in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are struggling to compete with the scale of strong government support in China and are vulnerable to even small shifts in the market. The coming decade will test whether global supply chains can adapt without collapsing into protectionism or following in the footsteps of historical Soviet warnings.  Sustained innovation will ultimately depend not on who dominates the market, but on how effectively nations balance security with interdependence — a balance that may ultimately define the next chapter of economic globalization itself.

Franklin Chang Díaz is a Costa Rican physicist, former NASA astronaut, and founder of Ad Astra Rocket Company. A pioneer in plasma propulsion and green hydrogen innovation, he has dedicated his post-NASA career to advancing clean energy technologies that bridge space science and sustainable development. Drawing on decades of experience with hydrogen fuel systems in spaceflight, Chang Díaz is now applying that expertise to help decarbonize Earth’s transport and energy sectors, proving that small nations can play an important role in the global transition to a hydrogen-powered future.

Your career began in space exploration, yet you have become one of the leading advocates for hydrogen energy. What inspired your transition from space technology to clean energy?

My experience with hydrogen started in space. At NASA, we used liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel cells to generate all the electricity and water we needed. That was our power source, our drinking water, our hygiene water—everything. And when we docked with the Mir Space Station, the Russians did not have any water. They relied on shipments from Earth, and they were always running low. Meanwhile, on our side, we had so much water that we had to dump the excess into space.

That experience made a deep impression on me. It became clear that this self-sustaining technology could be applied to Earth’s energy systems. The problem is that we remain trapped in a carbon-based economy, which continues to drive climate change. Costa Rica is uniquely positioned to lead the transition because it lacks oil and gas reserves and is therefore not bound to fossil fuels. Some people argue that the country should explore for fossil fuels, but by the time any resources were extracted, the world would have already moved on. The future is hydrogen.

Hydrogen is often seen as expensive compared to traditional fossil fuels. How do you address this concern?

The problem is that people only compare the price of hydrogen to gasoline, without considering the hidden costs of fossil fuels—public health impacts, environmental degradation, and climate change. The price and the cost are not the same thing. The environment is subsidizing fossil fuels, and we are not accounting for that.

In Costa Rica, we are proving that hydrogen is already economically viable. We are building a hydrogen production plant in Guanacaste, which will produce 430 kilograms of hydrogen per day—enough to power a fleet of trucks and buses. This will be the first fully operational commercial hydrogen project in Costa Rica, and we believe it will serve as a blueprint for the rest of Latin America.

Many companies are now integrating AI with energy solutions. How do you see AI playing a role in the hydrogen revolution?

AI is critical. Hydrogen production, storage, and distribution need to be optimized in real time. At Ad Astra, we are developing AI-driven solutions to optimize electrolysis efficiency based on renewable energy availability, predictive maintenance for fuel cells, and cost reduction. We implement AI-driven logistics to distribute hydrogen more efficiently. AI also plays a role in forecasting energy demand so that we can produce hydrogen when renewables are most abundant, reducing waste. This is how we make hydrogen economically scalable.

Many assume the hydrogen transition will start in developed nations like the U.S. or Germany. But you have argued that developing nations might lead the way. Why?

The U.S. and Europe have deeply entrenched fossil fuel industries. They have established infrastructure, and they are resistant to change because too much money is at stake. In contrast, developing countries do not have that burden, which means they can move faster.

Costa Rica, for example, produces 99 percent of its electricity from renewables. We do not have a domestic oil industry fighting against clean energy. That gives us a huge advantage. If we prove hydrogen’s viability here, other developing nations will follow.

What does the roadmap look like for integrating hydrogen in Costa Rica and Latin America?

The biggest challenge is resistance to change. People are comfortable with gasoline cars and fossil fuel infrastructure. The companies that profit from these industries do not want change. But this is exactly what happened in the 1800s when horse-and-buggy manufacturers opposed the automobile.

What we are doing in Costa Rica is proving that hydrogen works in real-world applications. Our first commercial hydrogen plant will be operational by mid-2026, and we are focusing on heavy-duty transport—buses and trucks that currently burn enormous amounts of imported fossil fuels. By proving the business case for hydrogen, we can scale the model across Latin America.

What advice do you have for young innovators who want to work at the intersection of space technology and clean energy?

Be willing to fail. People assume that everything I have done has been successful, but the reality is that 9 out of 10 things I try fail. Failure is how you learn to succeed. Second, do not work alone. Build teams, bring in people with different perspectives, and collaborate. Innovation happens faster in groups. Finally, do not wait for everything to be perfect before taking action. Take small steps, iterate, and improve as you go. If you try to predict every possible risk before acting, you will never move forward.

Your vision for the future extends beyond Earth. How do you see humanity balancing sustainability on Earth with space exploration?

We are all astronauts. Earth is our spaceship, and our life-support system is failing. If we do not fix it, we will not survive long enough to explore the stars.

But I believe humanity will rise to the challenge. I see a future where humans live on other planets, and Earth becomes a global national park—a preserved sanctuary that people visit, but not where the majority of humanity lives. To achieve that, we must transition to sustainable energy now, and hydrogen is key to that transition.

Diaz spoke with Solis on November 12th , 2024. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Twitter/X bio of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, as of December 2025, reads “Philosopher King.” In the past, it read, “The world’s coolest dictator.” This unabashed public recognition of authoritarianism is unique. For example, even after the death of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in 2024, a spokesperson for the Kremlin in Russia referred to Russia’s democracy as “the best.”  

However, Bukele’s mano dura, or iron-fisted, tactics in El Salvador have provided him a foundation for this claim. The country was roiled by the inescapable, “suffocating” shadow of gang violence for many years. Bukele moved in to quash the gang opposition and restore a relative sense of safety, but with dire consequences for civil and human rights.

Bukele’s suppression of gang violence has led to widespread acceptance of his leadership among Salvadorans, despite the damage he has caused to El Salvador's democracy and its citizens' civil and human rights. However, the possibility that he achieved this feat through backdoor deals with gangs indicates that the suspension and violation of rights was not a necessary condition to improve safety.

Background of the Gang Violence Crisis

The 1960s in El Salvador saw the birth of significant gang activity after industrialization and urbanization increased. In the 1980s and 1990s, gang activity focused on small groups that did not have control over cities at large.

El Salvador’s gang violence crisis erupted after its 12-year civil war, which was between its right-wing government (funded by the US) and guerrilla leftist groups (backed by Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union). Many Salvadorans fled the country during the civil war; in fact, gangs Barrio 18 (also called the 18th Street gang) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) actually originated in Los Angeles, USA. But as the US deported gang members, the groups came to El Salvador, and a rivalry exploded between them. Violence particularly spiraled after 2014, and by June 2015, El Salvador was known as the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere as well as the most dangerous country on the planet, not including war zones.

While gang violence has broadly impacted Salvadoran society, it has disproportionately affected its poor. Beyond the obvious impacts on personal safety, it has also lowered income and lessened access to education, as well as hindered the ability to move around freely. Wealthy individuals are better able to pay extortion fees to gangs—to the tune of around three percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)—as well as live in safer circumstances, such as in luxury compounds.

