Philippa Kaur

A quick check of the Met office forecasts for Ukraine suggests that over the next week or so the weather is going to get steadily warmer. The rising mercury has fuelled speculation that Ukraine’s much discussed spring offensive is just around the corner, the only questions being when and where Ukraine’s military planners intend to make their big push. Kyiv is being understandably tight-lipped about this, surprise and deception – as Sun Tsu noted in the Art of War millenia ago – being key to military success.

Some observers have noted that Ukraine has achieved a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, which could foreshadow a major push southwards towards Crimea. The big question exercising most military experts is whether Ukraine has received sufficient new military equipment from its western allies to achieve the sort of spectacular successes it managed in September and October last year.

But there are signs of war fatigue setting in among some of Kyiv’s friends, while – as we noted in the last Ukraine recap – an increasing number of countries are opting to join China in urging Volodymyr Zelensky to the negotiating table. Just this week the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, held a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, the first time the pair has spoken since the war began. Zelensky said afterwards that he had told Xi that: “There can be no peace at the expense of territorial compromises.”

Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

But with much of Europe and the west suffering rising inflation and the prospect of continuing unstable energy prices, this may become an increasingly unpopular stance. Stefan Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, tracks Beijing’s growing influence in the diplomatic manoeuvring around Ukraine while noting widening divisions in the west.

Read more:
Western anger over China’s ambiguity on Ukraine cannot hide growing divisions in EU over support for Kyiv

There is, as Chris Morris – an expert in military strategy at the University of Portsmouth notes here – an element of Catch-22 about the situation. Kyiv’s allies want the spring offensive to demonstrate that Ukraine can achieve significant gains on the battlefield if they are to continue to pour billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment into the cause. Kyiv, meanwhile, needs billions of dollars’ of military equipment to achieve that success.

The state of the conflict on April 26 according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Institute for the Study of War

The problem, as Morris notes, is that the recent massive leak of US intelligence files included Pentagon assessments that Ukraine is unlikely to make the same massive gains as it achieved last autumn. A great deal is likely to hang on whether that assessment is accurate or whether, like last year, Ukraine’s tactical nous will surprise everyone once again, most crucially, of course, the Russians.

Read more:
Ukraine war: as Kyiv prepares counteroffensive it needs to convince allies it is up for the fight

Many observers have linked the fighting – particularly over the winter around the battered city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east – to the first world war: the trenches, the high casualty numbers, the slow progress across territory. Christiaan Harinck, an expert in the history of war at Utrecht University, says that while much of this is undeniable, it would be foolish to jump to conclusions about what would appear to be the failure of Russia’s winter offensive.

Moscow’s political objectives, Harink warns, might be as much about involving the west in a lengthy and debilitating conflict. As he writes here: “It might be the case that in its current assessment of the situation, a stalemate in eastern Ukraine serves the Kremlin’s purpose.”

Read more:
Ukraine war: why WWI comparisons can lead to underestimates of Russia’s strengths

The Russian front

If many western commentators are comparing the trench warfare in eastern Ukraine to the first world war, Putin and his propaganda machine have been insistent in drawing parallels with the “great patriotic war” in which Russia (with, admittedly, a modicum of help from the US, Britain and other countries) faced down the Nazi threat and achieved victory in Europe.

Russians celebrate Victory Day on May 9 (the UK celebrates the same thing on May 8, due to the time difference) and, particularly since Putin came to power, it’s become a huge thing. One of the centrepieces is the march of the Immortals Regiment in which thousands parade with pictures of loved ones who gave their lives in defence of the homeland.

But not this year. It was recently announced that for security reasons the celebrations would be scaled back (cancelled in cities deemed too close to the Ukraine border) and the march of the Immortals will not take place.

Dina Fainberg, an expert in modern history at City, University of London, tells the story of how Victory day become Russia’s biggest national celebration. As she notes, the decision has been greeted with derision by many in the west. One former US military commander tweeting that: “Nothing says you’re a grand strategist quite like not having enough soldiers and equipment to hold an annual parade.”

