East Shield: Poland’s Role In Defending NATO’s Eastern Border – Analysis

July 8, 2026 
 Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute
By Jakub Romaniuk

Key Takeaways

Poland’s Major Defense Investment — Poland is leading European security efforts with the East Shield project — a multi-billion PLN initiative (2024–2028) to fortify its border with Russia and Belarus through barriers, shelters, logistics centers, and advanced anti-drone systems.

Broad International Cooperation — The project involves close collaboration with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, the UK, and especially Germany (Bundeswehr engineers), and is integrated into EU defense plans (SAFE program) and NATO’s eastern flank strategy.

Strong US Role — The United States supports the project through technology (e.g., Ultimate Building Machines for rapid infrastructure and contributions to the SAN anti-drone system) and high-level visits, while discussions advance toward a permanent US military base in Poland.

Analysis

(FPRI) — Back in February 2025, when US Vice President JD Vance announced at the Munich Security Conference that US assistance would be scaled back and called on Europe to take greater responsibility for its own security, many European leaders reacted with consternation and outrage. The shock was short-lived, and Europe immediately took action. As early as March of that same year, the European Commission unveiled a massive plan called “ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030,” which was intended to serve as the foundation for further joint European efforts aimed at improving the Old Continent’s defense capabilities and boosting Europe’s competitiveness in the defense industry. At the same time, an informal race began for the role of Europe’s new security leader and a valuable partner for the United States. Poland was among the countries that, from the very first days following the Munich Conference, demonstrated initiative in advancing further European security discussions and increased investment in its own defense capabilities. Such action was inevitable for a country bordering Ukraine—which had been attacked by Russia—and which was a potential next target of President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

That is why Poland has risen to the top of the ranking of countries allocating the largest share of their budget to defense—in line with the 5 percent of GDP targeted by President Donald Trump, Poland reached 4.3 percent as early as 2025 (though the target was 4.7 percent), and in 2026, it currently stands at 4.8 percent. In fact, the proposal adopted at the NATO Summit in The Hague in 2025—committing member states to allocate 5 percent of GDP to defense by 2035—originated in Poland. This approach has not gone unnoticed by the US administration, which today points to Poland as one of its key and reliable partners in the field of defense. Allocating such a large portion of the budget to defense has led to an increase in the size of the army, its modernization, and the launch of several projects crucial not only to Poland’s security but also to the entire eastern flank of NATO—such as East Shield, SAN, PIAST (construction of a satellite constellation), and the Wisła Program (the procurement and integration of the Patriot systems). The implementation of the East Shield program—a flagship initiative for Polish security—entered its decisive phase in 2026. The project, valued at 10 billion PLN ($2.7 billion), is also intended to be one of the key elements of NATO’s eastern border defense. What are the project’s objectives, will it also help other countries in the region, and what is the role of the United States?

About the East Shield

On May 18, 2024, during the celebrations in Kraków marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Monte Cassino, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced investments in fortifications and an air defense system known as the National Security Plan East Shield to strengthen the border with Russia and Belarus, and a satellite component—financed by the European Investment Bank. East Shield is a program planned for 2024–2028 aimed at strengthening Poland’s resilience to attacks and hybrid warfare; it is a key investment in Polish and European security. Importantly, this is not a project intended to supplement the existing barrier on the border with Belarus, which is designed to combat illegal migration—the East Shield will serve solely to deter potential aggressors, limit their mobility, and protect soldiers and civilians in the event of an attack. It is also an innovative component—implemented on an unprecedented scale—of the broad transformation currently underway within the Polish Armed Forces. As part of the program, fortifications will be built and natural terrain barriers (e.g., swamps, slopes, and forests) will be utilized and reinforced. In addition, plans call for the construction of shelters, logistics centers, material warehouses, fortification elements, and a drone detection and tracking system that will operate using thermal imaging, radar, and electronic surveillance. The project involves not only fortifying the border zone but also preparing areas in the border region and supporting facilities up to 50 km from the border.

The Armed Forces are primarily responsible for the development and construction of the project, with a particular focus on the engineering corps; however, due to its complexity, this is an inter-ministerial project that also involves local governments, the Government Agency for Strategic Reserves, and other entities. The East Shield is being built primarily on land owned by the state and local governments. The plan calls for program components to be procured from Polish manufacturers, which is intended to further strengthen the domestic market, and some of the new infrastructure—such as roads and bridges—is designed to be dual-use and serve residents in peacetime. However, this is not only a national project; it also has international significance, as it will contribute to the joint defense of the eastern flank of the European Union and NATO. Poland is consulting with Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland on sharing experiences and combining efforts to protect the borders.


Construction of the first elements of the East Shield began in late October 2024. By the end of 2025, 60 km of the border had been secured (including 10 km of physical barriers), though most of the work to date has been devoted to completing all necessary formalities and preparing for further processes. In addition, 17 border crossings have been secured. 2026 is a pivotal year for the project, during which another 200 km (including 20 km of physical barriers) of the border is to be secured and the anti-drone system is to be expanded.

European Defense

Poland has submitted 26 (out of a total of over 100) projects related to the East Shield, with a total value of €10 billion, under the European SAFE program, which is part of the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 plan. Poland was the first EU country to sign an agreement on the SAFE program. The first 15 percent advance payment of €6.5 billion—out of approximately €43.7 billion allocated to Poland (for comparison, Poland’s defense budget for 2026 is approximately €47 billion)—has already been disbursed to Polish defense contractors. The results are already visible. At the end of May, the first contracts worth over 1.4 billion PLN (€330 million) were signed. SAFE will be used to finance, among other things, the Jarzębina-S guided munitions systems—a key component of the East Shield—as well as TM anti-tank mines and ISM cassettes for Baobab-K mine-laying vehicles. Advanced Protection Systems (APS), a private company specializing in anti-drone systems, also has reason to be satisfied, as it will serve as a key subcontractor for the air defense system under the major SAN anti-drone contract, which includes supplies for the implementation of the East Shield program. The SAN system, Europe’s largest and most advanced anti-drone solution, is part of the East Shield and an important addition to the country’s multi-layered, integrated air and missile defense system. It is partially funded by EU SAFE funds. The total value of the program is estimated at approximately 15 billion PLN (€3.5 billion).


