By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 4/25/25

How likely is it that a potentially ultra-nationalist Germany “relitigates its borders or forgoes EU-style deliberation in favor of military blackmail”?

Foreign Affairs warned earlier this month that an emboldened and remilitarized Germany could pose another challenge to European stability. They’re convinced that former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende”, or historic turning point, “is real this time” in the sense that his successor Friedrich Merz now has the parliamentary and popular support to transform their country into a Great Power. While this would allegedly benefit Europe and Ukraine, it wouldn’t be without three serious risks. [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/zeitenwende-real-time]

According to the article’s two authors, these entail: Russia waging more hybrid war on Germany; Germany’s rise possibly provoking more nationalism in surrounding countries; and this potentially leading to an explosion of ultra-nationalism in Germany. The catalyst for all of this is the US’ gradual disengagement from NATO brought about by the Trump Administration’s reprioritization of the Asia-Pacific. As American influence recedes, it’ll create political and security voids that others compete to fill.

To be sure, the article itself is more about promoting the alleged advantages of Germany’s delayed implementation of Scholz’s “Zeitenwende”, which the authors praise as long-overdue and a natural response to the aforesaid catalyst seeing as how Germany is already the EU’s de facto leader. At the same time, touching upon the risks bolsters their credibility in some readers’ eyes, enables them to subtly throw shade on Trump, and presents the authors as prescient in case any of the above occurs.

Beginning with the first of the three, it’s predicable that Germany and Russia would carry out more intelligence operations against one another if the first plays the continent’s leading role in containing the second, which the latter would of course consider to be a latent threat for obvious historical reasons. The article omits any mention of the way in which his newfound German role would harm Russian interests and misportrays whatever Moscow’s response may be as unprovoked aggression.

They’re fairer with regard to the second risk of surrounding countries becoming more nationalistic as a reaction to an emboldened and remilitarized Germany but don’t elaborate. Poland is probably the most likely candidate though since such sentiments are already rising in society. This is a reaction to the ruling liberal-globalist coalition in general, its perceived subservience to Germany, and concerns that a possibly AfD-led Germany might try to reclaim what Poland considers to be its “Recovered Territories”.

The last risk builds upon that the authors expressed as the worst-case scenario of “a German military first strengthened by politically centrist, pro-European governments [falling] into the hands of leaders willing to relitigate Germany’s borders or to forgo EU-style deliberation in favor of military blackmail.” It’s this potential consequence that’s the most important to evaluate since the first two are expected to be enduring characteristics of this new geopolitical era in Europe while the final one is uncertain.

The outcome of Poland’s presidential election next month is expected to greatly determine the future dynamics of Polish-German relations. If the outgoing conservative is replaced by the liberal candidate, then Poland will probably either subordinate itself even more to Germany, rely on France to balance it and the US, or pivot towards France. A victory by the conservative or populist candidates, however, would lessen dependence on Germany by either balancing it with France or reprioritizing the US.

France is foreseen as figuring more prominently in Polish foreign policy either way due to their historical partnership since the Napoleonic era as well as their shared contemporary concerns about the threat that an emboldened and remilitarized Germany could pose to them. French in general are less worried about Germany relitigating their borders than some Poles are and are much more anxious about losing their chance to lead Europe either in whole or in part after the Ukrainian Conflict finally ends.

France, Germany, and Poland are competing with one another in this respect, with the most likely outcomes either being German hegemony via the “Zeitenwende” vision, France and Poland jointly thwarting this in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), or a revived “Weimar Triangle” for tripartite rule over Europe. So long as the EU’s free flow of people and capital is retained, which of course can’t be taken for granted but is likely, then the odds of an AfD-led Germany relitigating its border with Poland are low.

That’s because like-minded Germans could simply buy land in Poland and move there if they wanted to, albeit while being subject to Polish laws, which aren’t different in any meaningful sense than German ones for all intents and purposes with respect to their daily lives. Additionally, while Germany does indeed plan to undergo an unprecedented military buildup, Poland is already in the midst of its own buildup and a more successful at that after having just become NATO’s third-largest military last summer.

