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      Could COVID-19 Bring Down Autocrats?

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      The outbreak of COVID-19 initially looked like a gift to autocrats around the world. What better pretext for a state of emergency than a pandemic?

      It was a golden opportunity to close borders, suppress civil society and issue decrees left and right (mostly right). Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and others took advantage of the crisis to advance their me-first agendas and consolidate power. Best of all, they could count on the fear of infection to keep protestors off the streets.

      However, as the global death toll approaches a million and autocrats face heightened criticism of their COVID responses, the pandemic is looking less and less like a gift.

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      The news from Mali, Belarus and the Philippines should put the fear of regime change in the hearts of autocrats from Washington to Moscow. Despite all the recent signs that democracy is on the wane, people are voting with their feet by massing on the streets to make their voices heard, particularly in places where voting with their hands has not been honored.

      The pandemic is not the only factor behind growing public disaffection for these strongmen. But for men whose chief selling point is strong leadership, the failure to contain a microscopic virus is pretty damning.

      Yet, as the case of Belarus demonstrates, dictators do not give up power easily. And even when they do, as in Mali, it’s often military power, not people power, that fills the vacuum. Meanwhile, all eyes are fixed on what will happen in the US. Will American citizens take inspiration from the people of Belarus and Mali to remove their own elected autocrat?

      People Power in Mali

      Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presidential election in Mali in 2013 in a landslide with 78% of the vote. One of his chief selling points was a promise of  “zero tolerance” for corruption. Easier said than done. The country was notoriously corrupt, and Keita had been in the thick of it during his tenure as prime minister in the 1990s. His return to power was also marked by corruption — a $40-million presidential jet, overpriced military imports, a son with expensive tastes — none of which goes over well in one of the poorest countries in the world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Mali is not only poor, it’s conflict-prone. It has been subject to military coups at roughly 20-year intervals (1968, 1991, 2012). Several Islamist groups and a group of Tuareg separatists have battled the central government — and occasionally each other — over control of the country. French forces intervened at one point to suppress the Islamists, and France has been one of the strongest backers of Keita.

      Mali held parliamentary elections in the spring, the first since 2013 after numerous delays. The turnout was low, due to coronavirus fears and sporadic violence as well as the sheer number of people displaced by conflict. Radical Islamists kidnapped the main opposition leader, Soumaila Cisse, three days before the first round. After the second round, Keita’s party, Rally for Mali, claimed a parliamentary majority, but only thanks to the constitutional court, which overturned the results for 31 seats and shifted the advantage to the ruling party.

      This court decision sparked the initial protests. The main protest group, Movement of June 5 — Rally of Patriotic Force, eventually called for Keita’s resignation, the dissolution of parliament and new elections. In July, government security forces tried to suppress the growing protests, killing more than a dozen people. International mediators were unable to resolve the stand-off. When Keita tried to pack the constitutional court with a new set of friends, protesters returned to the street.

      On August 18, the military detained Keita and that night he stepped down. The coup was led by Assimi Goita, who’d worked closely with the US military on counterinsurgency campaigns. Instead of acceding to demands for early elections, however, the new ruling junta says that Malians won’t go to the polls before 2023.

      The people of Mali showed tremendous courage to stand up to their autocrat. Unfortunately, given the history of coups and various insurgencies, the military has gotten used to playing a dominant role in the country. The US and France are also partly to blame for lavishing money, arms and training on the army on behalf of their “war on terrorism” rather than rebuilding Mali’s economy and strengthening its political infrastructure.

      Mali is a potent reminder that one alternative to autocrats is a military junta with little interest in democracy.

      Democracy in Action in Belarus

      Alexander Lukashenko is the longest-serving leader in Europe. He’s been the president of Belarus since 1994, having risen to power like Keita on an anti-corruption platform. He’s never before faced much of a political challenge in the country’s tightly-controlled elections.

      Until these last elections. In the August 9 elections, Lukashenko was seeking his sixth term in office. He expected smooth sailing since, after all, he’d jailed the country’s most prominent dissidents, he presided over loyal security forces, and he controlled the media.

      But he didn’t control Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. The wife of jailed oppositionist Sergei Tikhanovsky managed to unite the opposition prior to the election and brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets for campaign rallies.

      Nevertheless, Lukashenko declared victory in the election with 80% of the vote (even though he enjoyed, depending on which poll you consult, either a 33% or a 3% approval rating). Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania. And that seemed to be that.

      Except that the citizens of Belarus are not accepting the results of the election. As many as 200,000 people rallied in Minsk on August 23 to demand that Lukashenko step down. In US terms, that would be as if 6 million Americans gathered in Washington to demand Trump’s resignation. So far, Lukashenko is ignoring the crowd’s demand. He has tried to send a signal of defiance by arriving at the presidential palace in a flak jacket and carrying an automatic weapon. More recently, he has resorted to quiet detentions and vague promises of reform.

      Just like the Republicans in the US who appeared as speakers at the Democratic National Convention, key people are abandoning Lukashenko’s side. The workers at the Minsk Tractor Factory are on an anti-Lukashenko strike, and many other workers at state-controlled enterprises have walked off the job. Police are quitting. The ambassador to Slovakia resigned. The state theaters have turned against the autocrat for the first time in 26 years.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Despite COVID-19, Belarus doesn’t have any prohibitions against mass gatherings. That’s because Lukashenko has been a prominent COVID-19 denialist, refusing to shut down the country or adopt any significant medical precautions. His recommendations: take a sauna and drink vodka. Like Boris Johnson in the UK and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko subsequently contracted the disease, though he claims that he was asymptomatic. The country has around 70,000 infections and about 650 deaths, but the numbers have started to rise again in recent days.

      There are plenty of oppositionists ready to usher in democratic elections once Lukashenko is out of the way. A new coordinating council launched this month includes former Culture Minister Pavel Latushko as well as prominent dissidents like Olga Kovalkova and Maria Kolesnikova.

      Even strong backing from Russia won’t help Lukashenko if the whole country turns against him. But beware the autocrat who can still count on support from a state apparatus and a militant minority.

      The End of Duterte? 

      Nothing Rodrigo Duterte could do seemed to diminish his popularity in the Philippines. He insulted people left and right. He launched a war on drugs that left 27,000 alleged drug dealers dead from extrajudicial murders. Another 250 human rights defenders have also been killed.

      Still, his approval ratings remained high, near 70% as recently as May. But Duterte’s failure to deal with the coronavirus and the resulting economic dislocation may finally unseat him, if not from office then at least from the political imagination of Filipinos.

      The Philippines now has around 210,000 infections and 3,300 deaths. Compared to the US or Brazil, that might not sound like much. But surrounding the Philippines are countries that have dealt much more successfully with the pandemic: Thailand (58 deaths), Vietnam (30 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths). Meanwhile, because of a strict lockdown that didn’t effectively contain the virus, the economy has crashed, and the country has entered its first recession in 29 years.

      Like Trump, Duterte has blamed everyone but himself for the country’s failings, even unleashing a recent tirade against medical professionals. But Duterte’s insult politics is no longer working. As Walden Bello, a sociologist and a former member of the Philippines parliament, observes at Foreign Policy In Focus, “The hundreds of thousands blinded by his gangster charisma in the last 4 years have had the scales fall from their eyes and are now asking themselves how they could possibly have fallen in love with a person whose only skill was mass murder.”

      In the Philippines, presidents serve one six-year term, and Duterte is four years into his. He may well attempt to hold on for two more years. He might even pull a Vladimir Putin and change the constitution so that he can run again. A group of Duterte supporters recently held a press conference to call for a “revolutionary government” and a new constitution. Another possibility, in the wake of recent bombings in southern Philippines, might be a declaration of martial law to fight Abu Sayyaf, which is linked to the Islamic State group.

