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      Corruption, an Unnecessary Evil

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      Since the United Nations Convention Against Corruption was adopted in October 2003, International Anti-Corruption Day is observed annually on December 9. In the context of the ongoing pandemic, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, had a clear message: “Corruption is criminal, immoral and the ultimate betrayal of public trust. It is even more damaging in times of crisis — as the world is experiencing now with the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to the virus is creating new opportunities to exploit weak oversight and inadequate transparency, diverting funds away from people in their hour of greatest need.”

      Corruption impacts every aspect of society and involves all kinds of companies, large and small, in an array of industries. Certain sectors are seen as carrying a higher risk of corruption — oil and gas, armament, construction, among others — but no industry is spared. The World Bank estimates that more than $1 trillion in bribes is paid each year. In the health sector alone, an estimated $450 billion, or around 6% of total expenditure, is lost to fraud annually. Some argue that bribery is part of doing business, but such practices increase costs and put companies at risk of severe financial, legal and reputational damage.

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      For society at large, the effects of corruption are far-reaching and have severe economic repercussions, create unfair competitive advantages and result in the loss or decreased quality of public services. The consequences of this can be devasting. Martin Manuhwa, head of the Federation of African Engineering Organisations, notes that when public contracts are not awarded based on honest and fair bidding, “Infrastructure collapses. Roads develop potholes, and people die. Basically, corruption kills.”

      Looking for Accountability

      Historically, citizens have expected governments to hold companies accountable for corrupt behavior, but their track record of doing so is spotty. Following the 2008 global financial crisis, the United States began enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act more vigorously. Since then, the US has been a world leader in prosecutions and investigations of foreign bribery, but countries such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel, France and Spain have recently increased efforts as well.

      However, a recent report from the European Commission found that only 30% of Europeans believe their governments’ anti-fraud efforts are effective. Indeed, Transparency International’s Exporting Corruption 2020 project finds that although high-profile settlements make headlines, the enforcement of foreign bribery laws is very low amongst most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries; in 2020, only four out of the 47 OECD members actively pursued prosecutions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of company-wide anti-corruption compliance systems and industry-level regulations designed to discourage bribery. Governments are often “quite happy” to pass the cost and responsibility of enforcement off to someone else, but self-regulations are often inadequately administered and lack audits performed by independent, disinterested parties. Tools such as the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises provide companies with recommendations for implementing compliance programs. It is then up to the companies to conduct internal audits and ensure employees and contractors are following their anti-corruption policies. Companies are motivated by a variety of factors: legal requirements, the risk of fines and prosecution, reputational damage and, for some, a genuine desire to act more ethically. But while there are self-reported cases of foreign bribery, the temptation to cover up infractions is compelling. 

      Various efforts by industries to self-regulate have also emerged. Non-binding, industry-led initiatives or “soft laws” attempt to set anti-corruption norms by asking companies to adhere to a set of principles. For example, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative “invites” multinational companies to disclose money they pay states to extract natural resources.

      In industry-level self-regulating organizations (SROs), member companies develop policies for a particular industry and they, as opposed to an independent agency or government regulator, monitor and enforce member compliance. One example is the Banknote Ethics Initiative (BnEI). The organization was created by some banknote producers to “provide ethical business practice.” Members agree to abide by BnEI’s Code of Ethical Business Practice and to undergo an audit “carried out by a third-party auditor” in order to become accredited. According to their website, audits are conducted by two entities: GoodCorporation and KPMG. But if there are only two options for auditing members of an SRO, are auditors actually independent?

      While SROs can help set standards for industries in the absence of effective government regulation, there is also an inherent conflict of interest. As the NGO Truth in Advertising argues, “Self-regulators are, by definition, funded by the companies they claim to regulate. Don’t for a second believe that any self-regulator wants — or even would be permitted by its constituent members — to do all that it can to prevent harmful or deceptive business practices that are proving lucrative for the industry.” The OECD and the UN Environment Programme add that self-regulatory processes are often burdened by a lack of enforcement and inadequate sanctions of member companies, lower incentives to voluntarily report bad practices and are dominated by a small number of companies that prioritize what is in their best interests.

      An International Anti-Bribery Standard

      A new development offers hope for addressing the global corruption problem. In 2016, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) introduced the ISO 37001 Anti-Bribery Management Systems. Created using input from existing recommendations and from countries, non-profits and esteemed multilateral institutions, the standard provides an auditable, independent benchmark of international compliance principles and enables organizations of all sizes, public or private, to prevent, detect and address bribery.

      To become certified, an anti-bribery management system meeting the standard’s requirements must be implemented, an individual overseeing compliance needs to be appointed, and financial controls, monitoring and reporting processes need to be in place. Audits are done over a three-year period (to ensure policies are not simply on paper) and are performed by independent certifying bodies.

      Numerous companies and governments have since pursued certification as ISO 37001 has increasingly become recognized as the reference for anti-bribery. Anti-corruption lawyer Jean-Pierre Mean says the advantage of certification is benchmarking and reassuring organizations that they have implemented effective measures. Moreover, “It also demonstrates that you have a system that works to stakeholders, personnel, shareholders, and the community at large.”

      As a sign of confidence in the standard, prosecutors in Brazil, the US, Denmark, Switzerland and Singapore have required companies to pursue ISO 37001 certification as conditions of settlements in many lawsuits. While certification cannot guarantee bribery will not take place, it is universally recognized proof of a company’s willingness to prevent it. Companies and governments should require ISO 37001 certification from potential partners as a prerequisite to doing business, discarding superfluous and therefore suspicious self-regulation.

      Increased efforts to curb bribery have had varying levels of success. Government enforcement of existing laws needs to be strengthened as evidence has shown that self-regulation is flawed. The introduction of ISO 37001 as an independent standard for anti-bribery holds the most promise, but more companies and governments need to pursue certification for change to happen. Corruption may be as old as it widespread, but it can also be avoided.