The US is also unlikely to completely withdraw from Poland, let alone all of CEE, so its forces will probably always remain there as a mutual deterrent against Russia and Germany. Neither have any intent to invade Poland though so this presence would mostly be symbolic and for the purpose of psychologically reassuring the historically traumatized Polish population of their safety. In any case, the point is that the worst-case scenario that the authors touched upon is very unlikely to materialize.

To review, this is because: Poland will either subordinate itself to Germany after the next elections or rely more on France to balance it (if not reprioritize the US over both); the EU’s free flow of people and capital will likely remain at least for some time; and the US won’t abandon CEE. These will accordingly: appease or balance a possibly ultra-nationalist (ex: AfD-led) Germany; ditto; and deter any potential German territorial revisionism (whether via legal or military means).

Drawing to a close, it can therefore be concluded that the new order taking shape in Europe likely won’t lead to a restoration of interwar risks like Foreign Affairs warned is the worst-case scenario, but to the creation of spheres of influence without military tensions. Whether Poland stands strongly on its own, partners with France, or subordinates itself to Germany, no border changes are expected in either the western or eastern direction, with all forms of future German-Polish competition remaining manageable.

Russia Matters, 5/16/25

1. The first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in over three years ended on May 16 in about two hours and with no signs of meaningful progress other than a prisoner exchange deal as Ukrainian officials accused Russia of making “unacceptable” demands, RFE/RL reports. Despite offering to hold direct peace talks with Kyiv on May 15 in Istanbul in lieu of the 30-day ceasefire Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders demanded on May 10, Vladimir Putin ultimately did not attend, sending a midlevel delegation to Turkey instead. Zelenskyy, who reiterated his intention to meet with Putin directly throughout the week, slammed the move as disrespectful, saying “I think Russia’s attitude is unserious,” according to the New York Times. During the negotiations on May 16, Meduza reports that the Russian delegation reportedly said Moscow would agree to a ceasefire only if Ukraine withdrew its forces from the four regions Russia claims to have annexed (Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia), according to Economist correspondent Oliver Carroll, citing a “well-placed” source. “Moscow also threatened to seize two more [regions]: Kharkiv and Sumy,” Carroll wrote. According to Carroll, Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation, said Russia does not “want war,” but is “ready to fight for a year, two, three—however long it takes.”
2. Following the unsuccessful peace talks in Istanbul, Donald Trump said there’ll be no resolution of Russia’s war in Ukraine until he meets with Putin, Bloomberg reports. “We have to meet. He and I will meet. I think we’ll solve it, or maybe not but at least we’ll know. And if we don’t solve it, it’ll be very interesting,” Trump said May 16, according to Bloomberg. “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump said May 15. “And obviously he wasn’t going to go [to the talks in Istanbul]. He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there.”
3. The EU is preparing to apply much higher tariffs on Ukrainian imports within weeks, hitting Kyiv’s economy at a crucial time in its fight against Russian aggression, the Financial Times reports. The decision to abruptly end special trade arrangements—which allowed most Ukrainian goods to enter the EU duty free—came after Poland led a push to protect the bloc’s farmers, according to diplomats, according to the Financial Times, and will cost Ukraine about €3.5 billion in revenue a year. The arrangements lapse on June 6, and the EU is planning to replace it with “transitional measures” while the two sides update their overall trade agreement.

***

The Odessa Moment

By Scott Ritter, Substack, 5/16/25

Russia has informed Ukraine of its baseline condition for conflict termination—the withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the territory of lands which, from the perspective of the Russian Constitution, constitute part of Mother Russia. These include Kherson, Zaporozhia, Donetsk and Lugansk. Russia has also made it clear that if Ukraine does not accept these terms, the next time Russia is willing to sit down and negotiate with Ukraine their demands will include four additional Ukrainian oblasts, or administrative regions—presumably Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov. We have reached the Odessa Moment.

