As the world increasingly speaks out against China’s genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, the quietest voices continue to belong to the leaders of Muslim-majority countries.

Look no further than Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s interview this week with Axios’s Jonathan Swan. Swan asked why the premier, who often speaks out on Islamophobia in the West, has been noticeably silent on the human rights atrocities happening just across his country’s border.

Khan parroted China’s denial that it has placed roughly 2 million Uyghurs in internment camps and then evaded the issue over and over again. “This is not the case, according to them,” Khan said, adding that any disagreements between Pakistan and China are hashed out privately.

That’s a jarring statement. Instead of offering a pro forma “Yes, of course we’re concerned by this” before moving on, Khan chose instead to minimize the problem altogether.

Why would Khan do such a thing during a high-profile interview, with his self-enhanced image as a defender of Muslims on the line? The prime minister gave the game away later in the interview: “China has been one of the greatest friends to us in our most difficult times, when we were really struggling,” Khan told Swan. “When our economy was struggling, China came to our rescue.”

China has given Pakistan billions in loans to prop up its economy, allowing the country to improve transit systems and a failing electrical grid, among other things. China didn’t do that out of the goodness of its heart; it did so partly to make Pakistan dependent on China, thus strong-arming it into a closer bilateral relationship.

It’s a play China has run over and over through its “Belt and Road Initiative.” China aims to build a large land-and-sea trading network connecting much of Asia to Europe, Africa, and beyond. To do that, it makes investment and loan deals with nations on that “road” — like Pakistan — so that they form part of the network. The trade, in effect, is that China increases its power and influence while other countries get the economic assistance they need.

That relationship has helped Pakistan avoid economic calamity. But as of right now, it doesn’t have the funds to pay China back. That could spell trouble for Pakistan, as China has a history of taking a nation’s assets when it doesn’t pay its debts, like when it took over a Sri Lankan port in 2018.

To avoid a similar fate, and perhaps keep the money flowing, Khan likely didn’t want to badmouth China in public. “China is Pakistan’s only lifeline out of debt,” said Sameer Lalwani, director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC.

Look elsewhere in the world and the story is essentially the same. Even the leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — who often portray themselves as the defenders of Islam and of the ummah, the global Muslim community — are choosing to prioritize their economic relationship with China over standing up for the Uyghurs.

In the short term, they may get more funds from the relationship with China, but in the long run, the price they pay is in their reputation.

Khan is the latest Muslim leader to give China a pass on the Uyghurs

George Mason University’s Jonathan Hoffman, who studies Middle Eastern politics and geopolitical competition, told me Khan’s statements are in line with the trend of Muslim leaders turning away from China’s gross human rights abuses.

They “represent a broader pattern in the region where the plight of the Uyghurs is sidelined as China has quickly become the largest oil consumer, trade partner, and investor,” he told me.

That helps explain some of the actions by Muslim-majority nations and their leaders in recent years, which Hoffman wrote about in May for the Washington Post:

In 2019, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt were among 37 countries that signed a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council praising China’s “contribution to the international human rights cause” — with claims that China restored “safety and security” after facing “terrorism, separatism and extremism” in Xinjiang…

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited China in 2019, he declared that “China has the right to take anti‐terrorism and de‐extremism measures to safeguard national security.” And a March 2019 statement by the Saudi‐based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) praised China for “providing care to its Muslim citizens.”

The most egregious example of how China has bought loyalty, compliance, and silence, though, may be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In 2009 — as Chinese authorities cracked down on Uyghurs amid ethnic violence in Xinjiang, and long before there were credible reports of arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and forced labor — the Turkish leader spoke out about what was happening.

“The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise,” Erdoğan said.

But now his tune has changed. In January, Turkish police broke up a protest led by local Uyghurs outside China’s consulate in Istanbul, and the government stands accused of extraditing Uyghurs to China in exchange for Covid-19 vaccines.

Why such a shift? You guessed it: Money.

