Philippa Kaur

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    India and China: A Time for Diplomacy, Not Confrontation

    Chinese and Indian forces have pulled back from their confrontation in the Himalayas, but the tensions that set off the deadly encounter this past June — the first on the China–India border since 1975 — are not going away. Indeed, a poisonous combination of local disputes, regional antagonisms and colonial history could pose a serious danger to peace in Asia.

    In part, the problem is Britain’s colonial legacy. The “border” in dispute is an arbitrary line drawn across terrain that doesn’t lend itself to clear boundaries. The architect, Henry McMahon, drew it to maximize British control of a region that was in play during the 19th-century “Great Game” between England and Russia for control of Central Asia. Local concerns were irrelevant.

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    The treaty was signed between Tibet and Britain in 1914. Although India accepts the 550-mile McMahon Line as the border between India and China, the Chinese have never recognized the boundary. Mortimer Durand, Britain’s lead colonial officer in India, drew a similar “border” in 1893 between Pakistan (India’s “Northern Territories” at the time) and Afghanistan that Kabul has never accepted, and which is still the source of friction between the two countries. Colonialism may be gone, but its effects still linger.

    Although the target for the McMahon Line was Russia, it has always been a sore spot for China, not only because Beijing’s protests were ignored, but also because the Chinese saw it as a potential security risk for its western provinces. England had already humiliated China in the two Opium Wars as well as by seizing Shanghai and Hong Kong. If it could lop off Tibet — which China sees as part of its empire — so might another country… like India.

    A Threat to China?

    Indeed, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unilaterally revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution and absorbed Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, the Chinese saw the grab as a threat to the security of Tibet and its restive western province of Xinjiang. The area in which the recent fighting took place, the Galwan Valley, is close to a road linking Tibet with Xinjiang.

    The nearby Aksai Chin, which China seized from India in the 1962 border war, not only controls the Tibet-Xinjiang highway, but also the area through which China is building an oil pipeline. The Chinese see the pipeline — which will go from the Pakistani port of Gwadar to Kashgar in Xinjiang — as a way to bypass key choke points in the Indian Ocean controlled by the US Navy.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The $62-billion project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a piece of the huge Belt and Road Initiative to build infrastructure and increase trade between South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and China.

    China moves 80% of its oil by sea and is increasingly nervous about a budding naval alliance between the United States and Beijing’s regional rivals, India and Japan. In the yearly Malabar exercises, the three powers’ war-game closes the Malacca Straits through which virtually all of China’s oil passes. The Pakistan-China pipeline oil will be more expensive than tanker supplied oil — one estimate is five times more — but it will be secure from the US.

    In 2019, however, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah pledged to take back Aksai Chin from China, thus exposing the pipeline to potential Indian interdiction.

    From China’s point of view the bleak landscape of rock, ice and very little oxygen is central to its strategy of securing access to energy supplies. The region is also part of what is called the world’s “third pole,” the vast snowfields and glaciers that supply the water for 11 countries in the region, including India and China. Together, these two countries make up a third of the world’s population but have access to only 10% of the globe’s water supplies. By 2030, half of India’s population — 700 million people — will lack adequate drinking water.

    The “pole” is the source of 10 major rivers, most of them fed by the more than 14,000 thousand glaciers that dot the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. By 2100, two-thirds of those glaciers will be gone, the victims of climate change. China largely controls the “pole.” It may be stony and cold, but it is the lifeblood to 11 countries in the region.

    Back in Time

    The recent standoff has a history. In 2017, Indian and Chinese troops faced-off in Doklam — Dongland to China — the area where Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim come together. There were fistfights and lots of pushing and shoving, but casualties consisted of black eyes and bloody noses. But the 73-day confrontation apparently shocked the Chinese. “For China, the Doklam stand-off raised fundamental questions regarding the nature of India’s threat,” says Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington.

    Doklam happened just as relations with the Trump administration were headed south, although tensions between Washington and Beijing date back to the 1998-99 Taiwan crisis. At that time, President Bill Clinton sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the area, one of which traversed the Taiwan Straits between the island and the mainland. The incident humiliated China, which re-tooled its military and built up its navy in the aftermath.

    In 2003, President George W. Bush wooed India to join Japan, South Korea and Australia in a regional alliance aimed at “containing” China. The initiative was only partly successful, but it alarmed China. Beijing saw the Obama administration’s “Asia pivot” and the current tensions with the Trump administration as part of the same strategy. If one adds to this the US anti-missile systems in South Korea, the deployment of 1,500 Marines to Australia and the buildup of American bases in Guam and Wake, it is easy to see why the Chinese would conclude that Washington had it out for them.

    China has responded aggressively, seizing and fortifying disputed islands and reefs, and claiming virtually all of the South China Sea as home waters. It has rammed and sunk Vietnamese fishing vessels, bullied Malaysian oil rigs and routinely violated Taiwan’s airspace.

    China has also strengthened relations with neighbors that India formally dominated, including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Maldives, initiatives which India resents. In short, there are some delicate diplomatic issues in the region, ones whose solutions are ill-served by military posturing or arms races.

    The dust-up in the Galwan Valley was partly an extension of China’s growing assertiveness in Asia. But the Modi government has also been extremely provocative, particularly in its illegal seizure of Jammu and Kashmir. In the Galwan incident, the Indians were building an airfield and a bridge near the Chinese border that would have allowed Indian armor and modern aircraft to potentially threaten Chinese forces.

    Dangerous Thoughts

    There is a current in the Indian military that would like to erase the drubbing India took in its 1962 border war with China. The thinking is that the current Indian military is far stronger and better armed than it was 58 years ago, and it has more experience than the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The last time the Chinese army went to war was its ill-fated invasion of Vietnam in 1979.

    Embed from Getty Images

    But that is dangerous thinking. India’s “experience” consists mainly of terrorizing Kashmiri civilians and an occasional firefight with lightly-armed insurgents. In 1962, India’s and China’s economies were similar in size. Today, China’s economy is five times larger and its military budget four times greater.

    China is clearly concerned that it might face a two-front war: India to its south, the US and its allies to the west. That is not a comfortable position, and one that presents dangers to the entire region. Pushing a nuclear-armed country into a corner is never a good idea.