Back in January 2023, while appearing on “The Gaggle” with George Szamuely and Peter Lavelle, I postulated that Russia was approaching what I called “the Odessa Moment,” that confluence of military and political circumstances which, once reached, would trigger a strategic decision by Russia to expand the Special Military Operation (SMO) beyond the geography defined by the territories absorbed by Russia following a controversial referenda held in September 2022 on the territory of Kherson, Zaporozhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, in which the question of self-determination was answered by a vote on whether these territories should be incorporated into the Russian Federation or not.

As originally conceived, the SMO was not about territorial acquisition but rather defending the rights of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. In negotiations which began less than a week after the SMO began—first in Gomel, Belarus, and later in Turkey—Russia simply sought to achieve that which had been promised as part of the Minsk Accords entered into with Ukraine, Germany and France in 2014-2015, in which Ukraine promised to make the appropriate changes to its Constitution guaranteeing that the rights and status of Russian-speaking Ukrainians would be protected.

Ukraine, backed by both Germany and France (and the United States as well) opted to treat the Minsk Accords as an opportunity to build up military power sufficient to reclaim parts of the Donbas region (comprised of the oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk) as well as Crimea which were lost in the aftermath of the CIA-backed Maidan coup of February 2014 which saw the Russian-speaking lawfully elected President, Victor Yanukovych, ousted and replaced by US-backed Ukrainian nationalists. Between 2015 and 2022, the US and its NATO allies trained and equipped hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers for the sole purpose of reclaiming by force the territories of Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea.

In April 2019 Volodymyr Zelensky, the former comedian-turned politician, won the election for the office of President of Ukraine, ousting the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko. Zelensky ran on a platform of peace, winning over the Russian-speaking population on the promise that he would “crawl on his knees” if necessary to work out a peace plan with Russia. Instead, within months Zelensky was convening a war council where he promised to use the Ukrainian military to reclaim the parts of Donetsk and Lugansk that had freed themselves from Ukrainian rule.

This was Zelensky’s first mistake.

The path he chose led to Russia, in the days before the initiation of the SMO and after Ukraine began mobilizing its forces to attack the Donbas, recognizing the independence of both Donetsk and Lugansk and entering into a collective security agreement, actions which guaranteed that the Donbas would never again be part of Ukraine.

This was Zelensky’s Donbas moment.

Zelensky’s second mistake came in April 2022, when he walked away from the negotiations that Russia had initiated immediately after the start of the SMO which culminated in a finalized signature-ready peace agreement which has become known as the Istanbul communique. This agreement would have recognized the independence of the Donbas republics, but returned all other Ukrainian territory that had been occupied by Russian troops during the SMO.

Zelensky, pressured by his US and NATO supporters, rejected this agreement, and instead took tens of billions of dollars in military aid from the US and NATO which he used to rebuild his depleted military force, which he then used to launch a counterattack against Russian forces which had already began their withdrawal from Ukraine as a good faith measure in keeping with the terms of the Istanbul communique.

Russia responded by organizing referenda in both the Donbas and the two oblasts, Kherson and Zaporozhia, that constituted the land bridge connecting Crimea with Russia proper. These referenda were on the question of these territories becoming part of the Russian Federation; all four voted yes, and after the appropriate legal action was taken by the Russian parliament, President Putin signed a decree which made all four oblasts part of the Russian Federation.

This was Zelensky’s Little Russia moment.

And now Zelensky finds himself at a new crossroads.

His Odessa Moment.

He has a chance to end the SMO on the most favorable terms possible, terms which reflect the harsh reality the Ukrainian President and the nation he leads faces due to Zelensky’s prior poor decision-making regarding Russia.

The Donbas is gone. So, too, is Little Russia. These losses are irreversible, politically and militarily.

Ukraine has a chance to end the conflict now. But to do so it must respect the reality of the moment.

