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      Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Complicated Puzzle

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      On Friday, December 10, the parliament of the Republic of Srpska, one of the constitutive entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, adopted a Declaration on Constitutional Principles that states that the legislation imposed by the high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina should be considered unconstitutional since the required procedure was not followed. The parliament also adopted conclusions by which it withdraws the formerly given consent to delegate some of Republic of Srpska’s authority to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

      Is Dissolution a Solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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      The same conclusions also require the government to propose adequate legislation within six months, which would enable normal functioning in view of the transfer of authority and competencies, formerly given to the federal level, back to the Republic of Srpska. The opposition parties criticized this move as a risky one, which can potentially bring more harm than good.

      Postwar Design

      This news provoked outrage in the centers of Western political power as well as in many mainstream Western media. The European Union and the governments of the US, UK, Germany and France have condemned these conclusions, calling for the respect of the Bosnian state institutions and the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in the former Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and established the state in its postwar design.

      This may seem a somewhat paradoxical situation given that the Western governments that criticize the leadership of the Republic of Srpska affirm the Dayton Accords, while the leadership in Banja Luka and especially Milorad Dodik — the Serb member of the collective presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by far the strongest political figure in the Republic of Srpska — likewise express their unreserved support Dayton. Dodik has repeatedly claimed that the only way for Bosnia and Herzegovina to continue to exist as a state is the return to the Dayton Agreement and stick to all its articles.

      The problem, however, is not simply a formal one. It is deeply political. The current crisis was triggered by the former high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko, who outlawed the denial of the Srebrenica massacre as well as any questioning of the qualification of this crime as genocide.

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      This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, leading the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs immediately to declare that if this legislation — perceived as anti-Serb — is not annulled, they would take steps toward protecting Bosnian Serbs and their entity from illegitimate and oppressive measures coming from the Office of the High Representative. The high representative is best described as the foreign governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina — acting, in reality, as an exponent of the most influential Western governments — with enormous powers and no democratic legitimacy. 

      The Dayton Agreement may have put an end to the war back in 1995, but it created a state which, in one sense, was stillborn. The Bosnian–Herzegovinian Serbs obtained the Republic of Srpska, with which they have primarily identified ever since. Bosnian–Herzegovinian Croats, as the third major ethnic/national community in Bosnia and Herzegovina — although much smaller than the Muslim/Bosniak and Serb ethnic/national groups — ended up without their own entity within the newly established Bosnia and Herzegovina.

      Instead, they were included into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the other constitutive part of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in addition to the Republic of Srpska. This is what is still provoking dissatisfaction among many Bosnian Croats and the reason why many, if not the majority of them, perceive Croatia, not Bosnia and Herzegovina, as their “home” country.

      Small Yugoslavia

      This means that only among Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks one can find an overwhelming commitment to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this political dynamic lies the reason why many Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak politicians advocate for a unitary state — and the eventual dissolution of the Republic of Srpska by taking away its key competencies — and for the abandoning of any ethnic/national principles in the election of political representatives under the pretext that this is in accordance with liberal-democratic principles.

      However, this is precisely what is perceived as a threat among many Bosnian Serbs and Croats, since the Muslim/Bosniak ethnic group is the largest one, which means that in practice it would be able to impose its will unto the other two major ethnicities and the institutions that were initially designed to prevent such discrimination.

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      This means that the “small Yugoslavia,” as Bosnia and Herzegovina used to be called because of its diverse religious and ethnic landscape reminiscent of Yugoslavia as a whole, is facing similar problems that former (big) Yugoslavia failed to resolve. The position of Muslims/Bosniaks (and their leadership) in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be seen in parallel to the position of Serbs in Yugoslavia.

      As the Serbs were the biggest ethnic group present in significant numbers in most Yugoslav republics, the overwhelming majority of Serbs were in support of Yugoslavia as a state. This, however, was perceived by many other ethnic communities as potential oppressiveness. The Serbs thus ended up being the only ones trying to save Yugoslavia from dissolution.

