Philippa Kaur

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    A Double Twist in Russiagate

    The New York Times never tires of finding new pretexts to repeat the same message. Its journalists have been regularly updating it with the same lack of substance over the past four years. The latest iteration, published on August 7, bears the title, “Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Says.”

    In the very first sentence, the author, Julian E. Barnes, presents it as breaking news, the release of a “first public assessment” of a never-to-be-doubted source: “intelligence officials.” The intelligence revealed turns out to be little more than confirmation of the theme familiar to Times readers: “that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President [Donald] Trump.”

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    In their vast majority, Times readers are anti-Trump and mostly lifelong Democrats. For a moment last year, The New York Times seemed to admit the failure of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election to validate its favored thesis. In March 2019, The Guardian sensibly published an op-ed with the title, “Enough Russia: after Mueller, it’s time for Democrats to focus on America.” Its subtitle read: “With this distraction finally out of the way, it’s time to deal with issues that the majority of the electorate actually cares about.”

    Now, 18 months on, The Times, faced with the serious task of getting Joe Biden elected and defeating Trump, cannot avoid returning to its past habits. Still, to keep a stale story alive and make it look like news, something new had to be added. It needed a twist. Senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, revealed the scoop. It isn’t just Russia. It’s also China and Iran. In other words, Russiagate on steroids.

    The senator framed it by saying that William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, “has basically put the American people on notice that Russia in particular, also China and Iran, are going to be trying to meddle in this election and undermine our democratic system.” King spoke in reference to a statement made by Evanina on August 7 regarding the release of an intelligence report over foreign interference in this year’s US presidential election.

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Undermine:

    Call into question the political credo all upstanding citizens of a powerful nation are required to recite and adhere to because failure to affirm their faith would endanger the complex political systems, potentially causing it to implode

    Contextual Note

    Any serious journalist with a sense of logic should question King’s reasoning when he asserts that foreign powers are “trying to meddle in this election and undermine our democratic system.” After all, in the age of social media, anyone and everyone can try to meddle. Trying doesn’t imply succeeding. But the jump from “meddle” to “undermine” poses a more fundamental logical problem.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The three foreign nations cited — Russia, China and Iran — certainly have the capacity to meddle. Everyone does. That reality existed even before social media. Furthermore, meddling is what all reasonably solid national structures are expected to do. Why else would they have intelligence services? What does the CIA do?

    But can they undermine? That requires more than simply trying to meddle. Undermining means hollowing out the ground below to destabilize the structure. It requires means that go well beyond spreading rumors and publishing lies. For the past four years — as The Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, admitted in private — there has been no causal link established between Russians “trying to meddle” and the effective undermining of American democracy. Publications that encourage the belief that meddling is tantamount to effective undermining are guilty, at the very least, of faulty logic.

    The real irony in this attempt to produce new scoops with stale news is that the real scoop of this entire four-year drama emerged two days later. On August 9, a whistleblower, Steven P. Schrage — a former White House, State Department and G8 official — came forward in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News to put the entire Russiagate narrative in a new perspective, essentially validating President Trump’s thesis known as “Spygate.” Although Fox News can legitimately be suspected of pro-Trump bias, this is an important emerging story covered by the respected investigative journalist, Matt Taibbi.

    At the end of the Fox News interview, Schrage makes this interesting comment: “This is about officials undermining our democracy and it needs to be known long before the election.” If what he describes is true, this is not a case of meddling from afar but, as he says, actively undermining the workings of US democracy from the inside.

    Historical Note

    The latest intelligence report that The New York Times used as the basis of its story attempts to create a new historical perspective. Building on the belief embraced by the Democratic Party for the past four years that there is a secret link between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the intelligence community now adds China and Iran to the list of meddling nations.

    The designation of three villains may harken back to George W. Bush’s 2002 strategy when he launched the trope of a three-pronged “axis of evil.” It worked for President Bush on the eve of his invasion of Iraq in 2003. It led to the successful multiplication of unsuccessful wars in the Middle East, a fact that has dominated the trajectory of US history ever since. Because the uncertainty of facing off against a single enemy entails the risk of losing — a humiliation the US endured in Vietnam — having three enemies to choose from strengthens the case of a power that wishes to project its strength, fearlessness and unparalleled spirit of domination. 

