Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in World Politics

      The NY Times and Elon Musk Deal With Bolivia

      by

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

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

      The World Has Reserves About Its Reserve Currency

      READ MORE

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

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Fraught:

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

      Contextual Note

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

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

      Historical Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in World Politics

      India and China: A Time for Diplomacy, Not Confrontation

      by

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

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

      Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

      READ MORE

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

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

      A Threat to China?

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

      Back in Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Dangerous Thoughts

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

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

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Why a Biden presidency might not mean a return to pre-Trump foreign relations

      by

      European leaders, desperate for an end to the Trump presidency, are being warned that four years of Joe Biden may present them with new challenges and not a simple restoration of the benign status quo in transatlantic relations prior to 2016.An evolving Biden doctrine about ending “forever wars” and protecting American workers from Chinese competition would require collective military and economic commitments from the EU that it is still ill-equipped to meet, foreign policy specialists have suggested.The overall tenor of the platform, emphasising post-Covid multilateralism and cooperation with fellow liberal democracies, is already welcome in Europe. Biden’s promised end to the institutionalised mayhem, animus towards allies and pandering to authoritarians will be a relief. Competence, reliability and dialogue may not be a high bar to set a presidency, but simple normality would amount to a revival of the idea of the west, such has been the chaos of the past four years.Forsaken multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organization, would be rejoined, ending the US practice, in the words of Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken, of simply going awol. “Ninety per cent of life is about showing up,” Blinken told Chatham House, adapting Woody Allen.Biden may seem to personify an old-school nostalgic Atlanticism of the foreign policy establishment. But the Democrat’s draft policy platform released last month reflects the influence of the progressive left, and an effort to absorb the lessons from the shock 2016 defeat.Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy adviser, speaking to the European Council on Foreign Relations podcast, agreed that Biden had moved to the left, saying he had faced mobilisation on foreign policy from progressives in a way that Barack Obama never experienced. As a result, foreign policy is no longer a backwater in democratic politics, and new links between foreign and economic policy are being drawn.Many of the Obama-era foreign policy advisers now clustered around Biden, dismissed as a horror show by some on the left, also deny that they crave simple restoration, saying everything has changed since 2016.Stung by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, they recognise the populists’ claim to have better constructed a foreign policy to help Americans’ daily lives at home. William Burns, a former state department official under Obama and one of Biden’s many advisers, recently wrote: “The wellbeing of the American middle class ought to be the engine that drives our foreign policy. We’re long overdue for a historic course correction at home.”Jeremy Shapiro, a senior researcher with the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR), also says there has been a pressure on Democrats to make their foreign policy more relevant to daily American lives. “There was this sense that in the Obama administration foreign policy was a plaything of the elites divorced from Americans’ daily existence. The change from Obama to Biden is there will be more focus on America.”Without threatening tariff wars, the Biden platform hints at a new scepticism about globalism and free trade. In broader policy terms, Europe will welcome Biden’s commitment to the Paris climate change treaty, and to Nato, “the single most significant military alliance in the history of the world,” as Biden described the organisation to the Munich security conference in 2019. To the relief of Berlin, the withdrawal of US troops from Germany would stop. A more consistent approach to Turkey would be sought. More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      The CO2 Border Adjustment for the EU

      by

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

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

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

      READ MORE

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

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

      WTO-Compatible Design

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

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

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

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

      Don’t Underestimate the Diplomatic Effort

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

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

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

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

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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      Investigating the Radical Right’s Presence in the Military

      by

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

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

      The Far Right Has a History of Infiltrating the British Army

      READ MORE

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

      The Threat

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

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

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

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

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

      Hateful Conduct

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      With the BRI, China Still Has a Long Road Ahead

      by

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

      Beijing’s BRI Hubris Comes at a Price

      READ MORE

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

      Deaf Ear

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

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

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

      Outside the Norm

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

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

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

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

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

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

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

      by

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

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

      Will Bosnia and Herzegovina Ever Rise Above Its Ethnic Divisions?

