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      Cautiously Optimistic: The Biden Administration’s Options in Yemen

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      As Joe Biden is declared US president-elect, expectations vary from pessimism on the left and among experts in the Middle East to optimism over lessons learned. In the US, the left has already sent the first warnings on expectations, focused on foreign policy and singling out Washington’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen. The coalition that brought victory for the Democratic Party included major progressive members of Congress, a segment that opposes US support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, among other priorities.

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      Yemeni-Americans have also raised expectations for the Biden administration, as part of the coalition that won the crucial state of Michigan. Mounting pressure at home will undoubtedly drive a number of opportunities to advance efforts to de-escalate the conflict and restart peace talks in Yemen soon after Inauguration Day in January next year.   

      Unique Approach

      The current administration’s policy in the Middle East has exonerated Arab regimes both at home and in the region. As reality sinks in on a Biden presidency, concern grows among both President Donald Trump’s supporters and American progressives over the potential for a Biden pivot toward more intrusive Obama-era policies and limited access to weapons purchases. Biden would shift from the Trump administration’s policy to a reciprocal relationship maintained with Gulf monarchies based on access to weapons in exchange for mutually beneficial public gestures of cooperation while balancing tensions within the Gulf Cooperation Council. Observes highlight the pressure from some in Biden’s own camp demanding significant departure from Trump’s approach to relationships with the Arab regimes, in particular.

      Critics of the current administration underline the manner in which Trump’s hands-off approach and business interests served to prolong the war in Yemen and turned a blind eye to possible international humanitarian law violations. Focus remains on the personal relationship between Trump family members and Arab officials, marginalizing the work by US diplomats and defense officials. This approach will definitely not continue under a Biden administration, raising concern among Arab leaders over access to the president and control over their own institutions. While observers acknowledge these concerns, they highlight the persistent reliance on US cooperation amid growing economic and security vulnerabilities in the region. Iran remains a top priority for both sides following an end of UN sanctions.     

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      While Biden’s potentially unique approach — a more pragmatic agenda than that employed during President Barack Obama’s second term — will rattle relations with the Gulf monarchies, his pivot could lead to substantial progress on Yemen’s peace process. There are three main reasons a Biden presidency encourages such positive expectations.

      One, progressive members of Congress such as senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, Representative Ro Khanna and even the Republican Senator Mike Lee are expected to pressure the Biden administration on weapons sales and on criticism of Saudi Arabia. This group will undoubtedly be joined by the so-called Squad — Democratic House members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilham Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — all staunch critics of Gulf regimes.

      Second, Biden will most likely prioritize a return to talks with Iran to rescue the nuclear deal abandoned by President Trump. Saudi Arabia and Israel will again aim to influence the Biden administration to limit concessions made to Tehran. Third, a Biden administration would prioritize reengagement with the European Union and the NATO alliance, addressing, among many other issues, relations with Turkey and the situation in Iraq and Syria at a highly volatile time and amid a growing threat from Islamic State-inspired terrorist attacks in Western Europe. These issues cannot ignore the role of Iran in the region as the one-year anniversary of the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani approaches.       

      Under Pressure at Home

      Joe Biden’s victory signaled an astounding rejection of President Donald Trump, delivered by a wide-ranging coalition of Democrats, progressives and moderate Republicans. Among these are the likes of Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all holding significant leverage over the incoming administration. This pressure is not confined to domestic issues, with foreign policy also featuring high on priorities for Sanders and Warren during their own presidential bids.

      Relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, embroiled in the conflict with Qatar and the war in Yemen, will definitely face mounting challenges. Biden is not just seen as a repudiation of the Trump approach to the region, but also as an extension of the Obama legacy. When Biden served as President Obama’s vice president, he witnessed the change of the guard in Saudi Arabia from the late King Abdullah to King Salman bin Abd al-Aziz, and will find a much different Saudi Arabia, now nearly five years now under the de facto rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

      The crown prince now holds the defense portfolio, with his brother Khaled as his deputy, and in charge of the Yemen file. Both Mohammed bin Salman and Prince Khaled have visited the White House and maintained direct communications with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The personal relationships that granted Saudi Arabia reprieve following the murder of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two years ago and the mounting accusations of war crimes in Yemen will not exist in a Biden administration.

      It is important to keep in mind that the Powers Act is among the issues carrying over from the Trump era. The most recent fight in Congress aimed at limiting Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran, but we must recall that Senator Sanders was among a number of members of Congress who criticized President Obama and Vice President Biden for supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the start of the Yemen conflict in March 2015. President Biden would have two options in the emerging political environment: either negotiate a deal with progressives in the Democratic Party, pledging to not go soft on Saudi Arabia and halt weapons sales or face an embarrassing scenario where members of his own party, joined by Republicans looking to obstruct his administration as much as possible, move to limit his powers and publicly undermine his foreign policy options.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As opposed to Trump’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which emboldened their roles in Libya and Yemen, a Biden presidency under pressure from the Democratic left would undercut leverage of Gulf monarchies vis-à-vis actors on the ground in Yemen, for example. In response to increasing unpredictability in recent months, Saudi Arabia and the internationally recognized government of Yemen resisted pressure to announce a new cabinet following the agreement in August between President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the pro-secessionist Southern Transitional Council (STC) until after the US presidential election. Saudi Arabia and President Hadi hedged their bets on a second Trump term, which would grant both leverage over the STC and advance a more favorable composition of the cabinet. It is still likely that a new cabinet is formed before the end of 2020, as the STC knows its relationship with the UAE could also change under a US administration that is more engaged and looking to de-escalate the conflict upon taking office.

      Iran has not sat idly on the sidelines either and has perhaps positioned itself far better than its regional rivals. The arrival of a new ambassador to Sanaa in mid-October signaled a major escalation in diplomatic relations. Hassan Eyrlou, reportedly “an IRGC member tied to Lebanese Hizballah,” was smuggled into Sanaa from Oman during the latest prisoner exchange between Houthis and the government of Yemen that included two US nationals. This move aggravated relations between Saudi Arabia and the office of the UN special envoy to Yemen as local officials accused the current UN envoy, Martin Griffiths, of complicity in the violation of the embargo. Iran has grown bolder in publicly acknowledging its relations with Houthis since the signing of a defense cooperation agreement in December 2019 in Tehran.

      No Straight Path

      Iran has positioned itself within the Arabian Peninsula in a manner in which it can exploit substantial leverage on a Biden pivot away from the current US approach in the region. The regime in Tehran, more so than Houthis in Sanaa, has managed to prove to the international community that it can operate around Saudi and Emirati defense posture and expand its political and military spheres to advance its interests. Whether it is a military confrontation under Trump or a diplomatic test under Biden, Iran has secured enough leverage to negotiate under favorable terms.

      Yemeni observers agree that Ambassador Eyrlou was not the only one smuggled from Muscat. The tactic used is fairly well known, as a number of Iranian officials and Houthi elements travel to and from Sanaa by air, bypassing the long road from Sanaa to Mareb, Sayyun and the Mahra-Oman border. While no one is yet suggesting flights serve to smuggle weapons, drones or missiles, observers don’t doubt smaller components such as batteries, computer chips or radar components are transported to Sanaa. The trend in both smuggling operations and attacks by Houthis on Saudi territory has involved the use of smaller drones, along with deployment of short-range ballistic missiles and weaponized over-the-counter drones on positions held by the Yemeni army and coalition troops along various battle fronts.

      This complicates the circumstances for the Biden administration as well as the position held by progressives in Congress aiming to halt weapon sales to Gulf allies. The military threat posed by Iran, and now by the Houthis, has long been used by Israel and Saudi Arabia to justify their role in the war in Yemen and in the procurement of weapons systems, both defensive and offensive. In order to rally support from Gulf allies for reengagement with the Iran nuclear deal, Joe Biden will have to reassure allies of pressure on Iran to de-escalate and rein in the Houthis in Sanaa. Both demands will come at a very high price.