El Salvador Under Bukele

When Nayib Bukele became president, he undertook a widespread crackdown on gang violence, in which about 87,000 people were detained and arrested. Starting in March 2022, El Salvador has been in a “state of exception,” or an emergency situation that allows the suspension of many constitutional rights. These rights include habeas corpus and due process. Under Bukele, the murder rate dropped from 53 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 2.4 per 100,000 in 2023. The homicide rate plummeted 57 percent between 2021 to 2022, and extortions also lowered significantly.

Due to the suspension of some rights, the detentions under Bukele often significantly lacked due process. And beyond gang members, arrests have also included those investigating collusion with gangs—for example, journalists and civil society groups. The human rights group Movement of Victims of the Regime (MOVIR) estimates that thousands of people have been unjustly detained over accusations of gang association. Aside from suspending rights, Bukele has also taken steps to weaken checks and balances. For example, in 2021, he removed executive branch oversight from the attorney general and Supreme Court justices by placing his supporters in those positions.

The significant reduction of violence under Bukele has led to his widespread popularity among citizens. He was even reelected in 2024, despite El Salvador’s constitution banning a second term. Furthermore, a 2022 poll conducted by Gallup found that 92 percent of citizens in El Salvador supported the continuation of the state of emergency.

Even if temporary suspension of rights could be justified to address the gang violence situation, it was unnecessary to imprison journalists and civil society members and erode democratic institutions. However, considering the massive overall increase in quality of life that Bukele’s crackdown on gangs provided for the average citizen, it is unsurprising that many are willing to trade democracy for security—even if the two were artificially presented as mutually exclusive.

Bukele’s Alliances with Gangs

It is a common perception that the reduction of gang violence in El Salvador was entirely due to Bukele’s crackdown. Reflecting that perception, in February 2025, President Donald Trump formed a deal with Bukele to imprison some Venezuelans deported from the United States in a Salvadoran mega-prison. Bukele has encouraged President Trump to detain people, telling him that “to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some.”      

However, there is evidence that the reduction in violence was, in large part, due to other tactics. The Biden administration alleged in 2021 that Bukele’s regime actually bribed MS-13 and Barrio 18, with payoffs such as cash, sex workers, and cellphones, to keep violence low.

Similarly, the newspaper El Faro alleged in 2020 that Bukele was making deals with gangs. It used government records such as intelligence reports as well as prison records to reach these conclusions. El Faro also interviewed Barrio 18 gang leaders, who claimed that in exchange for bribes, the gang agreed to intimidate voters into supporting Bukele to become mayor of San Salvador, the country’s capital. Seven of El Faro’s journalists have warrants out for their arrests after reporting on the deals Bukele allegedly made with the gangs. The newspaper is largely run from Costa Rica to avoid retribution from inside El Salvador.

The allegations of Bukele’s backdoor dealings with MS-13 and Barrio 18 dispute the necessity of severely restricting human rights and civil liberties in El Salvador. They also call into question the praise Bukele has garnered domestically and abroad for quashing gang violence, considering his public-facing measures may not have been the main cause of the decline.

Even if the allegations were untrue, the severity of human rights infringements enacted during Bukele’s crackdown already calls his actions into doubt. But if Bukele did broker deals with these gangs, he implicitly offered the people of El Salvador a false choice between rights and liberties, or safety.

Other Methods of Dealing with Gang Violence

Instead of beginning by restricting rights and liberties, United Nations research and strategies enacted in Colombia provide alternative, or at least additional, ways that the gang violence situation could have been addressed.

More abstractly, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) points to the association between the presence of weapons and violence. It suggests improving the traceability of weapons to track them when used violently, and undertaking initiatives involving the voluntary surrender of weapons, such as buy-back programs. The International Crisis Group advises tactics such as improving the quality of investigations and addressing social issues that can make people susceptible to joining criminal groups.

As for concrete examples, Medellín, Colombia has lowered homicide rates by improving policing, social programs, and urban planning. And in 2020, Mayor Óscar Escobar of Palmira, Colombia initiated a program called “Pazos” focused on youth between 14 and 29—those most highly involved in violence. Instead of using punitive approaches, it seeks to deal with structural causes by combining international and domestic strategies to disrupt and intervene in violence. In 2021, Palmira left a list of the 50 most violent cities in the world, and in 2022, it recorded its lowest homicide rate in 17 years.

However, implementing these initiatives often requires cooperation with third parties like international organizations—unlikely for authoritarian regimes. As a result, even if one considers it justified to pivot to autocracy during such a crisis, in the long run Bukele’s autocratic turn may prove to stymie future progress and reform in El Salvador.

Despite the above, the reality is that for those living in such viscerally real violence, slower and more cumulative reforms may be unappealing when the situation is life-or-death. Regardless, instead of holding up Bukele’s crackdown as an example to emulate, increasing awareness of alternate strategies—and of the backdoor deals Bukele may have brokered—prevents the ideas of reducing violence and reducing rights from becoming too intertwined in public consciousness.

Introduction

It is a rare occurrence for the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to exclude a nation from the World Cup; it is rarer for a participating country to boycott the World Cup. Both were on the table with the upcoming World Cup in the United States in the summer of 2026, concerning the nation of Israel. For this article, the main root of this conflict started in 2023. Israel’s conduct in the war has prompted widespread international criticism, with some governments, legal scholars, and human rights organizations alleging violations of international humanitarian law, including claims of genocidal intent — claims Israel strongly disputes. International responses to Israel’s military campaigns have become increasingly fragmented, with several United Nations bodies and officials condemning Israel’s conduct in Gaza, while others, including key member states, continue to defend its actions.

As part of this backlash, a Spanish lawmaker, Patxi López, stated that there is a possibility that Spain will reconsider its participation in the 2026 World Cup if Israel participates. Coming off their recent European Championship in 2024, Spain has a high position in world football, and its absence in this tournament would have been second only to Argentina, the standing World Cup champions. The discussion of whether Israel should be excluded from the 2026 tournament was extensive, but a loss to Italy ultimately ended Israel’s World Cup aspirations. Yet, the topic remains relevant. FIFA did not need to make an immediate decision on Israel’s status, as it was made for them, but perhaps they should have acted anyway.

Background

While rare, the exclusion of nations from the World Cup has a historical precedent on a case-by-case basis. There had been renewed calls for also banning Israel from this edition of the World Cup, including a statement by Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez, who cited the exclusion of Russia from the 2022 and 2026 World Cups due to the nation’s invasion of Ukraine. The first nation to be banned was Germany in 1950, following broader post-war sanctions after  World War II. Japan was banned for the same reason. South Africa was excluded because of Apartheid, and Yugoslavia for conflicts during its breakup. Mexico, Chile, and Myanmar were all banned for non-political issues: Mexico for having overage players, Chile for player misconduct, and Myanmar for an unjustified withdrawal in the qualifying rounds. In the last ten years, Kuwait, Indonesia, Russia twice, Pakistan, and Congo have all been banned; the last three all for the 2026 World Cup. While most of these were not nearly as political a situation as Israel’s, the exclusions of Germany, Japan, and Russia were all conflict-related.