The project also involves close international cooperation. In addition to Poland’s already committed neighbors—Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland—discussions are underway with the United Kingdom and Germany, which are also expected to assist in the implementation of the East Shield. A sister project to the Polish one is the joint intergovernmental project of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—the Baltic Defence Line. An agreement on its implementation was signed by the defense ministers of these three Baltic countries in Riga in 2024. Its goal is to strengthen the eastern flank, including protection against incursions by troops from Russia and Belarus. The Baltic Defence Line is to be linked in the future with Poland’s East Shield. Since 2025, both programs have been formally incorporated into the European Union’s defense strategy and treated as a single, cohesive system.

The United Kingdom’s contribution consists primarily of technological support and advice from military engineers and sappers. Cooperation with Poland’s western neighbors, however, is becoming much closer. Since April this year, several dozen Bundeswehr soldiers have been stationed in Poland to assist in the construction of the East Shield. Their mission will consist mainly of engineering tasks, including the construction of anti-tank barriers, and the German soldiers will remain in Poland until the end of 2027. The signing of a new agreement on defense cooperation on the 35th anniversary of the Good-Neighborliness Treaty also confirms the growing rapprochement between Warsaw and Berlin on security issues. On June 17 in Warsaw, the Polish and German defense ministers, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and Boris Pistorius, signed a new agreement replacing the previous one from 2011. Although Germany was even prepared to enter into a broader agreement providing for security guarantees, Poland opted for a less ambitious solution to avoid a political dispute at home. As Kosiniak-Kamysz said, “The agreement paves the way for new areas of cooperation: in the fields of cybersecurity, shared responsibility, joint command in the Baltic Sea, new technologies—particularly space operations (…), military mobility, and the development of infrastructure to support this mobility between our countries.”

The Role of the United States

In a project so crucial to the security of NATO’s eastern flank, US involvement naturally could not be overlooked. More specifically, this refers to the Ultimate Building Machine (UBM) system for the rapid construction of infrastructure facilities, which can produce shelters, warehouses, and hangars in a very short time. In mid-January 2025, an agreement was signed with the American company M.I.C. Industries for the purchase of UBM machines, which are to be part of the East Shield. Another key element of Polish-American cooperation on this project is the US involvement in the creation of Europe’s largest anti-drone system (the SAN system), as part of which Poland will install up to 700 modern radars along its borders with Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

This May, a special visit was paid by a US delegation led by Thomas G. DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, during which he and Deputy Minister Cezary Tomczyk inspected and monitored progress on one of the sections of the East Shield. “The East Shield, together with the Baltic Defence Line, is becoming the foundation of security for Poland, the European Union, and NATO as a whole,” emphasized Tomczyk. DiNanno highlighted the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation and joint efforts to ensure border security: “The work being done here is an example of the kind of partnership we want to continue developing in the future.” An agreement on a permanent US military presence in Poland is also drawing closer—following a positive response from US authorities, the government in Warsaw adopted a resolution on June 16 launching the formal process of establishing a permanent US military base in Poland. This is an important issue for Poland because, aside from strengthening its security, it is possibly the only topic that could reconcile the president’s administration and the government, which are currently at odds (even if, on this issue as well, there is an ongoing competition over which side deserves more credit).

About the author: Jakub Romaniuk is a Non-Resident Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Programme Director at the Foundation Institute for Eastern Studies.

Source: This article was published by FPRI


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The Constitutional Test Of Montenegro’s European Future – Analysis

July 8, 2026 
By IFIMES

Key Takeaways

Constitutional Amendments Are a Critical Test — The upcoming vote (requiring a two-thirds majority) on judicial and rule-of-law reforms is the final hurdle to close Chapter 23 and a major litmus test for Montenegro’s EU accession path.

European Integration Legitimises the Government — Prime Minister Spajić’s administration stakes its credibility on being the frontrunner for EU membership, with Montenegro close to closing 19 of 33 chapters and receiving a €3.2 billion post-accession package.

Success Depends on Cross-Party Consensus — Failure to secure opposition support risks stalling reforms, undermining EU progress, and deepening political divisions ahead of the 2027 elections. Broad agreement is essential to demonstrate democratic maturity.

Analysis

Montenegro is entering one of the most politically sensitive phases since it restored independence in 2006. The forthcoming vote on constitutional amendments, which requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament, goes beyond the technical scope of reform and has become a critical test of political actors’ capacity to keep the country on its European course.

The planned amendments seek to strengthen and more precisely define the judicial system, including the composition and election of the Judicial Council, the functioning of the Constitutional Court and the election of its judges, the status of the Supreme State Prosecutor’s Office and the procedure for electing the Supreme State Prosecutor, as well as the alignment of the constitutional framework with the recommendations of the Venice Commission.

These reforms are the final condition for closing Chapter 23 (Judiciary and fundamental rights), one of the central and most demanding areas of Montenegro’s accession negotiations with the European Union. The outcome of the vote will therefore carry significance beyond domestic politics and will be scrutinised closely in Brussels and other European capitals. Parliamentary deliberation on constitutional amendments and the accompanying rule-of-law reforms can thus be viewed as a political litmus test of Montenegro’s European prospects, as it will directly determine the pace of the final stage of the accession process.

European integration as the cornerstone of the government’s political legitimacy

Prime Minister Milojko Spajić’s government (Europe Now Movement, PES) derives much of its political legitimacy from the claim that Montenegro has emerged as the most successful candidate for EU membership, with the potential to become the next member state as early as 2028.

This strategy means that European integration is not merely a foreign policy goal, but also the main means by which the government legitimises its authority domestically. Should the proposed constitutional amendments fail to pass, that narrative could be seriously undermined.

At the same time, the European Union is increasingly signalling that it regards Montenegro as the most likely candidate for the next round of enlargement. The Council of the European Union’s Working Party on Enlargement has considered draft common positions for the provisional closure of three additional negotiating chapters – Chapter 8 (Competition policy), Chapter 14 (Transport policy) and Chapter 29 (Customs union). If confirmed at the next Intergovernmental Conference, Montenegro would have provisionally closed 19 out of 33 negotiating chapters, further consolidating its status as the front-runner among EU candidate countries. This indicates that Brussels recognises the reform progress made, but also that the completion of the process now depends primarily on political decisions taken in Podgorica.

The opposition caught between principle and political risk

On the other hand, the opposition, led by the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), the European Alliance and Civic Movement URA, is seeking to frame the constitutional amendments within the broader context of strengthening democratic institutions and restoring political dialogue after months of institutional crisis. This approach is intended to underline that European integration cannot be separated from the functioning of the political system, but depends directly on its stability and capacity for compromise.