Unfortunately, the same “friends” and “allies” which encouraged Ukraine to walk away from the Minsk Accords and the Istanbul communique are now urging Ukraine to do the same when it comes to Istanbul 2.

But the promise of European support is illusory—the armories have long since been stripped bare, and the potential for meaningful military intervention never existed, either militarily or politically.

Moreover, any European action would, by necessity, require backing from the United States. While this may have been a possibility during the presidency of Joe Biden, it is a non-starter under the new administration of Donald Trump—even as the Istanbul 2 meetings were underway, the US announced that it was going to be withdrawing its forces from Europe.

Russia is to be taken seriously. While the challenges that Russia will face in occupying the four new territories it has put its sights on if Ukraine balks yet again regarding a peace agreement are many and not to be minimized, this is a military question which is best answered by the political resolve of the Russian leadership and nation, which at this juncture is unassailable.

Last year Vladimir Putin won a mandate to governing as a wartime President.

As the recently concluded May 9 celebration clearly demonstrated, the determination of the Russian people to defeat Ukraine is rock solid.

As the lead Russian negotiator in Istanbul made clear to his Ukrainian counterparts, Russia is prepared to fight for however long it takes, even alluding to the 21 years it took Peter the Great to defeat Sweden.

Ukraine will be lucky to survive the summer.

Zelensky faces one of the greatest tests of leadership he will ever face.

Nationalist forces in his government are willing to commit national suicide in pursuit of the failed Banderist cause.

Ukraine’s erstwhile allies, whose objectives continue to center around Cold War fantasies of strategically defeating Russia, are pushing Zelensky to reject the Russian conditions for peace, all too willing to sacrifice Ukraine as a proxy in pursuit of their unattainable goal.

If Zelensky truly cared about his nation and his people, he would swallow his pride and make the only decision capable of saving them—surrender.

But Zelensky is not a leader who cares about his nation or its people—he has already sacrificed Ukraine’s national integrity and more than a million of its citizens in pursuit of his EU and NATO driven fantasies of relevance and fortune.

This is Zelensky’s Odessa Moment.

And he will fail.

Again.

By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 5/14/25

Direct talks between senior Ukrainian and Russian representatives, if they do take place in Istanbul on Thursday, will be a real step forward and a significant achievement by the Trump administration.

It is worth remembering that only three months ago the Ukrainian government was still rejecting even the idea of talks with the Putin administration as illegal, and demanding prior Russian withdrawal from all the occupied areas of Ukraine as a precondition for negotiations.

Putin’s apparent rejection of Zelensky’s challenge to a face to face meeting is a disappointment, but not a crucial setback. It is very rare for real progress in peace talks to be made in meetings between leaders themselves, and the Russians have some reason to see this as a maneuver, or stunt, by Zelensky to gain Trump’s favor rather than a serious proposal.

Normally, before leaders meet there have to be long and detailed negotiations by officials to lay the groundwork for agreement. Hopefully, the Istanbul meeting of officials proposed by Moscow will advance that process, whereas a public shouting-match between Putin and Zelensky could set it back.

The Ukrainian and European governments have stated that Moscow’s rejection of a 30-day ceasefire shows that “Putin is not interested in peace”, but this is disingenuous. Russia’s ability to advance — even if slowly — on the battlefield is Moscow’s main source of leverage in negotiations, and it is not going to give that up unless substantial agreement has already been reached.

Nor, and for the same reason, were Western countries ever going to agree to Russia’s demand for a complete and permanent end to military supplies to Ukraine as the precondition of a ceasefire. We have to accept that while the talks continue, so will the fighting. That should be a spur to efforts to move as quickly as possible to a comprehensive settlement.

And a comprehensive settlement is what we should be aiming at. Even if Russia could be brought to agree to a long-term ceasefire, absent a settlement, such a ceasefire would resemble that in the Donbas from 2014-22: deeply unstable, constantly interrupted by clashes and exchanges of fire, and at permanent risk of collapsing back into full scale war.