The Conflict at Hand

This raises the question of how international football governing bodies determine when allegations of severe violations of international law warrant exclusion from competition. The move to ban Israel from football competitions had been growing, especially within the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which hosts competitions like the European Championship and the annual Champions League. In fact, over 30 legal experts had requested that UEFA prohibit Israel and Israeli clubs from engaging in current competitions. On the national level, beyond Spain, “twelve Middle Eastern football associations have called for Israel’s national team to be banned over the war,” and the Turkish Football Federation specifically sent a letter to FIFA, UEFA, and leaders of the world’s football federations, demanding Israel be banned from all sporting events. Ireland, Scotland, Slovenia, and Norway all similarly refuse to play in Israel. While this isn’t specific to the World Cup, global boycotting of Israel in football is widespread. Israel was facing backlash and exclusion from the tournament entirely, and, if the nation had not qualified for the World Cup and were not banned, boycotts from numerous nations would have remained a possibility.

Such boycotts would have posed significant challenges for the World Cup, a cultural and global phenomenon, raising difficult questions about whether disruptions can serve as a tool of political pressure. It is clear that to many nations, international issues take precedent; for instance, the Turkish Football Federation’s president, Haciosmanoglu, stated that “football has always been far more important than a sport.” For Haciosmanoglu, “it’s a universal language that brings together different cultures, fosters friendships, and strengthens the bonds of solidarity among people. Guided by these values, we feel compelled to raise our deep concern regarding the unlawful situation being carried out by the State of Israel in Gaza and its surrounding areas.” Sports have long been used as a social and political tool, from Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier to Didier Drogba pleading for peace in Côte d'Ivoire in the 2006 World Cup. International sports have served as a platform for political expression before global audiences. Spain’s position in the World Cup makes this even more of a relevant issue and one that does not seem to have a resolution soon.

In the Wider World

In the world of geopolitics, Israel’s potential exclusion represents a larger global system of public action and outrage. The conflict in Gaza, including allegations of genocide that remain legally contested, is an issue first between Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian people, and second between those players and other global actors that play a role, like the United States or Lebanon. As technology and, hence, information accessibility, enhance, the world is more aware of global tensions. Most nations don’t play a direct role in this conflict, yet with their awareness of the conflict in Gaza, those nations, and especially their people, feel a responsibility to take action for what’s aligned with those nations’ values. Middle Eastern countries, sharing a Muslim identity with the Palestinians, took up the issue and called for Israel’s exclusion, but the primary mover of the issue was the non-Muslim nation, Spain, which may be attributed in some sense to its pro-Palestinian stance and its history of politicizing sports. Cultural backgrounds certainly help, but these issues are appealing to audiences vastly disconnected.

While the potential Israel and 2026 World Cup tension has now disappeared, this sort of conflict could arise again in the future. Football, as one of the most uniting global events, provides an outlet for nations not directly involved in the war to express symbolic discontent when otherwise it’s difficult to make a public stand for an issue. Israel is heavily scrutinized, and its role in future competitions could still be endangered.

Yet, not the entire world is fighting against Israel; some are defending the nation. Before Israel lost to Italy, Trump’s administration expressed a commitment to stopping FIFA from banning Israel from its competitions. A spokesperson from the State Department signaled opposition to efforts to exclude Israel from international sports competitions. As a global superpower, the United States’ word holds weight in FIFA; this sort of international pressure could stop FIFA from taking action against Israel. Especially in regard to this tournament, the United States, as the host, would have had great leverage if Israel had qualified for the tournament. The divergence between US policy and positions held by other states highlights broader tensions between great powers and multilateral institutions. The US-Israel-FIFA tensions and potential tensions could represent a global stand against great power influence.

The next few years of global football will be shaped by geo-political tensions relating to Israel from both sides, though it seems geo-political tensions in general could play a large role in the future of the world’s sport. With calls from various nations around the world for Israel’s exclusion from this World Cup and continued protests against Israeli football, this issue is only going to rise. The sport continues to become more politicized, and Israel’s situation continues to become a higher point of tension. It’s up to the world’s nations and world football to decide the line, if there is one, between politics and the everyday sport of football.

UNESCO has called for international bans on smartphones in schools. Many teachers are concerned as well: a survey shows that 72 percent of high school teachers in the United States view cellphones as a major distraction for students. The growing use of smartphones in schools, along with increasing awareness of their negative effects, has led many countries to restrict their use and support policies that reinforce these measures. Despite this, some see such actions as unnecessary, or as an infringement upon individual rights.

Notably, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) ruled in 2024 that the collection of smartphones during the day at schools does not constitute a human rights violation, reaffirming its 2014 decision. Initial tests of this new strategy show promising results. Many schools that have prohibited phones have experienced fewer problems with discipline and absenteeism, with one psychologist noting that in those schools, “laughter can be heard in the hallways again.”

While smartphone bans in schools are proving to be beneficial in the short run, they ultimately do not address many underlying issues with increasing screen time dependence, such as technology companies making their services as addictive as possible, particularly to children. Furthermore, the positive effects technology can bring to the classroom, particularly in places like parts of Africa, necessitate a judicious approach to restricting smartphone usage that still allows for the benefits of technological learning.

Positive Effects of Technology in the Classroom

Despite the negative effects it often has on student learning, technology also presents many positives. For example, remote learning enabled by technology is a definite plus. While its position on smartphones in schools is negative overall, UNESCO recognizes the massive continuity boost that remote learning gave student learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, increasing technological literacy in regions like Africa can open doors to the gains in development that technology can offer. Brookings estimates that AI could double African countries’ GDP rate by 2035, emphasizing the possibility for growth in areas such as training and education. Beyond that, mobile phones in general have been shown to help achieve greater equality and equity in access to services, making travel less necessary in areas such as education and banking. Aside from the individual benefits of this improved access, it may spur economic growth.

Aiming to boost equity and reduce the need for expensive private tutoring institutes, or “Hakwons,” the South Korean government pushed the use of AI textbooks in classrooms. Ultimately, teachers, schools, and lawmakers successfully resisted universal adoption of these textbooks, but the situation illustrates potential benefits of technology in classrooms: tailoring learning to students and improving educational outcomes.

A 2022 dissertation from the University of Kent indicates that in Niger, students with access to mobile phones in the classroom received higher scores than students in the control group. That said, mobile phones increased math scores more than writing scores, showing that their usage is not universally beneficial and could even lead to diminishing returns, depending on the area of focus.

Some technology in schools also offers a safety element. Parents highlight the important role smartphones play in allowing consistent communication with their children while they are in school, particularly in emergencies. Lee Yoon-kyung, leader of the National Parents’ Association for True Education in South Korea, pointed out the anxiety that could be caused in students and parents alike through restricting access to phones.

However, neither remote learning nor developing technological literacy requires the use of smartphones specifically, and for parents truly concerned about their students’ safety, options such as so-called “dumbphones” are available. These are less distracting but allow communication to be sustained.

Alternatives to Bans

Even for countries who agree that smartphones have significant negative effects on schools, some have found alternatives to banning them altogether. For example, China has limited the use of smartphones to 30 percent or less of the time spent teaching, and has incorporated breaks from screens. This enables the integration of smartphone technology into learning while allowing the majority of classroom time to be screen-free.