The Turkish economy was in a downturn well before the coronavirus pandemic, but China has come to the rescue. Erdoğan and his team have sought billions from China in recent years, and China became the largest importer of Turkish goods in 2020. Saying anything negative about the Chinese government — especially on the Uyghur issue — could sever the financial lifeline China provides.

That said, the pressure from the pro-Uyghur public in Turkey has forced a slight shift in the Erdoğan regime’s rhetoric in recent months. In March, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his administration has brought up the plight of the Uyghurs in private discussions with Chinese officials.

Still, that falls far short of what the world should expect from Muslim leaders.

He’s a hardliner and staunch critic of the West, but he’s not expected to fundamentally change Iran’s policy toward the US. He’s loyal to the supreme leader, but he may soon replace him. And he’s just been imbued with substantial power, but he’ll mostly use it to do his boss’s bidding.

That’s what the world can expect from new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who won the country’s presidential election on Friday — a contest that was heavily rigged in Raisi’s favor — with extremely low voter turnout.

Raisi is an ultraconservative judge currently serving as head of the country’s judiciary. He’s long faced allegations of involvement in severe human rights abuses, including the mass execution of thousands of prisoners, mostly political dissidents and protesters — activities for which Raisi was sanctioned by the Trump administration in 2019.

As president, Raisi will face several daunting challenges. He’ll have to negotiate America’s reentry into the 2015 nuclear deal. He’ll have to address both the sharp economic downturn and the coronavirus pandemic plaguing his nation. And he may have to oversee the succession of 82-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — Iran’s first real power change in over 30 years.

Experts say Khamenei orchestrated Raisi’s election victory, mainly by barring strong challengers from competing against him, to ensure the supreme leader’s vision for Iran far outlives him.

“Khamenei wants someone who sees the world the way he sees the world,” said Ilan Goldenberg, director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, DC. As a former student of Khamenei’s who was appointed to every major job he held by his mentor, Raisi is a safe bet to assure the supreme leader’s legacy.

But there are still open questions about what Raisi’s ascent to the presidency will mean for the future. One is how a hardliner will govern as president, especially now that his ilk will control all major branches of Iran’s government. Experts predict the country will become more repressive internally and continue its combative foreign policy. “They still won’t trust the United States,” said Holly Dagres, a UK-based fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

The other, arguably bigger question is whether Raisi’s rise to the presidency makes him the clear frontrunner to replace Khamenei when the aging leader dies. If that’s the case, then how the 60-year-old Raisi governs could offer clues to how he might lead Iran for decades to come. The money is on Raisi following in his mentor’s footsteps.

“Raisi owes everything he has to Khamenei,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director.

Who is Ebrahim Raisi?

Weeks before the June 18 presidential election, it was clear that Iran’s leadership wanted Raisi to win.

The regime allows only those deemed loyal enough to the supreme leader to run for president, but it also likes leaving a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the election. This time, though, Khamenei and the 12-person Guardian Council responsible for approving candidates openly removed that veneer. They disqualified anyone who could possibly challenge Raisi, effectively guaranteeing his victory — perhaps seen as a necessary move after Raisi surprisingly lost in 2017 to current President Hassan Rouhani. 

The move was so blatant that even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite security and military organization responsible for the protection and survival of the regime, called the election undemocratic.

A look at Raisi’s past makes clear why the regime would go to such lengths to make him the new president.

He was born in Mashhad in Iran’s northeast, the same city Khamenei hails from, and can trace his lineage back to the Islamic Prophet Mohammed (which allows him to wear a black turban). Born to a clerical family, he received a religious education and achieved the status of a low-level cleric, but he never reached the status of ayatollah, the highest rank of Twelver Shia clergy in Iran.

Raisi instead joined Iran’s judiciary in 1981 and only four years later became deputy prosecutor general in Tehran, the capital. It was in that role in 1988, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war, that Amnesty International alleges Raisi was associated with the extrajudicial killings of political prisoners. “Between 4,500 and 5,000 men, women and children were killed in the summer of 1988 in prisons across Iran,” the human rights group wrote in 2013. (Raisi’s defenders deny his involvement.)