    The Chinese need to accept some of the blame for the current tensions. Beijing has bullied smaller countries in the region and refused to accept the World Court’s ruling on its illegal occupation of a Philippine reef. Its heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and its oppressive treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, is winning it no friends, regionally and internationally.

    There is no evidence that the US, India and China want a war, one whose effect on the international economy would make COVID-19 look like a mild head cold. But since all three powers are nuclear-armed, there is always the possibility — even if remote — of things getting out of hand.

    In reality, all three countries desperately need one another if the world is to confront the existential dangers of climate change, nuclear war and pandemics. It is a time for diplomacy and cooperation, not confrontation.

    *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The CO2 Border Adjustment for the EU

    The heads of state and government of the European Union propose introducing a “carbon border adjustment mechanism” from 2023, to charge imported goods according to the CO2 emitted during their production. At their recent summit, they decided to use the ensuing revenues to boost the EU’s budget. This gives a fiscal twist to an instrument actually designed for climate policy.

    Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, had already announced in 2019 that she would like to introduce a “carbon border tax” as part of her European Green Deal. In spring 2020, the commission launched a roadmap process to prepare concrete legislative proposals by 2021. Its proposal also responds to fears that higher European CO2 costs caused by EU emissions trading (EU ETS) could cause companies to relocate activities outside the union, causing carbon leakage.

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    Outsourcing would contribute to reducing European emissions, but not to tackling the global problem. To date, the European Union has addressed the risk of relocation by allocating free emission allowances to sectors at risk of carbon leakage. A CO2 border adjustment could create an alternative with a global impact.

    There is rising support for the idea, after years of resistance from many EU member states and business associations. And the pressure is set to grow, with an increase in the EU’s climate target for 2030 — and anticipated higher CO2 costs for EU businesses — expected this fall. Furthermore, a CO2 border adjustment for foreign products will be widely interpreted as a clear message, especially to Washington and Beijing, that the EU intends to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement. When designing the instrument, it will be important to comply with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and to get important trading partners on board. 

    WTO-Compatible Design

    The European Commission proposes three ways in which a “carbon border adjustment mechanism” could be implemented: “a carbon tax on selected products, a new carbon customs duty or the extension of the EU ETS to imports.” From a trade law perspective, any of these options could be designed in accordance with WTO rules. The crucial aspect is the principle of non-discrimination: that a CO2 border adjustment must not differentiate among like products or between WTO members. If it were necessary to depart from the principle, for example, where a trading partner or individual company is able to demonstrate that it is already taking care of emissions reductions, the rules for exceptions would need to be observed.

    An EU-wide CO2 “product tax” and its implementation by the EU member states would be the most straightforward approach from a trade law perspective. To do this, the EU would first have to levy a CO2 tax on goods manufactured in the European Union. Then, it would be unproblematic to apply this tax to imports as well — the value-added tax, for example, follows this approach. Imported “like” products would be treated the same way as domestic products, which is WTO-compliant.

    Extending the EU ETS to industrial imports would be more complex. The task for the European. Commission would be to demonstrate that under trade law, the CO2 allowance price is ultimately equivalent to a “product tax.” Failing that, the commission could argue that it was acting to protect a global resource, i.e., that avoiding carbon leakage was the central aim of the EU legislation. The “conservation of exhaustible natural resources,” which includes the Earth’s atmosphere, is a valid ground for violating WTO principles, subject to certain conditions. Such an exemption would also have to be claimed for a new CO2 customs duty.

    However, the European Council decision has exacerbated the risk that WTO dispute settlement panels will regard the new instrument as a means of generating income, rather than a means to protect the climate. This would make a difference if trading partners challenged the new tool. The climate focus, which would be taken into account in WTO rulings, is currently slipping into the background.

    Don’t Underestimate the Diplomatic Effort

    A CO2 border adjustment mechanism will need extensive explanation given the many open details, and it can only promote international climate policy cooperation if trade partners are informed at an early stage and regularly consulted. For this, the European Union should use WTO forums and the climate regime as well as other international organizations. In 2012, the European Commission was made painfully aware of the difficulties involved in going it alone, after seeking to include international aviation in the EU ETS. Major partners put political pressure on the EU, even threatening sanctions, and the union decided to backtrack and reduce the coverage of the ETS to flights within the European Economic Area.

    Trust can only arise if the EU adheres to multilateral climate and trade agreements — i.e., supports the Paris Agreement and the troubled WTO and expresses this clearly and often. This task has probably become much more difficult after the European Council decision because a fiscally-motivated border adjustment cannot be convincingly attributed to these multilateral concerns — especially as the revenues would flow to the EU rather than to funds supporting climate protection, for example, in poorer countries. If a CO2 border adjustment specifically targeted cement, steel and other energy-intensive industries, as has already been discussed, producers from emerging and industrialized countries would be especially affected.

    The union should start discussions with these countries without delay. A good opportunity will arise at the meeting of G20 finance ministers in Saudi Arabia toward the end of the year. In addition, the EU should insist to the US that this initiative is not intended as a provocation in the smoldering customs dispute. Ultimately, the climate policy success of a CO2 border adjustment will depend on how the world’s major economies react to it.

    *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Friday essay: has Donald Trump broken satire?