    As a candidate for the presidency in 2000, Bush had demonstrated his keen awareness of having at least one identifiable enemy when he said, in his inimitable style: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”

    Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, under the Clinton administration, the US no longer had an identifiable enemy. Bush provided three in 2002. The IC now wants to make sure that we have three today, with China replacing North Korea, a nation with whom Trump seems to have made some kind of peace.

    The intelligence community’s report is embarrassingly vague on all its findings. But that doesn’t seem to bother The Times. We read, for example: “They may also seek to compromise our election infrastructure for a range of possible purposes.” A sentence relying on “may” can be logically extended to state the opposite with the same degree of truth: Then again, they may not.”

    The Time mentions that the report “was short on specifics, but that was largely because the intelligence community is intent on trying to protect its sources of information.” Who needs specifics? And there is a noble intention of “trying to protect” sources. “Trying” is like “may.” It admits of its opposite.

    The Times itself acknowledges the lack of substance in the report. “Outside of a few scattered examples, it is hard to find much evidence of intensifying Chinese influence efforts that could have a national effect.” This sudden critical acumen may be due to the fact that the intelligence community finds that China would prefer meddling in favor of Joe Biden, assessing that “China prefers that President Trump … does not win reelection.” The Democrats should be alarmed. What would happen if Biden were to win the election and the Republicans spent the next four years complaining that it was all due to Chinese meddling?

    The article is filled with sentences containing the verb “try.” “Russia tried to use influence campaigns during 2018 midterm voting to try to sway public opinion, but it did not successfully tamper with voting infrastructure,” The Times reports. And what about “nevertheless” alongside “could try” in the following sentence? “But nevertheless, the countries could try to interfere in the voting process or take steps aimed at “calling into question the validity of the election results.”

    If anything, the report makes clear that the intelligence community, like The New York Times, is “trying” very hard to get across its message. It is easy to identify its targets. As Matt Taibbi notes, “The intelligence leak claiming Russia supported Bernie Sanders over Vice President Biden in 2020’s critical Nevada Democratic caucuses, shows how our national security powers could just as easily be deployed against Democrats as against Republicans.”

    Steven P. Schrage perhaps deserves the final thought: “Nothing excuses foreign meddling in U.S. elections. Yet it is hypocritical and absurd to use that as an excuse to hide abuses by U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, and political officials against our own citizens.”

    *[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. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 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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    in World Politics

    Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

    This year marks the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is reason enough to mull over its meaning and its implications. In a recent article for Fair Observer, Peter Isackson has made a strong case that the annihilation of the two Japanese cities by American bombers represents the “mother of all war crimes.” Given the long history of atrocities committed during times of war, I find this a rather bold statement that should not go unchallenged.

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    The case for the defense rests on two claims. First, the demonstration of American nuclear capabilities heralded in a period of stability, which quite likely saved Western Europe’s nations from being overrun and conquered by the Soviet Union and subjected to its rule. Second, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far from exceptional as war crimes go, if indeed the bombing of the two cities was a war crime at all.

    Balance of Terror

    In my younger years, in a very different world, I served for a couple of years in the German air force. I never flew a plane. I spent most of my time on duty in a tower close to the border to what at the time was the Czechoslovakian Socialist Republic (CSSR), a member of the Warsaw Pact and a satellite of the Soviet Union. We did electronic surveyance of the CSSR airspace, following Czech and Slovakian fighter planes as they performed their exercises as best as they could (more often than not they couldn’t, lacking basic motivation). It was a tedious job, boring as hell, particularly when the weather was bad and the pilots were grounded.

    Excitement, however, surged once a month, when we waited for the arrival of Russian long-range bombers. They took off from Minsk in what at the time was the capital of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic. Their mission: attack the towers along the West German border with the CSSR and the German Democratic Republic. We saw them coming, small dots on our radar screens. When they were in front of our tower, there was a small red blip, a fleeting flicker, and we knew if this had been der Ernstfall — an actual real-life attack — we would all be dead, gone up in smoke in a small nuclear mushroom.

    At the time, we did not think much of what had just happened. It was part of a game, along the lines of MAD magazine’s “Spy vs Spy” — inane, a waste of time, and somehow not very real. It was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the regime in Prague and the unraveling of the Soviet empire that we learned that the game had been much more serious and potentially deadly than what we suspected. There were plans on the other side of the border to overrun West Germany, conquer Western Europe and subject it to Soviet rule. Among the scenarios was a nuclear attack on Bonn, West Germany’s sleepy capital, designed to decapitate West Germany’s political elite.