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

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      Russia Ramps Up Pressure Against Kremlin Critics

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      Visibly weakened following a hunger strike in prison yet full of his usual verve, Alexei Navalny appeared before a court via videoconference on April 29 to appeal his fine for the defamation of a World War II veteran just as branches of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) were being shuttered across Russia. This is but the latest installment of the Kremlin’s campaign to increase pressure on Russia’s civil society and opposition.

      On August 20, 2020, Navalny was hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk after falling ill during a flight to Moscow following what appeared to be a poisoning attempt. After a standoff with the Russian authorities, Navalny was finally airlifted to a hospital in Berlin, where his poisoning was officially confirmed. The substance was identified as the nerve agent Novichok, a Soviet-era chemical weapon. The use of Novichok inspired calls for further investigations from international figures and (mostly Western) governments.

      A joint investigation by Bellingcat, CNN, Der Spiegel and the Insider “has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates” the FSB in Navalny’s poisoning. As the report states, “the August 2020 poisoning in the Siberian city of Tomsk appears to have happened after years of surveillance, which began in 2017 shortly after Navalny first announced his intention to run for president of Russia.” Moreover, Bellingcat released a recording in which Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an FSB officer, unintentionally confesses the details of the operation to Navalny himself, who phoned Kudryavtsev under the disguise of a high-ranking security official.

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      Once he recovered in Germany, Navalny flew back to Russia on January 17, but was detained immediately after landing. Following his arrest, he was charged with breaking the probationary terms of a previous prison sentence, which required Navalny to periodically report to Russian authorities. Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail, triggering a public outcry and mass protests across Russia.

      In prison and in failing health, on March 31, Navalny began a hunger strike demanding medical treatment by independent doctors. On April 23, he ended the hunger strike on its 24th day after consultation with non-prison medical staff. However, despite the bad publicity and an international outcry the case has engendered, the Kremlin remains unmoved by growing calls for the release of President Vladimir Putin’s potential political adversary.

      Fault Lines

      The poisoning of Alexei Navalny has once again highlighted the cracks in relations between Russia and the West. Last year, the National Security Council stated that it will “work with allies and the international community to hold those in Russia accountable, wherever the evidence leads, and restrict funds for their malign activities.” In response to Russia’s use of Novichok, the United States enacted additional economic sanctions, in addition to steps taken against Moscow for its interference in the 2016 presidential election. Officially announced by the State Department on March 2, these sanctions bring together Washington and the European Union in their condemnation of the attempted assassination and imprisonment of one of Russia’s key opposition figures.

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      As stated by US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, “The U.S. government has exercised its authorities to send a clear signal that Russia’s use of chemical weapons and abuse of human rights have severe consequences. Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and contravenes international norms.” The actions taken by Washington include an expansion of previous sanctions under the US Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 as well as measures in accordance with Executive Order 13382, which target proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act has been used against various Russian individuals and adversaries with connection to Russia’s chemical weapons program as well as defense and intelligence sectors.

      The United States is not the only country expressing its disapproval for the actions of the Russian government. Last year, after German officials said they had “unequivocal proof” of Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok, Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that there are “serious questions that only the Russian government can and must answer.” Similarly, after laboratories in France and Sweden confirmed the use of the nerve agent, French President Emmanuel Macron released a statement urging President Putin to provide information on the “attempted murder.”

      In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson also expressed his concern. The attempted poisoning of Navalny has parallels with the attack on the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Then, Novichok first came to international prominence but also failed to kill the intended victim. Johnson publicly condemned Navalny’s sentencing in February, joining Merkel, Macron, the European Parliament and the US in calling for his immediate release.

      The Kremlin Stands its Ground

      The Kremlin denies the allegations that it was behind the attack on Navalny. In his most recent annual address to the nation, President Putin reprimanded the West for its treatment of Russia and warned of possible consequences. The warnings centered around crossing a red line drawn by Moscow and came right after the US announced its newest round of sanctions. As Putin stated in the address, “Russia has its own interests, which we will defend in line with the international law. If somebody refuses to understand this obvious thing, is reluctant to conduct a dialogue and chooses a selfish and arrogant tone, Russia will always find a way to defend its position.”

      Additionally, the Russian president revived the accusation of a US-backed plot to assassinate Alexander Lukashenko, the besieged Belarusian leader who largely owes his tenuous position to Kremlin support in face of mass protests following a disputed election last year. However, no concrete evidence of either the plot itself or any involvement of Western governments has presented itself despite the claims made by Lukashenko himself. Although Navalny was not explicitly mentioned during Putin’s address, implications were made that the country’s opposition movement is part of the Western strategy to destabilize Russia — a familiar refrain in the Kremlin.

      The sanctions imposed by the United States are similar to past rounds put in place after the poisoning of the Skripals, demonstrating a continuity with previous disputes and attesting to the fact that the Kremlin’s behavior is largely unaltered by international outrage. Similarly unsuccessful have been the calls by leading academics, scholars and Nobel laureates both in and outside Russia urging the Kremlin to end its practices of persecuting political opponents.

      While ignoring international pressure, the Kremlin is ramping up domestic repression. One target is Navalny’s FBK, which prosecutors labeled as an extremist organization and ordered it to shut down. On April 30, Ivan Pavlov, a human rights lawyer representing Navalny’s foundation, was detained by the FSB. According to his organization, Komanda 29 (Team 29), Pavlov was charged with the “disclosure of materials of the preliminary investigation.”

      Independent media has also been increasingly targeted. Meduza, which has been publishing out of Latvia since its editor-in-chief left Russia in 2014, has recently been designated as a foreign agent. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, an independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from US Congress, has also been threatened. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, has fined RFE/RL up to $1 million for hundreds of violations of the foreign agent law.

      Meanwhile, Washington has stated that discussions are still ongoing for a possible meeting between presidents Biden and Putin, which may be a good opportunity for the new occupant of the White House to turn up the pressure on Moscow. All in all, neither Alexei Navalny’s popularity nor Vladimir Putin’s increasing authoritarianism are likely to catalyze immediate systemic changes either in the power dynamics in Moscow or vis-à-vis the West.

      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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      Will France’s 2022 Election Become a Political Volcano?