Though it is not directly related to school bans on smartphones, Australia’s recent decision to ban social media for those under 16 years of age represents an alternative route to approaching technology’s chokehold on children. This option allows regulations to target specific applications that may distract students during school, without requiring a blanket ban against the devices themselves. (Australia itself has banned smartphones in all public schools, but the point remains.)

Addiction or Personal Responsibility?

Ultimately, though, the above measures are aimed at punishing users, not the technology companies that intentionally hook users as much as possible. The American Psychological Association (APA) recognizes technological addiction, which includes social media addiction as a subgroup. In 2017, Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, directly admitted that the company “exploit[ed] a vulnerability in human psychology” in trying to maximize user time. This admission came prior to Instagram’s and Facebook’s adoption of short-form “reels” in 2020 and 2021, respectively—an arguably far more attention-grabbing medium popularized by TikTok. Considering 59.9 percent of the global population uses social media for an average of two hours and 24 minutes a day, the influence that social media companies hold is staggering.

In fact, by October 2024, more than a dozen states had sued TikTok for intentionally making the platform addictive to children. According to communications among TikTok employees that these states accessed, a staffer referred to its algorithm as having a “slot machine effect on young people.” One executive confirmed targeting younger users, saying that “it’s better to have young people as an early adopter.” When NPR asked TikTok for comment on the allegations that it violated consumer protection laws, the company pointed to settings that are adaptable on the consumer’s end, such as parental controls, screen time, and privacy.

In that vein, there is still a large degree of personal and parental responsibility in choosing to use these social media services. In Australia, despite the laws previously discussed, 84 percent of kids 8 to 12 years old use social media—a striking figure that points to parental responsibility as a significant factor. Furthermore, social media apps are certainly not the only ones students may use during the school day. And of course, schools may restrict phone use as much as they like, but a student can still go home and spend the rest of the day on their phone.

Moving Forward

Though restrictions on school phone use may target the issue in the short term, they are incomplete without also requiring increased accountability and transparency from technology companies, as well as publicizing the harm caused by heavy screen time and social media usage, especially to adolescents. The latter would provide parents and students alike with more tools to make healthier choices about technology consumption. Technology’s positive impacts on global classrooms are also important to weigh. In the end, there may be more than one way to hear laughter in school hallways again.

Today’s Turbulent Terrain  

It’s 2025, and the echoes of war continue to linger across Eastern Europe. For three years, Russia has waged a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since its start in 2022, human losses in the ongoing conflict have continued to skyrocket for both sides. Beyond manpower, military equipment is also being rapidly depleted. Since 2022, Ukraine has lost over 1,100 tanks. For Russia, more than 1,400 main battle tanks (MBTs) and 3,700 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and armored personnel carriers (APCs) have been destroyed. Along with these losses, Russia has reevaluated its nuclear policy, simultaneously leaning on forming new strategic partnerships to signal power abroad. But how exactly have these developments affected the security of other nuclear powers? More specifically, how has this nuclear proliferation altered pre-existing nuclear doctrines for other nuclear powers in Asia?

Nowhere are the answers to these questions more evident than on the Korean peninsula, an underrepresented terrain in discussions regarding the tense reality of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Both Pyongyang and Seoul have used the war as an opportunity to redefine, and in some cases double down, on their nuclear policies in response to Moscow’s wartime diplomacy, dynamics that will be analyzed in the following sections.

The Nuclear North

To understand the dynamics of nuclear politics across both Koreas, we must first look at the evolving partnership between Russia and North Korea amidst the war in Ukraine. During a 2024 visit with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Aimed at bolstering Russia’s dwindling war efforts in Ukraine, the treaty has since provided Putin with up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers to fend off Ukrainian assaults. The recent partnership has also unlawfully supplied the Kremlin with more than 20,000 containers of North Korean missiles, artillery, rocket launchers, and munitions for the war, per a 2025 report published by the UN Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT).

North Korean aid in the conflict is not only charity, however. In response to Pyongyang’s donations, Putin is strengthening North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, namely through the transfer of technologies for low-yield nuclear weapons and submarine-launch systems. Furthermore, Russia has also provided North Korean troops the opportunity to test their short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), more specifically the KN-23 missile, on the frontlines. These developments echo Putin’s focus on tactical nuclear weapons as a viable strategy for deterrence, subsequently embedding the atom into North Korea’s defense strategy.

This military partnership has sparked fears over advances to North Korea’s already growing nuclear program. Kim’s 2013 directive, the Byungjin Line, established nuclear development as a priority for North Korea’s defense sector, effectively integrating North Korea’s 50 nuclear weapons into the nation’s warfare and deterrence strategies. As such, recent technological exchanges with Russia are indicative of reinforcements to North Korea’s nuclear doctrine, this time on the global stage. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict amplified Kim’s nuclear and missile development and emboldened North Korea to adopt—and eventually constitutionalize—a new, aggressive nuclear doctrine under a 2022 law on the policy of nuclear forces. Under this law, North Korea’s threshold for deploying nuclear forces has been significantly lowered, even permitting preemptive nuclear strikes if the state perceives an imminent threat from a foreign country. This revised doctrine now permits an offensive, first-use policy, which significantly expands North Korea’s willingness to initiate conflict with South Korea. With a larger arsenal, Kim could even deter retaliation from the United States in the event of operations against South Korea.

Evidently, the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the recent nuclearization of North Korea. Empowered by statutory modifications and a fresh Russian alliance, North Korea’s nuclear politics continue to threaten the security of East Asia at heightened rates. North Korea’s brute doctrine of nuclear preemption and proliferation has been used to destabilize, terrorize, and undermine South Korea, further reflecting the shift in power on the peninsula since 2022.

Southern Strategy

Kim’s nuclear politics have not, however, been met with silence from its South Korean counterpart. To better understand South Korea’s response to developments in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, it is essential to examine the nation’s foundational nuclear policies, followed by the breakdown of contemporary attitudes within South Korea on the use of nuclear weapons.

Following US diplomatic pressure in the 1970s, South Korea decided to abandon its nuclear weapons program. In 1992, it signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea agreed not to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons. The treaty also prioritized using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, thereby outlawing the use of facilities for the enrichment of uranium. Instead of developing its own nuclear weapons, South Korea has long resorted to US extended deterrence for safety against North Korean threats, simultaneously bolstering its conventional forces to over 630,000 active personnel. South Korea’s lack of nuclear weapons has traditionally pushed dialogue favoring disarmament across the Korean peninsula, despite North Korea’s proliferation.

North Korea’s involvement in the ongoing Ukrainian conflict has increased talks over nuclearization within South Korea, as seen in a 2025 survey conducted by the East Asia Institute (EAI). The EAI found that 75.1 percent of all South Koreans favor further nuclear developments within the ROK—a 5 percent increase since the start of the war, and an increase of over 15 percent since the last six years. Popular sentiment is gearing South Korea towards nuclearization, but this trend isn’t exactly new. Before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, another set of public-opinion surveys found that South Korean support for independent nuclear armament in the nation lingered at about 61.4 percent. Directly following Russia’s invasion, this percentage of support increased by 4.7 points. In a presidential constitutional democracy like South Korea’s, these public support figures indicate increased pressure on lawmakers for revisions on existing nuclear policies, namely those of production, acquisition, and deterrence.