    For a long time, the answer has been yes. When Saturday Night Live, John Oliver and the satirical establishment railed at him, the president’s supporters were only strengthened in their belief there was a highbrow plot against their guy. Trump met anger with anger, and the effect of satire on public opinion played out to a very noisy draw.
    Now, however, three months out from the election in this most bizarre of years, the wheels may be falling off the Trump bandwagon. And satirists like Sarah Cooper, with her brilliantly economical lip-synching of the president’s speeches, seem to be adding to the Trump campaign’s problems in politically effective ways.
    Satire might be biting back, at least to the extent of nipping at Trump’s heels, while The Virus and his response to it are breaking his image as a strong leader.
    Those of us who enjoy satires like to imagine that the good ones (that is, the ones that make us laugh) change minds and form public opinion. This silver bullet effect, though possible, is extremely rare, as the long experiment in combative public rhetoric called the Trump presidency has demonstrated.
    [embedded content] Sarah Cooper lip-synchs Trump live during his Fourth of July speech this year.
    The case for yes (satire is broken)
    Satire makes us laugh, so we conflate it with comedy, which also makes us laugh. However, the laughter of satire is essentially “laughing at”, rather than the “laughing with” of benign and joyous comedy. It is more critical and appeals to harsher emotions in the audience. To be specific about the satirical element of cartoons, essays, sketches, and the rest – it mobilises the emotions labelled by psychologists “the CAD triad” of contempt, anger, and disgust.
    Satirists dream that the objects of their critique will shrivel under the coruscating force of their truth. This seldom happens, and never with experienced public figures. Mostly politicians ignore the satire or try to laugh it off, giving the real or fake impression they are good sports. Mostly their supporters ignore or reject it. Meanwhile, those already disposed to agree with the satire go along for the emotional ride. They vent their anger, contempt, or disgust on the person or behaviour of the target, and political life in countries with free-ish media rumbles on.
    John Clarke and Bryan Dawe fed the discontent of the discontented through seven prime ministerships over nearly 30 years. The format didn’t tire because a public appetite for satire at the expense of the powerful is ever present.
    It is an important part of the ecology of liberal democracies when they are functioning well, and a more urgent one in times of malfunction. It cheers us up and does something to keep the bastards honest.
    Read more: Farewell John Clarke: in an absurd world, we have never needed you more
    So it’s no surprise Donald Trump didn’t resign in early 2017 after John Oliver or Saturday Night Live exposed some policy flaws to ridicule. It is, however, a surprise that the massed forces of the satirical industrial complex haven’t managed to strip much paint from him or his supporters over the years.
    [embedded content]
    The public shaming mechanism implicit in political satire has been singularly ineffective in moving public opinion on his presidency, and here are two reasons why.
    First, Trump is shameless – he refuses the shaming mechanism that is part of satire’s deal utterly. Normal politicians (excluding those in authoritarian regimes} at least pretend to be able to take a joke at their own expense. They buy originals of cartoons, submit to comedians at press gallery dinners, and arrange their faces in a rictus loosely signifying amusement when caught on the back foot by a member of the public.
    Trump refuses all this. He hasn’t attended a White House Correspondents’ Dinner as president, and he fires back with anger and disgust whenever ridiculed. He doesn’t soak up or process the hostile emotions of satire. He returns them with exaggerated force.
    President Obama laughs conspicuously at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in April 2016. Susan Walsh/AP
    Second, his supporters seem to mirror this reaction. The anger and disgust satirists seek to vent on the president, Trump supporters vent straight back on the attackers in “the elites”. The public emotions are amplified rather than diffused. Division increases, and in the favourite verb of the culture wars, opinion is weaponised.
    This theatre of anger and disgust has largely worked for Trump. It has distracted his opponents and energised his supporters. The polls suggest the numbers for and against him have been very stable, and until recently, he has stayed within striking distance of a second term.
    The case for no (satire may be rising again)
    Things may be changing at the moment, for many reasons. A gap has opened between Trump and Biden in the polling and, if satire has anything to do with it, the key emotion is contempt.
    Trump has revelled in the energetic emotions of anger and disgust, but his image as a strong leader capable of “making America great again” can bear very little of the cold detachment that characterises contempt. Australian journalist Jonathan Swan’s facial expressions and follow-up questions in his celebrated Axios interview with the president this week reflect low-voltage disdain rather than more combative emotions.
    That approach kept Swan in the room and civilly engaged while his interviewee hung himself out to dry, appearing bumbling and unconvincing rather than a channel for the anger of the dispossessed.
    [embedded content]
    As Farrah Tomazin in the SMH wrote of Swan’s interview:

    It had all the withering satire of an ABC sketch featuring comedic duo John Clarke and Bryan Dawe […] Except this wasn’t satire at all, but a serious political interview with US President Donald Trump merely 91 days from one of the most consequential elections in US history.

    Cartoonists and sketch comedians are fastening onto things like the cool, hard separations from the Trump circus by Generals Mattis and Milley. This mobilisation of contempt may really shift a few votes. In a democracy, especially such a divided one as the US, voting intention only has to move a couple of points to be decisive.
    It’s true satire is seldom influential in elections. Very occasionally it can contribute to a wave of anger that wipes someone out, as perhaps happened to Jacob Zuma in South Africa, and may yet happen to Boris Johnson in the UK.
    Contempt is, however, a risk for a once-strong leader who has been weakened by events. It can act as a solvent on the uncommitted, whereas anger and disgust only tend to motivate the committed.
    This has happened once in Australia, not so long ago. In her brilliant Quarterly Essay on the electoral demise of John Howard, Judith Brett argued he was gone the moment the Chaser team infiltrated the APEC motorcade with an Osama bin Laden lookalike.

    This was political satire that was reaching far beyond the usual suspects on the liberal left, and in the process turning the government’s national-security credentials into a national joke. When the Chaser motorcade breached the Great Wall of Sydney, Howard’s days as a strong leader were over.

    Julian Morrow (right) and Chas Licciardello (left) from the ABC TV show The Chaser’s War On Everything after staging a fake motorcade through Sydney in June 2007 during APEC.
    When Howard made people angry or proud with strong borders and the “War on Terror”, he went from strength to strength. When The Chaser and others made him look like old Uncle John wandering the streets in a green and gold tracksuit he lost crucial support.
    Something like this might be happening to Donald Trump. As the nation’s death toll from COVID-19 grows, volleys of anger and disgust that tend to confirm audiences more vigorously in their convictions may be turning into a growing trickle of contempt.
    In an electorate close to evenly poised, this might sap the conviction of a significant numbers of voters in a sufficient number of states to make a difference.
    Sarah Cooper’s lip-synching reproductions of Trump’s speeches don’t shout angrily at the president, or present him as a terrifying menace. A fine-featured and expressive woman of Jamaican origin mouthing some of his less coherent interviews and news conferences just makes him look ridiculous.
    She started with a TikTok video called How to Medical that parodies the presidential mansplaining of bleach as a prophylactic for COVID-19 with surgical precision.
    [embedded content]
    It reminds me of John Clarke’s renditions of every Australian politician as himself in his own suit and voice. Cooper keeps her target’s voice (she even credits Trump as a writer) but subverts it with her vivid critical presence. While Clarke used the ethical standards of an older Australia to undermine the media spin of his victims, Cooper calls Trump out from a more modern America.
    She incarnates a new turn in the cycle of American self-creation where puffy old men in suits are beginning to seem washed up.
    Is this a sign of the tide changing irrevocably against Trump? Maybe not – the number of those who have underestimated his superhuman power to refuse shame is legion. His core support has never been a majority, but it has been incredibly durable.
    All the same, too many more clips like Cooper’s or cartoons like this one by Clay Jones about Trump’s photo op with the Bible on June 1, and he’s in trouble. If you have come to think of someone as a dilapidated dill, you tend not to care much, or vote, for him.
    Cooper’s parodies, Swan’s interview, and Jones’s cartoon detach viewers from the high emotions that Trump has ridden to defy attempts to shame and ridicule him. The cooler emotion of contempt may yet prove more corrosive. More