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      In just 12 months, French voters will be invited to judge Emmanuel Macron’s five years in office as president of the Fifth Republic. Most pundits in the media lazily assume it will boil down to a second-round repeat of the 2017 contest: Macron versus the right-wing firebrand, Marine Le Pen. Macron has the theoretical advantage of being the incumbent, but Le Pen has the practical advantage of challenging this largely unconvincing office-bearer. The French are seriously disappointed with Macron’s politics, much as they were with the two previous one-term presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande.  

      Reporting on the still-glowing embers of the famous but now dormant gilets jeunes movement that rocked France two years ago, Le Monde’s Marie Pouzadoux cites political scientist and professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, Pascal Perrineau, who has been following the yellow vest phenomenon since it started. He sees it as a deeply-rooted protest movement capable of re-emerging at any moment. After an initial loss of momentum during Macron’s so-called “great debate,” the outbreak of COVID-19 and restrictions on public assembly put the movement into a state of suspended animation. 

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      Surveying the current political climate at the approach of next year’s presidential election, Pouzadoux notes that “the executive has in fact drawn ‘no lesson’ from this protest movement or from the demands raised during the ‘great debate’ that followed it.” Perrineau offers this account of the state of play: “Today, the yawning gap between certain categories of the people and the elites continues to widen, while discontent and mistrust are maintained by the vertical management of power.”

      Perrineau sees a growing “climate of heterogeneous anger” that will open “an immense space” for Marine Le Pen in next year’s election. This is simply because, like Donald Trump in 2016, Le Pen represents the kind of anti-establishment gamble the voters, faced with an unpalatable choice, may now be ready to make. But, unlike the US, France’s tradition of protest and revolution opens another option. Perrineau senses the possible emergence of an inclusive protest movement that he calls “eruptive and emotional,” capable of effectuating what he calls “giletjaunisation” — the “’yellowvesting’ of French society.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Eruptive and emotive:

      The equivalent in the world of politics of the trendy term “disruptive innovation” in the economy, presaging a paradigm change that no one anticipated

      Contextual Note

      France’s political landscape has been in a state of utter disarray for at least the past decade. It was that disarray that allowed Macron to sneak through the cracks and humiliate the powerful political parties that had comfortably shared or alternated authority during the six decades of the Fifth Republic. But France was not alone. The US and the UK in particular have seen a similar disarray among the electorate. Yet despite the radical cultural and psychological upheaval, traditional parties have maintained their domination and managed to confirm, however uncomfortably, their authority.

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      Unlike Occupy Wall Street or the Tea Party in the US, the yellow vest movement never really disappeared into the folds of history. Another commentator cited in the article, political science professor Frédéric Gonthier, believes a remobilization of the movement is plausible, though no one is ready to forecast what form it might take.

      Most commentators agree that, while the gilets jaunes brand still has legs, it is unlikely that whatever revolt may emerge in 2022 will be a simple repetition of the 2018 scenario, unfolding under the same banner. Much depends on how the denouement of the COVID-19 crisis plays out. But that is exactly what the political elite fears today. On Monday, France ended its third phase of lockdown in a year and will continue its policy of curfew into June. What may happen when the population is once again free to assemble and protest without restriction no one can guess today. The election period itself will be rife with confusion as the different personalities in the still identifiable parties begin to vie for influence.

      Pouzadoux concludes her article with a quote attributed to Macron’s administration: “You must wait till the sea recedes to discover the disaster left on the beach.” Some may remember, thanks to recent experience, that the sea never recedes faster or further than at the approach of a tsunami.

      Historical Note

      Most people are aware that France’s Fifth Republic has outlived its life cycle and its historical logic. Someday soon, a Sixth Republic will emerge. 2022 is a year to watch. In purely electoral terms, it is bound to be messy. If the second-round presidential contest turns out to be a repeat of 2017, no matter who wins, there will be an increase in possibly uncontrollable eruptive emotion.

      Neither Macron nor Le Pen has a solid political base, an absolute necessity for any semblance of political stability given the institutions of the Fifth Republic. Macron has managed to hold on this long simply because the presidential system dictates that the electorate has no choice other than revolt. But he has failed to establish his authority in the eyes of the populace. The French are unlikely to support another five years of the clever outlier who sneaks past the confused peloton to win the race. It’s the rules of the race that will be challenged. Should Le Pen win, the confusion would be greater since she has no hope of gaining the parliamentary majority a president needs to even begin governing.  

      Everyone will remember 2020 as the year a pandemic upset the world order. Future historians may call 2021 a year of transitional hesitation for the entire clueless planet, as leaders attempt to redefine “the new normal” without the slightest idea of what a revised version of normality might look like. Will the two-year reign of terror by COVID-19 end before the start of 2022? France’s reign of terror in 1793 lasted only a year but spawned Napoleon and the eventual reconfiguration of Europe. It ushered in the Industrial Revolution led by a hyperaggressive British Empire that would triumph before being undone by internal European rivalries a century later.

      While US President Joe Biden attempts to reaffirm his personal vision of empire as he boldly asserts that the US is “in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century,” the “other countries” of the world — starting with US’s ally in Asia, India — are wondering whether it makes sense to frame the challenge ahead as a competition between dominant powers seeking to control the global economy in their selfish interest. The Biden administration now appears poised to defend the sacrosanct intellectual property of pharmaceutical companies that has aggravated beyond description the COVID-19 crisis in India and the rest of the developing world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The race to dominance among Europe’s rival nations two centuries ago triggered an as yet unfinished series of global disasters. These include the deployment of nuclear weapons against civilian populations in Japan and now dire, uncontrollable threats to human health and social stability as a consequence of climate change, all of which can be attributed to our civilization’s obsession with competition.

      One event worth watching in Europe this year, ahead of the French presidential election of 2022, is the state of play in Germany, where federal elections to elect the 20th Bundestag will take place in September. Recent polls show a potential lead for the Green party. If confirmed, this would overturn several decades of post-unification history. More significantly, as The Guardian’s Philip Oltermann reports in reference to the possibility of Annalena Baerbock’s party emerging as the leader of a new coalition, this eventual seismic event is attributable to the failure of imagination and vision of the traditional political elite.