      Tehran will insist on the UN expanding the table and include the Iranian regime as a power broker in peace negotiations under Griffiths. The aim is not just to act as a counterweight in negotiations but to ensure a role in organizing a final solution to the conflict in Yemen that advances its interests and maintains Houthis within its sphere of influence. This is problematic for Mohammed bin Salman, who aims to recreate Saudi influence in Yemen as his uncles did since the end of the revolution in North Yemen in 1967.

      It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia provided monthly stipends to Yemeni officials, including members of the Al Houthi family, for decades until the start of the Youth Uprising in 2011. For instance, Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, a member of Yemen’s parliament, helped the Saleh regime fight secessionists in 1994 and was involved in the settlement of the Saudi-Yemeni border agreement of 2000, all while receiving financial assistance from Saudi Arabia.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On the other hand, while Houthis greatly benefit from the international recognition granted by Iran, they don’t necessarily see eye to eye on Iran’s role beyond providing military assistance. Houthis continue to insist on their sovereignty and reject claims by Saudi Arabia and other rivals that they are Tehran’s puppets, while a number of Iranian officials have publicly announced that “Sana’a is the fourth Arab capital in [their] hands.” In order for the Houthis to accept any deal on a ceasefire, they will insist on direct talks with Saudi Arabia prior to the start of any comprehensive peace talks with President Hadi and the STC. This is not only a problem for Iran but mainly a non-starter for President Hadi and his government. Both Iran and Hadi fear a secret deal between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis will undermine their long-term interests in Yemen, and Hadi particularly fears being removed as president as part of the agreement.

      It would be difficult to convince Iran to abandon Sanaa as part of the process to reengage with the nuclear deal, but it is not impossible. In partnership with European allies who hold deep economic interests in advancing relations with Iran, the Biden administration could ideally negotiate an Iranian exit from Sanaa, knowing the regime will maintain a low-level presence. Unilateral sanctions against Iranian entities remain an option for the US, and, under a more pragmatic Biden administration, European allies would be less reluctant to join in order to exert further pressure on Iran to comply. Joe Biden would hold on to Trump-era sanctions as a carrot, which would also serve to assure both Israel and Saudi Arabia that he is not willing to let Iran off the hook easily.

      Other Options

      The war in Yemen is now near its seventh year, and the Houthis continue to hold the upper hand on the ground. Yet even with gains against the coalition and Yemen’s National Army, Houthis also recognize there is no final solution through military victory. Houthis are suffering economically and know the limited support they receive can always be bargained away for greater interests. The economics of the war have also had a great impact on the UAE, forcing it to withdraw its troops from southern Yemen and the west coast in 2019 primarily as result of budget constraints, which have also affected relations with the STC and its affiliated security forces. Saudi Arabia has also felt the pinch from the financial support for President Hadi’s government, financing the war against the Houthis and weapons purchases from the US to strengthen its defense throughout the kingdom, all at a time of economic uncertainty.

      There is no doubt the Biden administration will be pressured to end support for the war on Yemen on day one. Its options are limited and come at high political risk at home and in the region. European allies, who have proven limited in their influence since the signing of the Stockholm plan in December 2018, also want to see progress in the peace process. Ultimately, there is no doubt that if any of these efforts are to succeed, Yemenis must bear the bulk of the responsibility to secure progress and deter potential spoilers along the way. There is no way Joe Biden can secure progress through diplomacy alone if the parties on the ground do more to protect their individual interests than advancing peace and relief to millions of impoverished Yemenis facing famine and outbreaks of infectious disease throughout the country.

      While a number of Yemeni actors have reached out to Russia, it is unlikely that President Vladimir Putin is willing to play a major role in the conflict. Russia is expected to continue playing a role at the UN Security Council, where the UK is the penholder on Yemen, primarily blocking the expansion of mandates or a new round of sanctions on individuals. On the UN track, Martin Griffiths is the third UN envoy to Yemen and is on his third year in the post, and he’s come under increasing criticism by all parties, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

      Under such conditions, a Biden administration could see an opportunity to reintroduce a plan drafted by former Secretary of State John Kerry in 2016 that could marginalize the UN in the process. Griffiths is close to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and both would fight to maintain the UN as the host of any peace talks, but it is unlikely the US would expend much political capital to hand over the process to the UN. It is difficult to predict if the UN can maintain its high-profile role in Yemen, or if it is time to introduce a new neutral broker who can better balance relations between actors to restart comprehensive dialogue toward a peace agreement.

      *[This article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Diwan.]

      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 Asia, a New Kid on the Trade Bloc

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      History undergoes serious change thanks in particular to slow events that fly below the media’s radar. Focusing on dramatic, immediate events, the media tends to neglect the major shifts that unfold over time. Paradoxically, slowly developing events that often go unreported tell the true story of history. Most often, the exciting, explosive events that dominate the news merely serve to accelerate longer-term trends.

      There is a simple scientific reason for this. Systems react immediately to dramatic events that occur quickly and unexpectedly. They typically mobilize their defenses to improvise a rapid reply. Rather than signaling change, such actions serve to protect and reinforce the status quo.

      The 9/11 attacks, clearly the most dramatic event of the past two decades, provoked a massive response from the US government. The effort to oppose the emergence of the new shape of terrorism appeared to mark a decisive shift in contemporary political history. The response consisted of a global military alliance intent on defending the prevailing “rule of law” and the elaboration of a powerful security state.

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      The effort piloted by George W. Bush and Tony Blair ended up simply reinforcing the focus of Western nuclear powers on the idea that sophisticated military technology provided the key for governing the world. It confirmed and consolidated the long-term trend of building the entire Western economy and culture around the American military-industrial complex.

      Distracted by a relatively meaningless transfer of power in the US following Joe Biden’s election and other colorful events such as the comic melodrama of relations within British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chaotic Brexit team, today’s media have paid scant attention to one event of monumental importance that took place on Sunday. The event itself was unremarkable, but it is a powerful indicator of historical change. The signing on Sunday of the act that brought Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) into existence marked a crucial moment in a slowly evolving shift that began nearly a decade ago and will have a profound impact on history in the coming years.

      In its article on the event, Al Jazeera quotes one American expert, Jeffrey Wilson, who sees RCEP as “a much-needed platform for the Indo-Pacific’s post-COVID recovery.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Post-COVID recovery:

      The idea which some people consider to be phantasy that the global economy may some day return to normal once COVID-19 is eradicated.

      Contextual Note

      The New York Times notes that RCEP has been in the plans for eight years and describes it as “designed by Beijing partly as a counterweight to American influence in the region.” In other words, this is a chapter of a story that lives within the context of a massive and continual decades-long shift of momentum in the global economy. The center of gravity of the global economy has been silently but steadily migrating from the North Atlantic following World War II on a south-eastward course toward Asia.

      Back in 2015, Reuters market analyst John Kemp pointed to the West’s failure to sense this movement, stating that “Most western policymakers and journalists view the world economy through a framework that is 10-15 years out of date.” He further points out that “India’s economy has also started to become a major source of global growth, which will ensure the centre of gravity continues to move more deeply into Asia over the next 50 years.” Analysts who have even attempted to assess the speed of the shift appear to agree on a “rate of about 100 kilometres or more per year.” It may have accelerated since 2015, and even intensified as a consequence of the implicit isolationism of Trump’s “America First” philosophy.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Fearful of the threat to US hegemony posed by the RCEP, the Obama administration launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), designed to eclipse the RCEP and protect some of the key historical advantages that underpinned US economic hegemony. Once Trump decided to leave the TPP, the US could no longer take advantage of its provisions to protect industrial property rights or oblige other nations to respect unified labor standards.