Raisi continued to climb Iran’s power ladder, helped largely by Khamenei’s appointment in 1989 as supreme leader. Among other positions, Raisi went on to become the prosecutor general of Tehran in 1989, the first deputy chief justice of Iran in 2004, and the country’s attorney general in 2014.

In the last five years, Raisi became one of the nation’s leading regime figures. In 2016, Khamenei named him head of the powerful Astan Quds Razavi foundation, a supposed charitable group that manages the important Imam Reza shrine and other institutions. (The Trump administration in January sanctioned the foundation for its immense wealth and close ties to the supreme leader.)

Then in 2019, Khamenei gave Raisi the reins of Iran’s judiciary, where he used his perch to ostensibly tackle corruption, though some say he mainly targeted his political opponents. That same year, Raisi was elected vice president of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which — interestingly enough — will choose the next supreme leader after Khamenei dies.

Such an inexorable rise could only end up with Raisi as Iran’s president, which will make him arguably Iran’s second most powerful official after Khamenei himself. But what precisely he’ll do with that power isn’t entirely clear.

From President Raisi to Supreme Leader Raisi?

Raisi hasn’t offered up much of a platform during the election, partly because he hasn’t really needed to craft a winning message, what with the election having already been in his favor.

But experts note that he’s long been ultraconservative on domestic issues, such as on stamping out political dissent and women’s rights, and on foreign policy he remains extremely critical of the West.

However, the potential good news for the Biden administration is that Raisi has shown a willingness to abide by the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, which restricted Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

“Let’s make it clear. We would definitely abide by the [deal] in the format that was approved with nine clauses by the supreme leader, as it [is] a contract and a commitment that governments must abide by,” Raisi said during a June 12 debate.

He even attacked one of the other candidates as well as the current Rouhani government by saying only he could keep the agreement intact. “Gentlemen, you cannot implement the JCPOA,” Raisi said, using the acronym for the deal’s official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “The JCPOA must be implemented by a powerful government. Foreign power is an extension of internal power.”

It seems contradictory that Raisi would consistently rail against the West but also want the nuclear accord to survive. But experts says the cleric’s stance makes sense: Khamenei had allowed the initial agreement to happen, and the lifting of sanctions would greatly help the struggling economy.

Ultimately, though, analysts told me Raisi’s main job will be to help Khamenei realize his vision of a second Islamic Revolution, one led by the nation’s youth. Many of the nation’s leading clerics are 70 or older, and it has been over 40 years since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khamenei wants changes made to Iran’s government to foment a continued feeling of revolution among the next generation of Iranians.

To do that, the International Crisis Group’s Vaez says, Khamenei may change the government from a presidential to parliamentary system, removing a key source of friction between the offices of the president and supreme leader, and making it easier to pass reforms through government on party lines. Raisi likely won’t put up much of a fight during such shifts, and he’ll have few qualms about quashing dissent from the public or the government.

“Through this election, [Khamenei] wants to get a pliant president along with a pliant parliament so that he doesn’t have any resistance to internal changes,” Vaez told me.

By effectively handpicking Raisi, Khamenei aims to ensure his legacy and influence is lasting. “He’s thinking about after he’s gone, and this is how he’s doing it,” said the Atlantic Council’s Dagres.

So is Raisi fine with just being Khamenei’s puppet? Not quite, experts told me. Rather, it’s basically a trade: Raisi will do Khamenei’s bidding now, so that when the time comes to select a new supreme leader, Raisi is the odds-on favorite.

What Raisi’s election as president really means, then, is the arrival of a major new figure on the world stage. This is Raisi’s test before potentially taking the reins of Iran, and few believe he’ll throw away his shot. “Something big is happening in Iran,” Dagres told me.