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    Investigating the Radical Right’s Presence in the Military

    In the early morning on July 2, Corey Hurren, a 46-year-old military reservist from Manitoba, rammed his pickup truck through the front gate of the grounds at Rideau Hall, which houses the official residence of the governor general of Canada and Rideau Cottage, the temporary residence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family. Armed with four weapons — a revolver, two shotguns, and a newly-banned Norinco M14 rifle — Hurren was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada’s federal police corps) after a 90-minute stand-off. Hurren currently faces 22 charges, including “knowingly utter[ing] a threat to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”

    Hurren’s motives remain somewhat unclear. In a handwritten two-page letter found on his person, he expressed a litany of grievances, including fears over the suspension of Parliament due to the ongoing pandemic and the possibility that the country, under Trudeau’s leadership, was on its way to a communist dictatorship. Such a list sits alongside what has been described in the Canadian press as a mixture of “personal despair and financial distress.”

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    Hurren’s exact motivation for this act remains somewhat nebulous. He has a long history of being drawn to conspiracy theories, including QAnon, a radical-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed plot by an alleged deep state against US President Donald Trump and his supporters. The incident itself took place in the immediate aftermath of a protest on Parliament Hill, which saw a few hundred of far-right protesters descending on Ottawa to call for the prime minister to be prosecuted for diverse alleged crimes. These factors have led some analysts, including myself, to wonder whether this represented yet another incident of Canadian military personnel being in ideological alignment with radical-right groups.

    The Threat

    The threat posed by the presence of military personnel in radical-right groups is a growing concern across NATO member countries, but the full extent of the problem remains unclear. Over the past few months, Ondrej Hajn and I have so far identified 213 individual cases of military personnel from the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States discharged or prosecuted for their participation in radical-right groups since 2010. Only a fraction of cases involving soldiers discharged or prosecuted for harboring links to the radical right is available through open source information.

    While these numbers may at first glance seem insignificant compared to the overall size of these nations’ armed forces, two factors are worth bearing in mind. Firstly, publicly available information about individual military personnel involved in radical-right groups is extremely hard to come by. In fact, while our dataset records 14 cases in Canada, an internal document from the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF) Military Police Criminal Intelligence Program found that 53 CAF personnel were identified as being part of hate groups between January 2014 and November 2018. This indicates that our dataset only represents the tip of the iceberg.

    Daniel Koehler’s fantastic report on the issue paints a much grimmer picture but stops short of identifying individual cases, as we have sought to do. In fact, in the majority of cases, the information was not disclosed by the military itself but instead comes from media outlets, internet sleuths and law enforcement. Secondly, history has shown us the potentially disastrous consequences of letting such radical-right ideologies fester within the ranks of NATO militaries, giving succor to violent, racist ideologies that might lead to vigilante-style attacks.

    The threat posed by military personnel in radical-right groups became apparent in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, when Timothy McVeigh, a US Army veteran radicalized by anti-government rhetoric and interactions with members of radical-right militias, killed 168 people with a truck bomb. However, the events of September 11 and the resultant global war on terror largely sidelined concerns about extremism within military ranks. In 2008, the FBI warned that radical-right groups were “making a concerted effort to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent combat veterans.” The report further highlighted that “military experience is found throughout the white supremacist extremist movement as the result of recruitment campaigns by extremist groups and self-recruitment by veterans sympathetic to white supremacist causes.”

    These warnings would prove to be prophetic, and the intersection of individuals aligned with radical-right groups and the military appear to have plagued almost every NATO member country, where radical-right groups have deliberately attempted to recruit individuals with military experience to “exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.”

    Hateful Conduct

    Despite clear indication that the presence of military personnel among radical-right groups poses both a serious security threat and can be a detriment to unit readiness and successful deployment, Western militaries have been generally tight-lipped about their efforts to root out such individuals. A notable exception is the German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), which recently released its first publicly available report on extremism within the German federal defense forces, the Bundeswehr. (An English overview of this report can be found here.)

    Another positive step is last month’s unveiling of the new Canadian Armed Forces policy on hateful conduct. The policy provides a formal definition of hateful conduct as “an act or conduct, including the display or communication of words, symbols or images, by a CAF member, that they knew or ought reasonably to have known would constitute, encourage, justify or promote violence or hatred against a person or persons of an identifiable group, based on their national or ethnic origin, race, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics or disability.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    Prior to the unveiling of this policy, defining hateful conduct was a task which had previously proven difficult for military brass. Members found to have violated the policy can face administrative or disciplinary action that can range from mandatory education, counselling and treatment to having their cases investigated by military police.

    Along with the new policy, the Canadian Armed Forces announced that it will be implementing a new system to help monitor and track any suspected incidents of hateful conduct within its ranks. While details about this new system remain scarce, it has been reported that it will resemble the system created to monitor sexual misconduct in the ranks.

    While this new policy and the monitoring mechanism are clearly a step in the right direction that acknowledges the severity of the problem and the importance of addressing it in order to make the Canadian Armed Forces a more inclusive organization, it nonetheless falls short on several points. First, the new policy could be seen as a way of potentially decriminalizing hateful conduct within the CAF’s ranks. As argued by Colonel Michel Drapeau, “Under the new policy, the CAF has distanced itself from the Criminal Code, inviting commanding officers and members of the chain of command to treat any such wilful hateful conduct as an administrative, disciplinary matter.”