      The US has literally been left behind in the race to define and enforce the rules that will govern commerce and economic development throughout the Asia zone over the next 50 years. Most commentators suspect that once president-elect Joe Biden is in office, he will not in the short term make an effort to catch up. In the midst of a complex health and economic crisis, there are other priorities. But Jeffrey Wilson’s comment about “Indo-Pacific’s post-COVID recovery” reveals that Asia, under China’s leadership, today has a clear head start and can set the tone for what a post-coronavirus world will look like. This is a question every nation is grappling with. There are no obvious answers. But there can be little doubt that the world that emerges once COVID-19 is completely under control or eradicated will be very different from what preceded the pandemic.

      The Times signals the fact that “to some trade experts, the signing of the R.C.E.P. shows that the rest of the world will not wait around for the United States.” Many commentators have noted that four years of Donald Trump have convinced European leaders that depending on the ideological and geopolitical framework provided by the US is too risky an engagement. It may even transpire that, despite the intensified military cooperation between India and the US directed against the Chinese threat, as reported in this column by Vikram Sood, Atul Singh and Manu Sharma, India could eventually be attracted to the RCEP. Security is one thing. A humming economy is another.

      India could, for example, be positioned to profit from a key feature of RCEP. The Times quotes Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, who notes that “R.C.E.P. gives foreign companies enhanced flexibility in navigating between the two giants. Lower tariffs within the region increase the value of operating within the Asian region, while the uniform rules of origin make it easier to pull production away from the Chinese mainland while retaining that access.” Narendra Modi’s India has not yet managed to fulfill its promises to expand manufacturing in India. Could RCEP be the key to providing conditions favorable to that evolution?

      In short, the world is faced with a formidable number of variables that combine in a variety of different ways. As Brexit demonstrated, today’s political alignments can be nullified in a trice as the perception of economic opportunities and the pressure of uncontrollable crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic lead to new geopolitical configurations. Those trends are far more powerful than bilateral agreements.

      Historical Note

      Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will only begin to produce practical effects two or three years down the line. But it already opens channels of communication and coordination between fifteen countries. This will not only confirm the shift of the global economy’s center of gravity but also accelerate the shift toward a new power relationship between the US and China. As the recent presidential campaign highlighted, Americans tend to see this as a binary relationship. Yet all the indicators point toward a multipolar reordering.

      The Times article reminds readers of the historical situation when RCEP was first proposed: “The prospect of China’s forging closer economic ties with its neighbors has prompted concern in Washington. President Barack Obama’s response was the T.P.P.” Trump’s action upon taking office of killing the TPP before it could be signed opened the door to the eventual 15 nation agreement, with the roles of the US and China inverted. Obama designed the TPP to allow China in through the back door. RCEP is designed to allow the US in through the back door.

      The world awaits the evolution and hoped-for denouement of a series of crises nested each within the other. However painful and disruptive, these crises have the merit of signaling the existence of a common interest for all of humanity in stark contrast with the traditional model of geopolitical reasoning based on national rivalries. It is in everyone’s interest to keep our eyes fixed on the slow but deep movements of history as well as the superficial ones that the media throw in our faces every day.

      *[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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      No Clear Vision to End Violence in Afghanistan

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      Afghanistan has been engulfed in bloodshed and confusion for decades. The deal between the United States and the Taliban signed on February 29 in Doha, Qatar, has added more tension to the conflict by creating competition among anti-government militants. Groups such as the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) compete with the Taliban for political success and influence by perpetrating more violence. At the same time, they look to each other’s success as a source of inspiration and cooperation.

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      On November 2, Afghanistan was shocked by an attack on Kabul University that killed 35 students and wounded 50; officially, the death toll stands at 22, with 27 wounded. It was the latest of the many attacks on the country’s educational institutions. On October 24, a suicide bomber targeted the Kawsar-e Danish education center in western Kabul, killing at least 43 and wounding a further 57. In August 2018, another suicide attack in western Kabul on the Mawud tutoring center, which, like Kawsar-e Danish, was located in a Shai-dominated area, killed at least 48 and wounded 60. The victims at both schools were under the age of 20, some of them were as young as 14.

      Who Killed the Students?

      Due to the highly complex environment, survival for the people of Afghanistan is just a matter of chance. Sajjad Nijati was wounded in the attack on Kabul University. He is also one of the survivors of the attack on the Mawud education center. He has lost three of his family members in the attack on Kawsar-e Danish.

      ISK claimed responsibility for all three attacks, while the Taliban denied any connection. However, the Taliban attack on the American University of Afghanistan in August 2016 killed 14 and wounded 35, again mostly students. The attacks on Kawsar-e Danish and Mawud were mainly against the Shia Hazaras, a historically persecuted group that has invested in education as a strategy to break the cycle of its precarious position inside Afghanistan. Shamsea Alizada, a survivor of the attack on Mawud, topped the country’s national university tables by achieving the highest score out of nearly 200,000 students this year. When the attack happened, she was 15 and could have lost her life like many of her friends.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The day after the university attack, students protested and carried slogans against the Islamic State and the Taliban that read “Don’t kill us.” All in all, 13 people have been detained for their failure to prevent the attack, including the security commander of Kabul University and the district chief of police. However, Vice President Ambrulah Saleh reversed the decision arguing that the problem is systematic and needs broader attention. It is still unclear whether those arrested have been released.

      The question remains unanswered as to how the three gunmen entered the university campus. Kabul University has three main gates that are blocked by police checkpoints. The terrorists entered from the north gate, which is usually overseen by a large number of police officers who check all visitors’ IDs. With no sign of an explosion at the gate, Saleh, hours after the attack, called it an “intelligence failure.”

      Research shows that Afghan universities have been exposed to extremism in recent years and have become fertile ground for recruitment for groups like ISK and the Taliban; in July 2019, Afghan security agencies arrested three ISK recruiters at Kabul University. On November 14, Vice President Saleh announced that security forces have arrested the mastermind behind the attack on Kabul University. According to Saleh, Adel Mohammad was recruited by the Haqqani Network, a branch of the Taliban based in Miramshah, Pakistan, and had gone missing three years ago after completing his third year at Kabul University’s faculty of sharia law.

      Proxy War, Terrorism, Confusion

      In their peace deal with the US, the Taliban agreed to stop bombing urban centers and cut ties with other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. However, according to the US special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, attacks by the Taliban have increased by 50% in the past three months, to at least 55 attacks per day around the country. Since the official inauguration of the intra-Afghan talks in Qatar on September 12, the has been no reduction in civilian casualties. The Taliban use military operations as a bargaining chip in the talks, which has increased concerns about the group establishing a totalitarian and discriminatory regime in the country if it comes to power as a result of the negotiations.

      The frequently reported links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda remain another concern. Last month, Afghan security forces killed a senior al-Qaeda leader in Ghazni province in areas controlled by the Taliban. Another al-Qaeda member was killed in a Taliban-influenced area in Farah province, in the west. Research also shows that there has been cooperation — as well as clashes — between the Taliban and ISK in the past.

      Many in Afghanistan view the Taliban as responsible for hosting and cooperating with various terrorist groups. The continued war by the Taliban has severely undermined Afghanistan’s political stability, economic development and security. This has weakened the government’s functionality and territorial control, opening the door for other militant groups such as ISK. Both ISK and the Taliban have similar ideological positions toward secular education, and the situation on the ground today makes it clear that the war has turned into a deliberate strategy of indiscriminate violence against education centers and youth in the country.

      There are three theories about recent urban attacks in Afghanistan. The first is that the Taliban organize the attacks but deny responsibility to benefit from the chaos and backlash against the government, which allows ISK to claim responsibility. Vice President Saleh claimed that the ISK claiming the attack on Kabul University was fake. Saleh pointed to a Taliban flag apparently found at the scene as evidence of Taliban involvement. According to the vice president, the weapons found at the scene do not match those in photos released by ISK. The Taliban, however, rejects these claims.