Fainburg thinks there could be another reason behind the decision. Imagine if thousands of people turned up to march carrying pictures of loved ones killed in Putin’s “special military operation”.

Read more:
Ukraine war: Russia scales back May 9 Victory Day celebrations amid fear of popular protests

Victory Day become a tradition during Soviet times. Another less palatable feature of that era were the show trials by which Stalin rid himself of possible rivals and other thorns in his side. Preparing to be sentenced to 25 years for “treason”, journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza recently drew a comparison between his treatment and 1930s-style Soviet “justice”.

Russian dIssident Vladimir Kara-Murza has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for ‘treason’ among other charges.
The Moscow City Court via AP

But, as Stephen Hall – an expert in authoritarian regimes at the University of Bath – notes here, Putin has shown he has myriad ways of silencing troublesome voices in modern Russia.

Read more:
‘Stalin-style’ show trials and unexplained deaths of opposition figures show the depth of repression in Putin’s Russia

Further afield (and on sea)

Anyone following the war in Ukraine will have heard of the Wagner Group, a mercenary army allegedly run by one of Putin’s closest allies, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Allegedly, because Prigozhin himself denies any knowledge of the Wagner Group. Whatever the truth of this, there is increasing evidence that Russian mercenaries are involved in several parts of Africa, including Sudan – where savage fighting is rapidly spreading across the whole country and threatens to descend into civil war (although the Wagner Group denies this).

Kristian Gustafson and a team of intelligence experts at Brunel, University of London, have taken a close look at reports of Russian involvement in conflicts across Africa.

Read more:
Sudan: questions about Wagner Group involvement as another African country falls prey to Russian mercenaries

Finally, it remains unclear who was behind the sabotage to the Nord Stream pipeline last year that held up supplies of gas into Europe, fuelling concerns about the vulnerability of vital undersea and maritime infrastructure. Now a documentary report from a consortium of Scandinavian broadcasters has investigated the movements of a Russian research vessel called Admiral Vladimirsky allegedly collecting data on windfarms, gas pipelines, power and internet cables in the North Sea.

Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, once accompanied a Royal Navy reconnaissance vessel to the North Sea where part of its mission was to look out for Russian spy ships. He gives us his assessment of just how vulnerable this infrastructure is to hostile interference.

Read more:
Russian ‘spy ship’ in North Sea raises concerns about the vulnerability of key maritime infrastructure

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After months of speculation, the US president, Joe Biden, has confirmed his intention to seek reelection in 2024. In his video announcement, Biden promised to stand up against “MAGA extremists” and called on Americans to give him the chance to “finish the job”, saying:

When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.

The Republican party countered immediately, showing an AI-generated video on the GOP YouTube channel that depicted a dystopian future if Biden was reelected, using fake reports of increasing crime rates, illegal immigration and financial chaos.

There seems to be little enthusiasm for a second Biden term among Americans. His Gallup job approval rating at the end of his third year in office was just 40% – below Ronald Reagan’s (41%) in 1983 and only a point above Donald Trump’s in 2019 (39%).

According to a recent CBS News poll, almost half (45%) of Democrats think that Biden shouldn’t run. A huge 86% of those who thought he shouldn’t run stated that their main cause of concern was Biden’s age, while 77% felt it was time for someone new.

However, a slew of opinion polls assembled by the influential US politics blog FiveThirtyEight have found that Biden would beat any of the other Democrat politicians touted as possible nominees.

The age-old question

Born on November 20 1942, Biden would be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 by its end – the oldest person to be elected president and serve in the office. One focus group of swing voters deemed Biden too old, with a panellist saying: “Give that man a break!”

But columnist Abhi Rahman has argued that Biden’s age should be seen as a strength, not a weakness, and that he has the potential to make significant ground for Democrats in the next election, much like Reagan did in 1984 – another president whose age was raised as a concern by his opponents.

Just like Biden, even Reagan’s own party was worried about his age before his first election in 1980, at the (relatively) youthful age of 70. Republican leaders’ worries about whether Reagan would be able to “maintain his energy level” throughout his presidency were underlined by a claim by former president Jimmy Carter that he could not have dealt with the challenges of the office at the age 80.