This situation would make Ukraine’s economic development and progress towards the European Union virtually impossible, both because it would prevent Western investment and because it would mean that Ukraine remains a highly militarized and semi-authoritarian society permanently mobilized for war.

It would also make it far more difficult for the U.S. to reduce its military presence in Europe so as to concentrate resources elsewhere – which is indeed probably a key motive for the European approach.

Trump’s threat to “walk away” from the peace process has succeeded in bringing both sides to the negotiating table, but they agreed only so as to avoid being blamed by him for refusal. On key issues, the Russian and Ukrainian positions remain quite far apart, and it will be a miracle if one round of direct talks in Istanbul is able to bring them together. Continued U.S. engagement in the peace process therefore seems essential.

For Washington’s involvement to be effective, it will have to set out concrete and detailed conditions for agreement and bring both pressure and incentives to bear on both sides to accept them. A U.S. incentive to the Ukrainian side has already been established in the form of the the minerals deal and its promise that long-term American economic engagement in Ukraine will also ensure Washignton’s interest in maintaining Ukrainian security.

For Russia, the Trump administration has a huge potential incentive in the form of a new U.S.-Russian relationship, and an end to Washington pressure on what the Russians see as their vital interests.

Some of the elements of an agreement between Ukraine and Russia were laid down at the talks in Istanbul in March 2022, and are still applicable. Conditions meeting the vital interests of both sides, and on which the U.S. could help them to agree, include the following: that the ceasefire line runs where the battle line eventually runs, and neither side can be asked to withdraw further; that both sides should promise not to try to change the ceasefire line through force, subversion or economic pressure; that the issue or the legal status of the occupied territory should be left for future negotiation and that NATO membership for Ukraine should be excluded, but that Ukraine should be guaranteed the right to seek membership of the EU.

Conditions also included that no NATO troops should be deployed in Ukraine, and any peacekeeping force should be from neutral countries under UN auspices; that the UN should guarantee the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine; that both sides should guarantee linguistic and cultural rights of minorities; that Western sanctions against Russia should be suspended, but with a “snap-back” clause guaranteeing that they would automatically resume in the event of new Russian aggression; that any limits on Ukrainian armaments should be restricted to long-range missiles, and that the West should be able to go on arming Ukraine for defense.

A settlement along these lines would leave both sides unhappy — but hopefully, not so unhappy that they would be willing to take on dreadful the risks and costs of a return to war. We may hope that — to adapt President Lincoln’s words — the “better angels” of the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators’ natures will incline them to such compromises at their talks in Istanbul this week. If not, and however incongruous this partnership may seem to many, it will be for the Trump administration to give the angels a helping wing.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 5/13/25

Five New York Times (NYT) journalists collaborated to produce a detailed report earlier this week about “Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia”. It’s worth reading in full if time permits, but the present piece will summarize and analyze its findings. To begin with, CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla proposed an eight- to -10-month campaign for degrading the Houthis’ air defenses before carrying out Israeli-like targeted assassinations, but Trump decided on 30 days instead. That’s important.

The US’ top regional military official already knew how numerous the Houthis’ air defenses were and how long it would take to seriously damage them, which shows that the Pentagon already considered Houthi-controlled North Yemen to be a regional power, while Trump wanted to avoid a protracted war. It’s little wonder then that the US failed to establish air superiority during the first month, which is why it lost several MQ-9 Reaper drones by then and exposed one of its aircraft carriers to continued threats.

The $1 billion in munitions that were expended during that period widened preexisting divisions within the administration over whether this bombing campaign was worth the mounting costs. New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Caine was concerned that this could drain resources away from the Asia-Pacific. Seeing as how the Trump Administration’s grand strategic goal is to “Pivot (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China, this viewpoint was likely decisive in Trump’s final calculations.