    What prevented the Soviets and their toadies from carrying out their plans was not human compassion but a realist assessment of the distribution of military forces and the resolve of the Western allies to use them. At the time, this was called MAD — mutually assured destruction. It was grounded in the notion that any attack on the part of the Soviets would immediately trigger a full response of Western nuclear forces, resulting in the complete annihilation of the Soviet Union. The leadership in Moscow was fully aware of this logic. They did not like this “balance of terror,” but they ultimately submitted to its logic. Others, by the way, did not.

    Andrey Gromyko, the Soviet Union’s long-term foreign minister, claims in his memoirs that at one time, Chinese leader Mao Zedong tried to get the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, arguing that “his country could survive a nuclear war, even if it lost 300 million people, and finish off the capitalists with conventional weapons,” thus guaranteeing the triumph of communism. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets were not convinced and increasingly distanced themselves from Beijing.

    The logic of mutually assured destruction fundamentally altered the behavior of great powers, at least with respect to each other. It is to be hoped that the logic of the “balance of terror” is going to be enough to keep the US and China level-headed in the future, despite rapidly growing tensions between the two.

    The Breakdown of Civilization

    Unfortunately enough, war crimes are the norm rather than the exception when it comes to armed conflict. The claim that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ontologically different rests on a technological assumption. For some reason, nuclear weapons are fundamentally different from conventional ones. I am not sure what constitutes the basis of this assumption. Take the firebombings of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg during the Second World War, which cost the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary people — women, children, the elderly. Take the massacre of Babi Yar, in Ukraine, where in two days nearly 34,000 Jews were killed by German Einstazgruppen. Or, going back further in history, take the death toll during the Thirty Years War, which cost the lives of half of the population of what is today Germany.

    Massacres of the most atrocious form are hardly an invention of the 20th century, as Goya’s renditions of the barbarities visited on his fellow countrymen during the war against the French between 1808 and 1814, depicted in most horrifying detail. This was a war against an enemy that invaded the country in the name of the Enlightenment and revolutionary fervor. Or, as the Germans would say, Und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag ich dir den Schädel ein — If you don’t want to be my brother, I will smash your skull.

    For the victims of war crimes — more often than not civilians — it probably does not really matter how they were killed and why they were killed. It is quite understandable — human all too human, as Nietzsche would say — that horrendous deeds provoke retribution. The firebombing of German cities, the rape of German women caught be advancing Soviet armies — both are understandable given the atrocities committed by Germans during the war, in the name of Hitler and the Third Reich. Most Germans, or so most recent research suggests, were more than comfortable supporting a regime that guaranteed them a modicum of prosperity. Few asked where it came from.

    For that, Germans were punished in the most horrendous fashion. Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne and many other towns and cities went up in flames, leaving behind a landscape hardly different from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombing of Hamburg was named Operation Gomorrah, after the Biblical city destroyed by “sulfur and fire” for its sins, and, according to historian Keith Lowe, was on completely different level than the German raids on Coventry and London, “comparable with what happened in Nagasaki.” It was a just retribution for the crimes committed in their name, a retribution for the tens of millions of victims who paid with their lives for Hitler’s ambitions to conquer the world.

    Embed from Getty Images

    I would suggest that the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the retribution for the crimes committed by Japanese forces, in the name of racial superiority hardly different from Nazi ideology, against the peoples subjugated during the war. I have grave doubts that the victims of the Nanjing massacre or of the hundreds of young Asian “comfort women” pressed into sexual slavery by Japanese forces would consider the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime, but rather than an act of just retribution for Japanese atrocities committed during the war.

    Whether or not the United States was justified in meting out redistribution is a different question. After all, given America’s self-declared status as a leading Christian nation, it should perhaps have heeded the words of the Bible exhorting believers not to take revenge, “but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). But then, Americans have a tendency to pay lip service to the scripture while doing the opposite in real life.

    The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of these turning points in history that define a whole epoch. It demonstrated, once and for all, humanity’s ability to destroy itself. Had Hitler been in a position to get hold of “the bomb,” he surely would have used it to obliterate London, Moscow, perhaps even New York. The same goes for Stalin, only this time it would have been Berlin that would have gone up in a mushroom. If the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime, it was nothing more than another episode in a long history of atrocities committed in the course of wars, not more, not less — an episode which reaffirms once again the sad reality that the veneer of civilization is merely skin deep.