      But the combination of the pandemic, the economic crash and a pro-China foreign policy may turn the population against Duterte so dramatically that he might view resignation as the only way out.

      Democracy in the Balance

      Plenty of autocrats still look pretty comfortable in their positions. Putin — or forces loyal to him — just engineered the poisoning of one of his chief rivals, Alexei Navalny. Xi Jinping has just about turned Chinese politics into a one-man show. Viktor Orban has consolidated his grip on power in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suppressed or co-opted the opposition parties in Turkey, and Bashar al-Assad has seemingly weathered the civil war in Syria.

      Even Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, despite an atrocious record on both the pandemic and the economy, has somehow managed to regain some popularity, with his approval rating nudging above his disapproval rating recently for the first time since April.

      The US presidential elections might tip the balance one way or the other. Although America still represents a democratic ideal for some around the world, that’s not the reason why the November elections matter. Donald Trump has so undermined democratic norms and institutions that democrats around the world are aghast that he hasn’t had to pay a political price. He escaped impeachment. His party still stands behind him. Plenty of his associates have gone to jail, but he has not (yet) been taken down by the courts.

      That leaves the court of public opinion. If voters return President Trump to office for a second term, it sends a strong signal that there are no penalties for ruining a democracy. Trump operates according to his own Pottery Barn rule: He broke a democracy and he believes that he now owns it. If voters agree, it will gladden the hearts of ruling autocrats and authoritarians-to-be all over the world.

      Voting out Trump may not simply resuscitate American democracy. It may send a hopeful message to all those who oppose the Trump-like leaders in their lands. Those leaders may have broken democracy, but we the people still own it.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

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

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      For Yemen, No Consistent EU Policy in Sight

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      The European Union and its member states have presented an approach to the ongoing conflict in Yemen that has lacked both coordination and coherence. The situation in Yemen, which was the poorest Arab country already before the eruption of a civil war in 2014, has been described by the Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. In the face of this, the EU and its national governments have too often proved unable or unwilling to make a positive impact on the developments in Yemen. Some EU members, in fact, have been going in the opposite direction.

      The lack of a common European position on Yemen could be observed after September 14, 2019, when Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia were hit by airstrikes, forcing the kingdom to cut its oil production by more than a half. The attacks were claimed by the Houthi rebels who had seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.

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      Although the Houthis had hit Saudi territory several times in the past, Riyadh insisted that the Aramco attacks were launched from the north, implicitly blaming either Iran or Iraqi militias backed by Tehran. Iran provides the Houthis with support, although claims that the group is an Iranian proxy are far-fetched. An investigation carried out on behalf of the United Nations Security Council concluded that the attacks had probably not been launched from Yemen.

      On the one hand, France and Britain reacted to the attacks (whose authorship was even more uncertain at that moment) with very similar statements, highlighting their commitment to support the security of Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the German Foreign Ministry and the European External Action Service (the diplomatic arm of the EU) emphasized the need for de-escalation and made no reference to Saudi security.

      The Embargo That Never Was

      The different wording of these statements following the Aramco attacks could be considered anecdotic if it did not reflect a more profound divergence of views among EU members regarding the conflict in Yemen. France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain have continued to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia despite its blatant violation of international humanitarian law and human rights in Yemen. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, direct targeting by the Saudi-led coalition has resulted in more than 8,000 civilian deaths since 2015.

      Germany is the only EU heavyweight that has banned weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, even though Berlin has exceptionally approved the export of €400 million ($449 million) in weapons to Saudi Arabia in March last year. Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are some of the countries that have taken a similar position. It must be noted, however, that the economic value of weapons sales to Riyadh differs greatly from country to country. Saudi Arabia represents Britain’s biggest market for weapons exports and the third-largest for France. On the contrary, none of the above-mentioned countries implementing a ban has Saudi Arabia among its top-three buyers of military equipment.

      An EU-wide ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia is not only extremely unlikely, it would also have a limited impact if implemented. The United States remains by far the major arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, providing 68% of the weapons the kingdom has bought since 2014. Even so, an EU-wide ban on weapons sales to Riyadh is one of the strongest policies the EU could enforce. The share of Saudi weapons imports originating from EU countries is not the sole indicator of its importance for Riyadh. Switching from one weapons supplier to another takes money, time and may lead to incompatibilities in the weapons systems.

      EU countries exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia are acting against the EU Council Common Position on Arms Exports approved in 2008. Article 2 of the Common Position establishes that EU member states must deny an export license for military technology that “might be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law.” Adding to this, the EU’s former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, used to speak strongly against military solutions for Yemen. Mogherini’s successor, Josep Borrell, has less credibility to take such a position since he was Spain’s foreign minister when the Socialist government reversed its initial ban on weapon sales to Saudi Arabia.

      At the end, however, national EU governments retain sovereignty in the management of arms exports and thus often contradict the EU Common Policy. The European Parliament has called for a sanctions committee to be implemented in order to monitor weapons sales, but the decision is non-binding. Actually, it is not unusual to see members of the European Parliament voting in favor of severing support to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen while their own parties implement a diametrically opposite policy at the national level.

      The Rhetoric-Reality Gap

      This notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to think that the European Union has not been able to formulate a coordinated and coherent strategy regarding Yemen only because of the dissimilar positions of its member states regarding weapons exports. The low priority given to formulating and eventually supporting such a policy has been equally important. The volume of aid Yemen has received from the European Union is proof of its limited importance to EU leaders.

      Between 2015 and 2018 — the last year for which reliable data is available — Yemen has been allocated €2.33 billion in aid from EU institutions and member countries. During these same four years, Afghanistan and Morocco have received more than €5 billion each from the European Union, the largest global contributor of humanitarian aid.

      It is true that the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance is always complicated when a country is involved in a civil war, and Yemen is no exception. Actually, there are reasons to fear the Houthis might be diverting aid to non-humanitarian purposes. However, it would be naïve to assume that this is the main reason for the low levels of humanitarian aid Yemen has received from the European Union and its member countries. With a slightly smaller population, war-ravaged Syria has received three times as much humanitarian aid as Yemen between 2015 and 2018.

      The explanation for this reality has more to do with the fact that the war in Yemen does not carry the threat of a refugee crisis for the European Union. As surprising as it may seem, more than 160,000 migrants, mostly from Ethiopia and Somalia, arrived in Yemen in 2018. Once there, they often join Yemenis in trying to reach Saudi Arabia in the search of a better life. Riyadh, however, exerts strict controls on migration on the Saudi-Yemeni border, having built a fence along it during the early 2000s.

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      Marissa Quie and Hameed Hakimi argue that in the European Union, aid has become “a tool to stem what electorates perceive to be a ‘tidal wave’ of migration.” This goes a long way into explaining why Libya — through an Italy-Libya deal supported by the EU — Morocco, Turkey or Afghanistan, important points of rigin or transit for migrants aiming to reach Europe, are seen as a higher priority than Yemen.

      The incapacity of the European Union to reach and implement a comprehensive strategy regarding Yemen damages its soft-power projection in the world. Even though the EU stance on the Yemeni conflict is only one of many aspects leading to the questioning of Europe’s soft power, it does not always have to be this way. Europe proved this with its constructive role in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal, regardless of the fact that the EU was far less successful in finding a solution to the US exit from the deal in 2018.