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      The second theory is that the Haqqani Network, a branch of the Taliban close to Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), is carrying out attacks in urban areas. Some experts argue there is a disagreement between the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network branches. Therefore, without Quetta Shura’s approval, the Haqqani Network attack on urban areas but under the ISK name; since the appearance of ISK, the Haqqani Network did not claim most of the bigger urban attacks, with ISK taking responsibility instead. According to this theory, the main actor behind terrorist activity in Afghanistan is the Haqqani Network rather than ISK. It has been argued that the Haqqani Network has strong links and levels of cooperation not just with the ISI, but also al-Qaeda and ISK. Those who believe in this theory argue that there is a close relationship between the Haqqani Network and ISK.

      The third theory is that the ISK organizes urban attacks independently, such as the one on Kabul University. According to this analysis, ISK today has more influence in urban areas. At the moment, however, this argument does not have many supporters among experts and Afghan security officials. From the Afghan government’s point of view, ISK is a platform for Pakistan’s clandestine activities, where ISK is an umbrella for many actors including the Haqqani Network and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) for attacking targets in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, believes that ISK is supported by the same forces in Pakistan that back the Haqqani Network.

      Death by a Thousand Cuts

      The conflict in Afghanistan doesn’t have a single dimension. It is a combination of proxy wars and terrorism. The proxy dimension of the war since the 1980s produced countless intended and unintended consequences such as state fragility, terrorism, sectarianism, war crimes, social fragmentation and radicalization. Kabul University has found itself at the center of this strife over the four decades of war. In late 1983, a bomb was placed under a dining room table at the university, killing many. Later on, Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who was leading the Afghan Bureau of ISI at the time, revealed in his memoir that the attack was part of Pakistan’s strategy of “death by thousand cuts.”

      This specter of history is fresh in Afghanistan’s collective memory. Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan enabled the group to intensify the conflict. The complicated links and cooperation between the Taliban, ISK and al-Qaeda make it difficult to believe that they did not join forces to target educational institutions and carry out assassinations. At the same time, contextualizing the war in Afghanistan by considering the long history of cooperation between militant groups and the intelligence services in the region make the proxy dynamic of the war more apparent.

      With mistakes made on all sides, especially by the Trump administration in Washington, created both inspiration and hope for many extremist groups in the region. Particularly, the US-Taliban deal turned the country into a playground for various extremist groups and their supporters trying to either outdo each other or build tactical collaboration to defeat the Afghan government. Even Pakistani extremist groups have called upon the Afghan government to surrender to the Taliban.

      These groups are trying to build leverage through violence and claiming the honor of resisting the US and its partners. They are fighting to create frustration and chaos in order to expand their operational reach and lethality, thereby creating transnational inspiration for the movement. Unless there is a policy change to effectively deal with this threat, there is no clear vision for ending all this violence.

      *[Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that the attack on Kawsar-e Danish killed 24 people. This piece was updated at 17:50 GMT.]

      *[The author is one of the investigators on the Carnegie Corporation of New York-funded project “Assessing the impact of external actors in the Syria and Afghan proxy wars” (Grant number: G-18-55949) at Deakin University, Australia.]

      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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      Why Does God Allow Miscarriage?

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      The Senate hearings on Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court did not sit well with American feminists. An ultra-conservative judge belonging to an ultra-conservative Catholic faith group vehemently opposed to abortion and anything gay was hardly a candidate one would expect feminists to endorse. Interestingly enough, feminists zeroed in on one particular aspect defining the candidate, the fact that she is a mother — and a working one at that — to a relatively large family: five of her own, two adopted. This fact provoked a prominent feminist to tweet, “It’s a very weird thing to watch these old creeps congratulate a handmaid on her clown car vagina.”

      Do Romance Novels Offer an Outdated Model of Feminism?

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      For those unfamiliar with the terms, the Urban Dictionary defines “clown car sex” as “the act of trying to place as many penises as possible into a single vagina like many clowns try to fit into one car somehow.” The term “handmaid” as used in the tweet presumably comes from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” where women of all statuses living under a totalitarian theocratic state (in the US Northeast and parts of the upper Midwest) “are stripped of their rights, forcing them to live out lives of servitude in a patriarchal society” ” and made “(through servitude and rape) to carry children for the powerful.”

      The link to Barrett is her presumed membership in a Catholic faith group that, according to ex-members, dominates the lives of its members and preaches the subjugation of women.

      Fertility Shaming

      The term, of course, is hardly new. As early as 2012, the conservative Trump convert, Mollie Hemingway, wrote a piece entitled “Fertility Shaming: ‘It’s A Vagina, Not A Clown Car.’” In it, the author noted that she lived in two fundamentally different worlds. Here, a culture where “large families are considered awesome. You’re not looked down on for being childless or having a smaller family — indeed, my folks only had three children — but large families are considered cool.” There (Washington, DC), a different environment where “large families are mocked or derided. You only have 11 children if you’re retarded.” The latter she referred to as “fertility shaming.”

      Hemingway points out the hypocrisy of those who promoted reproductive rights and, one might add, a woman’s right to choose, but only as long as it means “avoiding our fertility, and doing whatever it takes to not have kids (or more than one or two of them).” Ironically enough, her reference in the text is to Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas mother of “19 Kids and Counting,” who supposedly said “It’s a vagina, not a clown car.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Duggar, unlike Barrett, is not a Catholic. But both women obviously believe artificial (as opposed to natural) birth control methods are fundamentally frowned upon by God. I am not sure where they got that from the Bible, but then I’m not a theologian versed in the intricacies of Bible exegesis. In fact, I started my academic career at a Catholic university where I had a colleague with 11 children, in addition to a number of them who never made it. Initially, even the Duggars were not against birth control — until they saw the light and “vowed to leave how many kids they’d have in God’s hands.” Apparently, the Duggars’ conversion moment was triggered by a miscarriage following the birth of their first son. Duggar blamed herself for the miscarriage thinking that her use of the pill had caused the problem. It somehow never occurred to her that miscarriages are quite common, as are stillbirths. Her miscarriage was not an act of divine punishment but an act of nature, random and unpredictable.

      US statistics suggest that between 10% and 15% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage during the early months of gestation, while one in 160 birth are stillbirths. Research shows that “Miscarriage is the most common complication of pregnancy with 1 in 4 women experiencing at least 1 miscarriage during their reproductive lifetime.” A Swiss website claims that half of all fertilized egg cells end in a spontaneous abortion. Most “natural” abortions occur during the first three months of pregnancy. In a number of cases, women report several miscarriages. And as the age when a woman can become pregnant increases, the prevalence of miscarriage increases too. In fact, after the age of 40, the likelihood that pregnancy ends in miscarriage increases by 50% compared to a woman in her early 20s.

      A recent article in The New York Times recounts the story of a woman desperately trying to have a baby. In the process, she experiences three miscarriages within a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, studies show that the likelihood of a miscarriage after three previous miscarriages increases by 50%.

      What these stories imply is that miscarriages are a fact of life, a “natural” occurrence. They are one of these things that just happen, for no apparent reason. It’s the bad luck of the draw, similar to the fact that some people (such as Germany’s ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) smoke all of their lives and live prosperously well into their late 80s, while others never touch a cigarette and yet die young of lung cancer. For those who believe that life has no particular meaning, that you get what you get, this is perfectly understandable, perhaps even acceptable.

      It Is What It Is

      For those, however, such as Europe’s dwindling number of true Catholics, and particularly American self-proclaimed Christians, it poses a fundamental problem. America’s “true believers” hold that life starts at conception. They also believe that its termination represents a crime, equivalent to murder in some circles. Unlike abortion, however, miscarriages cannot be blamed on human agency — unlike, for instance, global warming.

      This leaves only one alternative. The termination of human life via miscarriage must be the result of God’s will, similar to the way American Christians explain to themselves the rapid warming of the planet, the eradication of much of the planet’s ecosystem and the potential destruction of humanity. It is all part of God’s plan for humanity. It is, as one of the great sages of our time has observed, what it is.