If one phrase defines President Joe Biden’s approach to negotiating, it’s “all politics is personal.” When he uses that line, he aims to convey a rock-ribbed belief that finding what the other person can and can’t accept — be it a member of Congress from the other party or a foreign leader — will eventually lead to better relations and even mutually agreeable deals.

During a Wednesday press conference following his Geneva summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden showed once more that he puts a lot of faith in that approach. “All foreign policy is the logical extension of personal relationships,” Biden said. “It’s the way human nature functions.”

That’s not Biden saying all it takes to improve US-Russia relations is to have a one-on-one chat with Putin, although they did have a roughly 90-minute discussion. It meant, as he went on to explain, that because of that discussion, both men are now clear on what red lines not to cross as they seek to cooperate on arms control, cybersecurity, and more.

That outcome, in Biden’s mind, was worth the trip.

“What I’m saying is I think there’s a genuine prospect to significantly improve relations between our two countries without us giving up a single, solitary thing based on principle and our values,” he told reporters. “This is not just about self-interest. It’s about mutual self-interest.”

It’s the clearest distillation yet of how Biden thinks about foreign policy and diplomacy. Sure, there are constraints on what can be achieved, but the only way to make progress is to hear the other person out and find areas of common ground.

The problem for Biden is that it might not work.

“Personal diplomacy can matter. But it’s not the foundation for foreign policy and can’t overcome major structural constraints or national interests,” said Elizabeth Saunders, an associate professor at Georgetown University.

Biden is hoping his personal touch will work on Putin

Every American president since George W. Bush has tried some sort of reset with Putin’s Russia with the hope of improving relations between the two countries. Some, like President Donald Trump, also believed that engaging mano a mano with Putin would get him to change his behavior.

But Biden does seem to believe that he offers something different: a clear-eyed view that he can’t change Putin, but he can work with him where the two countries’ interests align. Some of those include fighting terrorism, reaching a political solution in Syria, finding ways to coexist in the Arctic, reducing the likelihood of nuclear war, and more.

This is all a big bet for Biden to make, and the Geneva summit showed precisely why.

Other than a promise to hold talks on a future nuclear agreement and an end to cyber hacking, along with the return of ambassadors to each other’s capital cities, little of actual substance came out of the meeting.

“The image of flying somewhere to look the adversary in the eye and make a breakthrough is misleading. It’s very rare,” said Saunders, though she noted that “regular discussions can keep information flowing.”

What’s more, it’s possible the summit could end up backfiring on Biden, especially if Putin soon decides to launch a cyberattack against the US or allow prominent dissident Alexei Navalny to die in prison — two things Biden warned would be unacceptable to the US. That would put Biden in the position of having to retaliate forcefully with sanctions or other measures, experts say, derailing any efforts to get US-Russia relations back on track.

Knowing the long odds, even Biden acknowledged his bet might not pay off. “Let’s see what happens,” he said at his press conference. “I’m not confident [Putin] will change his behavior.”

Analysts share that skeptical view, saying that reiterating America’s stances won’t have much of an effect on Putin. “We can deliver a message, as other presidents have, but from the Russian perspective, they’ve heard this before,” said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC.

But the president has now played his hand, and by doing so he’s put his “all foreign policy is personal” play to the test. Biden expects he’ll find out if he made the right call soon enough: “We’re going to be able to … look ahead in three to six months and say, ‘Did the things we agreed to sit down and try to work out, did it work?’”

President Joe Biden has made it clear that he’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to do two things: to “decide where it’s in our mutual interest, in the interest of the world, to cooperate, and see if we can do that,” and in “the areas where we don’t agree, make it clear what the red lines are.”

That may sound good, but experts warn Biden is setting himself up for potential failure.

That’s because setting “red lines” that can’t be crossed (or else) with an unpredictable leader such as Putin is a risky move. Should Putin later cross one of Biden’s red lines — perhaps by allowing prominent dissident Alexei Navalny to die in prison, or by letting Russian cybercriminals (or his own spies) conduct another cyberattack on either the US government or our private sector — it would be an embarrassing slap in the face to the American president.