Oman reportedly provided the “perfect offramp” for him by proposing to his envoy Steve Witkoff, who was visiting them as part of the US’ nuclear talks with Iran, that the US could stop bombing the Houthis while they’ll stop targeting American ships but not ships that they deem helpful to Israel. This draws attention to that country’s outsized diplomatic role in regional affairs, but it also shows that the US was hitherto unsure of how to end its campaign in a face-saving way despite already realizing that it failed.

Two pathways were considered: ramping up operations for another month, carrying out a “freedom of navigation” exercise, and declaring victory if the Houthis didn’t fire on them; or continuing the campaign while strengthening the capacity of local Yemeni allies to start another offensive in the North. Both were reportedly scrapped in favor of Trump’s sudden victory announcement after another US jet fell off of an aircraft carrier, a US attack killed dozens of migrants in Yemen, and the Houthis hit Ben Gurion Airport.

Five conclusions can be drawn from the NYT’s report. For starters, Houthi-controlled North Yemen is already a regional power and has been so for some time, the status of which they achieved despite the Gulf coalition’s previous years-long bombing campaign and ongoing partial blockade. This impressive feat speaks to their resilience and the effectiveness of the strategies that they’ve implemented. North Yemen’s mountainous geography indisputably played a role in this, but it wasn’t the sole factor.

The second conclusion is that Trump’s decision to authorize a very time-limited bombing campaign was therefore doomed from the get-go. He either wasn’t fully informed of the fact that North Yemen had already become a regional power, perhaps due to military officials self-censoring for fear of getting fired if they upset him, or he had ulterior motives in having the US bomb them for only a brief time. In any case, there was no way that the Houthis were going to be destroyed in just several months’ time.

Optics are important for every administration, and Trump’s second one prioritizes them more than any other in recent memory, yet the third conclusion is that he still beat a hasty retreat once the strategic risks started spiraling and the costs began piling up instead of doubling down in defiance. This shows that ego- and legacy-related interests don’t always determine his policy formulations. Its relevance is that no one can therefore say for sure that he won’t cut and run from Ukraine if peace talks collapse.

Building upon the above, the Trump Administration’s acceptance of Oman’s unsolicited proposal that led to the “perfect offramp” shows that it’ll listen to proposals from friendly countries for defusing conflicts in which the US has become embroiled, which could apply towards Ukraine. The three Gulf states that Trump is visiting this week have all played roles in either hosting talks or facilitating exchanges between Russia and Ukraine so it’s possible that they’ll share some peace proposals for breaking the impasse.

And finally, the China factor looms over everything that the US does nowadays, ergo one of the reported reasons why Trump suddenly ended his unsuccessful bombing campaign against the Houthis after being informed by his top brass that it was wasting valuable munitions that would be better sent to Asia. Likewise, Trump might be convinced by similar arguments with regard to the strategic costs of defiantly doubling down in support of Ukraine if peace talks collapse, which the Gulf states might convey to him.

Connecting the lessons from Trump’s Yemeni debacle with his ongoing efforts to end the Ukrainian Conflict, it’s possible that he might at first instinctively double down in support of Ukraine if peace talks collapse only to soon thereafter be dissuaded by his top brass and/or friendly countries. Of course, it would be best for him to simply cut his country’s losses now instead of continuing to add to them, but his increasingly emotional posts about Putin hint that he might blame him and overreact if talks collapse.

It’s therefore more important than ever that peace-loving countries which have influence with the US immediately share whatever creative diplomatic proposals they might have in mind for breaking the impasse between Russia and Ukraine. Trump is creeping towards a Yemeni-like debacle in Ukraine, albeit one with potentially nuclear stakes given Russia’s strategic arsenal, but there’s still time to avert it if the “perfect offramp” appears and he’s convinced that accepting it would assist his “Pivot (back) to Asia”.

So NED is still alive and well, it’s just not going to have transparency about who it’s funding. We’re getting the worst of all worlds. – Natylie

By Jack Poulson & Lee Fang, Substack, 5/1/25

The National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S.-government backed nonprofit designed to influence the domestic politics of countries across the globe, says its efforts are part of a campaign to promote “open and transparent government.”