      Similarly, Muslims/Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, being the biggest ethnic/national community, perceive Bosnia and Herzegovina as their country and are trying to centralize and preserve it at all costs, even though this is perceived as oppression by the members of other ethnicities. For many Bosnian Serbs, the survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a question of principle. They often posit the question that if former Yugoslavia could collapse and new states be established from its constitutive parts, why can’t the same happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

      Here we come to another major piece of the complicated Bosnian puzzle: the international factor. It was the Western governments — and primarily the US — under whose auspices postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina was created, with its highly inefficient structures and with the Office of the High Representative who, over time, obtained pharaonic powers. Naturally, the governments of the countries that have sponsored this arrangement are unwilling to admit that the whole experiment was a tremendous failure and that their interventions have actively prevented the development of democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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      In addition, Bosnia and Herzegovina, just as the Balkans as a whole, is also the terrain for bigger games and powerplay between the US-led alliance (which, in reality, is much less coherent than it is claimed), Russia and Turkey. Western politicians and the media are trying to explain the situation to the Western audience by blaming the local politicians, especially the Bosnian Serb leadership, as pro-Russian. What they are selling to their citizens is the story that everything will be fine as soon as the old politicians go and new ones, loyal to the West, take over.

      However, blaming everything on corrupt and irresponsible political elites will not resolve the structural problems that are, to a large extent, created by generous Western support. Yes, political elites — and not only in the Balkans — tend to be corrupt, irresponsible and ready to exploit people’s misery and nationalistic sentiments to their own advantage. This is, however, only one dimension to the complex story that tends to be grossly oversimplified in the mainstream Western media. The real problems are deeper, and the policies of influential Western governments are still only adding fuel to the fire.

      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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      Washington’s Tawdry Victory Over Julian Assange

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      Last week witnessed the 80th anniversary of a moment in history qualified by Franklin D. Roosevelt as “a date which will live in infamy.” On December 8, 1941, the president announced that the United States was declaring war after Japan’s unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor a day earlier. A nation that had spent two decades wallowing in isolationism instantly became one of the principal and most powerful actors in a new world war. Victory on two fronts, against Germany and Japan, would be achieved successively in 1944 and 1945.

      Last week ended with its own day of infamy when a British court overturned an earlier judgment banning the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Following in the footsteps of the Trump administration, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department successfully appealed the ban in its relentless effort to judge Assange for violating the 1917 Espionage Act, itself a relic of the history of the First World War.

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      Back then, President Woodrow Wilson’s government pulled no jingoistic punches when promoting America’s participation in Europe’s war. It actively incited the population to indulge in xenophobia. Public paranoia targeting Germany, the nation’s enemy, reached such a pitch that Beethoven was banned from the concert stage, sauerkraut was officially renamed “liberty cabbage” and hamburger “liberty steak.”

      The manifestly paranoid Espionage Act sought to punish anyone who “communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver or transmit to any foreign government … any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, etc.” The law, specifically for a state of war, was so extreme it was rarely used until Barack Obama unearthed it as the elegant solution for suppressing the whistleblowers he had vowed to defend in his first presidential campaign.

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      Despite overindulging his taste for punishing whistleblowers, Obama refrained from seeking to extradite Assange. He feared it might appear as an assault on freedom of the press and might even incriminate The New York Times, which had published the WikiLeaks documents in 2010. In the meantime, Democrats found a stronger reason to blame Assange. He had leaked the Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. Democrats blamed the Australian for electing Donald Trump.

      During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks for its willingness to expose the undemocratic practices of the Clinton campaign. But once in power, Trump’s administration vindictively demanded Assange’s extradition from the UK for having revealed war crimes that deserved being hidden for eternity from the prying eyes of journalists and historians. 