“I’m worried about the humiliation afterward. It could be a real political hit to President Biden,” said Heather Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, DC.

Even more dangerous, though, is the potential that Biden could feel pressured to respond forcefully, having all but promised to do so. Although such a move may be justified, it would foil Biden’s goal of better relations with Russia, leaving them to plumb new depths.

All told, the Biden-Putin summit may offer more risk than reward.

“Putin is predictably unpredictable”

In multiple calls with Putin, Biden has stated he wants the US and Russia to enter “a stable and predictable relationship.” It’s unclear what, precisely, that means, but most experts interpret the line as the administration saying it wants Putin to stop targeting America and its Western allies.

Over the last decade, Russia has, among other things, interfered in US and European elections, annexed Crimea, invaded part of Ukraine, foiled US military objectives in Syria, and potentially put bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.

That’s why Biden’s main mission in Switzerland is to tell Putin to knock it off, and instead find ways to rebuild trust with the US. As an example of what that relationship could look like, the administration continuously points to how the two countries recently extended the New START treaty for five years.

The problem is that it takes two people to build a “stable and predictable relationship,” and it doesn’t seem like Putin wants to do that.

“Putin is predictably unpredictable,” said James Goldgeier, a senior visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. “He wants to keep the pressure on and provoke the West” in part to deflect from his failures at home, such as his inability to quash Russia’s coronavirus outbreak.

What’s more, Putin knows Biden would rather focus on dealing with China than with Russia, which gives the autocrat all the more incentive to seek attention with bold actions.

Putin achieved both of those objectives — annoying the West and remaining in the headlines — in April when he amassed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border, leading many to worry that Russia was planning a larger-scale invasion of the country. The same month, Biden offered to hold the summit with Putin; days later, Putin ordered those troops back home.

Putin, then, seemingly bullied his way into a summit with Biden, giving him the platform he prestige he craves.

The larger problem for Biden is that Putin’s playbook likely won’t change after Geneva — which opens Biden up to a world of problems.

If Putin misbehaves after Geneva, Biden will have to retaliate

Biden hasn’t said exactly what red lines he’ll give Putin during their meeting. But experts say they’re likely to include Nalvany’s death, another massive government hack, and future election interference.

Take Navalny. For months, the Biden administration has made clear that the dissident’s death in Russian custody is a red line. “We have communicated to the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their custody is their responsibility and they will be held accountable by the international community,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN in April.

Analysts believe the US still maintains that position. Biden said during a press conference on Monday that Navalny’s death “would be a tragedy” and “do nothing but hurt [Putin’s] relationships with the rest of the world, in my view, and with me.”

These kinds of public statements already leave Biden with little wiggle room should Navalny die. But if that were to happen after the US president warned Putin directly, to his face, that Navalny’s death was a red line, it would be viewed as a direct affront and challenge to the American leader.

And Navalny’s death is an unfortunate possibility. Putin told NBC News just days ago that he couldn’t guarantee the activist’s safety. “Look, such decisions in this country are not made by the president,” he said.

That’s rich coming from Putin, an authoritarian leader with a firm grip on his country’s security services. After all, US intelligence recently concluded that the near-fatal poisoning of Navalny in 2020 was orchestrated by a Russian intelligence agency, and analysts say such an operation wouldn’t have happened without the dictator’s explicit approval.

All of this means Biden would have little choice but to respond to Navalny’s death in a major way, likely with harsh sanctions in concert with the US’s European allies. He made similar moves in April in response to the Kremlin’s election interference and government hacking.

But therein lies the rub: Those penalties didn’t change Putin’s behavior, and experts say future ones probably won’t either. The retaliation would be justified, they note, but not necessarily effective.

“There are only so many sanctions and expulsions you can do,” said Brookings’s Goldgeier. “They’re not really major tools at this point.”