      To be sure, this is a terrible simplification. And clearly not every American Christian subscribes to this logic. Far from it. At the same time, however, surveys suggest that many do; they certainly act as if they did. The reality is, there is nothing that would suggest that there is any necessity for this planet to survive as a home for intelligent beings. By now we know that over millions of years, this planet was populated by scores of creatures, ferocious and majestic, only to be wiped out by cataclysmic events. Their remnants can be found in museums all over the world, reminders of the fragility of life on Earth.

      The fact that more than 10% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage poses a fundamental challenge to the notion, so dear to Christians, that the termination of a pregnancy represents an abomination in the eyes of God, that life starts at conception and that there is a fundamental “right to life.” God obviously disagrees, otherwise he would not allow for the “natural” termination of the life of millions of fetuses every year. For believers in a merciful God, be they Christians or Muslims, this must be nothing short of frightening. It suggests that God might not be as merciful as they believe or, worse, that God could care less about the fate of humanity.

      Embed from Getty Images

      For non-believers, it is one more piece of confirmation that the existence of God is a myth, that human life is the result of a chain of processes based on trial and error, and that humanity might be nothing but the accidental, and highly destructive, byproduct of natural selection and evolution. We don’t know. For believers, it is all part of God’s plan, like earthquakes, pandemics and the extermination of whole nations.

      Fatally enough, this kind of thinking has failed to imbue us with humility and prudence. Today’s ruling class, from Trump to Johnson, from Bolsonaro to Putin, acts as if the destruction of the natural environment, the extinction of much of the planet’s species and rising average temperatures are of no consequence. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is credited with having noted that one day, the living might envy the dead. Khrushchev is said to have made the remark with regard to the threat of nuclear war.

      Today, other threats are much more urgent than nuclear war. Pandemics, global warming, the extinction of a large part of this planet’s flora and fauna are realities that suggest that human life in the decades to come will be confronted with the quite real prospect of extinction, be it because of intolerable climate conditions, the exhaustion of the planet’s freshwater resources or because of pandemics, similar to the plague in the Middle Ages, that wipe out large parts of humanity. Under the circumstances, the living might very well wish they had been among that 10% to 15% whose potential existence ended in miscarriage.

      Bigger Than Nuclear War

      For the likes of Barrett, Hemingway, Duggar and Simcha Fisher, a Catholic freelance writer and blogger with 10 children, these ideas are most likely heretical, detestable and pernicious to the max, given they prevent women from fulfilling their divinely-mandated destiny of motherhood. They tend to ignore the fact that their pursuit of a grand family is only possible because the vast majority of Americans don’t indulge in it. If everybody did it, the consequences would be disastrous.

      Take the case of a small country like Switzerland, which has a population of just over 8.6 million people. A large proportion of the country’s territory is covered by high mountains and several large lakes, areas that are largely uninhabitable. In 2016, there were roughly 3.8 million private households in the country. If each one of them had produced 10 children, within a few years, Switzerland’s population would increase by more than 30 million — roughly half that of France. Even the most pro-natalist representatives of the Swiss far right would consider this a nightmare scenario. And this despite the fact that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, with excellent health and social services.

      The consequences of unbridled fertility can daily be seen in the news: the treks of desperate refugees from largely Catholic Central American countries such as Honduras and El Salvador, seeking to make their way on foot to the southern border of the United States. Between 1960 and 2010, the population of Honduras more than quadrupled, reaching more than 8.5 million. And this in a country with rudimentary health care and no social services to speak of. The same is largely true for El Salvador.

      To be sure, over the past two decades, population growth in the two countries has dramatically declined, now approaching European levels. At the same time, the influence of the Catholic Church has considerably waned in the region, compensated by a dramatic upsurge in the number of evangelicals, which might to a certain extent explain the collapse in fertility rates. But by now, the damage is done, reflected, in part, by the steady stream of refugees from the region.

      President Donald Trump’s response was to freeze aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, thus further aggravating the situation in these countries. Earlier on, his administration, as Summer Brennan writes in Sierra, had already “stopped contributing to the United Nations Population Fund, the largest global supplier of contraceptives and reproductive services.”

      At the same time, the US named Valerie Huber to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. “Huber,” Brennan points out, is “a longtime advocate of abstinence until marriage, is a proponent of “natural” family planning — in other words, the rhythm method.” Now, if they could only stop God from allowing miscarriages and stillbirths, and prevent Catholic priests from sexually assaulting young boys, Donald Trump could find his place in the history books as the president who restored religion to its rightful place in the center of American life.  

      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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      Facial Recognition and the Convenience of Injustice

      by

      Some people are concerned that the latest generation of powerful technology tools now being developed and deployed may undermine important features of civilized societies and human life itself. Notably, Elon Musk is so worried about the danger of artificial intelligence (AI) that he invested in accelerating its development.

      Musk has voiced his concern while simultaneously expressing the hope that if good, stable and responsible people such as Elon himself develop AI before the evil people out there get their hands on it, his company SpaceX will succeed in moving the human race to Mars before AI’s quest to enslave humanity is complete. Fearing people may not make it to Mars in time, Musk launched Neuralink, a company that promises to turn people into cyborgs. Its technology, implanted in people’s brains, will presumably put a transformed race on the same level as AI and therefore allow it to resist AI’s conquistadors.

      Although this story of the race to the future by opposing forces of good and evil may sound like the plot of a sci-fi comic book, Musk has on various occasions said things that actually do resemble that scenario. In the meantime, AI is being put to use in numerous domains, theoretically with the idea of solving specific problems but, more realistically, according to the time-honored laws of consumer society as a response to the perennial pursuit of convenience.

      In the quest for convenience, one of the tasks people have assigned to AI is facial recognition. Apparently, it has now become very good at using the image of a face to identify individuals. It may even perform better than Lady Gaga in the knotty problem of distinguishing Isla Fisher from Amy Adams.

      Facial Recognition Technology and the Future of Policing

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      Law enforcement in the US has demonstrated its interest in the added productivity facial recognition promises. Like everyone else, the police like to know who they are talking to as well as who they should go out and arrest. The problem is that they sometimes arrest and incarcerate people that AI’s facial recognition has mistakenly identified. The accuracy of the existing tools diminishes radically with non-Caucasian faces. That means more wrongful arrests and indictments for black suspects.

      The New York Times makes a timid attempt to delve into this ethical issue in an article that bears the somewhat tendentious title, “A Case for Facial Recognition.” The article sums up the case in the following terms: “The balancing act that Detroit and other U.S. cities have struggled with is whether and how to use facial recognition technology that many law enforcement officials say is critical for ensuring public safety, but that tends to have few accuracy requirements and is prone to misuse.”

      Here is today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Critical (for):

      A deliberately imprecise term used to evaluate the importance of an act that exists on a sliding scale between absolutely essential and probably useful, making it a convenient way of creating the belief that something is more important than it really is.

      Contextual Note

      The adjective “critical” derives from the Latin word “criticus” and relates to the idea of “crisis.” It came into the English language in the mid-16th century with the meaning “relating to the crisis of a disease.” When The Times article tells us that “many law enforcement officers” say facial recognition “is critical for ensuring public safety,” we need to realize that those officers are not referring to a crisis but to their own convenience. Facial recognition can, of course, produce a crisis when it misidentifies a suspect. But the crisis is for the suspect, not for the police.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The expression “critical for” has come to signify “really important in my view,” a very subjective appreciation in contrast to the far more factual sounding “crucial,” which comes from the idea of the “crux” or the core of a problem. The article underlines this question of subjectivity when it reports that a black officer it quotes “still believed that, with oversight, law enforcement would be better off using facial recognition software than not.” “Better off” is not quite the same thing as “critical.”

      But let’s take a closer look at the claim that “law enforcement would be better off.” How do we parse the subject, “law enforcement,” in this sentence? The term “law enforcement” can be an abstract noun meaning the official function of monitoring behavior in a community to ensure optimal compliance with laws. This appears in sentences such as “one of government’s responsibilities is to provide the community with the means of law enforcement.”