      Many observers expected Biden to return to the prudent wisdom of Obama and break with Trump’s vindictive initiative. He could have quietly accepted the British judge’s decision pronounced in January. Instead, his Justice Department appealed. Unlike Trump, who sought to undermine everything Obama had achieved, Biden has surprisingly revealed a deep, largely passive respect for his predecessor’s most dangerous innovations — not challenging corporate tax cuts, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Trump’s aggressive support for Israel’s most oppressive policies with regard to Palestinians.

      Biden’s eagerness to follow Trump’s gambit aimed at subjecting Assange to the US brand of military-style justice allowed New York Times journalists Megan Specia and Charlie Savage to describe Friday’s decision by the British court as a success for the administration. “The ruling was a victory,” they wrote, “at least for now, for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Mr. Assange begun under the Trump administration.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Victory:

      Triumph in combat, including, at two extremes, cases marked by heroic action and others prompted by malicious self-serving motives and driven by the perpetrator’s confusion of the idea of justice with sadistic, vindictive pleasure

      Contextual Note

      The Times journalists quote Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, who “said the government was ‘pleased by the ruling’ and would have no further comment.” At no point in the article do the authors evoke the hypothesis that Biden might have sought to overturn Trump’s policy. Nor do they analyze the reasons that could undermine the government’s case. They do quote several of Assange’s supporters, including one who called “on the Biden administration again to withdraw” the charge. Serious observers of the media might expect that a pillar of the press in a liberal democracy might be tempted to express its own concern with laws and policies that risk threatening its own freedom. Not The New York Times. This story didn’t even make its front page. None of its columnists deemed it deserving of comment.

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      Journalist Kalinga Seneviratne, writing for The Manila Times, offered a radical contrast. “If this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is about promoting ‘press freedom,’” he speculates, “the Norwegian Nobel Committee missed a golden opportunity to make a powerful statement at a time when such freedom is under threat in the very countries that have traditionally claimed a patent on it.” He quotes the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who claims that “what has been done to Julian Assange is not to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do so in broad daylight, making visible to the entire world that those who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longer enjoy the protection of the law.” 

      Deutsche Welle’s Matthias von Hein noted the interesting coincidence that three converging events took place on the same day. “In a bitter twist of irony,” he writes, “a court in London has essentially paved the way for Assange’s prosecution on Human Rights Day — of all days. And how ironic that it happened on the day two journalists were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Last, but not least, it coincided with the second day of the Summit on Democracy organized by US President Joe Biden.”

      Von Hein added this observation: “We’re constantly hearing how Western democracies are in competition with autocratic systems. If Biden is serious about that, he should strive to be better than the world’s dictators.” But, as the saying goes, you can’t teach a 79-year old dog new tricks.

      Historical Note

      The coincidences do not end there. On the same day the news of Julian Assange’s fate emerged, Yahoo’s investigative reporter Michael Isikoff recounted the story of another man “brought to justice” by US authorities: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The Mauritanian citizen had the privilege of spending 14 years in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime, even after confessing to the crimes imagined by his torturers.

      It turns out to be a touching moral tale. Even after years of imprisonment and gruesome torture, Slahi “holds no personal animus against his interrogators.” According to Isikoff, “he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators,” years after the event. “I took it upon myself,” Slahi explained, “to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people.”

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      It wasn’t the Prophet Muhammad who said, “turn the other cheek” or “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Those words were spoken by the man George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld claimed to revere and whom Bush considered his “favorite philosopher.” The Quran did continue the original Christian insight, pronouncing that “retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it,” and that reconciliation and forgiveness will be rewarded by Allah.

      There has clearly been no forgiveness in Washington for the “evil” committed by Assange: exposing war crimes conducted in secret with American taxpayers’ money. Slahi’s torture was conducted by the declared proponents of “Judeo-Christian” culture. Shahi’s forgiveness stands as an example of what that culture claims as a virtue but fails to embrace in its own actions.