Biden, then, has backed himself into a corner. He’s headed to Geneva in hopes of convincing Putin to change his ways. But if he fails to persuade the Russian, as analysts expect, Wednesday’s summit could simply set up a worse future between the US and Russia.

“Hope is not a plan,” said Goldgeier.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is rewiring his nation’s government to operate less like a dictator’s playground and more like an organization that can handle multiple crises at once.

According to reports this week from CNN, Reuters, and other media outlets, Kim appointed a de facto second-in-command back in January to help lead the country’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. As “first secretary,” a title Kim himself held from 2012 to 2016 (he assumed the grander role of “general secretary” in January 2021), this as-yet-unknown person will serve as the despot’s “representative” to the WPK.

Experts were quick to say this person won’t actually be North Korea’s second-in-command. It’s at best a kind of executive secretary role, someone who has the authority to handle day-to-day party operations but not the power to make key decisions without the boss’s say-so.

“It means no change to [Kim’s] status as the supreme leader of North Korea, but it will mean a change in his leadership style,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a Seoul-based fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, DC. In fact, “Kim technically always has had a ‘second-in-command’ in every party, state, and military institution,” she added.

The new and unprecedented role, then, isn’t really about some already prominent North Korean official gaining more authority. Rather, it’s Kim’s latest reform to ensure his regime can handle all affairs of state without his consistent, direct input.

“It should suggest to us that Kim is doing things internally,” said Ken Gause, director of the adversary analytics program at the CNA, a Virginia-based think tank. “He’s changing this regime and making it a more normalized organization.”

Why Kim is reforming his government

Kim has made big changes to North Korea’s leadership before, experts said, including moves to rein in influential regime bodies, namely those in the security apparatus and the shadowy Organization and Guidance Department.

Previously, when Kim’s grandfather and father ran North Korea, those in uniform and other high-level officials influenced the country’s direction. The ruling family, at times, worried that some of them were plotting coups or taking too much power for themselves, occasionally leading to their brutal executions.

So, making changes to North Korea’s leadership structure isn’t necessarily new for Kim. But few are certain as to why he authorized a new first secretary now, though analysts have some ideas.

The first is that North Korea faces many crises, from a devastating coronavirus outbreak to a crushing economic collapse. To handle just those two problems, let alone all the challenges facing the country, Kim can’t follow the old playbook of making every single policy decision. It now seems he wants to set the strategic direction for the nation by letting his aide know exactly what he wants and trusting them to carry out the tactical decisions.

This has the added bonus of signaling to the outside world that Kim is a reformer with modern-day ideas. “We should view this as North Korea’s attempt to make Kim seem more like a ‘normal’ leader who rules through and with the party and not a lone dictator,” said Stimson’s Lee, who also noted that “in recent months, top North Korean party officials other than Kim Jong Un have led some party meetings.”

The second is that Kim has long said he wants to reform North Korea’s economy. But the problem, CNA’s Gause told me, is that any changes Kim makes won’t stick for the long term if the government is incapable of running without his constant input. Having a trusted official to help oversee the moves he makes, then, can help turn Kim’s economic dream into reality. “If they continue the way they had in the past, they will fail,” Gause said of the North Korean regime. “They are maturing and they are changing.”

The third reason may be a long-term play. It’s an open secret that Kim has health problems — he’s overweight, and a smoker. Gause suggested Kim may want to ensure he has a government in place that can continue to function should he die prematurely. That doesn’t mean he’s planning for a North Korea without a Kim family member in charge, but rather that he may envision a regime capable of working even in the temporary absence of a dictator.

As of now, it’s unclear who will assume the first secretary position. Most experts think it will be a confidante of Kim’s and someone who serves on the five-member presidium, a committee made up of top members of the ruling party. Reports suggest Jo Yong Won, who is close to Kim and believed to be in his mid-60s, could get the job or may have it already.

Put together, all of this means two key things: Kim seems to have the future of his nation in mind, and he’s supremely confident in his own leadership. He’s not giving up his power — he’s shoring it up.