    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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    Shamima Begum: The Sensitive Case of IS Returnees

    Born in the UK to Bangladeshi parents, Shamima Begum left London as a 15-year-old in 2015. Using her British passport, she traveled to Turkey with two of her friends from school. From there, Begum and her friends crossed into Syria, where they met their Islamic State (IS) contacts. While in Syria, Begum married an IS fighter. On February 19 this year, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission had stripped Begum of her citizenship as she was deemed to be a national security threat. On July 16, however, UK authorities granted this now adult British woman, who had joined a terrorist group as a teenager four years earlier, the right to return to Britain to challenge the UK government’s removal of her citizenship.

    The commission ruled that the decision to revoke Begum’s British citizenship did not render her stateless as, by default, the United Kingdom also considered her a Bangladeshi citizen “by descent.” However, the Bangladeshi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it did not consider her as a citizen of that country. A statement released by Begum’s British lawyers argued that she indeed had never visited Bangladesh, nor had she ever applied for dual nationality.

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    In the meantime, the press has chastised Begum, who remains a detainee in a camp operated by ethnic Kurdish militias in northern Syria, for making controversial statements such and saying that seeing her first severed head did not faze her “at all” and suggesting that people should “have sympathy” toward her for everything she has been through.

    Why Women?

    England’s Court of Appeal, in turn, unanimously agreed that Begum should be granted the right to have a fair and effective appeal of the decision to strip her of her citizenship, but only if she is permitted to come back to Britain. Of course, that does not guarantee the reinstatement of her citizenship rights, just that she has a right to present her case in person. Regardless of the legal wrangling and the debate about the legality that her case has sparked, this example sheds some light on the issue of contextualizing female IS supporters and terrorists and the legality of stripping Western-born suspects of their European or North American citizenship.

    There has been some academic discussion of why women, especially young women, who were born, raised and educated in the West, migrate to IS-held territory and join terrorist groups, leaving behind family, friends and a way of life while abandoning liberal values and opportunities that countries such as the UK offer them. It is difficult to ascertain whether a particular female, such as Shamima Begum, was a victim of IS, an active supporter or both. The widely circulated stories of “jihadi brides” have projected an image of confused and naïve girls and women traveling to join the Islamic State. While certain dynamics lured a number of females to IS-held territories, many went of their own free will. Yet it is highly debatable to what extent a 15-year-old understands the realities of this extremist group.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Muslim women have migrated to IS-held areas for a multitude of reasons, including the romantic ideal of marrying a “lion” — a supposedly brave and noble warrior — looking for an adventure and contributing to the establishment of an Islamic “caliphate” regulated by strict enforcement of Sharia law. The sense that joining the Islamic State empowers people to live meaningful lives draws many of the migrant women. One study suggests that besides issues of belonging and identity — and a skewed interpretation of Islam — it is, in the case of young women like Begum, online social networks that appeared to be the primary venue and driving factor for radicalization. It turns out that the vast majority of foreign women who traveled to Syria and Iraq served IS primarily as one of several housewives or sex slaves.

    It is only by understanding the motivations and experiences of those who have gone to fight abroad that governments can prevent the recruitment of another generation of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. The enemies of the Islamic State have ostensibly defeated the group in the Middle East, yet unknown numbers of surviving IS fighters have found the means to relocate to Afghanistan. Permutations of IS and other extremist groups are also active in many African countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria and  Somalia, among others. Aside from Afghanistan, other places in South Asia are not immune.

    Displaced Burden

    The UK, US and some other countries have chosen to prevent the return of foreign fighters by revoking their citizenship. Although such actions may prevent the return of foreign fighters in the short term, they do not solve the problem and may also be illegal under both national and international laws. In several instances, this will simply displace the burden and force weakened states such as Syria and Iraq to deal with the consequences of radicalization. It may also instill further grievances and act as a trigger for radicalization into surviving Western-born radicals who may plot terrorist attacks against Western targets.

    In certain cases, citizenship revocation has led to concerns over statelessness. Rendering an individual stateless runs against Western legal principles and is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In several legal systems, there is a lack of sufficient evidence to prosecute female returnees because of their domestic roles in Syria and Iraq. Another challenge associated with prosecutions of foreign fighters lies with demonstrating intent. This applies both to the intent of the actions committed while in the war zone and the intent of travel for aspiring foreign fighters. There is also an argument that many such individuals, especially the juveniles, were victims of human trafficking.