      “The underlying theme of her campaign so far,” Oltermann writes, “is that Germany is more innovative than its political class — a claim that got a boost last week when the country’s constitutional court ruled that the government’s climate targets do not go far enough.”

      Addressing climate change requires a movement emerging from the people in a spirit of cooperation, not competition. Biden, Macron and Le Pen all represent the commitment to some form of aggressive nationalistic competition. Could eruptive emotion end up serving the cause of global harmony? The adepts of competition are not about to give up their battle.

      *[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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      What the UAE-Turkey Rivalry Means for Europe’s Energy Security

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      In recent months, the United Arab Emirates has adopted a number of stances inimical to Turkish ambitions in the Mediterranean. This has taken the form of closer relations between the UAE, Greece and Greek Cyprus, more joint military exercises, and increased energy collaboration with Israel via the Abraham Accords. But with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the UAE has toned down its overt military posturing and complemented its strategy with economic means. The shift relies on hydrocarbon pipeline proposals that exclude Turkey with the aim to diminish its geopolitical importance to Europe.

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      The UAE views Turkey as a threat for two reasons. First, Ankara supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Emiratis have designated as a terrorist organization. Second, Turkey has been active both militarily and economically in North Africa, Syria and the Horn of Africa. In 2019 and 2020, competition between Abu Dhabi and Ankara flared, with both powers directly funneling mercenaries and money to Libya, stepping up competition in Somalia and castigating each other in diplomatic statements. The UAE also aligned with Greek Cyprus, Greece, France and Egypt against Turkey while providing financial and possibly military support in the form of mercenaries to anti-Turkish actors in the region.

      Energy Games

      During Biden’s first months in office, however, the UAE has undertaken two major actions that indicate a softer approach toward Ankara. First, on January 29, Abu Dhabi declared that it was ready to work closely with the UN on Libya. Second, the UAE began dismantling its base in Assab, in Eritrea. Although this move comes largely in an attempt to extricate itself from the war in Yemen, it also means losing a critical power-projection site that has acted as a counterbalance to Turkey’s and Qatar’s presence in Suakin, in Sudan. This does not mean that Abu Dhabi considers Turkey to be any less of a threat. On the contrary, recent UAE actions portend a refocusing on investment in pipelines and infrastructure in the eastern Mediterranean to blunt Ankara’s energy ambitions, especially concerning Turkey’s role in Europe’s energy security.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Moscow’s influence on Europe’s energy markets has emerged as a concern for the European Union and the US, with Russian supplies accounting for 40% of European gas consumption. Turkey is commonly floated as a solution because it can connect alternative pipelines from the Caspian and Central Asia. Turkey becoming an important energy transportation hub would give it leverage over the EU and allow it to better play the US, Western Europe and Russia against each other.

      However, the UAE’s attempts to lock Turkey out of the eastern Mediterranean energy pipelines threaten Ankara’s goals of becoming a larger player in the EU’s energy market. The UAE is attempting to do this by joining the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF) — comprised of Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Jordan and Palestine — as an observer. Although the EMGF claims to be open to anyone, its ostensible purpose is to lock Turkey out of the Mediterranean hydrocarbons market, especially with the EastMed pipeline project. This pipeline would transfer gas from Cyprus and Israel to Greece and then further on to Europe; it is a major reason for Turkey’s involvement in Libya. The EastMed faces certain financial and political struggles, and the UAE’s endorsement of the project could galvanize initiative and create a breakthrough in rallying a coalition to circumvent Turkey on the energy market.

      Moreover, Abu Dhabi’s improving relations with Israel provide it more alternatives in convening an anti-Turkish coalition. The Abraham Accords also augment the UAE’s ability to constrain Turkey by allowing Abu Dhabi to collaborate with Israel on joint pipeline projects. If the UAE manages to connect itself to the EastMed, or any other, pipeline, Turkey’s status as an energy alternative to Russia would diminish in the eyes of Europe and the US. It appears as if the UAE has already taken initiative in this regard: On October 22, 2020, Israeli state-owned Europe Asia Pipeline Company signed a binding memorandum of understanding with MED-RED Land Bridge, a company that has both Israeli and Emirati owners, to transport oil from the UAE to Europe.

      The joint venture would rely on the Eilat-Asheklon pipeline, built by Israel and Iran in the 1960s, that would send Emirati hydrocarbons from Eilat, on Israel’s Red Sea coast, to Ashkelon, on the Mediterranean. Though this is an oil pipeline, this portends future initiatives that could see Emirati gas transported through Israel to Greece, via a connection to the EastMed. Furthermore, Emirati oil tankers disembarking in Eilat would come with an increased security presence in the area. Though not a military base, the venture could make up for the power projection loss from the now defunct base at Assab.  

      Economic Foothold

      An Emirati bid to manage an Israeli port at Haifa represents another Emirati attempt to cement an economic foothold in the eastern Mediterranean. The port at Haifa is also close in proximity to Lebanon and Israel’s disputed oil blocs, some of whose drilling licenses have been awarded to France’s Total. As noted by Amos Hochstein, the former coordinator for international energy affairs at the US State Department, the UAE could adopt a larger role in resolving this dispute, which would free up more gas reserves that could be exported around Turkey. UAE mediation would also draw it economically closer to France, which has, for the most part, confronted Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. If Total receives new oil blocs, a French economic dimension could also align against Turkey in the region, bolstering the UAE’s initiatives.

      The Emirati bid for Haifa’s port comes after DP World, Abu Dhabi’s shipping and operations company, completed the Port of Limassol in Cyprus in 2018. Both actions represent the UAE’s push to bolster its infrastructure in the region, which would complement future pipeline initiatives. The UAE then signed a military cooperation agreement with Cyprus on January 12, which signified a deepening of this relationship. It followed an Emirati-Greek military partnership and a trilateral meeting between the UAE, Greece and Greek Cyprus, evidencing that Abu Dhabi is trying to complement military measures with diplomatic coalitions.