Public perceptions of the opposition’s role in this process could carry serious political repercussions, especially if it is seen as having contributed to a potential reform blockage. Meanwhile, European partners have consistently insisted on consensus as the essential prerequisite for reform in the judiciary, the rule of law and constitutional order, with the capacity to reach political agreement viewed as a crucial indicator of democratic maturity.

The experience of countries that have successfully completed accession negotiations, such as Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria, shows that sustainable progress was possible only when supported by a broad political consensus that rose above party divisions and short-term interests. This pattern suggests that crucial reform decisions in the European integration process required a high degree of political coordination and shared responsibility.


Should a two-thirds majority fail to materialise, the opposition may further entrench its position that major decisions cannot be taken without its involvement. Any slowdown in the European process would nevertheless remain a shared responsibility of all political actors, since in the final stage of negotiations the success of integration depends upon the collective capacity of the political elite to reach a durable agreement.
Time constraints and European pressure as a political challenge

Managing the European integration process effectively requires long-term planning, timely consultations and ongoing communication among all relevant political actors. Postponing crucial reforms until the final deadlines increases the risk of institutional deadlock and points to a lack of coordination within the reform framework.

Against this backdrop, the inter-party meeting in Montenegro, facilitated by the EU Delegation in Podgorica, can be seen as an attempt to revive political dialogue between the government and the opposition amid an accelerated European agenda and the need for decisions requiring a qualified majority. The agreement reached suggests that political actors are aware that constitutional amendments, security sector reforms and key judicial appointments are all inextricably linked components of institutional stability and the continuity of the EU accession process.

The announced changes to the legislative framework governing internal affairs and national security, particularly those relating to security vetting and stronger judicial oversight of the National Security Agency (ANB), mark a step towards greater transparency and more robust civilian oversight, in line with the standards of Chapters 23 and 24.

The creation of a dedicated parliamentary committee to monitor the implementation of legislation further reinforces institutional control mechanisms and could help reduce political tensions through structured dialogue between the government and the opposition. The announced urgent election of Constitutional Court judges and an inclusive approach to pivotal parliamentary appointments also point to an effort to establish a minimum common framework for judicial reform, one of the central issues in European integration.

Securing an agreement between the government and the opposition confirms the political maturity required for Montenegro’s successful European path. However, the European Union measures progress not by the agreement itself, but by its translation into tangible reforms implemented primarily for the benefit of Montenegrin citizens. If the entire Parliament remains committed to European integration, there is every reason to expect success.

The EU has earmarked an exceptionally favourable financial package of 3.2 billion euros for Montenegro, exceeding the amount initially planned and providing a strong incentive to continue reforms. Nevertheless, preserving political consensus after a prolonged period of polarisation remains a challenge. It will be crucial to transform this willingness to engage in dialogue into a stable decision-making mechanism, particularly for matters requiring a two-thirds majority. Parliament Speaker Andrija Mandić (New Serb Democracy, NSD) has a notable role in this process: within his remit, he should encourage dialogue and help build consensus on key reforms. Its success will determine whether Montenegro can capitalise on the current political momentum in the final phase of its EU accession.


From the perspective of IFIMES, the agreement reached is an important, albeit initial, step towards building a sustainable political consensus on the European agenda. Its real value will depend on the willingness of political actors to preserve the continuity of dialogue and prevent new institutional deadlocks that could hinder the accession process.

The long-term stability of institutions can be built only through inclusive dialogue, mutual respect and shared responsibility for achieving Montenegro’s strategic goal: full membership of the European Union.

The regional significance of Montenegro’s accession process

Montenegro’s progress transcends its national borders, serving as a benchmark for all Western Balkan states within the European integration process. In this context, the recent EU–Western Balkans Summit in Tivat carries additional political weight, as it can be read as recognition of Montenegro’s role and of the diplomatic efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, led by Ervin Ibrahimović (Bosniak Party, BS). At a time when enlargement policy once again ranks high on the European Union’s list of priorities, developments in Podgorica are becoming an important signal for the wider regional context.

At present, Montenegro stands out as the most likely candidate to take the next step towards European Union membership. The European Commission’s indicative financial package, valued at 3.2 billion euros for the post-accession period, further underscores the strategic commitment to planning for future membership, even though the final outcome remains contingent on the full fulfilment of reform criteria. This approach is further supported by public statements from senior European officials, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos, who have identified Montenegro as the most advanced candidate at this stage of the process.

In these circumstances, any stalling in reforms would have consequences extending far beyond domestic politics; it would inevitably impact the credibility of the European Union’s broader enlargement policy, particularly with regard to the Western Balkans.
Constitutional amendments as a test of political maturity and European consensus in Montenegro

The forthcoming vote on constitutional amendments goes beyond a mere technical adjustment to the country’s highest legal act and has become a political litmus test of Montenegro’s commitment to its strategic direction. Its outcome will show whether European integration is regarded as a shared national interest or as an arena for partisan rivalry.


A broad cross-party agreement on reforms would be a clear sign of the institutional and political maturity needed to enter the final stage of the accession process with the European Union. By contrast, a failure to reach consensus would risk slowing integration, deepening political divisions and triggering a new period of institutional instability, at a time when European momentum is stronger than at any point since accession negotiations began in 2012.

The International Institute IFIMES assesses that the capacity to reach compromise and cross-party agreement will be one of the defining indicators of Montenegro’s democratic maturity and its readiness to assume the obligations of European Union membership. European integration cannot be the project of a single political bloc; it requires broad consensus, institutional responsibility and a well-developed culture of dialogue. The European Union has made clear that the door to membership remains open, but that the key to completing the process lies in the hands of domestic actors. This is why the vote represents a test of the political system’s overall capacity to act in accordance with Montenegro’s long-term national and European interests.

Such a scenario could weaken the opposition’s political influence to some extent, despite its efforts to position itself as an indispensable actor in the strategic decision-making process. This could lead to a recalibration of the balance of power and a potential restructuring of political alliances in the run-up to the 2027 elections.

Meanwhile, all relevant political actors are already positioning themselves for the next round of elections at all levels, scheduled for June 2027, with every major decision increasingly seen through an electoral lens.