    Secondly, cases of hateful misconduct will continue to be dealt with behind closed doors, which makes it particularly hard for journalists, scholars and concerned members of the public to examine the full extent of the phenomenon. Without direct access to this data, scholars and the public will have to continue relying on open source data, which only paints a partial picture. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, while this new policy and the recent report from the German MAD are encouraging, the phenomenon has yet to be examined and tackled in a comparative way across all NATO countries, signaling a lack of efforts to coordinate practices and lessons learned amongst NATO member states concerning an increasingly transnational terror issue.

    *[The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    With the BRI, China Still Has a Long Road Ahead

    To determine whether China can deliver a better Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we must first ask whether Beijing is first of all capable of delivering a better BRI? Accusations of practicing debt-trap diplomacy and new forms of colonialism have had some impact on Beijing’s thinking, resulting in its pivot in 2018 to commit to a new, greener BRI, but the foundation of its “grand plan” for implementing the BRI basically remains similar to when it started in 2013.

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    President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China (CCP) have put some good-looking window dressing on the basic package, but so far, many BRI host country governments would say not all that much has changed since 2018, when Xi announced a pivot. Beijing is very good at saying one thing and doing another, as numerous governments around the world have learned. As a result, BRI host nations will inevitably believe that Beijing has had a real change of heart when they see it.

    Deaf Ear

    Part of Beijing’s problem is that it does not appear to be attuned to what the world is thinking. Perhaps it does not care. Reading Chinese media reports on the subject leaves one with the impression that the world is in unison and harmony with Beijing, its vision for the world and its performance thus far with the BRI. For example, according to  the CCP’s primary media outlet, the China Daily, a 2018 survey of 8,500 people in 17 BRI countries determined that “more than 70% agreed with the concepts of the “Chinese Dream,” the Belt and Road and “a community with a shared future for mankind.” But even this Chinese government-sponsored survey admitted that 64% of respondents believed that the BRI will confront many difficulties and challenges in the future.

    That concern was echoed by a 2019 survey by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, which polled more than 1,000 respondents in the government sector, the business community, civil society, academia and the media from across all 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It found that fewer than 10% of respondents viewed China as “a benign and benevolent power,” 64% had little or no confidence that Beijing’s revised approach to the BRI will result in a fairer deal for their respective countries, and nearly 50% responded that they believed that Beijing possessed an intent to turn Southeast Asia into its own sphere of influence. That does not sound like a particularly inspiring foundation from which to try to turn things around.

    Beijing knows it has a long road ahead. To its credit, it has issued regulations intended to better monitor the conduct of state-owned enterprises and private Chinese businesses, mandating that they should pay more attention to environmental, social, integrity, financial and other risk factors. If a particular host nation’s laws are weak, these entities have been advised to ensure compliance with Chinese law, international treaties and conventions, and industry best practices. Reporting requirements, capital controls, and the regulation of overseas finance and investment have been tightened, which has contributed to the notable decline in new Chinese overseas loans and investments since 2017.

    Outside the Norm

    That said, Beijing has generally been reluctant to apply its laws to the activities of its entities overseas. In fact, State Council guidance requiring extensive disclosure of contracts for major construction projects expressly exempts overseas investment and foreign aid projects. Laws criminalizing the bribery of foreign officials have never been enforced. Although Chinese courts have heard cases related specifically to the BRI, unless a project contract contains explicit obligations for which performance is sought, enforcement of Chinese laws for overseas actions almost never occurs. Beijing appears to be banking on the fact that a great many of the BRI’s host governments have worse transparency and corruption ratings than China, which presumably makes their willingness to pursue Chinese entities engaged in corruption less likely in the first place.

    As long as Beijing continues to insist that only Chinese entities will provide financing for BRI projects, there is no way for external organizations to monitor transparency, corruption or adherence to international standards. That will, by itself, ensure that tension remains between Beijing, BRI host nations and the West, and signals to the world that Beijing is not in fact serious about reforming fundamental aspects of the initiative. Greater emphasis can be placed on taking some care not to blatantly violate national laws and international norms, allowing Beijing to proclaim that progress is being made, but that will continue to be on a relative scale.

    If practices were previously wholly outside the norm of internationally acceptable behavior but they are improved, they can remain outside the norm of acceptable behavior even though they have improved. More than minor tweaks are required to demonstrate that a true pivot has occurred. Beijing certainly has the ability to implement meaningful wholesale change to the BRI if it chooses to, but it has yet to do so. Based on its prior history of performance regarding its flagship initiative, such changes stand little chance of being implemented.

    *[Daniel Wagner is the author of “The Chinese Vortex: The Belt and Road Initiative and its Impact on the World.”]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Russia Has Planted Seeds of the EU’s Demise in the Balkans

    Earlier this year, Kosovo elected Albin Kurti as prime minister. Progressive, pro-American, pro-justice and anti-corruption, Kurti was precisely the kind of politician Americans would ordinarily wish to see in power in the region. And yet the US has orchestrated what Kurti has called “a parliamentary coup d’etat” to replace him with Avdullah Hoti, who, as soon as he was installed, reversed the measures Kurti had taken to promote reciprocal sovereign relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

    Emerging out of the protests in Kosovo against the failures by the EU and the UN to address the massive corruption and pro-Serbian bias undermining peace negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, Kurti had staunchly refused American requests that Kosovo remove the import tariffs it had imposed on Serbia’s goods for its refusal to recognize Kosovo as an independent state. But if Kurti wanted to garner the same respect for Kosovo that Serbia was getting from the West, and the Trump administration in particular, his recalcitrance soon proved costly.

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    Congressional Republicans, with Trump’s blessing, threatened Kosovo with the loss of $49 million in US support, along with US peacekeepers still deployed in the country. And so, after less than two months in power, Kurti was labeled anti-American and swiftly ousted in a vote of no confidence. Unsurprisingly, Hoti, as Kosovo’s new prime minister, made immediate concessions to Serbia under the guise of aiding peace negotiations.

    Ad Hoc Border Redrawing

    A few weeks ago, an ad hoc White House summit between Serbia and Kosovo intended to promote the idea of land swaps within the region was abruptly canceled after a special prosecutor in The Hague hijacked the US plan with a surprising move by indicting, on June 24, Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaci, for war crimes in the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office even before the pre-trial judge’s confirmation of the charges. This indictment may or may not prove legitimate according to due process, but it did achieve the immediate result of removing the one remaining obstacle to a rushed peace treaty from which Kosovo was unlikely to benefit.