      The European Union rhetorically upholds a certain set of norms that are presumably the result of a certain European identity. These include the defense of human rights, the respect of international regimes — the 2008 EU Common Position and the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty among them — and the responsibility to help avert humanitarian crisis through aid. Nevertheless, as Mai’a K. Davis Cross explains, “identity, image, policies and Public Diplomacy are all interrelated.” EU public diplomacy in Yemen cannot work as long as its policies, and those of its member states, convey an image at odds with the identity the European Union claims as its own.

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

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      The Infiltration of Law Enforcement by Racist Extremists

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      As protests continue to bring cities across the United States to a standstill, the problem of racist policing is more evident than ever before. The killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department was the latest in a long line of violent assaults on people of color by law enforcement, and his name joins an ever-growing list of those who have been killed by ones who are sworn to protect and serve. The United States is grappling with the issue of police racism before the world’s eyes, and the scale of the conversation currently happening is unprecedented and, sadly, still not enough.

      While the unconscious bias of some officers of the law has been laid bare for all to see, the conscious and hateful bias of others has remained largely in the shadows. The systemic issue of racial profiling is evident, but the hidden epidemic of far-right activism in police departments around the country is an insidious and even more dangerous threat. The links between the police and organized racism are as old as the institutions themselves. During the civil rights movement, Southern police chiefs coordinated with local Ku Klux Klan chapters, and many officers and commissioners in the deep South were accused of aiding Klan activity and even being active members of KKK organizations.

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      While this trend seems like an archaic symptom of the era of segregation, links between law enforcement and far-right organizations have remained constant through the 20th century and into the 21st and are now seemingly more widespread than ever. In the 1990s, a federal judge found that a number of deputies in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office had concrete links to neo-Nazi organizations and that a number of cases of police violence against black and Latino communities had been motivated by their racist hostility and “terrorist” sympathies. Likewise, in 2008, a prominent Chicago-area police officer was fired and prosecuted over links to the Ku Klux Klan.

      Widespread Infiltration

      A 2015 FBI investigation found that white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement agencies was at epidemic levels, and suggested that right-wing and anti-government “domestic terrorists” were using links with law enforcement to gain intelligence and restricted access privileges, as well as ultimately evade capture. The report found that the vast majority of law enforcement agencies across the United States did not screen potential recruits for links to far-right organizations and often turned a blind eye to those recruits with questionable political beliefs.

      The bureau was aware of widespread infiltration as early as 2006, suggesting in a heavily redacted report that white supremacist activists were taking advantage of weak vetting procedures in local law enforcement agencies to gain access to “restricted areas vulnerable to sabotage and to elected officials or protected persons, whom they could see as potential targets for violence.” The 2006 report suggested that this was a systematic effort, coordinated by high-profile far-right figures such as William Pierce, and infiltration was seen as a key element in the philosophy of leaderless resistance.

      Despite the concerns and recommendations outlined in the FBI’s latest report, recent research has shown that the links between law enforcement and the extreme right have continued to flourish. Last year, a Reveal News investigation found that hundreds of active duty and retired law enforcement officers were members of online forums dedicated to Islamophobia, neo-Confederate ideology and even neo-Nazism. Almost 400 police officers from 150 different departments had their identities verified, and many were found to have been actively peddling hate speech, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and anti-government rhetoric.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Proud Boys in particular have strong links to law enforcement, and a number of high-profile investigations have highlighted the extent of the collusion between police and the hate group described as the “alt-right fight club.” In May this year, a Chicago PD officer, Robert Bakker, was found to have been an active member of a Proud Boys Telegram channel called “Fuck Antifa,” where he actively coordinated Proud Boys meet-ups and bragged about his connections in the police department and the government.

      Six months earlier, a police officer from East Hampton, Connecticut, was forced into retirement after his links to Proud Boys groups in the area. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law led an investigation into the officer’s social media activity, finding that he was an active member of the self-described “western chauvinist” group. A year before that, a female officer from Clark County, Washington, was fired after she was pictured wearing a Proud Boys sweatshirt and was later discovered to have been merchandising Proud Boys apparel on the design-sharing RedBubble website.

      Even in cases in which officers are not active members of hate groups, collusion remains a very real issue. In 2019, police officers in Washington, DC, were pictured fist-bumping Proud Boys members at a July 4 rally in front of the White House. The members of the group were then given a police escort to a local bar, while anti-fascist protesters were met with violence from both the police and the Proud Boys. In an even more egregious case, an investigation in Portland, Oregon, found that a senior police officer had been exchanging friendly text messages with Joey Gibson. Gibson was the leader of the far-right Patriot Prayer, a sometimes violent offshoot of the Proud Boys defined by both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

      In the lead-up to a number of high-profile clashes between the group and anti-fascist counterdemonstrators, Gibson and Lieutenant Jeff Niiya shared joking messages and talked about Patriot Prayer’s planned actions, with Niiya even confiding in Gibson that he had told officers to ignore outstanding warrants for the arrest of a prominent Patriot Prayer member, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese. A separate investigation found that Niiya had submitted police reports on Gibson’s behalf, launching criminal investigations against “antifa activists” based on footage Gibson had privately sent him. This raised concerns that far-right demonstrators were being given preferential treatment by Portland police, particularly given the reputation for forceful suppression of anti-fascist counterprotest in the city.

      Not Immune

      Although this trend reaches uniquely epidemic levels in the United States, the rest of the world is not immune. A 2019 report showed alarming levels of collusion between law enforcement and violent right-wing extremists in Germany. The investigation, led by the nation’s general prosecutor, found that the extreme-right Nordkreuz group had compiled a death list of leftist activists, journalists and pro-refugee targets using police records and was in the process of planning a major terror attack. It was found that the 30 members of the group had close ties to law enforcement, with at least one member actively employed by a special commando unit of the state office of criminal investigations.

      A recent investigation by Der Spiegel found that the elite unit, known as the KSK, openly tolerated extremist right-wing iconography and membership, even using widely-known Nazi ciphers such as “88” — code for HH, or Heil Hitler. The investigation uncovered high-level officers openly promoting “national-conservative ideology” and espousing racist ultranationalism. Earlier this year, a KSK soldier who reportedly had links to extremist groups was arrested after a weapons and explosives cache was found in his back yard. The German government responded to Der Spiegel’s exposé by launching its own investigation into the unit, finding that racist extremism was endemic across all ranks. As a result, the unit was officially disbanded in early July.

      As historian Kathleen Belew has shown in her most recent book on the long history of the far right’s links to the United States military, “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” the siphoning of weaponry and ammunition from military bases to white supremacist organizations has been a constant tactic of would-be terrorist groups. There is no doubt that the continued militarization of police forces in the United States and Europe, combined with the high levels of extremist infiltration, offers new avenues for the theft of high-grade weaponry and tactics, and further armament of extremist right-wing groups.

      These links between law enforcement and white supremacist organizations are deeply concerning, and present a very real threat to peace, justice and liberty in the United States and around the world. As police racism once again enters the spotlight, it is more important than ever to examine and challenge the infiltration of law enforcement by racist extremists. A centralized vetting process that directly seeks out links to organized racism and excludes candidates with any affiliation with far-right groups is the bare minimum and should be the first step toward a total overhaul of the training and oversight procedures.

      Despite a number of legal challenges to the protective role of policing, law enforcement, at its core, still exists to protect and serve the people regardless of race, religion or creed, and any affiliation with hateful ideology compromises an officer’s ability to execute this role fairly and without prejudice. Until the systemic and personal racism of law enforcement is no longer an issue, we will see more George Floyds, more Breonna Taylors, more murders in the name of law and order. Preventing and eliminating racist bias in police departments across the US is only the first step toward a long process of reckoning and reconciliation.