Political dynamics are thus already unfolding in the shadow of those elections, while whoever holds power afterwards will have a place in the “photograph for the history books” as Montenegro moves towards its possible, and increasingly likely, formal accession to the European Union as a full member.


About IFIMES

IFIMES – International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council ECOSOC/UN since 2018. IFIMES is also the publisher of the biannual international scientific journal European Perspectives. IFIMES gathers and selects various information and sources on key conflict areas in the world. The Institute analyses mutual relations among parties with an aim to promote the importance of reconciliation, early prevention/preventive diplomacy and disarmament/ confidence building measures in the regional or global conflict resolution of the existing conflicts and the role of preventive actions against new global disputes.
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Identity, Religion, Nationalism, And Political Mobilization In The Middle East – Analysis

July 8, 2026 
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

Key Takeaways

Identity Politics in the Middle East is Fluid and Instrumentalised — Nationalism, religion, ethnicity, class, and gender are not fixed but continuously renegotiated by state and non-state actors depending on power, legitimacy, and political opportunity.

Modern Constructs Meet Deep Cultural Repertoires — While Arab nationalism and state borders were modern inventions (shaped by colonialism and print capitalism), they draw on pre-existing ethnic, religious, and symbolic resources that give them strong affective power.

No Single Identity Dominates — Secular Arab nationalism declined after 1967, Islamism rose then adapted, and sectarian/ethnic identities persist — all are strategically mobilised rather than primordial, with outcomes shaped by context and elite competition.

Introduction

The politics of identity—encompassing nationalism, ethnicity, religion, class, and gender—provides the affective and normative fuel of political mobilisation across all regime types, and its comparative analysis has generated some of the most vibrant and contested debates in the discipline. Nationalism, as the ideological claim that the legitimate unit of political authority is the nation, was analysed by Anderson (1983/2006) as the product of particular conditions of modernity—print capitalism, vernacular standardisation, and the displacement of religious cosmologies—rather than as the natural political expression of pre-existing primordial communities. Gellner’s (1983) structural account, which derived nationalism from the homogenising cultural demands of industrial society, and Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) constructivist emphasis on the ‘invention of tradition’ converge on the insight that national identities, however experienced as ancient and organic, are modern political constructions whose genealogies are contingent and recoverable.

The Middle East, however, poses a set of complications for this modernist consensus that make it an especially productive terrain for comparative analysis. First, the region’s national boundaries were substantially the product of external imperial cartography—the Sykes-Picot arrangement and the League of Nations mandate system—such that the ‘nation’ frequently postdated, rather than preceded, the state (Hourani, 1991; Fromkin, 1989). Second, Islam supplies a transnational normative vocabulary—the umma, the caliphate, sharī’a—that both antedates and persistently competes with the territorial nation-state as a locus of ultimate political loyalty (Piscatori, 1986; Zubaida, 1993). Third, ethnic and sectarian cleavages—Kurdish, Amazigh, Shi’a, Sunni, Christian, and others—cross-cut and often subvert the nationalist project, producing what Makdisi (2000) termed ‘the culture of sectarianism’ as a durable political technology rather than a residue of primordial hatred. This essay argues that political mobilisation in the Middle East is best understood not as the triumph of one axis of identity over the others but as a continuous, historically contingent renegotiation among nationalist, religious, ethnic, class, and gendered idioms of solidarity, each instrumentalised by state and non-state actors according to shifting configurations of legitimacy and power (Barnett, 1998; Telhami & Barnett, 2002).

Theorising Nationalism: Modernism, Ethno-Symbolism, and Their Limits

The modernist paradigm associated with Anderson (1983/2006), Gellner (1983), and Hobsbawm (1990) treats the nation as an artefact of capitalism, bureaucratic rationalisation, and mass literacy. Anderson’s (1983/2006) concept of the nation as an ‘imagined community’—imagined because its members will never know most of their fellow-nationals yet nonetheless perceive a horizontal fraternity—rests on the technological precondition of print capitalism, which standardised vernacular languages and created the simultaneity of experience that national consciousness requires. Gellner (1983) located the causal mechanism instead in the functional requirements of industrial society, which demands a culturally homogeneous, literate workforce mobile across an anonymous labour market; nationalism, in this reading, is the political roof that industrialism requires. Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) edited volume complements both accounts by demonstrating empirically how ostensibly ancient traditions—kilts, coronations, civic rituals—were frequently fabricated in the nineteenth century to manufacture the historical depth that new political communities required (Chtatou, 2026, June 7).


Against this modernist current, Smith (1986, 1991) advanced an ethno-symbolist corrective, arguing that modern nations, whatever their political novelty, typically crystallise around pre-existing ethnies—named human populations with shared ancestry myths, historical memories, and cultural markers—such that nationalism’s ideological work is one of reinterpretation and mobilisation rather than pure invention. Connor (1994) pressed a related point about the affective, quasi-kinship character of national feeling, cautioning that instrumentalist accounts of nationalism-as-elite-manipulation understate the visceral force such identities exert once activated. The Middle Eastern cases discussed below vindicate elements of both positions: Arab nationalism’s ideologues self-consciously constructed a modern qawmiyya (pan-Arab nationhood) using print media and party organisation in a manner consistent with Anderson and Gellner, yet they did so by reworking pre-existing linguistic, tribal, and religious materials whose symbolic resonance—per Smith and Connor—could not simply be manufactured ex nihilo (Dawisha, 2003; Choueiri, 2000). The analytical task, then, is not to adjudicate definitively between constructivist and ethno-symbolist positions but to trace how political entrepreneurs mobilise available cultural repertoires under specific structural constraints (Chtatou, 2022, January 11).
Religion and the Nation-State: A Structural Tension

A second complication specific to the Middle East concerns the relationship between religion and the nationalist project. Piscatori (1986) demonstrated that Islamic political thought has historically resisted full assimilation into the Westphalian logic of territorially bounded, mutually exclusive sovereignties, since the umma is conceived as a single moral-political community transcending ethnic and territorial particularism. Zubaida (1993) extended this analysis by showing how modern Middle Eastern states have nonetheless successfully appropriated Islamic symbolism in the service of territorial nationalism—Egyptian, Moroccan, and Saudi state Islam each construct a nationally bounded religious authority that domesticates the universalist claims of the umma. Ayubi (1991) characterised this appropriation as constitutive of what he called ‘the over-stated’ Arab state: a state apparatus strong in coercive and symbolic reach yet weak in autonomous legitimacy, compelled continuously to borrow religious authority to compensate for thin nationalist consensus.