      Shahi is reconciled with his interrogators. But does he also feel reconciled with those who gave them their orders? In 2019, he said, “I accept that the United States should follow and put to trial all the people who are harming their citizens. I agree with that. But I disagree with them that if they suspect you, they kidnap you, they torture you, and let you rot in prison for 15 or 16 years. And then they dump you in your country and they say you cannot have your passport because you have already seen so many things that we don’t want you to travel around the world to talk about.”

      Despite appearances, Mohamedou Ould Shahi’s case is not all that different from Julian Assange’s.

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

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

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      Can Self-Help Diplomacy Lower Political Heat in the Middle East?

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      Since the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the United States has been the unchallenged dominant power in the Middle East and North Africa. As such, it often saw its role, for better or worse, as fixing the region’s many problems. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Iran, high oil prices, Gulf security, Western Sahara, menacing non-state organizations, counterterrorism, human rights, democracy, autocratic leaders, failed states — whatever the concern or challenge, the Americans came to view them as priority issues and their responsibility. Moreover, many regional states and even their citizens often saw America’s involvement as a necessity, sometimes even an obligation to tamp down the region’s frenzied political climate.

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      But times have changed. Three recent presidents — Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden — have made efforts to distance the US from its endless, exasperating entanglements in the Middle East. Those efforts had distracted the United States from its principal challenges in the world — China and Russia — and sapped it of its military, economic and political might and influence. America received very little in return on its investment. Furthermore, years of US involvement in the region had also fractured the American public’s support for the more critically important role it must play in anchoring the international order.

      Enter the Others

      Downgrading America’s involvement in the Middle East isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For decades, many in the Middle East and in the US had argued that the region’s problems must be tackled by the governments and people of the region. Outsiders can play a supporting role, but the tough decisions can only be made by the governments themselves. That may now be happening.

      But handing off the task of addressing the region’s manifold challenges got off to a poor start. Neither the US, nor the international community, nor the states of the Middle East seemed able to solve the conundrum of the region’s three failed states.

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      Then, starting around 2015, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman started ordering others around — imposing a blockade on Qatar, detaining the Lebanese prime minister, jailing courageous dissidents and largely harmless millionaires, ordering a hit job on journalist Jamal Khashoggi and jumping into the Yemeni Civil War. And it all went bad, very bad in fact. Additionally, it provoked other would-be movers and shakers to get in the act, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, China, Russia and even Israel. And not always with good intent or positive results.

      After years of misdirection, however, governments now seem to be taking a more sober and responsible approach that could prove genuinely beneficial for the region. For starters, they have embarked on a simple approach: dialog. They are talking about their problems, especially those between and among one another. Dialog leads to understanding, which can lead to shared interests. Ultimately, to be effective, dialog must lead to compromise. That involves the inevitable give-and-take that allows nations, especially those close to one another, to live and thrive in peace and prosperity.

      It’s a Start

      One of the most encouraging initiatives may be the most unexpected: dialog between the Middle East’s two major powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and hosted by perhaps the most unlikely state, Iraq, unquestionably the region’s most conflict-ridden for decades. The issues are many between these two historic rivals, separated by a narrow gulf on whose name neither seems able to agree. But the larger gulf lies in their differing views of the other, their competing religious sects — the Saudi uber-conservative Wahhabi Sunni Islam vs. Iran’s clerically-led, conservative Shia Islam — perceptions of the other’s role and intentions in the region, their wealth, and relations with and ties to the broader international community, almost non-existent in the case of Iran.

      One especially neuralgic issue for both is their respective roles in the Yemen War. It is now abundantly clear that the Saudis’ overwhelming military power, bolstered by the US and some European nations, cannot defeat the Houthi rebels. Nor can it end either the war or even its costly intervention in it. The Saudis need help. Enter the Iranians, who have been supporting the Shia-affiliated Zaydi Houthis in this war since 2013. With ideology and much-needed weapons and funding, though much less than what Saudi Arabia has expended, the Iranians have empowered the rebels to the point where they are now an established power in a future Yemen, whether unified or bifurcated.