      *[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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      Britain Fails Its Exams

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      The Advanced Level Certificate (A-level), together with the General Certificate of Education (GCSE), is one of two sets of exams students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland has its own system) sit in the summer. The GCSE is a ticket to spending two years studying for A-levels, itself a ticket to university, where 40% of England’s schoolchildren end up. The results are released in August by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual.)

      This year, there were no exams because the United Kingdom locked itself down against COVID-19. Instead, teachers supplied predicted grades. Teachers make these predictions every year, and it is with these in mind that universities make the offer of a place. Offers are made either unconditionally or with the proviso that the predictions are realized or bettered. In recent years, more and more offers have been made unconditionally, and these now comprise around a third of the total.

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      Universities do this because they are dependent upon the fees each student pays: no students, no fees, no university. The pressure rises as universities expand, and each finds itself having to attract a greater share of a shrinking number of school leavers. Restrictions imposed by a hostile immigration service on international students’ movements, and now in response to COVID-19, have made matters worse.

      The Algorithm

      This year was also different because, when the results were issued on August 13, it was obvious that Ofqual had intervened. The grades awarded to many students bore little resemblance to the schools’ predictions. Worried that teachers were being too generous and that this would undermine the credibility of the exams, Ofqual devised and applied a mathematical formula to moderate the results. The algorithm took account of the students’ mock results and the performance of each school in previous years, amongst other variables. The calculations determined that 40% of grades should be reduced. This threw offers and plans into doubt, causing umbrage among students, parents, teachers and universities.

      Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, stuck resolutely to his guns. By August 17, he had abandoned them, and the original predicted results were reinstated. Williamson had been blindsided by Ofqual, he claimed, and only became aware of the full implications of the recalculations over the weekend. Ofqual struck back, saying that Williamson had known difficulties were brewing ever since March, when he ordered the regulator to adjust grades if they appeared inflated.

      It was then made known that the head of Ofqual, Roger Taylor, established and ran a firm implicated in the Mid Staffs Hospital scandal. His firm, Dr Foster,  had come up with an algorithm enabling the hospital to present its mortality rates as low when, in fact, they were dangerously high and its patients were being dreadfully mistreated.

      Just what had Gavin Williamson been levelling at? The entire mess was completely avoidable and unnecessary. No exams had been taken, so there were no exams to be brought into disrepute. And there had been no exams because of exceptional circumstances. So why treat the teacher’s predictions as an assault on standards, especially when predictions are made every year and unconditional offers are issued to a fair proportion of students as a matter of course?

      Whatever the answer, the response was immediate. Gasps of disbelief at the secretary’s sheer incompetence (“He’s fucking useless,” declared one vice chancellor) were combined with emotional outbursts from students worried that their lives had been ruined, from parents trying to deal with the fallout at home, and from university staff whose summer breaks were interrupted.

      All parties most likely suspected that things would eventually sort themselves out if only because chancellors are desperate to fill seats. Having said that, the government and Ofqual displayed a complete absence of trust in teachers and schools. Most disgraceful was the treatment of students with potential and drive who had worked hard against the odds in schools assessed as poor over the last few years. At a macro-level, it meant that the proportion of the most deprived pupils (the bottom third) who achieved a Grade C or better fell by nearly 11%, while the independent schools saw their proportion of A and A* grades increase by nearly 5%.

      An education secretary, whose only claim to the job is that he was not educated at an independent school and did not go to Oxford or Cambridge, willfully took away the ladder from the very kids it is meant for. A more callous and spiteful decision in the name of equality is difficult to imagine. However, the farrago matters for another, even more important, reason. It illustrates just how superficial education has become.

      Grades Are Everything

      The A-levels are not just a passport to university. A school whose students’ average grades fall too far will come under greater scrutiny from the government, which can end in sanctions of one sort or another. These include changing staff pay and conditions; removing staff and governing bodies; turning the school’s budget over to an interim board; closing the school; or handing it (minus its former staff) to an academy. Academies, though state-funded, have more control over management, curriculum, pay, the selection of students and staff, and the freedom to attract money from private sponsors.

      Of the 3,400 or so state-funded secondary schools (3.25 million pupils), nearly three-quarters (about 2.3 million children) are now academies. If an academy fails, then it, too, is either absorbed by a more successful one or closed. Independent schools judged to be failing can also find themselves in trouble. For instance, they may be prohibited from taking on new pupils, fined or closed. Proprietors who do not respond adequately to enforcement notices can end up in prison.

      Grades, then, have come to mean everything. And because they mean everything, what they are supposed to signify has come to mean very little at all. The education system — and “system” is a good description — barely manages to educate. Where a good education is found in English schools, it is provided by teachers and parents despite the vast amount of nonsensical instructions (misleadingly entitled “guidelines”) issued by the government. In these oases of levelheadedness, staff teach outside the system’s narrow confines, helping children to explore more rounded and deeper understandings of the world, introducing them to new ways of thinking.

      The problem is not just that teachers are weighed down and worn out by red tape. To avoid falling foul of the government and its quality enforcers, teachers must consume millions of words of legislation, statutory instruments, notices and guidance that lay out in extraordinary detail everyday practice within the school. It is that education — or rather the fulfillment of standards dictated by the government — has become a bureaucratic procedure, a glorified exercise in form-filling, in which content, imagination, experimentation and sustained and unconventional thought no longer matter.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Children and teachers must do what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. “Best practice” holds sway over fresh thought. The student must see the world as directed. Thus, for instance, a play is a composite of meaning shaped by literary and dramatic devices. History is an unstable melange of constructions arrived at by historians through their interpersonal relationships. The economy must be studied through the application of the correct economic models. Only by breaking the mind into a kaleidoscope of skills through which patchworks of information are collected and assembled, declare geography teachers, can social and natural worlds be understood. Facts, interpretations and evidence are set out in neat bullet points so they can be memorized and marshalled in the correct way and in the correct place.

      All of this and more — such as precisely defined “command words” like “analyze” and “suggest,” and the marks to be awarded for each correctly placed fact or argument — is found in thick, glossy volumes of “specifications,” “amendments,” “sample assessments,” published “resources,” “mark schemes,” “specimen papers,” “exemplar material,” “schemes of work,” “skills for learning and work” and “topic materials” produced by exam boards for each subject.

      Officialism smothers all schools. But when parents are well educated and bring up their children to read, learn, write, talk and think coherently, teachers have an easier time of it. Children are confident, and this shows in class and in their work. Teachers know that as far as the exams are concerned, their students can, to all intents and purposes, teach themselves. A teacher’s immediate job is to make sure a child is practiced in the bureaucracy and is given the required information. This will deliver the grades.

      The second, and more important job, is to lead their children out and well beyond those limitations. It is this — a passion for their subject and a willingness to go further — that really prepares the child for university and beyond. Most, though not all, of these schools are independent and selective.

      State-funded schools are far more constrained by the system, and it is all they can do to meet its demands. The bureaucracy does not allow them the time, freedom, money or incentive to instill in children and parents the outlooks, values, beliefs, practices and confidence that will enable them to see beyond the government’s petty world view.

      I should say that the distinction I make between independent and state is too stark. There are some excellent state schools, and there are some terrible independent schools — unhappy little communities tucked away in some old building in the countryside. My point is simply that education, rather than its bureaucratized version, is found unevenly and rarely, and is more likely where teachers and parents have the wherewithal and determination to play the system and so keep it from dragging them and their children down into a mire of niggling and pointless tasks, boredom and despondency.