      READ MORE

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

      Ad Hoc Border Redrawing

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

      European Concerns

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

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

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

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

      The Bells of Hate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • 213 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Think 'sanctions' will trouble China? Then you're stuck in the politics of the past | Ai Weiwei

      by

      The Trump administration has floated the idea of sanctioning Chinese officials and members of the Communist party of China. Before we ask whether this is a good idea, let’s ask how Sino-US relations got to this stage.The US cold war with the Soviet Union was over ideology, but today’s standoff with China is different. The Chinese state has no ideology, no religion, no moral agenda. It continues wearing socialist garb but only as a face-saving pretence. It has, in fact, become a state-capitalist dictatorship. What the world sees today is a contest between the US system of free-market capitalism and Chinese state capitalism. How should we read this chessboard?The post-Mao dictatorship in China has lived by the principle of “repress at home and be open to the world”. It has imported knowhow from abroad. There are an estimated 360,000 Chinese students currently enrolled who have come through America’s open door. Over 40 years, at least a million have returned to China and fed their new technical knowledge into the existing authoritarian structures that have built the dictatorship. It might be the most momentous personnel transfer in history. When I applied to study in the US in the 1980s, I filled out a questionnaire that asked if I had ever been a member of the Communist party. The point of the question was presumably to avoid ideological risks. But it is beyond doubt that the Chinese students coming in with me included many party members who were headed to some of the US’s finest schools, often with scholarships. Americans generally assumed that these students would feel the appeal of liberal values, which they would then take back to China. What happened more often, though, was that Chinese students were quick to see the cultural differences between the two countries, and to draw the very logical conclusion that American values are fine for America but would never work in the Chinese system.If those US hopes for the exportation of values had panned out, much of China would have been won over by now. But what has actually happened? Returnees are now leaders in much of Chinese business and industry, but anti-American expression in China is as strong today as it has been since the Mao era.Washington bears much of the responsibility for what has happened. In the years after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, administrations of both parties touted the absurd theory that the best plan was to let China get rich and then watch as freedom and democracy evolved as byproducts of capitalist development.But did capitalist competition, that ravenous machine that can chew up anything, change China? The regime’s politics did not change a whit. What did change was the US, whose business leaders now approached the Chinese dictatorship with obsequious smiles. Here, after all, was an exciting new business partner: master of a realm in which there were virtually no labour rights or health and safety regulations, no frustrating delays because of squabbles between political parties, no criticism from free media, and no danger of judgment by independent courts. For European and US companies doing manufacture for export, it was a dream come true.Money rained down on parts of China, it is true. But the price was to mortgage the country’s future. Society fell into a moral swamp, devoid of humanity and difficult to escape. Meanwhile, the west made their adjustments. They stopped talking about liberal values and gave a pass to the dictatorship, in which Deng Xiaoping’s advice of “don’t confront” and Jiang Zemin’s of “lie low and make big bucks” made fast economic growth possible.European and American business thrived in the early stages of the China boom. They sat in a sedan chair carried up the mountain by their Chinese partners. And a fine journey it was – crisp air, bright sun – as they reached the mountain’s midpoint. But then the chair-carriers laid down their poles and began demanding a shift. They, too, sought the top position. The signal from the political centre in China changed from “don’t pick fights” to “go for it”. Now what could the western capitalists do? Walk back down the mountain? They hardly knew the way.Covid-19 has jolted the US into semi-awareness of the crisis it faces. The disease has become a political issue for its two major political parties to tussle over, but the real crisis is that the western system itself has been challenged. The US model appears to others as a bureaucratic jumble of competing interests that lacks long-term vision and historical aspiration, that omits ideals, that runs on short-term pragmatism, and that in the end is hostage to corporate capital.Are sanctions the way to go? A foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing recently remarked words to the effect that the US and China are so economically interlocked that they would amount to self-sanctions. The US, moreover, would be no match for China in its ability to endure suffering. And there he was correct: in dictatorships, sacrifices are not borne by the rulers. In the 1960s Mao said: “Cut us off? Go ahead – eight years, 10 years, China has everything.” A few years later Mao had nuclear weapons and was not afraid of anyone.The west needs to reconsider its systems, its political and cultural prospects, and rediscover its humanitarianism. These challenges are not only political, they are intellectual. It is time to abandon the old thinking and the vocabulary that controls it. Without new vocabulary, new thinking cannot be born. In the current struggle in Hong Kong, for example, the theory is simple and the faith is pure. The new political generation in Hong Kong deserves careful respect from the west, and new vocabulary to talk about it.“Sanctions” is a cold war term that names an old policy. If the US can’t think beyond them, the primacy of its position in this changing world will disappear. More