      So, the two regional powers are talking it out. The Saudis want out of the war, but they also want reliable security along their southwestern border. The Iranians want a Shia power on the Arabian Peninsula, but preferably one at peace.

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      Yemen may be the most immediate challenge for the two states. But there are others. More broadly, Saudi Arabia and Iran need to reach a modus vivendi in the region. On-again, off-again formal relations, menacing behavior toward each other’s oil and shipping interests, and verbal assaults do little more than increase the temperature in a region plagued by heat, literally and figuratively.

      Brothers Reconcile?

      Saudi Arabia has also launched a campaign to repair the frayed relations among its Arab neighbors. Last week, Mohammed bin Salman week began a PR campaign to demonstrate a new and improved political environment. In a swing through the neighboring Gulf states of Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and, most importantly, Qatar, he seems to be trying to rebuild what once had been the region’s preeminent multilateral organization, the Gulf Cooperation Council.

      Mohammed bin Salman single-handedly fractured the Gulf alliance when he imposed his 2017 blockade on Qatar, joined by the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. It backfired. Qatar remained in the good graces of the US, drew the political and military support of peripheral power Turkey and earned the support of Iran. Consider it the young prince’s on-the-job training in global as well as regional politics. He is now devoting particular attention to Doha in the hope of what yet we aren’t quite certain. But this repair work and goodwill tour cannot help but create progress.

      And not to be outdone, the Gulf’s other power, the UAE, has embarked on its own diplomatic repair mission. Like the Saudis, the Emiratis want to lower the temperature in the Gulf, and their position as the region’s prime economic entrepôt gives them special heft. The UAE’s ties to the US, still the unquestioned but now quiescent power in the Gulf, also lend special weight.

      Could It All Be for Naught?

      Looming over all of these laudable efforts, however, is Iranian behavior in the region. All eyes are now on the recently restarted talks over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, Austria. Following a near-six-month hiatus at Iran’s request, the P5+1 group and Iran renewed negotiations to reinstate the JCPOA — aka the Iran nuclear deal.

      But it is the critical non-dialog between the US and Iran — the two countries are still not meeting face-to-face but rather communicating through the intermediation of the other P5+1 countries — that bears the most serious watching. Unless they can agree on a way forward that puts Iran’s nuclear weapons potential well into the very distant future while also lifting America’s onerous and inescapably crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic, the heat in the Middle East will become white hot.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Judging from the US State Department’s uncharacteristically downcast semi-official readout of the first round of the negotiation restart, there is cause for concern. Iran’s counterproductive, albeit predictable, maximalist opening gambit soured the P5+1, even China and Russia. Negotiators met again last week. Unless there is a greater attitude toward compromise, however, pessimism will win out. Positions will harden. And more extreme (and dangerous) measures will become viable.

      President Biden has reiterated the US pledge that Iran will not get nuclear weapons. But neither he nor his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will state what the consequences of failed talks might be.

      Israel, however, is not so coy. Recent Israeli statements confirm that the military option is very much in play. As if to put an even finer point on the matter, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Jerusalem late last week for meetings with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Both men are retired top generals of their respective armed forces and will have discussed military and other options.

      Military action would be an unspeakable disaster for the Middle East. But so would a nuclear-armed or even nuclear-capable Iran. Even an approach that stops short of armed conflict will impose extraordinary hardship on the region, certainly prompting other states to consider acquiring nuclear weapons and further isolate Iran.

      It would be unfair to place the entirety of the burden for the success of these talks on Tehran. However, unless Iran understands the futility of its mindless pursuit of nuclear weapons, no effort at fostering understanding elsewhere can temper the region’s mercury-popping political heat.