      Not Much Help

      British universities have not been much help. Rather than find common cause with schools and encourage them in fostering a university-style education, universities have gone along with government reforms all too easily and are becoming more like brash, over-confident schools. The university has become a brand, an experience, a rite, designed to extract as much cash as possible from students. Walk away with a good degree, the student is told, and our brand will confer upon you a charisma, a light, a duende that will set you up for life or at least give you a foot in a door so that you show an employer what you can do. Meanwhile, behind all the pizzazz, the content of the degree is scratched away at and the process through which the certificate is awarded becomes more bureaucratic.

      The trend is especially obvious in universities without a well-established pedigree. Why should a student pay tens of thousands of pounds for a certificate from a university no one has heard of? The answer is “relevance,” and relevance means “skills.” As the degree is hollowed out, the space is filled with an omnium-gatherum of skills: cognitive skills, intellectual skills, key skills, transferable skills, employment-related skills, practical skills, applied skills, inter-personal skills, writing skills, reading skills, thinking skills, networking skills, team-working skills, observational skills, speaking skills, speech-making skills, analytical skills, editing skills, note-taking skills, research skills, computing skills, entrepreneurial skills, lab skills, creative skills, leadership skills, work ethic skills and ethical skills.

      Choose a verb or adjective, put the word “skill” after it, and it becomes teachable, assessable and marketable. To write an essay or a thesis or to take an exam is to engage in a piece of bureaucracy, an updated form of medieval scholasticism, in which all these skills are stitched together, tracked and traced.

      Embed from Getty Images

      By lifting a corner of the veil, the A-level fiasco exposes a little of the humbug swirling around the government’s education system and something of the cynicism with which the government treats the people it claims to represent. Just how deep this cynicism goes, however, is revealed by a matter from which the farce distracted public attention over the last week — a week that I suspect will prove deadly. I say deadly because it will be difficult in the time left to deter the government from repeating the same mistakes it made at the start of the pandemic that cost over 40,000 lives.

      At present, the UK government and its scientific advisers are busy saturating the press with its claim that the “life chances” of children will be damaged irreparably if schools stay closed. A generation of children will “fall behind,” many of those who rely on schools to feed them will go hungry, and many others, forced to stay at home, will be at greater risk of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.

      The government’s chutzpah is breathtaking. To indict the produce of its own policies and then use that indictment as cheap blackmail in support of those same policies is surely the height of contempt. A fifth of the population is poor because of government actions and inactions over many years. It is these “ordinary” people, as ministers like to call them, who are most under pressure to go work because of cuts to welfare, changes in benefit rules and threats from government.

      It is also they who, last time around, suffered most from a virus allowed to run loose. And it is their children who are most likely to bring it back home after struggling on public transport and spending hours in crowded classrooms working on pointless and soul-destroying bureaucratic techniques. The only strand of reasoning that makes some kind of sense in this tangled web of lunacy is a ruthless one: the primary function of the education system is to keep Britain’s labor force — and especially its cheaper end — at work.

      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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      Three Years On, Still No Accountability for Our Son’s Death

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      Three years ago today, we suffered the most painful experience a family can endure. Our son Christopher Allen was murdered on the other side of the world, reporting on the civil conflict in South Sudan. A freelance journalist and dual US-UK citizen, Chris was only 26 years old and had a bright future ahead of him — a future that was taken from him, from us and from those whose stories he was so intent on telling the world.

      On August 26, 2017, our lives changed irrevocably. Now, the pursuit of justice for Chris would become a central part of our existence. Our hearts were broken and, in addition to experiencing insurmountable grief, we found our family facing an uphill battle not only with the South Sudanese but also with Chris’ own governments in Washington and London, as well as with the United Nations.

      No Justice

      These are the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect journalists and press freedom, that are meant to fight injustice and ensure accountability for unspeakable crimes. Yet they have failed to act meaningfully to support us or help secure justice for Chris’ killing. Everything that is meant to be set into motion when a tragedy like this occurs simply did not happen — at least not without a fight from our side. Now, three years on, there has still been no investigation and no justice. We still lack even basic answers about what happened to Chris.

      Chris developed his craft as a journalist in Ukraine, where he lived and worked from April 2014 and from there embarked on a new challenge. In August 2017, he traveled to South Sudan to cover the country’s under-reported civil war, embedding with the SPLA-IO, a rebel faction attempting to overthrow the established government in Juba.

      Chris had embedded with the soldiers for more than three weeks, listening to the stories of their lives, their losses, motivations and fears before being targeted by government forces during a battle in Kaya, near South Sudan’s border with Uganda. We spoke with Chris the night before he was killed. The company was moving out that evening to walk through miles of bush to capture munition supplies.

      We urged Chris not to go, to write a piece that covered the embed to date, to share with his readers the pain the families of these men suffered at the hand of those in power. But he insisted that the story of preparing for battle was incomplete. Chris’ dedication to his journalism was absolute — he felt he must bear witness to the battle. He said to us that he “had to see it through.” Our son looked for the truth at all costs.

      As his parents, it is daunting and painful to recount this. Just as Chris sought the truth of the tragedies and difficulties of others, we have been working to establish the truth of the circumstances of his killing every day for three full years. Yet the very governments and institutions whose duty it is to help us find the truth have failed to support us at every key juncture over the past three years.

      Based on evidence uncovered through journalistic investigations in the absence of any official inquiry, we know that Chris was killed by a member of the South Sudanese armed forces and that his killing and the treatment of his body post-mortem are likely to constitute war crimes. With support from a legal team as well as campaigners at Reporters Without Borders, we have tenaciously sought an independent criminal investigation from the South Sudanese and US authorities.

      We Must See This Through

      In our deep desire to secure justice and accountability for the wrongful killing of our son, a civilian and journalist armed only with a camera, and to remind states that they cannot suppress press freedom by killing journalists with impunity, we will continue to demand a meaningful investigation and justice. Like Chris, we must see this through.  

      Despite our intense efforts, the US and UK governments and the United Nations have still failed to act meaningfully to help us find answers or justice, and in some cases have not responded at all. This is in sharp contrast to their publicly stated commitments to freedom of expression. The lesson we have learned over these past three painful years is that too often, these bodies cannot be taken at their word, and must very actively be held to account.

      We persevere in our fight for justice not only for our son, but for all journalists taking tremendous risks to get out the truth from dangerous places around the world. Every case of impunity leaves the door open for further attacks on journalists and emboldens those who wish to use violence to silence public interest reporting. In contrast, every case in which justice is achieved sends a powerful signal that violence against journalists will not be tolerated anywhere and that those who commit such atrocious acts will pay the price. This, in turn, serves to deter violence and protect journalists everywhere.

      We ask that a bright light be shed on the circumstance of Christopher’s killing. We call on governments and institutions to hold the South Sudanese military accountable for the wrongful death of our son. A transparent investigation is the first step. Accountability and justice for Chris must follow. By demanding accountability for our son’s killing, we hope to create a safer world for journalists and bolster press freedom everywhere.

      We must see this through. 

      *[Joyce Krajian and John Allen are the parents of Christopher Allen.]

      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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      Negotiating the End of Brexit

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      It is increasingly likely that, unless things change, on January 1, 2021, we will have a no-deal Brexit. That would mean the only deal between the European Union and the United Kingdom would be the already ratified EU withdrawal agreement of 2019.

      There are only around 50 working days left in which to make a broader agreement for a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU. The consequences of failing to do so for Ireland will be as profound — and perhaps even as long-lasting — as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

      A failure to reach a UK-EU agreement would mean a deep rift between the UK and Ireland. It would also mean heightened tensions within Northern Ireland, disruptions to century-old business relations and a succession of high-profile court cases between the EU and the UK dragging on for years.