Consequently, in response to North Korean nuclearization and the aforementioned popular sentiment, South Korea has openly recognized the threat of ongoing partnerships within the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. During a Cabinet meeting following the deployment of North Korean troops to Ukraine, former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol denounced North Korea’s illegal military cooperation with Russia. Despite this growing threat, Yoon maintained national policy by claiming the ROK would not be developing its own nuclear weapons, but rather continue relying on cooperation with the US for deterrence. US President Joe Biden’s administration presented this cooperation in the form of reaffirming a US commitment to supporting South Korea through nuclear deterrence. It also followed Biden’s creation of a new Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) with South Korea in an effort to discuss further nuclear strategy in the region. The creation of the NCG mirrored NATO’s response to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, where a NATO-Ukraine council was formed in 2023 to centralize international decision-making during the crisis. In short, US cooperation with South Korea seeks not only to counter Pyongyang but also to reflect broader lessons learned in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

To much dismay, however, the war in Ukraine, alongside the world’s limited ability to constrain Russian proliferation, has increasingly strained the credibility of US security guarantees. During the start of the second Trump Administration, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “Interim National Defense Strategy” memorandum highlighted deterring Chinese aggression in Taiwan as the main focus of US peacekeeping operations. For South Korea, this sparked fear that the United States would divert many existing resources away from the Korean Peninsula, or worse, neglect the commitments made under the Biden Administration.

This uncertainty, however, is not an option under South Korea’s strategy. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has doubled down on promoting cooperation and arms control as a way to combat Kim’s Russia-backed nuclearization. Lee’s current E.N.D. (Exchange, Normalization, Denuclearization) policy seeks to respond to Russia-linked proliferation through long-term, step-by-step solutions. Denuclearization, as Lee presented it at the 80th UN General Assembly, focuses on pushing North Korea to suspend existing nuclear and missile development, reducing existing arsenals, and ultimately culminating in a vision of eliminating all nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.

Although investing in conventional and US extended deterrence remains crucial to South Korea’s defense strategy, Lee’s renewed emphasis on “peaceful coexistence and mutual growth” with North Korea highlights diplomacy as the primary mechanism for responding to the instability unleashed by the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

The Koreas of Tomorrow

Three years into the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the consequences of the war have reached far beyond Europe. The exchange of manpower, ammunition, and technology is increasingly visible between North Korea and Russia as a result of wartime tensions,  reaffirming Kim’s position as the sole, and increasingly threatening, nuclear power on the Korean peninsula.

This war has produced fruitful relations between Kim and Putin, emboldening North Korea to increase its nuclear stockpiles. According to President Lee, North Korea’s current nuclearization efforts could be adding roughly 15 to 20 nuclear weapons to Kim’s arsenal each year. Despite this tension, South Korea’s response to developments in the conflict, namely the recent partnership between North Korea and Russia, seeks to maintain its position as a non-nuclear state while promoting peaceful dialogue with Kim’s regime. This doctrine prioritizes posing as small a threat to North Korea’s political and territorial sovereignty, particularly when it comes to Kim’s 2022 revision allowing for an offensive nuclear policy.

Hence, while North Korea is increasingly prepared to engage in nuclear conflict, South Korea will continue to prioritize diplomacy and dependence on US deterrence to minimize the risk of war. Relations between both countries currently remain frozen as South Korea seeks to foster dialogue with Kim’s regime, while North Korea, still uncertain of Western motivations, reasserts its strength with more nuclear signaling. With tensions at an all-time high between the US and Russia, the ripple effects of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict are rapidly changing the future of democracy, arms control, and power across the Korean Peninsula.

A new mother travels to Tijuana for body contouring surgery and a “mommy makeover” procedure. A middle-aged man travels to Phuket for a lower facelift and abdominal liposuction. A group of teens eagerly plans their all-inclusive plastic surgery package in the Dominican Republic: tummy tucks and tanning on the beaches of Puerto Plata. Google Trend data shows an over 100 percent increase in queries about liposuction in Turkish clinics from 2020 to 2023.

Cheaper, less invasive, and increasingly advertised, cosmetic procedures have become common; approximately a fifth of citizens in developing nations like Brazil and China say they plan to purchase such treatments as anti-wrinkle injections in the next five years. Medical aesthetics, already a US$82 billion industry, is poised to nearly double in size to US$143 billion by 2030.

Democratizing aesthetic surgery for both patrons and providers, the internet age has seen a global rise in uncertified plastic surgeons performing procedures. In Iran, there are only about 400 accredited plastic surgeons for the roughly 2,000 doctors offering cosmetic procedures. In Britain, over two-thirds of people administering anti-wrinkle and filler injections were found to be not medical doctors.

In addition to going to uncertified “professionals” who offer procedures at discounted prices, consumers have begun to take their wallets abroad to receive even cheaper operations overseas. Medical tourism, the act of traveling abroad for healthcare, is nothing new. However, the democratization of plastic surgery, globalization, and the internet age have pushed cosmetic surgery to the forefront of this growing industry–just a few months ago, the “Guadalajara Lady” went viral on TikTok for receiving a facelift at a fraction of the US price. Combined with greater accessibility and heightened awareness, cosmetic procedures have propelled medical tourism to new heights.

First World Service, Third World Prices

Enticing the impatient inpatients of the West, medical costs in Southeast Asian nations like India, Thailand, and Singapore are a fraction of those in the United States. Owing to favorable exchange rates, Westerners can travel to low- and mid-income countries (LMICs) and receive first-world procedures at third-world prices. Even with airfare, hotel, and other incidental expenses included, treatments can cost as little as 10 percent of comparable American care. Brazilian nose jobs average at US$2,000, nearly a fourth of the average cost of US$7,600 in America. A Turkish hair transplant can be a fifth of the price in Britain, explaining the continuous rise in Turkey-bound medical migrants–from 2013 to last year, procedures rose from 300,000 to over 1.5 million.

Of course, this financially and aesthetically motivated travel does not come without risks. Aside from migrating filler and unsatisfactory post-op results, transnational cosmetic procedures in nations with looser regulations or credential requirements can result in infection or even death. Twenty-nine American citizens were reported dead just from 2019 to 2020 as a result of cosmetic surgery in the Dominican Republic; this potential for misfortune hasn’t deterred plastic surgery hopefuls, however. Experts estimated there were 750,000 American medical tourists in 2007; in 2017, this number rose to 1.4 million. The medical tourism industry – and plane tickets overseas – are expected to increase by 25 percent per year by 2025.

In addition to being an economic boon for customers, the Western export of patients to developing markets is highly advantageous for the countries that receive them. Mirroring insurance, banking, and other industries that have followed the trend of outsourcing, medical tourism has become profitable due to globalization. With consumers realizing the ease of hopping onto a plane to undergo procedures, this willingness to travel farther in exchange for a lower medical bill provides destination countries with a lucrative opportunity. Compared to traditional tourism, medical tourism has significantly greater revenue-generating capabilities–medical tourists in Asia are estimated to spend over twice as much as traditional tourists.