    A more fruitful approach would be to allow a panel of experts to determine whether an individual returning to the home country is dangerous or disillusioned. The prime example of this approach is Denmark, which has already implemented assessment protocols that allow authorities to determine the individual circumstances for each returnee. Based on the results of such screenings, Danish police, together with social services, develop a plan of action for each returnee. Together, they decide whether a returnee is imprisoned, placed in a rehabilitation program or is assigned a combination of both approaches. It is extremely difficult to separate a victim from a perpetrator, and the boundaries can be particularly murky for foreign fighters.

    *[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

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    in US Politics

    Democratic, Republican parties both play favorites when allotting convention delegates to states

    As the Democratic and Republican parties pick their nominees for the presidency, they’ll do so under a delegate system that rewards states for their partisan loyalty – and ignores the common principle of everyone having an equal say.
    Consider these examples: Texas, home to 28.9 million people, will have 228 pledged delegates at the Democratic National Convention. New York, with two-thirds the number of people, at 19.5 million, will have more pledged delegates – 274. This inequality extends to less-populous states as well: Arizona’s 7.3 million residents will be represented by 67 pledged delegates, while Maryland’s 6 million people will have 96 pledged delegates.
    It’s similar with the Republican National Convention. Ohio, with a population of 11.7 million, will have 82 delegates, while Pennsylvania – home to 12.8 million people – has just 34. Oregon’s 4.2 million people have 28 Republican delegates, one fewer than either of the Dakotas, which each has well under a million residents.

    Only delegates can vote on party decisions at the conventions. This situation makes it harder for either party to attract independents, who make up about one-third of U.S. voters. If leaders in especially blue states get a disproportionately higher number of delegates than those in purple or red states, they will have more power to control which Democratic Party member is nominated, what the platform will be and what the rules will be for awarding states delegates the next time. It’s a similar story in the GOP for particularly red states, whose leaders will get more power over Republican decisions than people from swing states or states that tend to vote for the Democratic Party.
    Big differences in voting power
    I divided the pledged delegates assigned to each state by the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee by the states’ populations, and found some staggering disparities.
    For the Democratic Party, the District of Columbia received 28.34 delegates for each million residents, while Texas had 7.86 delegates per million people. A D.C. Democrat’s voice has 3.6 times the power of a Texas Democrat, which is the widest disparity in that party.
    But that’s nothing compared to the situation in the Republican Party. Wyoming received 50.1 delegates per million residents, compared to 2.66 delegates per million residents for Pennsylvania. The GOP’s widest disparity gives a Wyoming Republican a voice that is a whopping 18.9 times as powerful as a Pennsylvania Republican.
    That’s far more even than the Electoral College disparity, in which Wyoming gets four times more electoral votes per person than Florida.

    Why such a difference?
    The parties’ rule books for delegate selection are quite extensive. The RNC book is 40 pages long, while the DNC rules go on for 165 pages.
    It comes down to more than just population. Democrats have a formula for delegates that includes how the state voted in the last three presidential elections, the state’s number of Electoral College votes and when the state holds its primary.
    The Republican system gives each state three delegates per congressional district, 10 at-large delegates, and three more delegate spots – to be taken by party leaders from that state. The GOP also gives states “bonus” delegates if they voted for the Republican nominee in the previous presidential election, and if they have Republican governors and U.S. senators, and if there are Republican majorities in state legislatures and U.S. House of Representatives delegations.
    [You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend.]
    Both of these systems, in different ways, reward states where the party is strong, at the expense of party members in states that are more evenly divided or could be stronger.
    If your state votes solidly blue or bright red, you’ll have more power over that national party. Perhaps that’s why parties are becoming more extreme; the delegate allocations mean the Democratic Party is dominated by the most liberal states, while conservative states own the Republican Party. That leaves even less of a voice for states that are ideologically moderate, hurting party outreach efforts.
    Effects on the public
    Of course, the political parties can argue that they are private groups who can determine their own governance however they wish. But that power is not absolute.
    In the early 20th century, the Texas Democratic Party sought to exclude Blacks from voting in its primaries. A series of Supreme Court decisions over two decades culminated in a 1944 ruling declaring that state laws establishing party primaries made the Texas primary more than just a function of a private organization. Instead, those laws made the party’s primary a key component of the electoral process, and therefore the party could not exclude Blacks from participating.
    Beyond being unequal, these systems hurt parties’ ability to reach moderates. When New Jersey Democrats get more delegates than Georgians, despite having a smaller population, the party is less likely to select candidates who appeal beyond the die-hard faithful, who are more likely to be found among New Jersey’s delegates. It’s the same for Republicans, where the Alaska GOP has more than 10 times the delegates, proportionally speaking, as California’s GOP.
    A fairer future?
    There may be improvement on the horizon: Democrats are debating their delegate system for the 2024 primary. They are considering whether to continue limiting the power of superdelegates, determining what should happen to the delegates of candidates who drop out and encouraging diversity among party leaders.
    And GOP state conventions like the one this year in Texas are having a conflict over who will represent the party at the national convention and in the Electoral College. The question specifically is about whether rank-and-file party members will dominate, or whether the process will be opened up more to independents, libertarians and other nonmembers.
    So long as their most loyally partisan states have such disproportionate influence over candidate choices, party platforms and even the rules for delegate allocation, neither party will be at its best for reaching swing states or independent voters. More