      But law enforcement can also refer to the police themselves, the officials who are empowered to apprehend and deliver to the judicial system those who are suspected of infringing the laws. Which one is “better off” thanks to facial recognition? In the first case, abstract law enforcement — we are speaking of the safety of the community. “Better off” would then mean more optimally and more fairly conducted. In the second it is the men and women doing the job. For them “better off” basically means improved convenience.

      So which one is the article’s author, Shira Ovide, referring to? Clearly, the following explanation indicates that for her, law enforcement refers to the police and not to the needs of the community. “That’s the position of facial recognition proponents: That the technology’s success in helping to solve cases makes up for its flaws, and that appropriate guardrails can make a difference.” It’s all about the job of “helping to solve cases.” Ovide is a technology specialist at The Times, which might explain her focus on convenience rather than the ethics of policing.

      What Ovide says is superficially true, but the same logic could be applied to slaveholding. If we admit the argument that slavery helped to boost agricultural production — which of course it did — we could point out that the boost it provides makes up for its flaws. That was how slaveholders reasoned. The crucial difference — rather than critical — lies in examining the nature and the impact of those flaws. After all, slaveowners also thought about “appropriate guardrails.” They simply called them “slave patrols.”

      This is where, for Ovide, bureaucracy comes to the rescue of the logic of convenience and reveals the underlying logic of modern law enforcement: “The new guidelines limited the Police Department’s use of facial recognition software to more serious crimes, required multiple approvals to use the software and mandated reports to a civilian oversight board on how often facial recognition software was used.”

      The article ends on a slightly ambiguous note but fails to go into any depth on the moral question and its civic consequences. It seems to endorse the idea that with the right procedures, the gain in efficiency is worth the random damage it will produce.

      Historical Note

      The above reference to slave patrols may sound exaggerated, but it is not trivial. As Chelsea Hansen at the Law Enforcement Museum points out, slave patrols were “an early form of American policing.” The strategies and organizational principles that grew out of slave patrols influenced the evolution of policing in the United States. Race has always been a major, but usually unacknowledged feature of American law enforcement culture.

      The late anthropologist David Graeber put it brutally when he noted that the criminal justice system in the US “perceives a large part of that city’s population not as citizens to be protected, but as potential targets for what can only be described as a shake-down operation designed to wring money out of the poorest and most vulnerable by any means they could.” Mass incarceration has, among other things, enabled a modern form of slave labor.

      In other words, there is a vast historical and cultural problem the US needs to solve. That is precisely what’s behind the idea formulated as “defund the police.” The slogan itself is misleading. What it really means is “rethink the police.” But asking Americans to rethink any problem appears to be beyond their capacity. It’s always easier just to point to one simple practical task, like defunding.

      The debate about face recognition in policing should not focus on the tasks of police officers and the convenience it affords them but on the relationship between law enforcement and the community. But that would ultimately require weaning the consumer culture of its addiction to the idea of convenience.

      *[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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      Welcome Back, America?

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      America may well be divided about Donald Trump, but the rest of the world isn’t. The soon-to-be-former president has gotten high marks in the Philippines and Israel, a passing grade in a couple of African countries and India, and dismal reviews pretty much everywhere else. US allies in Europe and Asia are particularly relieved that Joe Biden will be taking the helm in January. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, summed up world sentiment with a pithy tweet: “Welcome back, America.”

      The international community is happy that the American people have taken down the world’s biggest bully. The heads of international bodies — from the World Health Organization to Human Rights Watch — are delighted that soon Trump won’t be undermining their missions. Perhaps the 2020 presidential election will inspire people elsewhere to dethrone their lesser bullies like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, even Vladimir Putin in Russia. Short of that, however, the removal of Trump from the international scene will restore a measure of decorum and predictability to global affairs.

      Joe Biden and America’s Second Reconstruction

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      With a slew of executive orders, Joe Biden is expected to press the reset button shortly after his January inauguration. The Washington Post reports: “He will rejoin the Paris climate accords, according to those close to his campaign and commitments he has made in recent months, and he will reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization. He will repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and he will reinstate the program allowing ‘dreamers,’ who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.”

      Just as Donald Trump was determined to delete the Obama administration’s legacy, Joe Biden will try to rewind the tape to the moment just before Trump took office. That’s all to the good. But the world that existed just before Trump began starting messing with it wasn’t so good: full of war, poverty and rising carbon emissions. Will Biden to do more than just the minimum to push the United States into engaging more positively with the international community?

      Dealing with Russia, China and North Korea

      The paradox of Trump’s foreign policy is that he often treated US adversaries better than US allies. Trump was constantly berating and belittling the leaders of European and Asian countries that had come to expect at least a modicum of diplomacy from Washington. The abrasive president berated NATO allies for not spending enough on their own defense, and he was constantly trying to pressure Japan and South Korea to pony up more money to cover the costs of US troops on their soil.

      Trump loved to insult what should have been his friends: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was “dishonest and weak,” British Prime Minister Theresa May was a “fool,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel was “stupid.” But Trump was positively glowing about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (“We fell in love”), Chinese President Xi Jinping (“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great”), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (“he might be bad, he might be good. But he’s a strong leader”). On the campaign trail in the fall, Trump reiterated: “One thing I have learnt, President Xi of China is 100 per cent, Putin of Russia, 100 per cent … Kim Jong-un of North Korea, 100 per cent. These people are sharp and they are smart.”

      Biden can be expected to reestablish the more routine praise of democrats and condemnation of autocrats. But will the reset go beyond rhetoric? During the campaign, for instance, Biden hit Trump hard on his China policy. The president, according to the Democratic candidate, wasn’t tough enough on China. Biden pledged to force Beijing to “play by the international rules” when it comes to trade and security. In addition, “under my watch America is going to stand up for the dissidents and defenders of human rights in China,” he has said.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The US-China relationship had begun its slide before Trump took office. The consensus, therefore, is that Biden’s election won’t reverse the trend. As Steven Lee Myers writes in The New York Times, “While many will welcome the expected change in tone from the strident, at times racist statements by Mr. Trump and other officials, few expect President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to quickly reverse the confrontational policies his predecessor has put in place.”

      Remember, however, that China-bashing has become a time-honored element of US presidential campaigns. Biden was not different. He saw an opening to criticize Trump and an opportunity to look tough on foreign policy, a perennial requirement for Democratic candidates. Once in office, however, presidents have generally adopted a more business-like approach to Beijing.

      My guess is that Biden will largely abandon the tariffs that Trump applied on Chinese goods because those were self-inflicted wounds that hurt American farmers and manufacturers. But he’ll continue to use sanctions against Chinese companies — on the grounds of intellectual property theft or security concerns — and against individuals associated with human rights abuses. Practically, that would mean shifting tensions to more targeted issues and allowing the bulk of US-China economic cooperation to proceed.

      More focused cooperation might be possible on environmental issues as well. In 2011, China and the United States established the Clean Energy Research Center to combine efforts to develop technology that can wean both countries of their dependency on fossil fuels. The funding runs out this year. Trump would not have renewed the project. Biden can do so and should even expand it. Of course, just talking would be a good start. The United States and China need to dial back tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the global economy. Biden will likely move quickly to lower the temperature so that he can focus on cleaning up some other foreign policy messes.

      The same applies to Russia. Despite some rather conventional hawkish language about Russia, Biden is clearly interested in reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US military policy. He is not only skeptical about the huge cost of modernizing the US arsenal but has shown some support for a no-first-use pledge, which would put him to the left of Obama. These positions should facilitate arms control negotiations with Russia, beginning with an extension of New START, even if the two sides remain far apart on issues like Ukraine, human rights and energy politics.

      The prospects for a resumption of negotiations with North Korea are perhaps not as rosy. Biden will probably order a strategic review of relations with Pyongyang, which will conclude after several months with various recommendations for cautious engagement. Those proposals, not terribly different from the ones that the Obama administration embraced in 2008, will not entice North Korea to give up its nuclear program. There might be negotiations, but they won’t be any more successful than the Trump administration’s efforts.