Halliday (2000) usefully disaggregated the analytic confusion that often attends discussions of ‘religious nationalism’ in the region, distinguishing between religion as a marker of communal boundary (a functional equivalent of ethnicity), religion as a totalising political ideology (Islamism proper), and religion as a legitimating discourse instrumentalised by incumbent states. These are analytically distinct even though empirically entangled: Ba’athist Syria’s minority-inflected Alawite leadership deployed a studiously secular Arab nationalist idiom precisely because sectarian identity could not supply legitimating universality (Batatu, 1999), whereas Saudi Arabia’s ruling family fused dynastic nationalism with Wahhabi religious authority from the state’s founding (Al-Rasheed, 2010). The variation across cases confirms Barnett’s (1998) broader point that Arab and Middle Eastern politics unfold within a shared normative field—pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, sovereignty—whose meaning is nonetheless perpetually contested and redeployed by rival elites for domestic and regional advantage (Chtatou, 2022, January 11).

Arab Nationalism and Its Vicissitudes

Arab nationalism (qawmiyya) emerged in the late Ottoman period among Christian and Muslim intellectuals of the Levant who sought, per Anderson’s (1983/2006) model, to construct a horizontal fraternity transcending confessional and dynastic loyalty through a shared Arabic print culture (Hourani, 1991; Dawisha, 2003). Its interwar and post-independence apotheosis under Nasserism and Ba’athism reworked this cultural nationalism into a state-centred ideology of anti-imperial liberation, non-alignment, and Arab unity, most spectacularly embodied in the short-lived United Arab Republic (Choueiri, 2000). Yet as Ajami (1978) diagnosed with prescient bitterness, pan-Arab nationalism’s normative claim—that the Arab nation, not the individual territorial state, constituted the legitimate unit of sovereignty—generated a persistent legitimacy deficit for the very states that invoked it, since qutriyya (territorial patriotism) and qawmiyya (pan-Arab nationhood) pointed in mutually undermining directions.

The 1967 defeat is conventionally treated as the watershed moment in this ideology’s decline (Ajami, 1978; Kerr, 1971), discrediting the secular nationalist regimes’ claim to have mastered the instruments of modern statecraft and creating the ideational vacuum into which Islamist movements would later expand (Kepel, 2002). Batatu’s (1999) monumental study of Syria demonstrates how, even as pan-Arab rhetoric persisted, Ba’athist power became increasingly captured by minority-sectarian and rural class networks, such that official nationalist ideology functioned less as a description of the regime’s social base than as a legitimating veneer over what was, in practice, an exclusionary patrimonial order—an early instance of the instrumentalisation dynamic elaborated below (Chtatou, 2025, January 14).

The Islamist Alternative: Religion as Mobilising Ideology

The eclipse of secular pan-Arabism created the political opening that Islamist movements—the Muslim Brotherhood chief among them—were organisationally and ideologically positioned to exploit (Kepel, 2002; Wickham, 2002). Wickham’s (2002) ethnographic study of Egyptian Islamist activism reframes mobilisation theory itself: rather than treating Islamism as a spontaneous outpouring of religious sentiment, she demonstrates how movements like the Muslim Brotherhood built dense networks of social provision, professional syndicates, and moral community that functioned as parallel infrastructures of solidarity where the state had retreated under structural adjustment. Ismail (2003) similarly emphasised the everyday, associational, and disciplinary dimensions of Islamist politics—mosque study circles, dress codes, neighbourhood surveillance of moral conduct—arguing that Islamism’s political effectiveness lay as much in its capacity to reshape the texture of daily life as in its formal ideological claims.

Roy’s (1994) comparative analysis complicated any triumphalist reading of political Islam’s ascendancy, arguing that Islamism as a totalising revolutionary project—aiming at the wholesale Islamisation of state and society—had substantively failed by the 1990s even as ‘neo-fundamentalism,’ a more socially conservative, depoliticised piety movement, continued to expand. This distinction proved analytically prescient: the subsequent trajectories of Islamist parties after 2011, from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s brief and calamitous experience of incumbency to Tunisia’s Ennahda’s pragmatic accommodation with pluralist competition (Cavatorta & Merone, 2015), illustrate the instability of Islamism’s relationship to formal state power, in contrast to its comparatively greater durability as a social and associational force. Kandiyoti’s (1991) work on gender and Kepel’s (2002) transnational history of jihadist trajectories further indicate that Islamist mobilisation itself fractured along multiple axes—reformist versus revolutionary, quietist versus militant, nationally bounded versus transnational—undermining any monolithic characterisation of ‘political Islam’ as a single actor or ideology.

Sectarianism, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Fragmentation

Where Arab nationalism and Islamism each aspired, in different registers, to transcend sub-national particularism, a third body of scholarship has examined how ethnic and sectarian identities have been actively produced and instrumentalised as bases of political mobilisation rather than surviving as inert pre-modern residues. Makdisi’s (2000) genealogy of Lebanese sectarianism is foundational here: he shows that the very category of a fixed, politically salient sectarian identity was itself a product of nineteenth-century Ottoman reform and European intervention, which recast a more fluid social order into administratively legible confessional communities—an argument structurally parallel to Anderson’s (1983/2006) and Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) treatment of nationalism as constructed rather than primordial. Salloukh et al. (2015) extended this analysis to contemporary Lebanon, arguing that the post-civil-war confessional power-sharing arrangement did not merely reflect sectarian identity but actively reproduced and hardened it, since political elites’ access to patronage resources depends on the perpetuation of confessional voting blocs—an instance of what Cammett (2014) termed ‘compassionate communalism,’ whereby sectarian parties furnish welfare goods in ways that entrench, rather than dissolve, communal boundaries (Chtatou, 2026, June 7).