      How Global Britain Confronts the Asian Century

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      Issues on which a deal could have easily been reached in amicable give-and-take negotiations will be used as hostages or leverage on other matters. The economic and political damage would be incalculable. And we must do everything we can to avoid this.

      Changing the EU trade commissioner, Phil Hogan, under such circumstances would be dangerous. Trying to change horses in midstream is always difficult. But attempting to do so at the height of a flood — in high winds — would be even more so.

      The EU would lose an exceptionally competent trade commissioner when he was never more needed. An Irishman would no longer hold the trade portfolio. The independence of the European Commission, a vital ingredient in the EU’s success, would have been compromised — a huge loss for all smaller EU states.

      According to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, talks between the European Union and the UK, which ended last week, seemed at times to be going “backwards rather than forwards.” The impasse has been reached for three reasons.

      The Meaning of Sovereignty

      First, the two sides have set themselves incompatible objectives. The European Union wants a wide-ranging “economic partnership” between the UK and the EU, with a “level playing field” for “open and fair” competition. The UK agreed to this objective in the joint political declaration made with the EU at the time of the withdrawal agreement, which was reached in October 2019.

      Since then, the UK has held a general election with the ruling Conservative Party winning an overall majority in Parliament, and it has changed its mind. It is now insisting, in the uncompromising words of it chief negotiator, David Frost, on “sovereign control of our own laws, borders, and waters.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      This formula fails to take account of the fact that any agreement the UK might make with the EU (or with anyone else) on standards for goods, services or food items necessarily involves a diminution of sovereign control. Even being in the World Trade Organization (WTO) involves accepting its rulings, which are a diminution of “sovereign control.” This is why US President Donald Trump does not like the WTO and is trying to undermine it.

      The 2019 withdrawal agreement from the EU also involves a diminution of sovereign control by Westminster over the laws that will apply in Northern Ireland and thus within the UK. That agreement obliges the UK to apply EU laws on tariffs and standards to goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain — i.e., going from one part of the UK to another.

      This obligation is one of the reasons given by a group of UK parliamentarians — including Iain Duncan Smith, David Trimble, Bill Cash, Owen Paterson and Sammy Wilson — for wanting the UK to pull out from the withdrawal agreement, even though most of them voted for it last year.

      Sovereignty is a metaphysical concept, not a practical policy. Attempting to apply it literally would make structured and predictable international cooperation between states impossible. That is not understood by many in the Conservative Party.

      The Method of Negotiation

      Second, the negotiating method has proved challenging. The legal and political timetables do not gel. The UK wants to discuss the legal texts of a possible free trade agreement first and leave the controversial issues — like competition and fisheries — until the endgame in October. But the EU wants serious engagement to start on these sticking points straight away.

      Any resolution of these matters will require complex legal drafting, which cannot be left to the last minute. After all, these texts will have to be approved by the European and British Parliaments before the end of 2020. There can be no ambiguities or late-night sloppy drafting.

      The problem is that the UK negotiator cannot yet get instructions on the compromises he can make from Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. Johnson is instead preoccupied with combating the spread of the COVID-19 disease, as well as keeping the likes of Duncan Smith and Co. onside. The prime minister is a last-minute type of guy.

      Trade Relations With Other Blocs

      Third, there is the matter of making provisions for the trade agreements the UK wants to make in the future with other countries, such as the US, Japan and New Zealand. Freedom to make such deals was presented to UK voters as one of the benefits of Brexit.

      The underlying problem here is that the UK government has yet to make up its mind on whether it will continue with the European Union’s strict precautionary policy on food safety or adopt the more permissive approach favored by the US. Similar policy choices will have to be made by the UK on chemicals, energy efficiency displays and geographical indicators.

      The more the UK diverges from existing EU standards on these issues, the more intrusive the controls on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain will have to be, and the more acute the distress will be for Unionist circles in Northern Ireland. Issues that are uncontroversial in themselves will assume vast symbolic significance and threaten peace on the island of Ireland

      The UK is likely to be forced to make side deals with the US on issues like hormone-treated beef, genetically modified organisms and chlorinated chicken. The US questions the scientific basis for the existing EU restrictions and has won a WTO case on beef over this. It would probably win on chlorinated chicken, too.

      If Britain conceded to the US on hormones and chlorination, this would create control problems at the border between the UK and the EU, wherever that border is in Ireland. Either UK officials would enforce EU rules on hormones and chlorination on the entry of beef or chicken to this island, or there would be a huge international court case.

      All this shows that, in the absence of some sort of partnership agreement between the EU and the UK, relations could spiral out of control. Ireland, as well as the European Union, needs its best team on the pitch to ensure that this does not happen.

      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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      How Global Britain Confronts the Asian Century

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      On February 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid bare his long-awaited vision of a “global Britain” in a world after Brexit. Speaking amidst the imperial grandeur of Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Johnson’s message was that the United Kingdom, liberated from the straitjacket of EU membership, would be free to carve out a confident, dynamic and outward-looking role on the world stage in a post-Brexit era — even as the first handful of COVID-19 infections took root on British soil.

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      Six months and a global pandemic later, Britain faces the unique and unprecedented challenge of redefining its place in a world that is in the midst of a historic watershed moment. The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst for deep-rooted trends that have long been evident to politicians, policymakers and analysts alike — none more so than the tectonic shift in the globe’s geopolitical center of gravity from West to East.

      Whether it be China’s much-publicized “wolf-warrior” diplomacy against states criticizing its initial response to the outbreak, or the initial success of East Asian states in confronting the pandemic using artificial intelligence and digital surveillance, COVID-19 has shown that the much-hyped “Asian century” is not merely a future prognosis but a present-day reality.

      Brexit Britain on the World Stage

      If the pandemic has served to boost Asia’s image on the world stage, the opposite is true for Brexit Britain. The UK’s bumbling response to the COVID-19 crisis has confirmed many of the suspicions of ill-placed grandeur held in foreign capitals since the referendum to leave the European Union in 2016.

      Despite Johnson’s boastful confidence in Britain’s “world-beating” response to the novel coronavirus (which causes the COVID-19 disease), fatal early errors by the government — notably the initial refusal to enforce a lockdown in a forlorn effort to preserve the economy — have resulted in Britain suffering the worst of both worlds. Not only is the UK facing one of the highest per-capita death rates and the worst economic fallout as a result of COVID-19 in the developed world, but the situation has been exacerbated by the looming threat of no post-Brexit trade deal being agreed with the EU by the end of 2020.

      In this context, a global Britain’s success in navigating the increasingly volatile “new normal” of the post-pandemic geopolitical order will hinge more than ever on the government’s ability to leverage ties with partners old and new across the Asian continent.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Johnson’s vision of a buccaneering global Britain on the world stage is fundamentally predicated upon two core pillars: trade and security. Whitehall is acutely aware that Britain’s ability to harness the ascendance of Asia’s emerging powerhouses hinges upon striking a fragile balance between these two, often inconsistent, objectives.

      On one hand, Britain’s strategic planners look hungrily toward contemporary geopolitical hotspots like the South China Sea as testing grounds for a new forceful security footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. Britain’s armed forces already possess a string of strategic outposts, from the Brunei-based Gurkha garrison to Royal Naval logistical hubs in Singapore and Diego Garcia. The recently formed UK Defence Staff (Asia Pacific) has outlined plans for a further base in Southeast Asia in a bid to affirm Britain’s commitment to upholding the regional security architecture.

      In a symbolic gesture, the scheduled deployment of the Royal Navy’s brand new state-of-the-art aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to conduct “freedom of navigation” patrols in the disputed South China Sea during 2021 is indicative of a wholesale rejection of the strategic retrenchment from east of Suez that has typified British security policy in the Indo-Pacific since the 1960s.