Augmenting Bodies and Policies

Exemplifying the for-profit nature of private healthcare, medical tourism has significantly influenced the policies of destination countries striving to reap its benefits. India and Thailand have shaped their policies around it, introducing expedited medical visas to promote migration for cosmetic procedures. Specifically, Thailand has sought to facilitate the influx of foreign patients by negotiating the portability of public insurance between donor countries. Governments have directly subsidized medical tourism by providing public land, corporate tax breaks, and reduced tariffs on medical equipment used by private hospitals that serve medical tourists.

Not only a testament to the power of medical tourism, the ability to shape international relations and synchronize national policies requires a form of soft power known as health diplomacy. A linkage between foreign affairs and global health, health diplomacy is a form of diplomacy that focuses on protecting health across borders and uses health-related issues to promote stability between nations. Furthermore, health diplomacy contributes to soft power and enables nations to secure political and economic gains, prestige, and influence by projecting a commitment to global and internal health.

Health diplomacy’s place as a form of soft power is evident in the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s use of health initiatives to build alliances with developing nations. Serving as a “first responder” for developing countries during COVID and spearheading global immunization, China’s Belt and Road Initiative and vaccine policy allowed it to simultaneously increase its reputation in the third world while diminishing that of the West. But the export of medical aid has done more than generate goodwill. Spanning multiple decades, the PRC’s cultivation of international relations using health diplomacy has most notably afforded it its 1971 admission to the UN, an achievement that would not have been possible without the affirmative votes of its Third World and ASEAN supporters.

Filling Wrinkles, Lips, and Public Hospital Beds

Rather than a tool for political gambits or a means to optimize international prestige, health diplomacy pertaining to medical tourism relies on destination nations tailoring their policies around customers of the West to best extract profit. For example, Malaysia was able to grow its medical tourism sector at an annual rate of 16.3 percent over 4 years through government-led initiatives such as the establishment of the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council (MHTC), an organization implemented to facilitate coordination between private hospitals, government agencies, and medical tourists. Self-described as an organization “with the mandate to position Malaysia as THE healthcare travel destination in the world,” the MHTC and other efforts by the Ministry of Health Malaysia have significantly advanced Malaysian medical tourism, generating MYR 1.7 billion in revenue and attracting 1.22 million medical tourists in 2019 alone.

Combined with unfavorable policy changes in donor countries (such as reduced coverage or long wait-time benchmarks for non-urgent procedures), these destination nation initiatives fuel the lucrative flow of medical tourists and greatly influence perceptions of healthcare systems on both sides of patient exchange. But although destination nation governments may reap the benefits, this rise in tourism often comes at the expense of native citizens.

Despite being required to serve impoverished domestic customers as well, legal regulations protecting citizens are often ignored by destination nation hospitals in favor of the lucrative procedures requested by foreigners. Public hospitals in some nations have been opened to privately-financed foreign patients, misappropriating public resources not only in the form of inequitable government investment but also literally in the form of hospital beds. Cuban citizens grapple with deteriorating healthcare facilities battered by US-led embargos, while Havana-bound Americans receive first-class service. The attention directed toward medical tourism raises questions about healthcare equity and the potential misuse of public funds – are nations prioritizing the lucrative business of servicing foreigners while their public healthcare systems for citizens deteriorate? India specifically only allocates 4.9 percent of its GDP on healthcare (compared to the US’s 15.3, France’s 11.1, and Switzerland’s 11.3 percent), yet it is a juggernaut in the medical tourism industry. Shaving jawlines and public resources, the profitability of medical tourism creates a conflict between the economic interests of destination nations and their citizens’ access to equitable healthcare.

While health diplomacy initiatives promoting medical tourism may improve international relations between donor-destination countries, these same treatment pathways for foreigners often become barriers for native citizens. Funds that could have been allocated to public hospitals and other egalitarian forms of care are instead delegated to private hospitals that serve foreigners. Making healthcare more accessible to medical tourists while limiting resources for citizens, medical tourism-promoting policies not only transform the socioeconomic conditions of involved nations but also global health as a whole.

Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, Harvard '09, is the CEO of Zipline, a global logistics company pioneering autonomous drone delivery for medical and commercial supplies.

Zipline began its first logistics operations in Rwanda, delivering life-saving blood supplies to local hospitals. You’ve mentioned before that you chose this partnership because you needed a country as agile and entrepreneurial as your company. Could you tell us more about the dynamics of this partnership? What lessons have you learned in Rwanda that later helped you grow in the rest of Africa?

When we started building the technology, we saw a huge opportunity to create the first logistics system that would serve all people equally. We wanted to enable universal access to healthcare and create economic opportunities for people around the world.

When I went to Rwanda and met with the Minister of Health, I shared this broad vision: we’d deliver medical products to every hospital in the country using autonomous aircraft and transform the health system. I remember she looked at me and said something along the lines of, “Keller, shut up. Just do blood.”

That was powerful advice. She explained that approximately 50 percent of transfusions go to mothers with postpartum hemorrhaging and 30 percent go to children.  Blood is an incredibly difficult product to deliver at the right time and place due to its different components—packed red blood cells, platelets, plasma, and cryoprecipitates—each of which comes in different blood types: A, B, AB, and O, including positive and negative types, and more. Just getting the right type to the right place is a logistical nightmare.

They made that bet on us. We signed an initial contract to deliver blood to 21 hospitals across the country. Looking back, it was a crazy thing for them to trust us and for us to think we could pull it off. But we did. Zipline delivered to all 21 hospitals and became core infrastructure for those facilities. Then, we expanded to 50 hospitals, and after that, 100 hospitals. Today, we serve more than 700 hospitals and health facilities across Rwanda.

Globally, we now serve almost 5,000 hospitals and health facilities across eight countries.

It took a lot of vision from the Rwandan government.

We went from delivering just blood to delivering all medical products, then animal healthcare supplies, and even artificial insemination products for cattle and pigs. Then, we introduced childhood malnutrition treatments. Now, we’re delivering e-commerce products nationwide. What’s amazing is that even eight years later, the system is still growing fast. In 2024 alone, our Africa business doubled in scale.The country is even discussing building a new national postal service using Zipline’s infrastructure.

Zipline was critical to the pandemic response in Ghana and Rwanda, delivering over 1 million vaccines to fight against the virus. Could you tell us more about how your company was able to react and adapt effectively to such a shock?

When the pandemic hit, we approached things in a pretty unique way.

First, we did not send people home, despite the general stay-at-home orders. Zipline is a healthcare company, and tens of millions of people depend on us every day. Those people were more desperate than ever because many human-based logistics systems were shutting down.

A ton of inventory in the system began to flow into Zipline. For example, within just two weeks at the start of the pandemic, the number of vaccines we were delivering increased tenfold. We saw this huge surge in demand, and we had to make sure our teams kept coming in. We spread out our desks in the Aviary to keep people safe, because we were building aircraft—you can’t exactly build scalable hardware from your bedroom.

At the same time, we were working to maintain the global supply chain to respond to this unprecedented increase in demand.

Interestingly, a lot of medical products started flowing into Zipline’s infrastructure for the first time during the pandemic. Even after people went back to work, those products never left. It was like they had found a better way of moving.

To this day, Zipline still delivers all those vaccines, cancer therapies, and other public health supplies. Once they were being delivered in this faster, more efficient way, it just did not make sense to revert to the older, less reliable system of humans driving trucks.