The group, funded by Congress and working in tandem with the State Department, has backed activists and civil society groups across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to push for greater disclosure among government entities. For instance, a recent NED report argues that “enhancing transparency” is vital for building trust in institutions and democratic governance, and urges the adoption of new disclosure laws for countries in the Balkans.

Despite the altruistic goals of disclosure for the developing world, NED is now going dark. In a new “duty of care” policy published this week, NED quietly announced a new rule to conceal the names of recipients of its programs from the public. Its 2024 grant list, attached to the policy, features dollar figures and one sentence summaries for over 1,700 grants. All of the external recipient names and identities have been wiped.

The move amounts to a fundamental shift in NED programming. For decades, the group, in accordance with its public demands for transparency, has published annual lists featuring grant recipients.Subscribed

Formed in the early years of the Reagan administration in response to increasing controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, NED set out to engage in pro-American foreign influence initiatives that were once the domain of covert operations. “This program will not be hidden in the shadows. It will stand proudly in the spotlight, and that’s where it belongs,” stated Reagan in 1983.

“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” stated former acting NED president Allen Weinstein in a widely quoted 1991 interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. “The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection,” he continued.

The primary U.S. funder of overt operations has been the NED, the quasi-private group originally headed by Carl Gershman that is controlled by the U.S. Congress, Ignatius explained. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been covert — such as dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain and funding dissident media known as ‘samizdat’.

The endowment was initially active inside the Soviet Union. It gave money to Soviet trade unions; to a foundation headed by Russian activist Ilya Zaslavsky; to an oral history project headed by Soviet historian Yuri Afanasyev; to the Ukrainian independence movement known as Rukh, and to many other projects. Avoiding the scandal of journalists and governments uncovering covert political action funding has been the raison d’être.

More recently, NED has been highly active in efforts to highlight Chinese human rights abuses, especially in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and its grantees have worked in Ukraine to counter alleged Russian influence. In a report titled “Long-Term Investments Pay Dividends in Ukraine,” NED touted its work funding local think tanks and activists pushing for civil society reforms, including the controversial media registration law in 2023 used to shut down media outlets accused of spreading Russian narratives.Subscribed

NED, despite its status as a quasi-independent nonprofit, continues to serve as an arm of the U.S. government. Its leadership features former government policymakers and elected officials, and its funding is virtually all from appropriations earmarked by Congress. As of fiscal year 2024, 99.3% of the organization’s $356.5 million in revenue came from the U.S. Government.

The push for secrecy by NED is justified as a security measure designed to protect the recipients of its funds. In a statement, the group noted that the Taliban had targeted Afghans associated with NED and that NED grantees were on Russian “kill and capture” lists.

In 2022, NED reportedly deleted its Ukraine-related grant lists. Archived internet records show that over $22 million in grants to groups and activists in the country appear to have been wiped.

Yet the sudden reversal on transparency comes amid a broad push for secrecy. Last month, the U.S. Government-backed international journalistic group Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) similarly advised its peers to “launder money legally” as part of hiding sensitive donors, in response to what OCCRP described as a “toxic future” for pro-democracy journalists. The State Department further retroactively deleted details of the vast majority of USAID’s personal services contractors from public records.

“Rather than listing names that could serve as a roadmap for those seeking to silence advocates for freedom, we provide descriptive information that reflects the nature of their work without compromising their security,” wrote Wilson in Monday’s policy announcement. The new policy, he added, still maintains “the spirit of transparency.”

Photo: National Endowment for Democracy president and CEO Damon Wilson. Credit: Twitter/@NEDemocracy

See Related Reporting:
— NGOs Backing Judicial Coup in Romania Funded by USAID, State Department (Dec. 11, 2024)
— U.S. Funds Ukraine Groups Censoring Critics, Smearing Pro-Peace Voices (April 11, 2024)