Comparable dynamics obtain for ethnic mobilisation more broadly. Kurdish nationalism, straddling Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, illustrates Brubaker’s (1996) argument that nationalism is best conceptualised not as the property of bounded groups but as a relational, contingent ‘nationalising’ practice pursued by state elites, homeland minorities, and external patrons in dynamic triadic interaction; Kurdish mobilisation has accordingly taken sharply divergent institutional forms—armed insurgency in Turkey, federal autonomy in Iraq, and localised self-administration in Syria—depending on the specific configuration of state strategy and external alliance in each context (McDowall, 2004; Romano, 2006). Amazigh (Berber) mobilisation in North Africa presents a further variant: rather than seeking territorial secession, Amazigh movements in Morocco and Algeria have pursued cultural and linguistic recognition within the existing nation-state, contesting the Arabo-Islamic monopoly on official national identity while working through, rather than against, state institutions (Maddy-Weitzman, 2011; Silverstein & Crawford, 2004). This variation across the Kurdish and Amazigh cases underscores that ethnic mobilisation, no less than religious or nationalist mobilisation, is shaped by the political opportunity structures within which it operates rather than by the intrinsic content of ethnic grievance alone (Wimmer, 2013).
Class, Gender, and the Intersectional Terrain of Identity Politics

Identity politics in the Middle East cannot be reduced to nationalism, religion, and ethnicity alone; class and gender constitute intersecting axes that mediate how the former are experienced and mobilised. Batatu’s (1999) analysis of Syria already demonstrated the inseparability of sectarian and class dynamics, as rural, minority-sect officers used the vehicle of Ba’athist party organisation to displace an urban Sunni landholding elite—sectarian mobilisation, in this instance, cannot be understood independently of the class realignment it accomplished. Bayat’s (2010) concept of the ‘quiet encroachment of the ordinary’ similarly reframes subaltern class politics in the region away from formal movements and towards incremental, informal appropriations of urban space and resources by the poor, a mode of mobilisation that operates beneath, rather than through, the nationalist or religious idioms more commonly studied.


Gender constitutes an equally constitutive axis. Kandiyoti’s (1991) edited collection demonstrated that nationalist and Islamist projects alike have relied on the regulation of women’s bodies, dress, and family status law as a primary terrain upon which competing visions of authentic national or religious identity are enacted and contested—the female body functions, in this literature, as a privileged symbolic site onto which anxieties about modernity, authenticity, and communal boundary are projected. Moghadam’s (1993) comparative study extended this argument by tracing how state-led modernisation projects across Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere instrumentalised women’s legal and social status as an index of national progress, only for subsequent Islamist reactions to reverse these very reforms as a means of repudiating a discredited secular-nationalist order. Joseph’s (2000) concept of ‘relational rights’—wherein legal and political personhood in much of the region is mediated through kinship and confessional status rather than direct individual citizenship—further demonstrates how gender, sect, and nationality are structurally co-constituted within the region’s legal and political architecture rather than analytically separable variables (Chtatou, 2025, January 14).
Authoritarian Durability and the Instrumentalisation of Identity

A final dimension concerns the relationship between identity politics and the durability of authoritarian rule that long characterised, and in most cases still characterises, the region. Bellin’s (2004) influential ‘robustness of authoritarianism’ thesis located regime durability primarily in the coercive apparatus’s institutional cohesion and willingness to repress, but subsequent scholarship has argued that coercive capacity alone cannot explain variation in regime survival without attention to how identity cleavages are managed. Anderson (1991) had earlier shown that Middle Eastern monarchies in particular derived resilience from dynastic and tribal legitimating formulas unavailable to republican regimes, which were correspondingly more reliant on the nationalist and populist legitimation whose 1967 collapse Ajami (1978) diagnosed. Brownlee’s (2007) comparative analysis of party institutionalisation similarly demonstrated that regimes which successfully channelled elite competition through ruling-party structures—again frequently articulated through nationalist or religious idiom—proved more durable than those relying on coercion alone (Chtatou, 2026, June 7).

Lynch’s (2006) study of the post-2000 Arab public sphere added a further dimension: the proliferation of satellite television and, later, social media created a transnational discursive space in which pan-Arab identity was reactivated—now channelled through networks like Al Jazeera rather than Nasserist state broadcasting—generating new forms of mobilisation, most consequentially during the 2011 uprisings, that cut across the boundaries of individual authoritarian states even as those states’ formal identity-management strategies remained nationally bounded (Lynch, 2012). The uprisings themselves, and their profoundly divergent outcomes—democratic transition in Tunisia, military restoration in Egypt, state collapse in Libya, Syria, and Yemen—confirm that identity mobilisation is neither uniformly liberalising nor uniformly authoritarian in its effects; rather, as Barnett (1998) and Telhami and Barnett (2002) argued in advance of these events, the political consequences of identity mobilisation depend on the specific institutional and coalitional context into which mobilised sentiment is channelled, not on the intrinsic content of the identity invoked (Chtatou, 2022, January 11).

Conclusion

The comparative study of identity politics in the Middle East vindicates the modernist premise, shared by Anderson (1983/2006), Gellner (1983), and Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983), that nationalism and its cognate identity formations are historically contingent constructions rather than primordial essences—a premise borne out empirically by Makdisi’s (2000) genealogy of Lebanese sectarianism, Batatu’s (1999) account of Syrian Ba’athism, and Dawisha’s (2003) history of Arab nationalism’s rise and decline. Yet the region’s experience equally illustrates the limits of a purely constructivist account: religious, ethnic, and communal identities, once activated by political entrepreneurs, acquire an affective density and institutional entrenchment—through confessional power-sharing, welfare provision, and associational life—that render them resistant to unmaking even after the political conditions that produced them have changed, a durability closer to Smith’s (1986) and Connor’s (1994) ethno-symbolist emphasis (Chtatou, 2022, January 11). The overarching lesson for comparative politics is that nationalism, religion, ethnicity, class, and gender in the Middle East are not competing, mutually exclusive vectors of political mobilisation but a continuously reconfigured repertoire, whose relative salience at any moment reflects the shifting strategic calculations of state and non-state actors operating within specific, historically produced structures of opportunity and constraint (Barnett, 1998; Wimmer, 2013).


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Batatu, H. (1999). Syria’s peasantry, the descendants of its lesser rural notables, and their politics. Princeton University Press.
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About Dr. Mohamed Chtatou

Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.

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Erdogan’s Turkey: Far Removed From EU And NATO Principles, Yet More Indispensable Than Ever – Analysis

July 8, 2026 
By Richard Rousseau

Key Takeaways

Erdoğan Uses the Ankara NATO Summit as a Personal Triumph — Hosting the summit boosts the Turkish leader’s international stature at a time when he faces domestic economic crisis and is cracking down on opposition and civil society.