    Thaci’s role as president is largely ceremonial, but his early leadership of Kosovo’s liberation from Serbia and his standing as one of the country’s most prominent politicians of the last 20 years would have made him a formidable peace negotiator.  

    Embed from Getty Images

    The conspicuous timing of this indictment, then, was entirely to the advantage of Serbia and, by extension, Russia. The peace negotiations will go on with Kosovo’s delegation being limited to Hoti, a bit player likely to agree to whatever is put on the table. Serbia, on the other hand, is led by a rising authoritarian, Aleksandar Vucic, whose party has just won a parliamentary majority in an election the integrity of which has been broadly questioned by the country’s opposition.

    Serbia’s minister of information in the late 1990s, Vucic, is credited with banning foreign media and any criticism of the government. Equally sacrosanct is his relationship with Russia. Vucic recently hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Belgrade, gifting him, perhaps symbolically, with yet another puppy. In return for this kind of clearly demonstrated loyalty, Putin has been good to Serbia, delivering anti-aircraft weapons but also actively arming Bosnian Serb police and training paramilitary units to strengthen the voices of separatists in the region.

    Putin has similarly turned Milorad Dodik, the current representative of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (Bosnia) tripartite presidency, into a political puppet. Emboldened by Trump’s deference to Putin, Dodik has undermined all of Bosnia’s efforts to join the NATO alliance. He has even promised to Bosnian Serbs that he would break up Bosnia and annex nearly half of its land to Serbia, which Serbia — along with Bosnian Serbs — has already ethnically cleansed of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) during the 1990s genocide. Dodik’s continued destabilization of his own country reflects the extent to which Putin dominates the region. To bolster Dodik’s power, in April of this year, Putin stunned Bosnia and Herzegovina’s government by sending Russia’s military units into the country, uninvited.

    If it was not already clear enough, it is now: Putin has successfully enlisted Donald Trump as a pawn in Russia’s long-term geopolitical game in Europe. And with an unfettered Russia free to make such moves as Putin chooses, we may soon be witnessing another round of serious bloodshed in the Balkans. The threat has not gone unnoticed.

    European Concerns

    Europe saw Thaci’s indictment as an opening to inject itself into the peace talks between Kosovo and Serbia. Only a day later, the president of the European Council met with Kosovo’s prime minister; the “1st physical visit since coronavirus” by the president of the European Commission was also with Hoti. Having now been summoned by the EU and perhaps overwhelmed by the pressure brought to bear by his western neighbors, Hoti agreed to participate in new Europe-led peace talks with Vucic that would take the place of that canceled White House summit. 

    The EU was rightly concerned with the direction of the peace talks led by Trump’s envoy, Richard Grenell, and the consequent violence that might have ensued had the peace agreement legitimized the idea of land swaps, as Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, has now confirmed were being discussed. As far as Bolton is concerned, “This happens in history, that’s just something you have to live with.”

    But Europe is far less indifferent to the kind of bloodshed such land swaps might trigger in the Balkans. The EU, after all, now includes Croatia, a country bordering Serbia, which, if drawn into a conflict, would undermine the long-term viability of the already weakened transnational organization. In short, a peace treaty endorsing the land swaps would open a Pandora’s Box of tensions reigniting Serbs’ old claims over territories in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and beyond. Violence of this kind in the Balkans will assure Putin’s ultimate goal of destabilizing Europe. Once again, Russia will have a point of reentry into Eastern Europe, through its own backdoor — the Balkans.

    Under the malign neglect of Trump’s presidency, Vladimir Putin has crafted for himself a unique window of opportunity within which to instigate violence in the Balkans, capitalizing on likely Serb secession from the handful of nations born out of the fall of Yugoslavia. Serbs in Montenegro, Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs in Croatia and Serbs in Kosovo have long hoped to join into a Greater Serbia, an ethnically cleansed and imagined nation void of religious diversity. It was this same Serb ambition of ethnic purity that led to several wars and the unforgettable genocide against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s.

    The Bells of Hate

    Today, the bells of hate chime more widely yet, drawing upon white supremacy throughout the West. Aided by Russia and a half-witting Trump, an authoritarian-led Serbia is entirely capable of initiating bloodshed as relentlessly and dangerously as it did in the 1990s — perhaps even more so.

    Setting aside Trump’s own race and religion-based sympathies for Serbian nationalism, American national interests in no way align with Serbia’s agenda of redrawing borders in the Balkans. But with Putin pushing for it, Trump has been in a hurry to help out however he can. And why wouldn’t he be, just ahead of a November election in which his Russian friend may once more be able to play a critical role?

    So while Europe and the US continue to trip over each other, this is the perfect opportunity for Putin to legitimize the idea of redrawn borders. Serbia and Kosovo are one thing, after all, but validating the concept for implementation elsewhere? This would really be something, taking geopolitics back to a mode in which military conquest and ethnic cleansing, rather than aspirations to democracy, human rights and social justice, are what shape the fortunes of nations.

    Putin is a long-term strategist who, while no one was watching, has actively planted the seeds of the EU’s demise in the Balkans. And make no mistake: Neither a canceled meeting in the White House nor another summit hosted by Europeans this summer is going to stop him. In the wake of Richard Grenell’s White House summit debacle and the EU leaders’ evident panic for what comes next, the only thing meaningfully standing in Putin’s way is the tiny NATO-protected country of Montenegro. Last year, Russian military intelligence agents were convicted for their role in a 2016 coup d’état aimed at thwarting Montenegro’s attempt to join NATO. Though the attempt failed, Putin didn’t stop there.  

    In 2018, only three days after the infamous off-the-record meeting between Trump and Putin in Helsinki that shocked the world, President Trump stunned us all yet again when he proclaimed that NATO’s insistence on protecting this newly admitted member, Montenegro, would trigger a war of global proportions. Few were inclined to take this seriously at the time, but watching Trump’s hastened interest in appeasing Russia with the peace treaty between Kosovo and Serbia, America’s indifference toward the rise of Putin’s control over Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the recently announced costly withdrawal of American troops from Germany in the midst of America’s own national crisis shines a light not only on Washington’s shifting alliances but also new dangers on the horizon.