      Beijing’s Sphere of Influence

      Nevertheless, such grandiose ambitions of a more assertive military and diplomatic footprint in Asia do not come without their costs. Given China’s increasingly assertive posture on the international stage since the outbreak of COVID-19, it is not unreasonable to expect the diplomatic blowback from Britain’s perceived meddling within Beijing’s sphere of influence to grow stronger in the post-COVID era.

      In July, after the UK offered citizenship to almost 3 million Hong Kong residents following Beijing’s implementation of a controversial new security law in Britain’s ex-colony, China issued a strongly-worded yet ambiguous threat of “retaliation.” China’s response is illustrative of the fact that Brexit Britain’s ability to fully harness the Asian century is dependent upon London playing second fiddle to the preferences of Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi.  

      Despite Johnson’s lofty rhetoric hailing Britain’s post-Brexit transformation into a “great, global trading nation,” such a vision is not exactly conducive to geopolitical maneuvers that can all too readily be perceived as antagonistic by prospective partners. For instance, Whitehall’s backpedaling over the contracting of Huawei, a Chinese technology company, to construct large tracts of Britain’s 5G infrastructure over national security concerns does not bode well for a future UK–China free trade deal. Similarly, efforts to introduce restrictions on immigration via the adoption of an Australia-style points-based system have proved to be a sticking point in post-Brexit trade negotiations with India, the former “jewel of the empire” with whom Britain shares extensive historical, cultural and linguistic ties.

      As a global Britain seeks to navigate a post-pandemic order characterized by increased great power antagonism, retreating globalization and resurgent authoritarianism, Whitehall’s strategic planners must be prepared to make hard-headed compromises between geopolitical and economic objectives in Asia in a manner that has been sorely lacking from Brexit negotiations with Britain’s European partners. Cut adrift from Europe at a time when the global order is becoming increasingly fragmented into competing regional blocs, a rudderless Britain lacking a coherent, sustainable vision of how it seeks to engage with Asia’s emerging superpowers risks becoming caught in the middle of an escalating cold war between the US and China.

      Reason for Optimism

      Despite the gloomy prognosis for a global Britain standing at the dawn of the Asian century, there remains reason for optimism once the short-term shockwaves of the pandemic have receded. Britain’s elite universities retain a mystical allure for ambitious young Asians seeking a world-class education. China, India, Hong Kong and Malaysia account for four of the top five countries of origin for international students in the UK. In addition, with two leading vaccine candidates in development at Oxford and Imperial, a British breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19 would further bolster Britain’s reputation as a global hub of research and innovation.

      Such cutting-edge academic expertise — combined with London’s enduring status as a global financial center, post-2021 visa and immigration reforms targeting highly-skilled professionals, and the cultural imprint of large Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese diasporas — ensures that even post-Brexit Britain possesses the latent potential not only to attract top-class Asian talent, but also to emerge as one of the Asian century’s biggest winners outside of the Indo-Pacific. Whilst Brexit has undercut the Blairite vision of Britain as a “pivotal power” bridging the gap between the US and Europe, the United Kingdom’s deep-rooted historical, cultural, linguistic and economic ties with Asia’s rising powers provide ample scope for recasting Britain as a pivot on a grander scale: as a global hub bridging East and West.

      However, such aspirations remain little more than wishful thinking unless British policymakers can formulate a coherent approach toward the Asian century, which has so far been absent. Nevertheless, tentative steps have been taken in such a direction over recent months. Whitehall’s merging of the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office is likely to deal a blow to British influence in less-developed corners of Asia, at least in the short term. Yet Johnson’s renewed commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid enables a more cohesive, long-term approach with developmental issues, allowing funding to be streamlined toward teams of world-class specialists, such as the UK Climate Change Unit in Indonesia or the Stabilisation Unit supporting post-conflict reconstruction in fragile states like Pakistan and Myanmar.

      Similarly, the Foreign Office’s recent adoption of an “All of Asia” strategy is indicative of a more comprehensive approach to forging partnerships across the continent, balancing conflicting security, diplomatic, trade, developmental priorities, as illustrated through the establishment of the UK’s first permanent mission to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc in January 2020.

      Before It Sets Sail

      As the nature of post-pandemic global order emerges over the coming months and years, a global Britain will find itself navigating a turbulent geopolitical environment made infinitely more challenging by the aftershocks of the coronavirus. This includes a worldwide economic crisis, decreased globalization, declining faith in multilateral institutions and rising great power tension, all of which threaten to derail Johnson’s post-Brexit voyage into the unknown before it has even set sail.

      Whilst Britain and its Western allies have bungled their response to the public health crisis, Asia’s dynamic rising powers are already bouncing back from the pandemic and laying the building blocks to ensure that the 21st century truly is Asian. From Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to New Delhi’s “Make in India” to ambitious future vision projects such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, Vision of Indonesia 2045 or Kazakhstan 2050, Asia’s emerging powerhouses all champion integrated strategic frameworks to harness the unprecedented shift in global wealth and power eastward, which the COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed.

      A global Britain’s greatest mistake would be to supplement such a long-term calculated strategy with the half-baked geopolitical gambits that have so far typified Brexit Britain’s approach to the world’s largest continent. Indeed, for the UK to truly unleash its full potential in the dawning Asian century, it must look to Asia itself for inspiration.

      *[Will Marshall is an intern at Gulf State Analytics, which is a media partner of Fair Observer.]

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

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      Will Millennials and Zoomers Save the Future?

      by

      “All of you young people who served in the war. You are all a lost generation.” This famous phrase is credited to Gertrude Stein by Ernest Hemingway, who popularized it in the epigraph to his 1926 novel “The Sun also Rises.” The phrase encapsulates the feelings of a generation, disillusioned by the civilizational breakdown witnessed during the Great War, the loss of faith in the ideals and values that had marked their pre-war youth, which left them empty and cynical. In Europe, many of them would ultimately find a new purpose in the ranks of Mussolini’s squadristi, Hitler’s Sturmabteilung and the various fascist movements that sprang up in their wake — with disastrous results.

      It might appear preposterous to compare today’s younger generations, millennials and zoomers (aka Generation Z), to Hemingway’s cohort of young women and men on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet there are good reasons to presume that today’s younger generations are going to be as deeply, if not more, scarred — socially, economically and psychologically — by COVID-19 as the Lost Generation was by World War I.  

      Foretaste of Things to Come

      The travails of COVID-19, as has been frequently noted, are just a foretaste of things to come. The combination of climate change and the destruction of natural habitats has made the outbreak of infectious diseases spreading from animals, such as bats and birds, to humans increasingly likely. As a landmark study published in Nature put it a decade ago, “mounting evidence indicates that biodiversity loss frequently increases disease transmission.” Or, to put it differently, “current evidence indicates that preserving intact ecosystems and their endemic biodiversity should generally reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases.”

      Unfortunately, the opposite has been the case. The current rate of extinction is “tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years — and it is accelerating.” By now, humanity, which accounts for not more than a small sliver of life on this planet, is responsible for the loss of more than 80% of all wild mammals and half of all plants. The consequences are potentially catastrophic.

      For the moment, concerns about global warming and the rapid loss of biodiversity has been overshadowed by the all-consuming issue of COVID-19. And for good reasons. The novel coronavirus has severely disrupted life as we have come to know and expect it. And there is no end in sight. Its social, economic and psychological consequences, in addition to its impact on public health, has been profound and far reaching, particularly for the younger generations. Millennials, already pummeled by the fallout from the Great Recession of 2008, have been hit hard once again. For zoomers, the generation born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s, COVID-19 is likely to be the formative experience shaping the rest of their lives.