      Cyprus proves critical to the UAE’s energy ambitions. Not only is the island a vital connecting point for the EastMed pipeline, but it also recently discovered gas, both of which provide Europe with an alternative to Turkey’s energy supply. This gas will flow to Cairo via a pipeline agreed upon in 2018, where it will be liquified and exported to Europe. These pipelines may not decisively change Turkey’s role in Europe’s energy security, but they nevertheless threaten Ankara’s energy ambitions and indicate that the UAE is undertaking a multifaceted strategy to undermine its rival.

      Though both Turkey and the UAE would prefer to see each other’s geopolitical significance diminished in the eyes of Western Europe and the US, it would be best for Europe if the two actors worked together. Europe would face a crisis if a jingoistic Russia cuts off the gas deliveries to the continent. Moscow has already threatened Ukraine’s energy supply. As many have argued, Emirati-Turkish competition erupted because of a power vacuum left by incremental US withdrawal from the region. However, if the US and other disinterested states could attempt to broker a détente following the lifting of the blockade on Qatar, collaboration between Ankara and Abu Dhabi could prove a viable supplement for Europe’s energy security.

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

      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

      Rudy Giuliani’s apartment searched as part of Ukraine investigation

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      Federal investigators have executed a search warrant at a New York office and private apartment belonging to Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of the city and personal lawyer to Donald Trump.Federal authorities have been examining whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping him search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals.Investigators had seized some of Giuliani’s electronic devices from the Upper East Side residence, and from his law office on Park Avenue, early on Wednesday, the New York Times reported.Giuliani’s own lawyer, Robert Costello, condemned the raids as “legal thuggery,” claiming his client had cooperated with prosecutors and offered to answer questions not involving his “privileged” communications with Trump.“What they did today was legal thuggery. Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States,” he told the Wall Street Journal.Giuliani posted, then deleted, a tweet saying he would be giving a live statement about the raids during his afternoon radio show on WABC radio. When the show started at 3pm, Giuliani was missing and a guest host, Dominic Carter, was presenting.Giuliani was considered a heroic figure in New York politics for his role as a top mafia prosecutor and then as mayor during the 9/11 terror attacks. But his reputation nosedived during the Trump era as he became embroiled in numerous scandals involving the administration and his role as one of Trump’s most fervent cheerleaders and attack dogs.In the infamous “quid pro quo” episode, officials in Ukraine were alleged to be simultaneously attempting to “dig up dirt” on Trump’s political rivals, including Joe Biden, who was shortly to become the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.Biden’s son, Hunter, had business dealings in Ukraine when his father was Barack Obama’s vice-president earlier in the decade, including a seat on the board of Burisma, one of the country’s largest energy companies.The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) makes it a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the US government at the request of a foreign official without informing the justice department.Giuliani was back at the heart of the news cycle after the 2020 presidential election last November. He was a leading proponent of “the big lie”, Trump’s false claim that the election was stolen from him by “widespread fraud” in the voting process.Giuliani became something of a laughing stock when he represented Trump in numerous failed legal challenges to the election result and made inept appearances in court and at press conferences.But the anti-democratic campaign ultimately led to the 6 January insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol, during which five people lost their lives.According to the New York Times, the US attorney’s office in Manhattan and the FBI have been seeking a search warrant for Giuliani’s phones for months, which officials in Trump’s justice department continually sought to block.Following Trump’s departure from office in January, and confirmation in March by the US Senate of Biden’s pick Merrick Garland as attorney general, the justice department dropped its opposition.The Times noted that while the warrant is not an explicit accusation of wrongdoing against Giuliani, it showed the investigation was entering “an aggressive new phase”. The newspaper contacted the FBI and US attorney’s office, both of which, it said, declined to comment.In a tweet on Wednesday, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress, and who has since become a Trump critic, said simply: “Here we go folks!!!”The New York Times further reported that the FBI also served a search warrant Wednesday on the Washington DC home of attorney Victoria Toensing, an associate of Giuliani and reported contact of Ukraine officials who were looking into the Bidens. Toensing, the newspaper said, has previously represented Dimitry Fitash, a Ukrainian energy billionaire with alleged mob contacts who is under indictment in the US for bribery.The Wall Street Journal said Costello told its reporters that authorities arrived at Giuliani’s apartment at 6am and seized his devices.He said the search warrant described the investigation as a probe into a possible violation of foreign lobbying rules and “sought communications between Mr Giuliani and individuals including John Solomon, a columnist who was corresponding with Mr Giuliani about his effort to push for investigations of Joe Biden in Ukraine”.Solomon, a conservative political operative and Giuliani ally, has been accused of using his columns in the Hill to help spread disinformation about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine, his writing earning praise from Trump and his acolytes, who called them worthy of a Pulitzer.The Hill, meanwhile, decided in 2018 to classify Solomon’s future contributions as “opinion.”Costello added that in recent years he had offered to answer investigators’ questions as long as they agreed to say what area they were looking at ahead of time. He said they declined the offer. “It’s like I’m talking to a wall,” Costello said.Prosecutors began looking into Giuliani after building an unrelated case against Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Soviet-born American citizens alleged to have aided his efforts in Ukraine and later charged with crimes including conspiracy and campaign finance violations.The Times said the investigators were looking into Giuliani’s push to remove the then US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump considered disloyal and obstructive, and whom he removed in May 2019.The Ukraine scandal, and Trump’s dark prediction during his notorious July 2019 call with the country’s prime minister Volodymyr Zelensky that Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things,” was the subject of Trump’s first impeachment trial. More

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      Charismatic Leadership and the Far Right

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      Horia Sima, a central figure within the interwar Romanian fascist organization the Iron Guard, once described his leader, Corneliu Codreanu, as follows:

      “What was most impressive, on first contact with Codreanu, was his physical appearance. Nobody could pass him by without noticing him, without being attracted by his look, without asking who he was. His public appearance provoked curiosity. This young man seemed a god descended among mortals … Looking at him, you felt dazed. His face exercised an irresistible fascination. He was a ‘living manifesto’, as the Legionaries used to call him.”

      Such a description, highlighting an emotive, passionate and even irrational bond between a fascist and his leader, is a typical expression of the charismatic leader dynamic. Though this is an important phenomenon to consider, it can also sometimes be rather lazily used as an essential component of the far right and needs to be used with care.