Turkey’s Strategic Importance Gives It Leverage — As a middle power with the second-largest NATO army, advanced drones, and key geographic position, Turkey is becoming more indispensable to the alliance — even as it drifts toward authoritarian “Putinism.”

NATO Faces a Values vs. Strategy Dilemma — While Turkey is a necessary partner for European security, Ukraine, and the Middle East, its authoritarian turn and rule-of-law violations are increasingly difficult for the alliance to overlook.

Analysis

The venue was chosen long ago as part of a rotation system among the 32 member states. However, the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, on July 7 and 8 nevertheless feels like a crowning achievement for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the “reis” — the “leader,” as his supporters call him — a formidable political figure who knows how to seize every opportunity.

Since joining NATO in 1952, Turkey has capitalized on its geopolitical position at the crossroads of three major crisis zones on Europe’s periphery: the post-Soviet space, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Since the end of the Cold War, Turkey has never been more indispensable, positioning itself readily as a mediator in various regional crises. However, Erdogan’s Turkey, which began EU accession negotiations in October 2005 after implementing significant democratic reforms that have since stalled, has never been more removed from the founding principles of the 27 and the North Atlantic Treaty. This is because the EU and NATO are not merely military organizations; they are also founded on shared values, foremost among them respect for the rule of law. This is how the difficult Turkish equation might be summarized.

Massive Crackdown on Turkish Civil Society

Much like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Turkey had already been an illiberal democracy for years, but it is now heading toward Turkish-style “Putinism,” which is both nationalist and religious. We must denounce this plebiscitary autocracy, which has docile opposition parties in parliament and allows for a few token spaces of freedom, that enables Western allies, particularly European ones, to turn a blind eye and accept Erdoğan into the fold. Over the past two weeks, authorities have carried out dozens of arrests across the country, targeting lawyers, political opponents, students, environmental activists, and journalists. The hugely popular comedian Deniz Göktas was arrested for a stand-up routine that was deemed insulting to the head of state. The routine has garnered well over nine million views in recent days.


The “reis’s” real international stature masks a weakening of his domestic political standing. Worn down by twenty-three years of unchallenged power, the Islamist leader and founder of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) has embarked on an authoritarian headlong rush against the backdrop of a social and economic crisis. Unemployment is skyrocketing, and inflation is at 30 percent. The massive crackdown on civil society and the cultural sector is accompanied by a relentless effort to bring the military, the judiciary, universities, much of the media, and major economic groups under direct control.

The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), founded 102 years ago by Mustafa Kemal alongside the Republic, is now in the crosshairs and risks judicial supervision by a government-controlled judiciary. Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Greater Istanbul and the CHP’s leading figure and potential candidate for a future presidential election, had already been behind bars for a year on questionable corruption charges.

A Balance of Power in Ankara’s Favor

Turkey’s offer to defend Europe comes with a catch: an open rejection of the rule of law for domestic political reasons. The “Reis” refuses to accept any external criticism of his governance. Should NATO accept this price? There have been numerous crises between NATO and Turkey, most notably during the invasion of Northern Cyprus and the three military coups (1960, 1971, and 1980). These crises have always been resolved because Turkey needs NATO as much as the alliance needs Turkey strategically.


However, the balance of power is increasingly shifting in Ankara’s favor as Turkey skillfully navigates its position as a middle power. It is also unafraid to use force to protect its interests in the Caucasus, Libya, and the Aegean Sea. Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO and a highly capable defense industry that now ranks 11th in the world. This rise in power has taken place over the past decade thanks to the formidable Bayraktar TB2 drones. These inexpensive yet incredibly effective drones have been nicknamed “the Kalashnikov of the skies.” Notably, they helped Ukraine counter Russian aggression in the early stages of the conflict. Since then, Turkish-made weaponry has continued to improve.

More Turkish Influence into NATO

The Ankara summit, like the previous one in The Hague, is dominated by the issue of transatlantic relations, which have been severely strained since the billionaire returned to the White House. Of course, one shouldn’t take Donald Trump’s vengeful bluster at face value. He’s still upset that his allies didn’t support him in his war against Iran. However, the United States also benefits greatly from the alliance, including through the sale of its military equipment. Most European NATO member countries have acknowledged this and, at the previous summit, pledged to increase their defense spending to 3.5% of their GDP — and even 5% when infrastructure spending is included.

However, the time has come not just for “burden sharing,” but for “burden shifting.” This is ultimately inevitable, even if the scope and timeline of the U.S. withdrawal are still unclear. However, a NATO with less America means a NATO with more Turkey.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to insist that “European security is unthinkable without Turkey.” As recently as two years ago, French authorities viewed Turkey as a “strategic competitor” on par with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China. For several years, the two countries were in open rivalry in Libya, the Caucasus, and the Aegean Sea. Today, the European defense industries of the 27 are cooperating ever more closely with their Turkish counterparts. Gone, too, are the verbal spats with Emmanuel Macron. The two presidents frequently discuss the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. On July 7, Macron became the first Western head of state to visit Damascus and meet with his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist who is close to Ankara.

Erdoğan: Again, a Necessary Partner

Dealing with a Turkish leader consumed by hubris who is unpredictable and determined to act independently against a backdrop of nostalgia and neo-Ottoman ambitions is no easy task. This is especially true since the Anatolian autocrat enjoys strong support from his counterpart in the Oval Office. In fact, Donald Trump never ceases to extol his great friendship with Erdogan and arrived in Ankara with a gift that pleased him greatly—the U.S. will lift Turkey sanctions and consider selling F-35s, despite opposition from Congress. The two men have fairly similar views on the exercise of power and its perks. They both rely on an omnipresent family clan that unabashedly blurs the line between private interests and public funds.

However, necessity is the mother of invention. The new sultan is once again considered a necessary partner, even though he is not entirely trustworthy. This is evident in the Ukraine issue, where Turkey has played an active role in the “coalition of the willing” launched by Paris and London from the outset. This coalition comprises some 35 countries that have committed to providing security guarantees to Kyiv once the fighting has ceased. Turkey will lead the maritime component, and its headquarters will be based in Istanbul.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sees himself as indispensable in the Middle East. He has positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause and has claimed deep ties to Hamas. Like the AKP, Hamas emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood movement. However, through outrageous remarks such as “Netanyahu has surpassed Hitler in barbarism,” Erdogan has cut himself off from participating in an international stabilization force in Gaza. Nevertheless, Turkey remains a significant regional power, the only other true military power alongside—or rather, in opposition to—Israel. Relations between the two U.S. allies have deteriorated significantly, despite the fact that Ankara was the first capital of a Muslim-majority state to recognize the Jewish state in 1949. Turkey’s NATO dilemma risks becoming increasingly complex.