      The end result: the same “strategic patience” approach of the Obama years. But perhaps a more flexible Biden administration will allow South Korea to move forward with its own slow-motion engagement with the North.

      The Greater Middle East

      Trump tilted US policy toward the Israeli hard line. He was a great deal more accommodating of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, particularly around Yemen and human rights. And he substantially escalated tensions with Iran.

      Biden’s first and perhaps least controversial step will involve the nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated with Tehran. Biden has indicated that he favors rejoining the pact, and Iran would welcome such a move. To begin with, he’ll likely negotiate the removal of Trump-era sanctions in exchange for Iran reversing some of the nuclear moves it has made over the last three years.

      “One option for a Biden administration to jumpstart the process would be to revoke National Security Policy Memorandum 11, which formally ended U.S. participation in the JCPOA on May 8, 2018, on day one of his administration,” the National Iranian American Council recommends. “Sanctions-lifting could be accomplished by the same mix of statutory waivers, Executive order revocations, and U.S. sanctions list removals as performed by President Obama when implementing the initial U.S. commitments under the nuclear accord.” It can’t come too soon. Iran will hold its presidential election by June 2021, and the reformists need to demonstrate that their strategy of engagement with the United States is still effective. The reform camp did poorly in last spring’s parliament elections.

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      Another important first move would be for Biden to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. The cancellation of all military assistance, from intelligence-sharing to spare parts for planes, would seriously compromise the war effort, and it’s a move that even some Senate Republicans support. “He should publicly and privately tell the Saudis that he will do this on day one,” Erik Sperling, of Just Foreign Policy, told In These Times. ​“This will pressure them into negotiations and may end the war before he even enters the White House.”

      The Saudis, not thrilled with Biden’s victory, have been slow in sending their congratulations. In addition to his stance against the Yemen war, the next president will take a harder line on Saudi human rights violations, including the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. On the other hand, Biden might find a bit more common ground with Saudi Arabia in piecing together a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump put a heavy thumb on the scale to favor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Biden will seek to correct the balance. Writes Yossi Melman in the Middle East Eye:

      “It is very likely that once Biden enters the Oval Office, his foreign and national security team will renew contacts with the Palestinian Authority, reinstate the Palestinian embassy in Washington and re-open the US Treasury’s pipes to allow the smooth flow of financial aid to the Palestinians, which were blocked and closed by the outgoing administration.

      From sources close to the Biden campaign, Middle East Eye also learned that the CIA will once again cooperate with its Palestinian counterparts and engage in mutual security collaboration to tackle terror threats. But at the same time, PA President Mahmoud Abbas will be asked to tone down anti-Israeli rhetoric and to resume talks with Israel.“

      Biden favors a two-state solution, but it’s not clear whether this option still exists after Trump and Netanyahu teamed up to undermine the Palestinian negotiating position.

      Climate Crisis and Security

      Unlike the progressive wing of the Democratic Party — or major political parties in Europe and other countries — Joe Biden has not fully embraced the Green New Deal. Instead, he has put forward his “clean energy revolution,” which envisions a carbon-neutral United States by 2050 and would invest around $1.7 trillion into job creation in clean energy and infrastructure.

      Biden’s positions on the climate crisis are in marked contrast to Trump’s denialism. According to the president-elect’s website, he “will not only recommit the United States to the Paris Agreement on climate change – he will go much further than that. He will lead an effort to get every major country to ramp up the ambition of their domestic climate targets. He will make sure those commitments are transparent and enforceable, and stop countries from cheating by using America’s economic leverage and power of example. He will fully integrate climate change into our foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as our approach to trade.”

      This plan, if implemented, “would reduce US emissions in the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide or its equivalents,” reports The Guardian. “Calculations by the Climate Action Tracker show that this reduction would be enough to avoid a temperature rise of about 0.1C by 2100.”

      Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is certainly a major improvement over Trump. But those goals themselves are insufficient. The pledges of Paris would still result in an increase of more than 3 degrees Celsius, well above the 2-degree target. Moreover, those pledges were voluntary, and many countries are not even meeting those modest goals.

      Of course, Biden will face considerable resistance from the Republican Party for even his modified Green New Deal. That’s why he has to focus on the jobs and infrastructure components to force the Republicans to appear “anti-job” if they stand in the way of the “clean energy revolution.” To pay for his green transition, Biden plans to rescind the tax cuts for the wealthy and leverage private-sector funds. He hasn’t discussed reallocating funds from a sharply reduced military budget. Indeed, Biden hasn’t talked about reducing military spending at all, right he favors reducing American military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Joe Biden is rather unexceptional when it comes to his views on American exceptionalism. The Foreign Affairs article that outlined his foreign policy approach was titled “Why American Must Lead Again,” after all.

      Granted, Biden was focusing more on the soft-power side of American leadership, leading on climate change, human rights and democracy, nuclear non-proliferation. His tone in the Foreign Affairs article is a welcome antidote to Trump’s bombast: “American leadership is not infallible; we have made missteps and mistakes. Too often, we have relied solely on the might of our military instead of drawing on our full array of strengths.” He emphasizes diplomacy, international cooperation, openness.

      But Biden will be the president of the United States of America, not the Democratic Socialists of America. He believes that the United States has a right to intervene militarily overseas if necessary. He views the United States as an honest broker to mediate in parts of the world — the Middle East, East Asia — where the United States is hardly neutral. He will, like Obama, sell weapons, and lots of them, to almost any country with the cash to buy them (and even some that don’t). And if that weren’t enough, he’ll have a still-strong “America First” constituency in Congress scrutinizing his every move, eager to label him a “traitor.”

      The international community, although welcoming the new president, will understandably remain wary of the United States. Dr. Jekyll will be back in charge in the White House, but who’s to say that Mr. Hyde won’t return in four years or even make some guest appearances before the next election? It simply doesn’t make a lot of sense to entrust leadership to a country with a severe personality disorder.

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      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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      Searching for the Soul of America

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      The soul of America is a highly sought-after commodity these days. In their victory speeches, both President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris mentioned that they fought for the soul of America in the tightly-contested elections. Some 75 million people agreed, giving the Biden-Harris ticket the reigns for the next four years to repair and restore the soul of the nation.

      360˚ Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      The losing incumbent, Donald Trump, has been a singularly divisive figure in American politics over the past several years. He is a racist and a white supremacist, a xenophobe and an Islamophobe, a misogynist and a narcissist, a liar and a petulant loser. Trump repeatedly denied scientific evidence when dealing with environmental issues and the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 death toll in the US is nearing 250,000 from over 10 million cases, primarily due to the mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump administration. And yet, 8 million more people than the 62 million who voted him into office in 2016 find Trump’s actions and behavior as acceptable. A staggering 70 million Americans still feel that there is nothing wrong with the soul of the nation and chose to cast their vote for Trump.

      If we are forced to draw conclusions about that intangible entity referred to as the soul of America just from the votes people cast in the presidential contest, we can only surmise that it is split almost evenly between what Joe Biden and Donald Trump stand for. Refusing to accept that verdict, I investigated down-ballot races across the country with the hope of unearthing other clues that could shed a light in my quest to understand where and what America stands for today.

      Should Non-Citizens Be Able to Vote?

      Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia have in their constitution language to the effect that the right to vote is available only to citizens of the country. Notwithstanding that, Alabama, Florida and Colorado passed constitutional amendments to make the citizenship requirement for voting more explicit. What is interesting is not that these measures passed with an overwhelming majority, but the fact that 23% of voters in Alabama, 20% in Florida and 33% in Colorado cast their ballots against the measure.

      The 3.5 million Americans who subscribe to the idea that non-citizens should be able to vote belong to an interesting segment of the nation’s population. Perhaps they echo my thought process that it is appropriate for non-citizens to get to vote on specific issues. As non-citizens, it makes sense that they do not get to participate in the representational democratic aspects such as electing the president, governor or members of Congress. However, in keeping with the philosophy of taxation with representation, it also makes sense for them to vote in specific propositions, measures and initiatives local to their place of residence.