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    Beirushima: What Lebanon Needs to Survive

    It will be a while until we know what or who triggered the explosion destroyed the Beirut port and, with it, half of the Lebanese capital, on August 4. What we know for sure is who the ultimate culprits are, and, unfortunately, none of them are included among those under house arrest or currently being interrogated: the corrupt political mafia that has controlled and exploited the lives of ordinary Lebanese for many years. Each one of those in power, directly or indirectly, has contributed to the blast that not only killed at least 200 people and wounded more than 6,000, but also destroyed Lebanon’s desperately needed economic lifeline, turning the country into a beggar state that must survive on external charity.

    The fact that the petition launched on the eve of President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Beirut calling for Lebanon to return to the French mandate gathered 50,000 signatures in the first 24 hours is representative of the hopelessness that has pervaded this small, but historically proud, creative and industrious nation. The fact that regional and international scavengers have come closer, circling the Lebanese wagon, seeking to complete their meal, is testimony to the dangers that lie ahead as Lebanon must try to protect the last remaining elements of its sovereignty against another assault.

    This assault will further compound the UN Security Council ruling that overruled Lebanon’s parliament in the case of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister assassinated in 2005 — a process that has lost both its respect and even its entertainment value.

    Last Line of Defense

    But that is a discussion for another day when the delayed ruling is announced. For now, in the midst of one of the most destructive episodes in the country’s recent history, the Lebanese people find themselves faced with not only the greatest challenge to their survival as a nation but also the loss of what they fought hard to defend in the face of foreign usurpation: their ability to continue as a creative nation of free thinkers and artists and, above all, as partakers of a free political process that is the envy of all those subjugated to dictatorships in the region.

    Just two days apart, 75 years ago, in Hiroshima, Japan, another proud and industrious people were smitten by unprecedented magnitude. While the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki were a deliberate act of premeditated evil, the jury is still out on Lebanon’s Beirushima. The jury is also still out on whether the Lebanese will follow the footsteps of their predecessors to rebuild their country into a vibrant and transparent economic regional player, but without surrendering the strength that first liberated most of their land and now continues to protect its territorial integrity — the last line of defense for what remains of Lebanon as a nation.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Beyond that imperative, nothing must be held sacred if reform is to be the true way forward. Losing that imperative is what many of the country’s regional enemies will seek to force upon Lebanon, exploiting the opportunities this very dark hour provides them. This will indeed prove to be a challenge that requires strong leadership that must protect Lebanon from foreign intervention.

    As shock turned into more street anger, Lebanon’s fragmented society has forgotten its religious and sectarian divides and united against a common internal enemy: the corrupt political system that has abused its democratic process and misruled Lebanon for far too long. This display of national unity is the silver lining that will hopefully ultimately save Lebanon.

    The entire political system must be overhauled if Lebanon is to survive as a nation. And the onus of leading the way lies with the people and not the leadership. Lebanese politicians have proven themselves to be one of the most corrupt political elite in the region, owning or being involved in everything ranging from garbage collection to power generation to banks that lend money to the government at exorbitant rates. The structure has created a ruling class with everything to lose and nothing to gain from economic reform. These are not the people trustworthy of leading the transformation the country so desperately needs.