About Richard Rousseau

Richard Rousseau, Ph.D., is an international relations expert. He was formerly a professor and head of political science departments at universities in Canada, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates. His research interests include the former Soviet Union, international security, international political economy, and globalization. Dr. Rousseau's approximately 800 books, book chapters, academic journal and scholarly articles, conference papers, and newspaper analyses on a variety of international affairs issues have been published in numerous publications, including The Jamestown Foundation (Washington, D.C.), Global Brief, World Affairs in the 21st Century (Canada), Foreign Policy In Focus (Washington, D.C.), Open Democracy (UK), Harvard International Review, Diplomatic Courier (Washington, C.D.), Foreign Policy Journal (U.S.), Europe's World (Brussels), Political Reflection Magazine (London), Center for Security Studies (CSS, Zurich), Eurasia Review, Global Asia (South Korea), The Washington Review of Turkish and Eurasian Affairs, Journal of Turkish Weekly (Ankara), The Georgian Times (Tbilisi), among others.

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IMF downgrades global growth forecast second time in a row – Statista

Global growth is slowing to just 3% ni 2026, says the IMF reducing its outlook for a second time this year. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Katharina Buchholz for Statista July 8, 2026

The IMF downgraded global growth prospects for the second time this year, saying it expects the global economy to grow by just 3 percent in 2026. In January, this projection had still stood at 3.3 percent, Statista reports.

While the downgrade is slight, it still conveys the multiple risks to the global economy currently present. As shocks from the Iran war persist, driving up the price of energy and other traded goods, disinflation has stalled and financial markets continue to be at risk of negative reactions. The IMF saw a positive aspect in the global AI boom, creating an increase in demand for related technologies.

Two countries upgraded since the last forecast were China and the UK, the latter one on a very low level, however. Other countries where economic growth is paper-thin and decreasing are France, Germany and Japan. All three are expected to grow by only 0.6–0.7 percent each this year. This number was as low as 0.9 percent for the Euro Area and 1.1 percent for Canada, giving rise to some doubts around the economic prospects of developed countries in general. The IMF meanwhile said the global economy weathered the current shocks "better than feared".

The organization also said that global first-quarter growth in 2026 turned out better than expected at an annualized 3.0 percent quarter-over-quarter, slightly above forecast. According to the IMF, the rise in renewable energy use was making economies less vulnerable to elevated energy prices which are currently an issue. The AI boom also helped some countries and territories to achieve better economic growth numbers, but this was mostly limited to Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia. China could also grow more than expected on the back of public investments and a high-tech manufacturing surge. Much of the rest of the world, however, pretty much suffered the negative effects of the current crisis without many upsides.

The IMF concludes that risks to the world economy were more balanced than in April, but still pointed in a negative direction as both peace in the Middle East and gains from the AI boom remain fragile. It also cautions that trade tensions could resurface as a result of war-induced shortages, which would put an additional damper on the economy.

 You will find more infographics at Statista

 

Brazil fears US military intervention after cartel terrorist listing

"Designating criminal organisations as terrorists will not bring benefits," Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said, adding that the US decision "poses concrete risks to national sovereignty." / agencia brasil

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By bnl Sao Paulo bureau July 8, 2026

Brazil's government has warned lawmakers that the US’ decision to designate the criminal factions Comando Vermelho (CV) and Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) as terrorist organisations could open the door to US military action on Brazilian soil.

The assessment was published by the Foreign Ministry – known as Itamaraty – after Congressman Evair Vieira de Melo formally requested information on the matter.

"There is a possibility of the use of military force by the US on Brazilian territory," Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira wrote on July 1 in a parliamentary missive, adding that the designation "will not bring concrete benefits to international cooperation" and could carry "significant impacts both economically and on national sovereignty."

"Such application can occur with a wide degree of discretion, given the breadth of the terms adopted in that country's counterterrorism legislation, with serious possibilities of implications for Brazilian citizens in the financial, immigration and criminal spheres," Vieira wrote.

In another passage, Vieira reiterated that the unilateral classification "could be invoked as justification for extraterritorial actions against Brazilian institutions" and that "furthermore, there is a risk of the use of US military force against the national territory."

O Globo reported that the measure could affect Brazilian individuals, companies or organisations even where their ties to the designated factions are indirect or involuntary.

The Trump administration classified PCC and CV as Specially Designated Global Terrorists and Foreign Terrorist Organisations, effective June 5, a decision announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio roughly a month ago.

According to Poder360, Itamaraty said Brazil received no official communication from Washington before the classification took effect, though the government has since registered its opposition.

The move came days after Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, a supporter of the designation and the likely right-wing candidate in the October election, visited US President Donald Trump. President Lula da Silva has accused Bolsonaro of stoking tensions with Washington, including over a tariff row that could see fresh levies imposed next week.

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump has taken a more active role in Latin America, threatening to seize control of the Panama Canal, launch land strikes in Mexico against cartels, and stage a “friendly takeover” of Cuba – while already imposing an oil blockade on the island. On January 3, US forces captured former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in a military operation, prompting his deputy Delcy Rodríguez to take power as interim leader; she is now governing under de facto US tutelage.

On July 1, the US announced sanctions against two Brazilian nationals, three São Paulo-based companies and a Portuguese firm suspected of laundering money for PCC, which the Trump administration described as now "the largest transnational criminal organisation in the Western Hemisphere."

The dispute has sparked a flurry of diplomatic engagement. Defence Minister José Múcio will travel to Peru on July 8 to meet US Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby on the sidelines of the Conference of Ministers of Defence of the Americas.

Before departing, Múcio is due to meet President Lula to align Brazil's position; the Presidential Palace's central concern is whether Washington intends any intervention or direct action on Brazilian territory under the pretext of combating the factions.

Lula has instructed Múcio to strike a firm tone in defence of national sovereignty while presenting the results of Brazil's own efforts against organised crime in recent years.

Brasília maintains that existing legal-assistance agreements, intelligence-sharing and police cooperation already give both countries effective tools against transnational criminal groups, making the terrorist designation unnecessary to strengthen joint action, the ministry's document said.