      German Nationalism, From Revolution to Illiberalism

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      When surveying the emergence of terms such as charisma, charismatic leadership and so forth, it is impossible not to start with the founding sociologist Max Weber. He argued that political legitimacy came in three varieties: traditional, legal bureaucratic and charismatic. Traditional authority operates through customs providing validity to a leader’s decisions, such as with a monarchy; legal bureaucratic works through an impersonal system of rules providing authority, such as within a liberal democracy; and charisma, meaning “gift of grace,” sees authority emanating from the extraordinary nature of a leader, as understood by followers. For Sima, Codreanu clearly evoked the latter.

      Weber added some further nuances to his concept as well. In particular, he wrote of the sense of mission that a charismatic leader evokes, a cause shared by his or her followers, giving their charisma a sense of purpose. For those who do not share this mission, such leaders are unlikely to hold much charismatic appeal. The leader generates their sense of having special qualities by, effectively, becoming a living embodiment of a passionately held cause. They do this as they, somehow or other, go beyond that of others who share the same sense of mission.

      Charismatic bonds between leader and follower are not created by a leader alone but are a phenomenon that emerges from the shared, affective dimension between leaders and followers. As Ann Ruth Willner puts it: “[C]harisma is defined in terms of people’s perceptions of and responses to a leader. It is not what the leader is but what people see the leader as that counts in generating the charismatic relationship.”

      The Duce

      Charisma has been a term applied to many fascist leaders. Emilio Gentile, writing in Modern Italy in 1998, uses Weber’s approach to examine Benito Mussolini’s charisma as emanating from his political mission. He concludes that the Duce experienced periods of greater and lesser charismatic appeal: Firstly as a socialist leader before the First World War, then as a leader of a new radical nationalist movement urging Italy to enter the war, and then once again his charisma grew during the rise of the fascist movement in Italy. Charisma was not a constant, but something that could grow and wane.

      Of course, Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich has been a particular focus for charismatic leadership. John Breuilly, writing in Nations and Nationalism in 2011, states that charismatic leadership was not typical of all nationalist movements, but was common in fascists such as Codreanu, Mussolini and particularly Hitler. The interwar German conditions were unique. As he explains, in modern-day contexts, “it is the product of massive breakdowns of impersonal forms of modern authority that opens up a particular space, although there has to be someone capable of filling that space and, in Hitler’s case, a unique sequence of events leading to charismatic power.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Aristotle Kallis, writing in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions in 2006, also critically engages with Weber’s model and explains the need to differentiate between the leadership cults of movements and regimes, and their ability to foster of a genuine charismatic community. The former did not guarantee the latter, and an authentic charismatic community was only partially developed even in the Third Reich. Even here, Kallis stresses that Weber’s other forms of authority — traditional and legal — continued to hold some influence.

      Roger Eatwell developed another influential analysis of fascist charismatic leadership, building critically on Weber’s model. Writing in The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right in 2018, he argues that as well as mission and personal presence, charismatic leaders promote a Manichean division of the world to help legitimize their emotive bonds with followers. Moreover, he stresses the need to consider the role of charismatic leadership at the level of the coterie, focusing on how the phenomenon helps bind together radical political groups.

      The question regarding the continued importance of charismatic leadership in more recent populist parties has also been much discussed. Duncan McDonnell published an essay in Political Studies that explores charisma at the level of the coterie, focusing on perceptions of charisma amongst populist party members, both elected officials as well as grassroots activists. His approach urges care in applying the term, while by examining interviews with party coteries, he helpfully exemplifies how charisma needs to be studied through assessing the interactions between leaders and followers. As well as concluding that Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Switzerland’s Christoph Blocher were partial charismatic leaders, he concludes that Umberto Bossi was an archetypal charismatic leader of the Northern League — yet this meant his downfall caused the Italian party much damage as a consequence.

      Whether charismatic leadership is an essential component of populism has also been debated. Takis S. Pappas, writing in the Routledge International Handbook of Charisma, states that “populism and charismatic leadership are inescapably interrelated and should always be studied conjoinedly.” Contrastingly, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Leadership, Cas Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasse stress that populism is a complex, variegated phenomenon with many forms of leadership; charismatic leaders are one among various styles among populists, which can even include no leader at all. The latter point seems to echo the cautionary use of the term among historians of fascism. Notably, Roger Griffin resisted using charisma as a defining aspect of fascism in his influential model of the ideology.

      The Short Shelf Life of Charisma

      Nevertheless, some of the most striking figures in recent years in the far right have been charismatic in their style. Donald Trump, the former US president, powerfully unleashed a form of charismatic leadership as he generated an affective bond between himself as a leader and a wider following through a shared sense of mission. However, even this mission does have a shelf life and will not last forever, as his election defeat in 2020 suggests.

      I wrote a short article for The Guardian in 2019 reflecting on Trump as a charismatic leader and predicted a decline in his charismatic appeal over time. Some waning of his charisma has clearly occurred since then, although the study of charisma shows us the phenomenon can ebb and flow. Trump, after all, retains great influence within the Republican Party and continues to enjoy a widespread aura of infallibility among a largescale movement that supports his mission and sees him in emotive, superlative ways.

      As a historian, I leave it to others to predict where this may go in the next few years, but more widely, the relationship between the populist and fascist right and charismatic leaders is both complex and ongoing. For those studying this in the coming years, it is important to focus on the limits of the charisma model as well as its strengths, and it is unhelpful if used to try to explain everything. It is also crucial to consider how people project onto leaders a perception of them as charismatic. After all, charisma does not come from a leader alone — it is projected onto him or her by others. Without this atmosphere, such leaders often have little else to offer. 

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

      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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      German Nationalism, From Revolution to Illiberalism

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      It is often noted that 19th-century nationalism owed much to the rise of academic history. As historians have observed, studies in national development provided materials for later and cruder claims of fascist cultural supremacy. For instance, Leopold von Ranke and Georg Hegel represented different versions of such narratives. The former traced a conceptual movement in large patterns of events; its ideological consequences were various, but one aspect was the justification of the Prussian state. The latter urged rigorous attention to historical evidence but suggested that in such detail a pattern of providence could be found.