    While the US president insists on enabling serious mischief in the Balkans, Europe can only watch in fear, too weak to stop what may be coming next. Bearing in mind the fact that it was Franz Ferdinand’s assassination by a secret Serb military organization that triggered the First World War, we would do well right now not to look the other way.

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    The Mother of All War Crimes

    As Americans once again struggle with the very idea of having a history, let alone reflecting on its significance, an article in The Nation originally published in 2015 marks the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It offers its readers a reminder of an event that no one has forgotten but whose monumental significance has been consistently distorted, if not denied.

    Japan’s surrender in 1945 officially ended World War II. It marked a glorious moment in history for the United States. But most serious historians agree on one fact that everyone has insisted on forgetting. The war would have ended without the demonstration of American scientific and military prowess carried out at the expense of hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives.

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    If history has any meaning, humanity should have applied to August 6, 1945, the very words President Franklin D. Roosevelt used at the beginning of America’s war with Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. More than Pearl Harbor, August 6, 1945, should be remembered as “a date which will live in infamy.” 

    In the article originally published to mark the 70th anniversary of the events that led to the end of World War II, the author, Gar Alperovitz, reminds us that almost every US military leader at the time counseled against dropping the bomb. It cites the testimony of Admiral William Leahy, President Harry Truman’s chief of staff; Henry “Hap” Arnold, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces; Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet; and Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr., commander of the US Third Fleet.

    All these senior officers agreed that “the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment.” Even Major General Curtis LeMay, who nearly 30 years later tried to push John F. Kennedy into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, agreed that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

    General Dwight Eisenhower, the future president, also believed “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.” But Eisenhower added this consideration of profound geopolitical importance, which directly contradicts the official pretext given by the government and repeated in the official narrative, that thousands of American soldiers would die in the final assault on Japan. “I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives,” he said.

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    World opinion:

    The understanding people across the globe have of how a hegemonic power works for or against their interests, a phenomenon that hegemonic powers learn to ignore as soon as they become convinced of the stability and durability of their hegemony

    Contextual Note

    World War II marked a sea-change in geopolitics. It literally ushered in the era of technological rather than purely military and economic hegemony. The real point of the bomb was to provide a graphic demonstration of how technological superiority rather than mere economic and military clout would define hegemony in the decades to come. That’s why the US has been able to consistently lose wars but dominate the global economy.

    “President Truman’s closest advisers viewed the bomb as a diplomatic and not simply a military weapon,” Alperovitz writes. It wasn’t just about ending the war but modeling the future. Truman’s secretary of state, James Byrnes, “believed that the use of atomic weapons would help the United States more strongly dominate the postwar era.” He seemed to have in mind the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower would later denounce.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Eisenhower’s prediction about world opinion in the aftermath of the nuking of Japan was apparently wrong. Polls taken in 1945 showed that only 4% of Americans said they would not have used the bomb. Relieved to see the war over, the media and governments across the globe made no attempt to mobilize world opinion against a manifest war crime.

    On the basis of the letters to the editor of The Times, one researcher nevertheless reached the conclusion that, in the UK, a majority of “civilians were outraged at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” This probably reflects opinion across most of Europe. The Vatican roundly condemned the use of nuclear weapons, even two years before the bombing of Japan and then again after the war, but it had little impact on public opinion.

    Focused on the drama of the Nuremberg trials rather than the mass destruction in Japan, the nations of the world very quickly adjusted to the fatality of living with the continued presence of nuclear bombs. They even accepted the bomb as a stabilizing norm in what quickly became the Cold War’s nuclear arms race. After all, the idea of mutuality in the strategy of mutually assured destruction seemed to keep things in some sort of precarious balance. 

    With history effectively rewritten in a manner agreeable to the hegemony-minded governments of the US, American soft diplomacy — spearheaded to a large extent by Hollywood — did the rest. The American way of life almost immediately became a global ideal, only peripherally troubled by Godzilla and other disturbing radioactive mutants.

    Takeshi Matsuda explained in a 2008 article in the Asia-Pacific Journal: “By the end of World War II, the U.S. government had recognized how important a cultural dimension of foreign policy was to accomplishing its broad national objectives.” Those “national objectives” had clearly become nothing less than global hegemony.

    Historical Note

    Post-World War II history contains a cruel irony. An inhuman nuclear attack on Japanese civilians became perceived as the starting point of a new world order under the leadership of the nation that perpetrated that attack. The new world order has ever since been described as the “rule of law.” 

    Because the new order relied on the continued development of nuclear weapons, it might be more accurate to call it a “rule of managed terror.” It was built on the notion of fear. Over the following decades, the vaunted rule became increasingly dependent on a combination of expanding military might, mass surveillance, technological sophistication and the capacity of operational weapons to strike anywhere with great precision but without human intervention.

    In his article, Gar Alperovitz quotes a pertinent remark in 1946 of Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr., who called “the first atomic bomb … an unnecessary experiment. … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” But Halsey was mistaken. The scientists didn’t drop the bombs. The politicians — especially Harry Truman, with whom the buck was destined to stop — ordered it. And bomber pilots did the dropping. But Halsey’s intuition about the rise of technology as the key to hegemony was correct.

    Whether Truman understood what was happening, or whether he was an unwitting tool of a group of American Dr. Strangeloves (the former Nazis were already being recruited), no historian has been able to determine. Fox News journalist Chris Wallace, in his book on Truman and the bomb, claims that the president “agonized over it,” as well he should have. 

    The problem that remains for those who seek to understand the significance of our global history is that once the deed was done, Truman’s and everyone else’s agonizing ended. Shakespeare’s Macbeth famously “murdered sleep,” but America’s official historians, in the years following Hiroshima, succeeded in putting the world’s moral sense to sleep.

    Humanity is still on the verge of nuclear annihilation. Some of the bellicose discourse we hear today may be bluff. But the US military has elaborated concrete plans for a nuclear war with China, and preparations for that war are already taking place. As journalist John Pilger points out, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been pushing hard to foment a war mentality among the American public, partly because it is part of Trump’s reelection strategy and partly because Pompeo is “an evangelical fanatic who believes in the ‘rapture of the End.’”