    Pulling the Trigger

    On top of everything else, its ailing economy is loaded with more than 1.5 million refugees, the result of Israeli occupation, the Syrian Civil War and many regional conflicts that Lebanon is made to pay the price for. It is, therefore, not surprising that highly explosive ammonia nitrate abandoned at the port of Beirut for six years would be allowed to lie hidden and become a powder keg waiting for something or someone to trigger what Brian Castner, the lead weapons investigator for Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Team, called “the biggest explosion in an urban area in decades” that made 300,000 people homeless.

    In a country where economic indicators have lost their meaning, where law and order are decided by a judicial mafia, where the role of both political business leadership has lost its demarcations and where a foreign president is popularly welcomed where a native is banished, it is clearly a time to fold and start all over again. And only the street, now prompted and indeed strengthened by a massive explosion, can lead the way. Whether the blast that devastated the nation’s capital has also wiped away the corruption that brought Lebanon to its feet, only time will tell. For if it hasn’t, nothing ever will, and the noble, generous and hardworking Lebanese will become a nation that once was.

    This is, of course, assuming it was something, not someone, who pulled the trigger. Should it, in the end, become evident that the explosion was another act of premeditated evil, then all bets are off. Our worst fears will become true, and Lebanon, and the entire region, will go up in flames. Let us hope Donald Trump was once again wrong when he suggested the blast had been an attack, and let us hope that foreign election campaigns have not been the reason Beirut blew up, with the potential to take with it the rest of what’s remaining of our region.

    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 NY Times and Elon Musk Deal With Bolivia

    Maria Silvia Trigo and Anatoly Kurmanaev have penned an article for The New York Times that describes the dramatic protests in Bolivia against the interim government. As so often in NYT articles, the content reveals more about the newspaper itself than about the topic it analyzes.

    Treating the current instability in Bolivia with the perspective acquired 10 months after the ouster of Evo Morales, the former president, should have provided a perfect opportunity to review the complex drama surrounding that coup. Instead, the authors chose to describe the dramatic events unfolding today as a simple contest between two opposing groups. The article reports on the roadblocks organized by anti-government protesters that have paralyzed several cities in Bolivia. It cites two motives behind the protests: “to challenge the delay of general elections and rebuke the government’s poor response to the coronavirus pandemic.”

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    The authors have reduced an existential geopolitical drama to little more than a vigorous election campaign between two sides with contrary views of the best way of governing. They do take the trouble to mention, in a single sentence, the crucial spark that set off the crisis: “Mr. Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, was ousted from power in November after a fraught bid for a fourth term.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Fraught:

    A convenient adjective to describe a situation characterized by factors that cause anxiety and stress leading to suffering while creating the impression that the reasons for the anxiety are inexplicable, there being no identifiable party responsible for either the stress or the suffering, which also may simply be imaginary

    Contextual Note

    The New York Times has an excellent reason for avoiding to delve into the complex facts behind Morales’ “fraught bid for a fourth term.” The Times itself not only misreported those facts at the time of Morales’ ouster, but the journal actively contributed to justifying a right-wing, anti-indigenous coup led by a fanatically evangelical Christian faction that the US government and its media supported under manifestly false pretenses.

    The authors are skilled in The Times’ art of crafting reporting to get a political message across while hiding their own allegiances from view. In the sentence cited above — “Mr. Morales…. was ousted from power” — the authors deftly use the passive construction to exclude any reference to how the ousting took place, by whom and with what objective. It was just something that happened, possibly on its own. The ouster was successful and now belongs to history. The passive mood removes any consideration of accountability.

    In an earlier article published in June revealing the uncomfortable truth that the pretext for removing Morales was flawed, the authors also demonstrated their talent at carefully designing their wording to remove the question of agency: “Mr. Morales’s downfall paved the way to a staunchly right-wing caretaker government, led by Jeanine Añez, which has not yet fulfilled its mandate to oversee swift new elections.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    Calling it “Mr. Morales’s downfall” implies that, like Humpty Dumpty, the president teetered and fell off the wall. Nobody pushed him. The metaphor “paved the way” implies that the Anez government simply wandered innocently into a situation of Morales’ making and profited from it. Continuing to call it a “caretaker government” denies what most observers had noticed at least since January: that “the right-wing former senator entered the presidential palace claiming a much bigger mandate,” as Angus McNelly put it.