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      Ranke’s method, adopted by a generation of historians, was that of a conservative liberal of the Restoration period, envisaging a balance of European power. By mid-century, however, new historians had taken a Prussian-centered national narrative to a new level of conviction, combining elements of Hegel’s statist teleology with Ranke’s evidence-based method. In the German revolution of 1848, the rhetoric of liberty and nationhood was confused, and the goals of a constitutional monarchy and a united Germany seemed united under one banner.

      Yet within a short time, the revolution failed, and a conservative mood descended. Subsequently, the liberal spirit of nationalism was replaced by a Bismarckian argument for nationalist militarism and expansionism. Academic writing was touched by this sequence of events.

      A Historical Method

      Prior to 1848, academic historians were already sketching accounts of providential German unification and expansion. The writers of the Prussian School of History were former students of Ranke and Hegel. They wrote at first in a liberal register. Johannes Gustav Droysen began his career as a classicist, coining the term “Hellenism.” His 1833 life of Alexander the Great launched his academic career. A popular volume, its account of the Macedonian marshaling of Greek culture into a powerful empire was read as a pattern for Prussia’s future role.

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      Droysen’s historical work became overtly political with his 1842-43 “Lectures on the Wars of Liberation,” a record of Prussian popular resistance against foreign invaders. A member of the Frankfurt parliament during the 1848 revolution, he witnessed the failure of its liberal and nationalist aspirations. The crisis came when members voted to fight for the regions of Schleswig-Holstein against the claims of Denmark. It was clear, on Prussia’s withdrawal of support, that the parliament was impotent without the northern state’s backing, and by 1849 Frederick William IV was secure enough to reject liberal proposals.

      Since 1840, Droysen had taught at Keil University in the disputed region. His account, “The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein,” lent support to nationalist calls for the defense of Germany’s territory. In a similar spirit, in 1851 he published a life of Count Yorck von Wartenburg, the general whose decision to change sides was a turning point in the war with Napoleon. The historical stage was set for a renewal of this national self-assertion. Otto von Bismarck, the prime minister of Prussia and the founder and first chancellor of the German Empire, no doubt saw the usefulness of such narratives when formulating his foreign policy in the early 1860s.

      Droysen took pains with his lecture series on the historical method, hoping to provide a philosophical basis for the discipline. The lectures were published only in 1937, but in 1858, he circulated a precis, the “Grundriss der Historik,” translated as “Outline of the Principles of History,” which describes history as theodicy, forming an organic pattern of growth. The method was Rankean, but drew explicitly on Hegel in its emphasis on the direction and progression of history. Going beyond Ranke’s hints at the runic import of recorded facts, Droysen pointed directly to signs of development, specifically toward a Prussian state.

      This commitment was clear in his major work, “The History of Prussian Politics,” which he began having taken a chair at Jena in 1851. Through the period of the Prussian wars on Austria and France until his death in 1884, Droysen completed 14 volumes that traced the growth of the Prussian monarchy to the year 1756.     

      From French Revolution to German Empire

      Heinrich von Sybel made his name with a history of the first crusade written with Rankean documentary rigor. Yet he already had a political aim, undercutting romantic medievalism in his commitment to a liberal future. In 1848, he too attended the Frankfurt parliament, and similarly transferred his nationalist faith toward Prussian statism over time. Despite this allegiance to the “polar star” of the north, he took a chair at Munich on Ranke’s recommendation, leading Prince Maximilian’s new Bavarian Historical Commission and founding the Historische Zeitschrift (Historical Journal).

      His debt to Ranke did not preclude a shift in tone. A celebrated 1856 address on historiography demurred at the excessive pursuit of objectivity. His major work of these years, the “History of the French Revolution,” was a Burkean warning against the destructive effects of Jacobinism. Using archives in Paris, Sybel mounted a scholarly assault on France’s role in recent European history. He effectively downgraded the revolution to a by-product of historical providence centering on Prussia. The French historiographer Antoine Guillard described it as “an attack not only on the Revolution but on the mind and history of France.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      In this view, the French Revolution indeed signaled the end of the old order, but it was merely one of three such events, the others being the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and the destruction of Poland. This wider break with feudalism and the rise of a modernity that would be encapsulated in a unified Germany under Prussia. French pride at the assertion of popular sovereignty and human rights was undercut and German nationhood celebrated.

      Taking a chair in Bonn in 1861, the historian was now also a politician, sitting in the 1860s and 1870s in the Prussian Diet and the Constituent Reichstag of the North German Confederation. Bismarck saw Sybel’s value and made him director of Prussian archives in 1875, where he worked on his last major work, “The Founding of the German Empire by William I.” This overtly politicized work of history gave a Bismarckian slant to events leading up to 1871. Some, noting William I’s ambivalence about his chancellor’s maneuverings, joked the phrase “by” should have read “despite.”

      The work lacked life and bore the weight of a propagandistic tome; later its political slant worked to its author’s disadvantage as the focus on Bismarck over William I offended the new kaiser, and Sybel was banished from the state archives in 1890. He died five years later, having completed his last volume. Sybel, though wary of democracy as a step toward Bonapartism and a believer in Prussia’s power, was also a believer in a Burkean pluralism, whereby power was best distributed among social groups under the protection of the state. Toward the end of the 19th century, a more virulent language of racial homogeneity and expansionism came to the fore.

      Racial Theory

      The boldest publicist of the Prussian School, whose messages most clearly herald the racialized nationalism of the 20th century, was Heinrich von Treitschke. Born in Saxony with Czech roots, Treitschke began his career as a Privatdozent in Leipzig, but his conviction in Berlin’s destiny to rule was out of place there, and he returned to take university posts in Prussia. His earliest publications included patriotic poems, while his 1859 dissertation on “the science of society” made a strong case for the state as necessary and primeval, without need for a contract with its citizens. Prussia provided a nucleus for a German state forming according to historical destiny.