      For both generations, the economic impact of the pandemic has been disastrous. Already last year, months before the pandemic hit the United States full force, Annie Lowrey wrote in The Atlantic that millennials were “likely to be the first generation in modern economic history to end up worse off than their parents. The next downturn might make sure of it, stalling their careers and sucking away their wages right as the Millennials enter their prime earning years.” The pandemic confirmed her worst fears. Early this year, Lowrey characterized the pandemic as a “financial tsunami for younger workers.”

      According to preliminary data, after the onset of the pandemic, “a staggering 52 percent of people under the age of 45 have lost a job, been put on leave, or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic, compared with 26 percent of people over the age of 45.” Federal aid was likely to do little to nothing to alleviate their financial woes.

      The outlook is equally bleak for zoomers. According to the consulting firm Delloite, in April and May 2020, 30% of Zoomers reported having lost their job or having been put on temporary, unpaid leave. This is particularly ironic. As Mathew Goodwin has recently noted, zoomers “find themselves in a strange position — on the one hand, they are on track to be the most well-educated generation in history but, on the other, they are entering the labour market amid one of the most challenging periods in history.” Given their educational background and levels of skills, their prospects in the labor market should be bright; instead, they are nothing short of bleak.

      At least for the moment, opportunities for internships have largely dried up, entry positions are rare and, for those who manage to get one, the pay is low. And things are unlikely to get better any time soon, given the depth of the coronavirus-induced recession. As an essay in The Economist recently put it, “Economic misery has a tendency to compound. Low wages now beget low wages later, and meagre pensions after that. The prospect of middle-aged drudgery beckons.”

      After Us, the Deluge?

      The Lost Generation’s soul-shattering experience of senseless death during the Great War turned many of them cynical while leading them into aimless and reckless pursuit of vacuous, decadent hedonism, reflected in the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the paintings of George Grosz. Given the circumstances, one might expect history to repeat itself, not as a “grand tragedy” but as a “rotten farce,” as per Karl Marx’s “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” reflected in the infamous “COVID parties” on the beaches of Florida, with their flair of Russian roulette, scripted according to the adage “after me, the deluge,” or, more prosaically, “who gives a shit about the future.”

      As it turns out, zoomers do — or so a growing number of recent studies suggest, whether produced by think tanks or by business consulting firms seeking to exploit Gen Z’s consumer potential. The results are nothing short of stunning, the implications potentially revolutionary. Take global warming. In 2019, an Amnesty International-sponsored survey found more than 40% of young people considering global warming the most important global issue. At the same time, however, almost half of zoomers and more than 40% of millennials thought that it was already too late to repair the damage caused by climate change.

      This, however, does not seem to have turned them cynical, self-centered, apathetic or escapist. On the contrary. An article in Forbes, written at the height of last year’s global mass demonstrations calling for action to confront climate change, put it best, claiming that Gen Z was “a force to be reckoned with. They’re not trying to change the world; they’re already doing it and, in many cases, they’re leading the way.”

      A Gen Zer’s Perspective on Climate Change Reform

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      Recent studies support this contention. They find that the younger generation holds deeply engrained values that more often than not are in complete opposition to the values that dominated advanced capitalist societies pre-coronavirus. In the face of a resurgence of ethnocentrism and tribalism, they cherish diversity while rejecting the knee-jerk nationalism that has been the hallmark of right-wing populism currently en vogue from Britain to Denmark, from Italy to the United States.

      Unlike their elders, who for decades allowed themselves to be subjected to incessant neoliberal indoctrination claiming that the state is part of the problem, that only markets get things right, that society does not exist, and that everybody fends for themselves, zoomers are pro-government and supportive of a strong state. COVID-19 has not only validated and reaffirmed their belief in government action and the extension of social welfare policies but also in the necessity of fundamental, radical change.

      With Gen Z, the old slogan from the student movement of the 1960s that “the personal is political” has come back with a vengeance — and a new meaning. We have seen it with the controversies over the wearing of masks that have shown how quickly and to what degree personal choice turns into political statement these days. Today, as a number of top-notch business consulting firms have affirmed, this is particularly true with respect to consumption patterns and consumer choices. Veganism, for instance, is not only a lifestyle choice — it is also, and in some instances even predominantly, a political statement. As Deborah Kalte has recently noted, the “vast majority of vegans is politically motivated and aims to induce change in society at large.”

      In the past, as Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu have argued and shown, consumption served as a marker, a sign of distinction, and this in a very material sense. Today, or so a number of studies suggest, at least with the younger generation, consumption is tied in with ideals and values, which makes it highly political.

      The Personal Is Political

      Even before the onset of the pandemic, business reports noted the central importance of sustainability for the younger generation. In 2015, a Nielsen report found more than 70% of global millennials were willing to pay more for sustainable goods. Five years later, a First Insight report found that “the vast majority of Generation Z shoppers prefer to buy sustainable brands, and they are most willing to spend 10 percent or more on sustainable products.” At the same time, the report noted that Gen Zers and millennials “are the most likely to make purchase decisions based on values and principles (personal, social, and environmental).”

      And the revolution does not stop here. Business consultants have already set their eyes on Generation Alpha — the offspring of the millennial generation and younger siblings of Gen Z — who populate today’s cradles and kindergartens. As an article in Wired puts it, the “latest age group to emerge are barely out of diapers, and the internet is already serving them ads.”

      Raised and influenced by their millennial parents and Gen Z siblings, they are expected to be just as progressive and radical — even more so — as their immediate elders, or so a recent report from the e-commerce consulting firm Wunderman Thompson Commerce wants us to believe. Confronted with myriads of global crises — humanitarian, ecological, economic, social — they are characterized as “uniquely ethically inclined and value-led.” This is based on the finding that more than two-thirds “of 6 to 9 year olds say that saving the planet will be the central mission of their careers in the future, joining the fight that current Gen Zs are leading.” An equally large proportion indicated they would like to buy from companies that “are trying to do good in the world.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      If the findings of these studies are true, things are likely to heat up considerably in the near future, both socially and politically. What the younger generations represent is a reality that is fundamentally at odds with the one peddled by Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and Scott Morrison (Australia’s champion of coal), to name but a few. There is a huge gap between the perceptions and values of the younger generations and those of the older generations, as most recently seen once again with COVID-19, whether with regard to wearing masks or accepting track-and-trace apps. Today, the fate of the planet is to a large extent in the hands of generations that are unlikely to experience the full force of the disasters their actions and inactions have caused. The reality is that governments, corporations and the older generation have largely failed the younger generations and continue to do so — with catastrophic consequences.  Over the past several decades, governments have piled up huge amounts of national debt.  With COVID-19, they have added further layers, bound to impose yet another enormous burden on today’s youth.     

      Under the circumstances, it might be tempting to dismiss them as another Lost Generation. It bears remembering, however, that it was the original Lost Generation that was instrumental not only in the rebuilding of much of Europe after the Great War, but also in the establishment of the postwar liberal order — “embedded liberalism” — and the entrenchment of the social-democratic welfare state. 

      Today, we confront another crucial moment. Once again hope rests on the younger generations to provide the vision and energy not only to meet the numerous social, economic, cultural and particularly ecological challenges that threaten to overwhelm humanity. All available data suggest that they are quite prepared to meet the challenge, if only because they don’t have much of a choice. Chances are that the young people will make a difference — provided their parents and grandparents will take them and their concerns and worries seriously, rather than dismissing them as alarmism or folly.

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