    World opinion, if our democracies knew how to consult it, would undoubtedly prefer the plain and simple annihilation of our nuclear capacity. But the dream of a democracy of humanity, in the place of competing nation-states, dwells only in an obscure political and psychological limbo, existing as something between an empty promise and wishful thinking.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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    Houthi Rebels Gain Momentum in Yemen

    Early on July 13, the Houthi rebels launched their second coordinated attack on Saudi Arabia in 20 days. The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted and destroyed four ballistic missiles and six explosive drones that had been launched from the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa. While the Saudis did not inform the location of the missile and drone attacks, a Houthi military spokesperson stated they were directed at “military aircraft, pilot accommodation and Patriot systems in Khamis Mushait, and other military targets at Abha, Jizan and Najran airports” and destroyed a number of those targets. He added that “the giant oil facility in the Jizan industrial zone” was also targeted, and that the “strike was accurate.” Additionally, the rebels claimed to have killed and injured dozens of Saudi military officers. 

    The new coordinated attack, which followed the airstrikes against targets that included the Saudi defense and intelligence headquarters and King Salman air base on June 23, aiming for military sites and equipment with the addition of an oil facility, shows that the Houthis are stepping up their offensives against the Saudi-led coalition. The rebels claimed the attack was a retaliation against Saudi aggression, the latest of which was an airstrike on the Hajjah governorate that killed seven children and two women on July 12.

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    Although the Saudi airstrike indeed provoked Houthi retaliation, another large-scale attack of that sort was already expected, and more are likely to come. With these two attacks, the Houthis have gained momentum based on their alleged ability to hit targets with high precision deep within Saudi Arabia, namely in Riyadh, and strike multiple targets in different cities at the same time. The Iran-backed group likely intends to push the Saudi-led coalition to approach ceasefire talks more seriously and consider concessions that the Saudis have so far deemed unnegotiable, such as the lifting of the sea, land and air blockade of Yemen.

    The Push for Marib City

    Tied to the Houthis’ intention to force the Saudi-led coalition to agree to better terms for a ceasefire is the rebels’ continuing push to capture Marib city, the Yemeni government’s last stronghold in the north of the country. On June 29, Houthis and pro-government fighters clashed in the Hashia district of Marib province, and on July 1, the Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes on the governorate, which is mostly controlled by the Houthis, except for parts that include its capital of the same name. Following the initial session (on July 7) of the trial of Houthi leaders accused of orchestrating the takeover of the Yemeni government, the Iran-backed group launched a ballistic missile that reportedly landed in a civilian area of Marib city on July 8, followed by another strike on July 14.

    The Saudis have been wanting to withdraw from the Yemeni conflict for quite some time now. But they cannot allow a complete Houthi takeover of the northwest and, without Saudi presence, possibly even further, as this would give the rebels more bargaining power ahead of eventual direct negotiations. After Houthi forces captured the city of al-Hazm, in al-Jawf province, in March, the rebels gained access to a pathway through the al-Ruwaik desert where they would be able to send fighters directly to Marib and/or carry out additional airstrikes on the city.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Considering the danger of that threat, army troops announced in late June that they had surrounded al-Hazm, and on July 15, the coalition allegedly carried out air raids on the city that killed several civilians, increasing pressure as it is aware of the strategic importance of the city in a potential Houthi takeover of Marib.

    It is highly unlikely that either of the two warring parties will achieve a complete military victory in Yemen. The Houthis will likely continue with their escalation approach hoping to capture Marib city so that they can increase their leverage ahead of eventual direct negotiations with the Saudi-led coalition, which are being pursued by the UN envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths. The coalition, in turn, will likely continue striking Houthi-controlled areas responding to the rebels’ attacks and keep on defending its last stronghold in the north, but, at some point, it will need to address ceasefire talks for the sake of the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

    Should the coalition decide to wait and see if the tables are turned in the conflict, in which at the moment Houthi forces enjoy the upper hand militarily, and continue to refuse to grant Houthis legitimacy, the Saudi-backed government might be perceived by the international community as one of the pieces hindering a successful political process in Yemen. That is not to say that the Houthis are facilitating the process, but the Yemeni government has more to lose in terms of legitimacy simply because it is the governing entity recognized worldwide.

    Endless fighting, with constant accusations of violations of international humanitarian law against the Saudi-led coalition, which currently amount to over 500 since 2015 according to the UK government, could eventually wear out the support for the government and its international legitimacy — the only thing knowingly corrupt President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi still holds onto — might start to fade.

    Undivided Attention

    In the south, the latest developments involving the Abu Dhabi-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) may affect the landscape of the war. The STC has been involved in on-and-off fights with the Saudi-led coalition for control of the south even after the power-sharing Riyadh Agreement the two parties signed in November 2019 and the announcement of a ceasefire in June. On July 26, however, the STC and the Yemeni government agreed on another attempt for the implementation of the Riyadh Agreement following a Saudi proposal to “accelerate” its fulfillment. 

    According to Yemeni media, the new deal brings similar points, such as the appointment of a governor and security director for Aden and the formation of a new cabinet with equal representation from both the north and the south, with new conditions, like the return of the governor of Socotra to the island and the revocation by the STC of its declaration of self-rule.

    The alleged adaptation of the Riyadh Agreement, the materialization of which is still to be seen, and the consequent reduction of tensions between the two parties would ultimately damage Houthi plans, since the Iran-backed group was likely taking advantage of the fragmented attention given by the coalition to the fight against the STC in the south and the Houthis themselves in the north. The question that remains is whether the now undivided coalition’s attention to the fight against the Houthis in the north, provided the new conditions with the STC bring stability to the south, will enable it to turn the table in the conflict.

    Looking ahead, there is a big chance the Houthis will continue to pressure the coalition, especially with offensives in and around Marib city and potentially in Saudi Arabia. Previous experiences show Houthi attacks are likely to continue even after the reported understanding between the coalition and the STC based on the fact that the June 23, Houthi-coordinated attacks on Saudi Arabia came a day after the coalition and the STC had announced a ceasefire. Meanwhile, if focused on the fight against the Houthis, the coalition might be able to respond to attacks with more vigor and prevent the rebels from increasing their leverage ahead of eventual direct negotiations.

    *[Gulf State Analytics is a partner organization of Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More