      Treitschke’s path exemplified the historians’ trajectory away from liberalism. As his writing gained influence, his distance from Ranke was clear. When sending a copy of his polemical essays to his father in 1865 he noted: “That bloodless objectivity which does not say on which side is the narrator’s heart is the exact opposite of the true historical sense. Judgment is free, even to the author.” His essays, often biographical studies or political arguments, grew more fervently nationalistic. The smaller German states should submit to annexation; colonial growth was a natural expression of a vital new power.

      This set a tone for German expansionism from the 1860s onward. Treitschke too was politically active, sitting in the Reichstag in 1871 as a member of the new National Liberal party and welcoming the culture war against Catholics isolated in the new Kleindeutschland. In 1874, he was invited to take the chair in history in Berlin; Ranke was ushered from his post to make room for Treitschke, whom he deemed disapprovingly a publicist, not a historian. Yet student fraternities preferred their new teacher, the court made him official historiographer of Prussia in 1886, and his academic standing was reinforced by his editorship of Historische Zeitschrift after Sybel’s death in 1895.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Treitschke’s “History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century” was a colorful and lively work; keyed into the public mood, it impressed foreign readers including the British historian G.P. Gooch, who compared it to Macaulay’s “History of England” in style and vigor, “both vibrate with their authors’ personality.” Gooch wrote in 1913, not seeing the full legacy of the Prussian School. As Treitschke gained influence in polemical attacks on socialists and Jews, his arguments converged with forms of social Darwinism and a racialized politics. In 1879, a long review essay in the Preussische Jahrbucher, the right-wing journal he edited from 1866 to 1889, concluded with an anti-Semitic polemic. He claimed that fundamental differences between Jews and Christians in Germany could not be resolved, and that the Jews had “assumed too large a space in our life.”

      These passages were later republished in the pamphlet, “A Word About Our Jews,” which reached a wider audience and sparked the Berlin Anti-Semitism Conflict, a two-year spate of protest and violence against the Jewish population. Treitschke’s anti-Semitic pronouncements coincided with those of Adolf Stöcker, then a court preacher to William I, who created the Christian Social Workers’ Party in 1878 to draw laborers away from socialism. Between them, Treitschke and Stöcker gave a new clerical, political and academic respectability to anti-Semitism from the 1880s onward.

      Such theories were not far removed from the biological variants of similar ideas, for example in Ernst Haeckel’s monism of the same period, with which it seems aligned as much with a social Darwinist as an Idealist or Christian idea of providence. It was Treitschke who coined the phrase “The Jews are our misfortune,” repeated ad nauseam in the Nazi period, and most recently adapted as “Israel is our misfortune” by the far-right party Die Rechte (The Right) in the European Parliament elections of 2019. The tradition of German nationalism had come a long way from the liberal rhetoric of freedom during the revolutionary period.

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

      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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      Shaping the Future of Energy Collaboration

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      The cancelation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s much-awaited visit to India is disappointing but unsurprising. India, a country with nearly 1.4 billion people, is currently confronting a second wave of COVID-19 infections. Though all is not lost as bilateral talks are expected to take place virtually on April 26. High on the agenda remains the launch of Roadmap 2030, which will foreseeably set the tone for India-UK relations in a post-COVID era and pave the way for a free trade agreement.

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      This shared vision, forming a critical piece of the “global Britain” agenda and the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy, is expected to lay out a framework for enhanced cooperation across a much broader set of policy pillars. One such area is climate action, which is a key part of economic growth strategies and the global green energy agenda for both countries.

      As signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement — the international treaty on climate change — India and the UK have sizable ambitions to invest in creating cleaner and sustainable energy systems. This time last year, the United Kingdom experienced its longest coal-free run to date, a significant milestone for an economy that generated about 40% of its electricity from coal just a decade ago. While India’s green energy transition is comparatively nascent, it has made significant strides toward expanding its renewable energy capacity, especially in solar power, where it is emerging as a global leader.

      Energy Sources

      Although the two countries have vastly different energy sources and consumption patterns, this creates a unique opportunity for each economy to capitalize on its individual strengths. In offshore wind power, the UK is the largest global player, while India has only begun to scratch the surface of its wind potential. The United Kingdom’s technical prowess will play a crucial role in supporting the growth of India’s offshore wind energy — from the meteorological expertise required to evaluate wind patterns and energy production potential to joint research and development opportunities.

      The growth of electric vehicles (EVs) is another area where each market has distinct strengths. India, for example, can rely on the UK’s experience as it undertakes the massive infrastructure exercise of deploying smart charging EV stations. The UK can draw on India’s success with battery-powered three-wheelers to develop sustainable last-mile connectivity solutions. Strengthened bilateral cooperation on these fronts will not only accelerate the EV revolution globally but can also serve to contain China’s dominance in this market.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Indian and British governments are closely collaborating around climate action. This is evident from recent trips to India by the UK’s Alok Sharma, the president of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that will take place in Glasgow, and Lord Tariq Ahmad, the minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth.

      It is, however, important to expand the scope of these engagements to include small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a powerhouse of skill and experience. SMEs based in the UK can play a significant role in supporting India’s energy transition. British companies could adapt their innovations for the local market, while in turn benefiting from India’s strong manufacturing base and engineering skills. To tap into this market opportunity, governments could facilitate SME-focused trade delegations as well as joint-venture opportunities for cleantech startups.

      Green financing would play an equally important role in truly unlocking the value of such partnerships. This would be through existing bilateral instruments like the Sustainable Finance Forum and Green Growth Equity Fund or the UK’s soon-to-be-launched revenue mechanism that will mobilize private investment into carbon capture and hydrogen projects. This is especially important for India, which is looking at green hydrogen in a big way and is set to launch its first national hydrogen roadmap this year. As the UK’s carbon capture market grows, this could support India’s plans to produce hydrogen from natural gas, creating new avenues for technology sharing.

      If one thing is clear, it is that the opportunities are immense and the existing foundation is strong. With the stage set and the actors in place, Roadmap 2030 could certainly stand to benefit not just India and the UK, but the world at large in delivering a cleaner, more affordable and resilient energy future.

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