      Criminal Justice Reforms

      Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana, increasing the list of states that have decriminalized the schedule 1 drug to 31, including Washington, DC. Only in seven states — Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming — is the possession of marijuana fully illegal, even for medicinal purposes, although in North Carolina, it is not considered a criminal offense.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Oregon became a trailblazer, the first state to decriminalize possession of small amounts of hard drugs. Today, America’s prisons have a population of 2.3 million, where one in five behind bars is there on account of a drug offense. With the decriminalization of marijuana, America’s war on drugs, initiated by Richard Nixon and perfected by Ronald Reagan, may finally be coming to an end.

      A harsh reality of committing a felony offense is the loss of the right to vote. In the infamous presidential election of 2000, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in the state of Florida by a razor-thin margin of 537 votes. Florida, along with Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, has some of the harshest possible voting laws for people who have committed a felony offense. According to the Sentencing Project, 5.2 million people were ineligible to vote in the 2020 elections. Nearly 22%, or 1.13 million of them, are in the state of Florida. History may have been very different, and Bush may never have won the 2000 election had Florida’s laws allowed former felons who have paid their dues to the justice system and turned their lives around to vote.

      This November, California made a shift to take a more liberal view on the voting rights of those with felony convictions. Californians restored the right to vote for people on parole, removing an important obstacle in allowing former felons to become full-fledged members of society. They also rejected a proposal that sought stricter parole rules and harsher sentencing.

      Eliminating Symbols of Slavery

      Earlier in June, Mississippi retired the state flag that had incorporated a version of the Confederate battle banner in it. The people of Mississippi voted to approve a new flag with the symbol of magnolia and the words “In God We Trust,” removing one of the last vestiges of Confederacy in a state flag.

      Rhode Island voters passed a measure to strip the racially insensitive phrase “Providence Plantations” from its official name, after having failed to do so in 2010. By an overwhelming majority of 80% and an impressive majority of 68%, respectively, voters in Utah and Nebraska passed an initiative that removes references to slavery from their constitutions and suspends the permission of involuntary servitude as criminal punishment.

       And the Verdict Is

      Toning down the populist and ill-conceived war-on-drugs rhetoric and easing the reintegration of former felons into society by restoring their voting rights are small steps toward meaningful criminal justice reform. Eliminating signifiers that celebrate the Confederacy and slavery from state names and flags is more than symbolic. They open up a path to healing, rejecting the hatred that lurks in the veneration of the icons of white supremacy.

      The disappointments came from my home state of California. Here, Proposition 22 posed the question of whether app-based gig-economy workers such Uber and Lyft drivers should be treated as contractors or as employees with proper benefits. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Postmates pumped nearly $200 million dollars to avoid the responsibility of giving gig-workers employee status. Their marketing blitzkrieg recruited Mothers Against Drunk Driving to portray a dismal scenario of increased drunk-driving deaths should this proposition fail. In the end, capitalism won where people opted to have their cheap Uber and Lyft rides, even if it meant denying their drivers their fair share of benefits.

      More poignantly, California missed its chance to reinstate affirmative action, which it ended in 1996 without giving adequate time for that initiative to have a meaningful impact. Sadly, more than 56% of voters failed to appreciate that compensating for centuries of advantages enjoyed by whites and other privileged classes would not only require counterinitiatives like affirmative action, but that they need to be given time so that African Americans and other disadvantaged minorities have a true shot at social equity.

      Counterbalancing my disappointments stemming from the 70 million who are still willing to embrace Donald Trump and Californians rejecting affirmative action, I found many down-ballot measures, from Mississippi to Utah, from Arizona to New Jersey, pointing to a subtle shift in the right direction. That gives me a glimmer of hope that the soul of America may not be so dark as to be beyond redemption. And as they say, hope springs eternal.

      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-US Relationship Is Now Official

      by

      After decades of dithering, India has finally opted for American-led security architecture in Asia. In the latest US-India 2+2 meeting of foreign and defense ministers, the two countries concluded a fourth foundational agreement. The four key agreements between the United States and India to date include the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA, 2018), Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA, 2016), General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA, 2002) and, as of October this year, the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA). This alphabet soup of little-known pacts has created the basis of a US-India entente. 

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      The seeds of a new architecture have been germinating in the form of the Quad, a grouping of India, Australia, Japan and the United States. Indian scientists have gone on a missile testing spree, and the political leadership in New Delhi is not softening its stand on the India-China border. India is also boosting its defense ties with Southeast Asian nations threatened by China. It has offered the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to the Philippines. BrahMos can be used against both land and sea targets. As an anti-ship missile, it has few peers. This missile effectively denies area entry to enemy surface combatants.

      In addition to BrahMos, India might soon start selling Akash air defense missiles to its Southeast Asian friends. New Delhi is now clearly making moves to counter Beijing, and closer cooperation with the US seems to be part of India’s new grand strategy.

      The Ghosts of 1962

      In the war of 1962 over a disputed border, India lost disastrously to China, yet it did not establish closer relations with the anti-communist US for largely ideological reasons. The then-prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a socialist. Deeply influenced by the Soviet Union, he was one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. Poor at realpolitik, Nehru tried to cultivate the US after 1962 even as he continued to remain close to the Soviet Union. The effort did not lead to much, and Beijing concluded that an Indo-US entente was improbable.

      Since 1962, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has adopted an aggressive stance against the Indian Army. In contrast, India was chastened by the loss of territory and prestige. Therefore, successive Indian governments have adopted a diffident stance vis-à-vis Beijing. In 2020, this has changed. The brutal killing of an Indian colonel by the PLA triggered a ferocious response from Indian troops. A surge of patriotism followed. The Modi-led nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government drew a line in the Himalayas and has stood up to its northern neighbor.

      Many in the English-speaking Indian and Anglo-Saxon media expected and predicted Indian capitulation, defeat and disgrace. The turn of events has proved them wrong. India has conducted its quickest Himalayan mobilization. It has used creative tactics, nibbled some territory hitherto held by the Chinese and put all three of its armed forces — Army, Navy and Air Force — in a state of high operational readiness. India has also conducted special operations inside Chinese territory and openly used Tibetan troops for the first time in its history. 

      New Entente

      In October, Modi’s government has shed India’s traditional Nehruvian diffidence and embraced the US wholeheartedly. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper joined Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar for the third annual US-India 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in New Delhi.

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      By signing BECA, India has gained access to valuable geospatial data, improving situational awareness for military operations and increasing the accuracy of its missile systems. COMCASA enabled Indian and US military platforms to network with each other. LEMOA allowed Indian and US militaries access to each other’s refueling facilities and military material. GSOMIA started the sharing of sensitive military intelligence data.

      These four agreements enable logistics, communication and geospatial data sharing are in place, making India a de facto US ally. India has turned decisively to the US in part because it has lost faith in Russia’s ability to contain China. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, India and the US have steadily moved closer. However, relations have been greatly influenced by the chemistry of those in power in Washington and New Delhi. Successive governments have blown hot and cold. When there has been a change of power in either democracy, their relations have suffered in the transition.

      Now, the 2+2 dialogue has moved decisively toward operationalizing the Quad. Previously, the Quad had not quite taken off. Australia and Japan have all shied away from closer engagement. This year, Australian sailors are joining the navies of Japan, India and the US for the Malabar naval exercise. This is a major change in political and military alliances in the region.

      The latest meeting marks a watershed in US-India relations. No longer will American policy change if a new administration enters the White House. Even as Donald Trump leaves and Joe Biden takes over, the trajectory of US-India relations is likely to remain the same. Many in New Delhi fear that Biden is likely to initiate a rapprochement with China and pressure India to kick-start talks with Pakistan. Even if that turns out to be true, ties between India and the United States have now been institutionalized, and the countries have entered an entente, if not an alliance.

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