In its initial launch period, Zipline has experienced many challenges, from failure to launch to retrieval errors. You are known for your entrepreneurial optimism and resilience, but how do you, as a leader, guide a team through failure? Tell us more about your leadership style.

When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I built a climbing wall there. Climbing has always been a huge part of my life. After graduating, I spent a year and a half as a professional climber before starting Zipline.

Professional climbing is interesting. There was one route I had been trying to complete throughout college—it's called China Beach, located in Rumney, New Hampshire. I first attempted it as a freshman and drove up every weekend from my dorm. A graduate student who had a BMW would lend me the car, and I'd make the trip up to try the climb.

The thing about climbing at that level is that you spend every weekend failing. You try the route, you fail over and over again. You're learning the technique, figuring out sequences, building strength. But 99.9 percent of the time you fail. Then, a week before I graduated, I finally completed it. It took four minutes to climb from bottom to top cleanly. It felt amazing, but the high lasted only a couple of hours before I was already thinking about the next project, the next difficult route I’d probably fail on another hundred times.

Rock climbing naturally prepares you for entrepreneurship. It gets you used to failing a lot. Unfortunately, the best schools in the U.S. often teach the opposite. I speak to Harvard or Stanford students sometimes, and I always emphasize this: to get into those schools, you basically have to go through life without failing. But entrepreneurship demands the opposite. You have to be willing to fall flat on your face 50 times. You get humiliated. Everyone around you has great jobs in consulting or investment banking, making more money, while you're off doing something weird that looks like a waste of time.

At Zipline, we try to do ten new things a day, and nine of them fail. From the inside, it often feels like a mess. But from the outside, investors look at Zipline and say, “This is a company that seems to have a breakthrough every day.” They see an incredible rate of progress.

And that’s the disconnect. Once you leave school, no one knows when you fail, and no one cares. You can fall on your face as many times as you want. People only notice when you succeed. School teaches you that failure is unacceptable, but in the real world, progress and innovation depend on it.

Zipline has taken enormous strides in making healthcare delivery accessible to the underserved. Though many NGOs or governments have aspired to achieve the same - their efforts are not always successful. In your experience, what is the benefit of public-private partnerships, and the role of start-ups in creating such global impact?

Global public healthcare has, for nearly a century, been dominated almost entirely by nonprofit organizations. There’s been a lot of good work done, but over the past 10 to 20 years, there’s also been a huge amount of inefficiency, bureaucracy, and waste. Ironically, many of these programs have names that sound unimpeachable—like “Reduce Childhood Cancer Mortality Foundation.” You hear that and think, “Who could be against it?” But then you look into the numbers and realize 85 percent of the budget goes to overhead, with only 15 percent reaching actual children with cancer.

If you really want to understand how the U.S. can play a constructive role in the world, the best way is to ask countries what they want.

In global aid, particularly in Africa, where NGOs dominate, these countries have been saying for decades: We want trade, not aid. Leaders like Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, have been crystal clear: they don’t want low-quality, free services that undermine local economies. They want innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation, and foreign direct investment.

I think we should listen.

It’s honestly crazy. In the U.S., nearly every industry is being transformed by technology—AI, automation, and robotics. When it comes to global public healthcare? It’s stuck decades in the past. It still relies on outdated technology, bloated administrative costs, and extremely low impact per dollar spent.

We need more competition. Governments, especially the U.S. government, should be paying for results, not actions. That shift is already beginning, and I think it's going to redefine global public health over the next decade. Taxpayers are demanding real outcomes for their money, and that’s going to push governments to open up markets and invite private companies to compete.

When that happens, private companies can often deliver better results, at far lower cost, by leveraging technology and innovation. That’s what countries actually want. And when those companies also create high-paying, sustainable jobs in those countries, they contribute directly to the long-term economic growth and independence that those nations are asking for.

In countries where Zipline has become public infrastructure, what have you learned about the responsibility of private companies when they start to take on public functions?

The simplest answer is: let market forces work.

If the U.S. government or an NGO wants to vaccinate a million kids, the traditional approach is to build an entire nonprofit organization from scratch. First, they hire an executive staff, then a huge team of consultants, usually based in Washington, D.C. They contract with firms like JSI and Chemonics, known as the “beltway bandits,” forming what’s often called the donor industrial complex.

Then they fly consultants business class back and forth to Africa for years to do project plans and program management. Eventually, they build a bespoke nonprofit-run supply chain just for that specific vertical—say, vaccines or antimalarials. If that sounds crazy, that’s because it is crazy. Yet, it’s exactly how the system works today.

A better way is obvious: decide the goal—vaccinating one million kids—and solicit ten bids. Five from NGOs, five from private companies. Choose the most cost-effective and credible proposal, and structure payment based on results. That’s it. Let the free market work. It’s an incredible force that brings innovation, efficiency, and entrepreneurship to the world’s most important problems.

It’s frankly wild that we have Instagram for pets—whole ecosystems of innovation for trivial problems. But when it comes to vaccinating 100 million children every year, there’s no private sector, no market competition, no real technology. That’s insane.

We need to let markets work. Large institutions like USAID, the Global Fund, and GAVI should focus on paying for results, not actions. They must open up to private sector competition. That’s what’s needed to drive efficiency and unlock real impact.

Just like the U.S. needed a SpaceX to break through the NASA cabal, we need a new model for global aid. If the U.S. wants to project power and influence in a more modern, effective way, we think that’s a great thing. But it has to happen by empowering innovation, competition, and market-driven results.

Cliffton spoke with Sheth on May 7, 2025. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The views expressed in this piece are the interviewee’s own and are not reflective of the views of the HIR.

Although a cure was discovered in 1945, tuberculosis (TB) remains the world’s most fatal infectious agent—only briefly overtaken by COVID-19 for three years. With increasingly effective treatments discovered from 1952 onward, it would be expected if TB no longer posed a major threat. Nevertheless, despite being preventable and curable, TB was the direct cause of 1.25 million deaths out of 10.8 million infections in 2023 alone. While other diseases may claim more lives overall, TB’s persistence is unique in the fact that it could have been eradicated decades ago if provided the political attention and global investment it requires, rendering it a critical global health issue.

TB is a highly infectious bacterial disease that commonly affects the lungs and is typically spread through airborne particles. Although 25 percent of the global population has been infected by TB, only five to ten percent of those infected will experience the potentially fatal symptoms of coughs, chest pain, fatigue, fever, and more. Entirely unpredictable, the disease can remain latent for the majority of its victims, while in others, ravages the lungs, kidneys, brains, spine, and skin for others. Nevertheless, the “cure” is the use of daily antibiotics, such as isoniazid, or rifampicin, for four to six months. Unfortunately, the failure to comply with the full duration of treatment or incorrect prescription of drug regimen will exacerbate the effect, facilitating the evolution of the bacteria into its multidrug-resistant form.

While TB has historically been prevalent in developing countries, the disease has also made a recent reemergence in the United States. Despite the US goal to have TB be eliminated by 2035, cases have been significantly increasing since 2020 across all age groups, reaching a newfound peak in 2023 that has not appeared since 2013. US policymakers fail to recognize the value of addressing this global disease through a global strategy, rather than concentrating policy focus and medical access at a national scale.