    Finally, adding “yet” to the observation that the Anez government has not “fulfilled its mandate” fails to recognize the increasingly evident fact that it has no intention to keep its promise. The very idea of a “mandate” also obscures the more egregious fact that nobody actually issued a mandate. Back in the thick of events in November 2019, Kurmanaev, quoting Javier Corrales of Amherst College, described the position of the Anez faction: “Without a popular mandate, they are pushing forward some of the most objectionable aspects of their agenda.”

    Then there’s the question of possible US involvement, which The New York Times famously dislikes mentioning whenever left-wing governments fall. In the June article, the authors offered a single hint at the US State Department’s likely involvement in the coup. “The United States State Department quickly reacted to the O.A.S. [Organization of American States] statement, accusing electoral officials of trying to ‘subvert Bolivia’s democracy,’” they wrote.

    This leaves the impression that the US was nothing more than a neutral observer of the events that played out and that its only interest in the affair is safeguarding democracy. The same article highlighted the flawed accusations of electoral fraud that led to Morales’ ouster — accusations put forward by the OAS, which is largely obedient to the US. Clearly, with hindsight, the US was quite content to see Bolivian democracy not only subverted but canceled.

    The article concludes with the now traditional “false balance” or “bothsidesism” characteristic of NYT journalism. Referring to the strategic implications around the current protests and their possible political consequences, the authors quote Filipe Carvalho, a Washington-based analyst. “Both sides are playing the pandemic for electoral gain, adding a new level of tensions,” he said. This leads the journalists to the melancholy conclusion: “Whoever wins will take control of a highly divided country in deep recession and few options to restart economic growth.”

    Historical Note

    Anatoly Kurmanaev’s article on December 5, 2019, began with this sentence: “An independent international audit of Bolivia’s disputed election concluded that former President Evo Morales’s officials resorted to lies, manipulation and forgery to ensure his victory.”

    On June 7 of this year, Kurmanaev and Maria Silvia Trigo provided an update with this explanation: “A close look at Bolivian election data suggests an initial analysis by the O.A.S. that raised questions of vote-rigging — and helped force out a president — was flawed.” Instead of pointing to politically interested deceit, they attributed everything to the fault of undue haste. Quoting Calla Hummel, a Bolivia observer at the University of Miami, they write, “The issue with the O.A.S. report is that they did it very quickly.”

    As The Times reporters consistently skirted around the facts concerning Morales’ ouster, two other reporters, Vijay Prashad and Alejandro Bejarano, writing for Salon, have provided a more complete historical background. They have updated the history with a revealing story about how American interests have been involved in the Bolivian economy well before the dramatic events of 2019.

    The authors call Morales’ ouster “the lithium coup.” In July, Elon Musk stepped up to the public witness box with a tweet that inadvertently provided evidence of the economic and political intrigue underlying Bolivia’s drama. The billionaire entrepreneur began by advising the American people against the evils of too much generosity. “Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people imo,” Musk opined on Twitter. This provoked the following response from a user called Armani: “You know what wasnt in the best interest of people? the U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there.”

    Instead of denying any connection with the coup, Musk defiantly tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it.” Apparently realizing that this might be interpreted as a confession of collusion, he later deleted the tweet.

    This battle of tweets could be dismissed as just another example of Musk’s Trump-like irresponsible addiction to Twitter. It doesn’t prove Tesla’s CEO had any hand in or knowledge of the events that led to the coup in Bolivia, though the lithium factor and Musk’s initiatives in South America would seem to point in that direction.

    But Musk’s formulation of his message is revealing. He claims “we” have the right to foment coups. He begins by claiming to speak in the name of the “interests of the [American] people.” But the “we” he identifies with is not the people. It’s US imperial power, a force that for more than a century has intervened against “whoever we want” as it has both successfully and unsuccessfully sought to overthrow any government guilty of showing a preference for the interest of its people to the detriment of American businesses.

    On the day following Musk’s original tweet advising against a stimulus package following the economic downturn in the US, The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd published an interview with him in which she affirmed that “he also really does want to save the world and make products that bring joy.” In the end, that’s how The Times has treated all the coups of the past. The rest of the world simply has to learn to “deal with it.”

    *[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. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 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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    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