Republicans are less likely to point to Biden’s age as an issue. Trump, currently the likeliest candidate to be the Republican nominee, has said that Biden’s age is not an issue – which is unsurprising given that Trump will be almost 79 at the next election.

Instead, Republicans have focused on the issues that continue to challenge the Biden administration: inflation and immigration concerns at the southern border.

While Democrats are not entirely happy with Biden running again because of his age, it is unlikely anyone will pose a significant threat to his nomination. Carter was the last incumbent to be challenged for the nomination when Senator Edward Kennedy threw his hat into the ring in 1980. Kennedy was unsuccessful then and his nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, poses no serious challenge to Biden with his current campaign for the nomination.

Running mate

Biden’s confirmation of his intention to run included his selection of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his running mate. Questions had been raised about whether Biden might have chosen someone else for the ticket. Instead, he has identified Harris as his nominated successor, an issue that had concerned many Democrats.

Heartbeat from the presidency: Kamal Harris has been confirmed as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2024.
EPA-EFE/Jim Lo Scalzo

In her statement, Harris called the 2024 election “a pivotal moment in our history” and told Americans that she and the president “look forward to finishing the job, winning this battle for the soul of the nation, and serving the American people for four more years in the White House”.

Harris’s selection is important. As columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times, Biden’s age – and possible failing health while in office – means Americans are voting as much for the vice-president as they are Biden, “more than in any other election in American history”.

But why break a winning formula? Recent polls indicate that a Biden-Harris ticket currently offers the best possible chance for a Democrat victory against either Trump or Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis.

Unlike Trump, Biden has portrayed himself as a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him. His public courting of Republican collaboration on the passing of his landmark infrastructure bills made small steps to bridging the partisan gap in American politics. This may provide a bridge for the Democratic party of tomorrow to appeal to some Republicans.

Such bipartisan appeal gains even more importance when considering that the 2024 presidential election may be the end of a cycle – the passing of the old guard.

The 2028 election will require a new generation of political leaders to step into the vacuum. If he wins in 2024, Biden will constitutionally be unable to stand, having had two terms in office. If Trump loses for a second time, he will not be trusted with the nomination again. And if Biden loses, it is unlikely he will run at the age of 86.

Increasingly politically active millennial voters, who turned out in high numbers in the 2022 midterms, have the potential to change the political landscape of the 2028 election, and are becoming the target audience of the next set of presidential candidates. Who these will be is currently a mystery, but contenders will likely be jockeying for the box-seat between 2024 and the next election.

Until then, it appears almost certain that Democrats will put their faith in the Biden-Harris ticket for one more term. More

Are Americans really as politically polarized as they seem – and everybody says?

It’s definitely true that Democrats and Republicans increasingly hate and fear one another. But this animosity seems to have more to do with tribal loyalty than liberal-versus-conservative disagreements about policy. Our research into what Americans actually want in terms of policy shows that many have strong political views that can’t really be characterized in terms of “right” or “left.”

The media often talks about the American political landscape as if it were a line. Liberal Democrats are on the left, conservative Republicans on the right, and a small sliver of moderate independents are in the middle. But political scientists like us have long argued that a line is a bad metaphor for how Americans think about politics.

Sometimes scholars and pundits will argue that views on economic issues like taxes and income redistribution, and views on so-called social or cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage, actually represent two distinct dimensions in American political attitudes. Americans, they say, can have liberal views on one dimension but conservative views on the other. So you could have a pro-choice voter who wants lower taxes, or a pro-life voter who wants the government to do more to help the poor.

But even this more sophisticated, two-dimensional picture doesn’t reveal what Americans actually want the government to do – or not do – when it comes to policy.

First, it ignores some of the most contentious topics in American politics today, like affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement and attempts to stamp out “wokeness” on college campuses.

Since 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency while simultaneously stoking racial anxieties and bucking Republican orthodoxy on taxes and same-sex marriage, it has become clear that what Americans think about politics can’t really be understood without knowing what they think about racism, and what – if anything – they want done about it.