Yet, developing countries face a higher need of help to reduce TB cases. While many countries have been ravaged by TB, Peru highlights the ongoing need for sustained global efforts to combat this curable and preventable disease. Despite its relatively average population size, Peru is second in TB cases within the Americas and globally first in multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) cases. Unfortunately, the nation is a stark reminder of how developing countries disproportionately suffer when diseases are met with global neglect.

Death Has Roots

Older theories proposed that TB appeared in the Americas following Spanish colonization in the 16th century, as was the case with many diseases introduced to the continent. However, paleoanthropologists analyzing Peruvian human remains discovered bacterial genome sequences hinting that TB infections originated from marine mammals prior to European contact. Whether transmission occurred through physical contact during hunting or consumption, sufficient evidence has yet to confirm the marine mammal theory.

Nevertheless, the historic disease proceeded to ravage Peruvian populations in the late 1990s and early 2000s.The disease existed long beforehand, but limited diagnoses and lack of global comparisons delaying recognition of its disproportionate TB burden. In 2001, Peru was recognized as having among the highest TB incidence rates in the Americas, with over 400,000 cases diagnosed (from 1991 to 2000) and only around 50 percent treated accordingly. However, these concerning morbidity rates were initially acknowledged in 1972, with 192.3 cases for every 100,000 in Cayetano Heredia Hospital alone. While the constant fatality of the disease would cause the assumption that TB-combatting programs only began in the 2000s, policies for TB prevention and treatment have been continuously evolving since 1972. For comparison, the United States and United Kingdom were at an estimated 10 cases for every 100,000 in 1992, underscoring Peru’s disproportionate TB burden.

Thus, the centuries-long fight against a curable, preventable disease persists in Peru, reflecting a broader global failure to eradicate tuberculosis despite decades of treatment efforts.

The Plague Persists

While policies have been consistently updating and adjusting according to the development of new drugs since 1972, Peru persists to host 13 percent of TB cases globally. In 2022 alone, 2493 new cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis cases (DR-TB) were revealed, with an over 60 percent treatment dropout compared to the 18.5 percent in 2019. With worsening statistics in treatment and infection alike, there is little surprise that DR-TB is regarded as the highest priority of Peru’s public health issues.

However, the invasion of COVID-19 caused a sudden halt in Peru’s effort to combat TB. The pandemic ravaged the Peruvian population, as the country held the world’s highest COVID-19 fatality rate. With 5,977 deaths per million citizens, it greatly surpassed Bulgaria’s 4,001 (ranked second) cases—Peru was unparalleled in its death toll. By the “end” of the pandemic, the country of 33 million had witnessed over 2.2 million cases and more than 200,000 deaths. The disease had not simply devastated Peru, it had undone decades of progress with other haunting diseases, like TB. Consuming the nation’s healthcare equipment, medications, and hospital space, the country lacked the means to allocate necessary funding toward the battle against TB. Potential cases went unnoticed during the lockdowns, forcing infected individuals to remain isolated, and therefore, undiagnosed and untreated.

The “end” of COVID-19 was celebrated globally, but Peru’s return to “normalcy” was far from simple. While the World Health Organization (WHO) had previously recorded a low of 117 TB cases per 100,000 people in 2020, that number rose to 173 by 2023. As the world recovered from the impact of COVID-19, Peru was left to confront a familiar enemy, now more resilient than ever.  

Health is a Human Right

While Peru has been historically commended for its management of tuberculosis, the journey has failed to show success proportional to its efforts. While programming began with the directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS) in 1980, results were poor from the lack of workers, resources, and medicines, which was worsened by patients’ financially lacking the ability to complete the treatment to its entirety.

In response, Pedro Suárez became Peru’s Director of National TB Programming in the 1990s, collaborating with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the WHO to establish the country’s first official national TB guidelines in 1991. These advances focused on properly training health workers to efficiently prevent, diagnose, and treat TB, while expanding access to the DOTS program at the local level. Although Suárez stepped down as director in 2004, continued funding from the Global Fund, support from the non-governmental organization (NGO) Socios en Salud, and the adoption of DOTS-Plus (an enhanced version of DOTS) helped make TB more effectively treatable. Increased budgets enabled the development of a nine-month drug regimen, expanded outreach efforts to actively search for TB cases within communities, and the acquisition of more advanced diagnostic equipment.

Efforts and programs have been consistently updated according to funding and new technology; nevertheless, case numbers remain significantly larger compared to other nations' progress. However, the disease persisting reflects a greater complexity of the environmental and social factors plaguing Peru, including poverty, overcrowding, immunocompromised populations, and the isolation of indigenous communities.

Poverty surpasses the ability to purchase medication and diagnostic examinations, limits access to transportation for consistent check-ups, worsens food insecurity, and hinders overall treatment adherence—factors overlooked in global policy. With food insecurity alone, malnutrition is globally recognized as a risk factor to TB, with only ten percent of TB patients in southern African cities are from food-secure households. Transportation is essential to the success of TB programs, as it affects not only patients’ ability to access healthcare facilities, but also health authorities’ capacity to provide proper clinical management due to communication and information barriers.

When only 45.93 percent of indigenous communities are within one hour of a healthcare facility and 15.44 percent are over eight hours away, health has become a privilege.

Healing the Future

As stated by Executive Director of Peru’s Department of TB Prevention and Control, Dr. Julia Rosa María Ríos Vidal, “We also have to work on the multi-sectoral response, making a commitment to face tuberculosis and making people understand that tuberculosis is a social problem.”

NGOs like Socios en Salud (Partners in Health), demonstrate the need to adapt treatments to the socio-cultural realities of each country. Since the mid-1990s, Socios En Salud has implemented various programs to address the distance-related barriers, such as TB Móvil and Mochila TB. In collaboration with the Peruvian Ministry of Health, the NGO has focused on increasing accessibility and training community health workers for long-term sustainability. Through TB Móvil, a blue truck that offers free testing for TB and COVID-19—reaching more than 210 people daily. Similarly, Mobila TB is a backpack machine with the capacity to test up to 80 people daily for TB. This device has further enabled for mobile testing and early-on diagnoses among previously unserved communities, including rural neighborhoods, prisons, and shelters.

While Peru plans to expand molecular laboratory techniques, empower vulnerable communities, and further integrate the WHO End TB Strategy, the United States is threatening to cut US$9 billion in global aid programs, undermining decades of progress. As stated by WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in response to potential funding cuts: “We are living through the greatest disruption to global health financing in memory.”

Although Peru has been burdened by TB for decades, its death toll was historically overlooked until it became a global tragedy. And while national policies and international support have been steadily improving, proposed cuts on global aid threaten to undo that progress. Given that USAID has assisted Peru’s efforts to eradicate TB (and its variations) for over 60 years, these funding cuts would severely limit testing and treatment. Nevertheless, with US TB cases rising since 2019, including a 15.6 percent increase from 2022 to 2023, it becomes evident that TB is not solely Peru’s issue—but a global one. Without a united effort, this curable and preventable disease will continue to pose a threat to millions worldwide.