‘Racial Justice Communitarians’ have liberal views on economic issues and moderate or conservative views on moral issues; some Black evangelicals supported Barack Obama but were troubled by his support for same-sex marriage.
Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

Recently, some political scientists have argued that views on racial issues represent a third “dimension” in American politics. But there are other problems with treating political attitudes as a set of “dimensions” in the first place. For example, even a “3D” picture doesn’t allow for the possibility that Americans with conservative economic views tend to also hold conservative racial views, while Americans with liberal economic views are deeply divided on issues related to race.

A new picture of American politics

In our new article in Sociological Inquiry, we analyzed public opinion data from 2004 to 2020 to develop a more nuanced picture of American political attitudes. Our aim was to do a better job of figuring out what Americans actually think about politics, including policies related to race and racism.

Using a new analytic method that doesn’t force us to think in terms of dimensions at all, we found that, over the past two decades, Americans can be broadly divided into five different groups.

In most years, slightly less than half of all Americans had consistently liberal or conservative views on policies related to the economy, morality and race, and thus fall into one of two groups.

“Consistent Conservatives” tend to believe that the free market should be given free rein in the economy, are generally anti-abortion, tend to say that they support “traditional family ties” and oppose most government efforts to address racial disparities. These Americans almost exclusively identify themselves as Republicans.

“Consistent Liberals” strongly support government intervention in the economy, tend to be in favor of abortion rights and pro-same-sex marriage and feel that the government has a responsibility to help address discrimination against Black Americans. They mostly identify as Democrats.

But the majority of Americans, who don’t fall into one of these two groups, are not necessarily “moderates,” as they are often characterized. Many have very strong views on certain issues, but can’t be pigeonholed as being on the left or right in general.

Instead, we find that these Americans can be classified as one of three groups, whose size and relationship to the two major parties change from one election cycle to the next:

“Racial Justice Communitarians” have liberal views on economic issues like taxes and redistribution and moderate or conservative views on moral issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. They also strongly believe that the government has a responsibility to address racial discrimination. This group likely includes many of the Black evangelicals who strongly supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, but were also deeply uncomfortable with his expression of support for same-sex marriage in 2012.

“Nativist Communitarians” also have liberal views on economics and conservative views on moral issues, but they are extremely conservative with respect to race and immigration, in some cases even more so than Consistent Conservatives. Picture, for instance, those voters in 2016 who were attracted to both Bernie Sanders’ economic populism and Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants.

“Libertarians,” who we find became much more prominent after the tea party protests of 2010, are conservative on economic issues, liberal on social issues and have mixed but generally conservative views in regard to racial issues. Think here of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who think that the government has no business telling them how to run their company – or telling gay couples that they can’t get married.

Three groups of Americans have a difficult time fitting in with either of America’s two major parties.
Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images

Five groups – but only two parties

These three groups of Americans have a difficult time fitting in with either of the two major parties in the U.S.

In every year we looked, the Racial Justice Communitarians – who include the largest percentage of nonwhite Americans – were most likely to identify as Democrats. But in some years up to 40% still thought of themselves as Republicans or independents.

Nativist Communitarians and Libertarians are even harder to pin down. During the Obama years they were actually slightly more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. But since Trump’s rise in 2016, both groups are now slightly more likely to identify as Republicans, although large percentages of each group describe themselves as independents or Democrats.

Seeing Americans as divided into these five groups – as opposed to polarized between the left and right – shows that both political parties are competing for coalitions of voters with different combinations of views.

Many Racial Justice Communitarians disagree with the Democratic Party when it comes to cultural and social issues. But the party probably can’t win national elections without their votes. And, unless they are willing to make a strong push for promoting “racial justice,” the Republican Party’s national electoral prospects probably depend on attracting significant support from either the economically liberal Nativist Communitarians or the socially liberal Libertarians.

But perhaps most importantly, these five groups show how diverse Americans’ political attitudes really are. Just because American democracy is a two-party system doesn’t mean that there are only two kinds of American voters. More