      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 Myths and Realities of South Korea’s Green New Deal

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      The Green New Deal is a progressive wish list that combines the reduction of carbon emissions with investments in Green technologies and Green jobs. In the United States, the Green New Deal has largely remained aspirational: a non-binding resolution that has not yet come to a vote in Congress.

      In South Korea, on the other hand, the Green New Deal is a policy reality. In 2020, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) put its version of a Green New Deal at the center of its platform. When South Korea held its parliamentary election that April in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, that platform helped propel the liberal DPK bloc to a landslide victory and a legislative super-majority. Emboldened by this victory, the liberal Moon Jae-in administration officially made the Green New Deal a part of government policy several months later.

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      It wasn’t the first time that a South Korean government tried to address these problems. “When we heard about the Green New Deal in 2020, I asked myself, ‘Haven’t we seen this policy before?’ We had a pretty similar policy in the Lee Myung-bak administration that was called Green Growth,” remembers Lee Taedong, a political scientist at Yonsei University. Beginning in 2008, the conservative Lee Myung-bak government had indeed promoted a green stimulus program that addressed the twin crises of climate change and economic stagnation.

      For President Moon’s government, which took office in 2017, the Green New Deal was not just an electoral ploy. South Korea was facing a reputational crisis. Successive governments had stressed the importance of addressing climate change. But the country was, as of 2018, the seventh-largest emitter of carbon in the world.

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      “South Korea is the ninth-largest consumer of energy in the world, and 95% of that energy is imported from outside,” notes Hong Jong Ho, an economist at Seoul National University. “It has the highest nuclear power plant density in world and the lowest renewable proportion among the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

      Contributing to South Korea’s dirty profile was its export of coal-fired power plants. “Along with Japan and China, South Korea was a lead financer of coal projects, mainly in Southeast Asia,” explains Kim Joojin, the managing director of the Korean NGO Solutions for Our Climate. “Because of abundant financing, countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam had a lot of new coal-fired power plants in their future that were really straining the global carbon budget.”

      Korean climate activists have worked hard to narrow the gap between the government’s rhetoric and its actual behavior. A key part of Korea’s climate action community are young people. “It’s limited how much pressure we can exert, as youth, on the government,” points out Kwon Yoo-Jung, an activist with Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK). “But we have to communicate that we are aware of the financing of coal-fired plants abroad and we’re not proud of it and it has to stop, even though the government is not doing this in front of us but in other countries.”

      Thanks to a sustained campaign of civic activism, the South Korean government finally announced this year that it would no longer finance overseas coal-fired plants. The Moon government also pledged in the lead-up to the Glasgow climate summit that it would, by 2030, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2018 levels on the way to becoming carbon neutral in 2050. It has also promised to increase wind and solar energy production by more than double by 2025.

      One of the chief sticking points in the country’s overall energy transition, however, has been South Korea’s singular focus on rapid economic growth. In the early 1960s, South Korea’s per capita GDP was comparable to that of Ghana or Haiti and 40% of the population lived in absolute poverty. But in the space of little more than a single generation, South Korea became a wealthy country and, by 1996, had joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Fossil fuel, almost all of it imported, was an essential ingredient of that economic success.

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      Today, the country struggles to define a different kind of economic success and a different approach to energy policy. South Korea’s Green New Deal is the latest attempt to square the often-conflicting demands for growth and environmental action. It has proved to be simultaneously an inspiration for other countries and a lightning rod for criticism of Korea and the Moon administration.

      Origins of the Green New Deal

      In 1998, the Kim Dae-Jung administration began to organize South Korea’s first serious response to climate change with a top-level committee on the topic and a comprehensive national plan. Not much came of it. It wasn’t until a decade later that Korea became more proactive.

      Lee Myung-bak had built a reputation as the head of Hyundai’s engineering and construction division. As mayor of Seoul, he developed a new profile as something of an environmentalist when, among other things, he removed an old elevated highway in the capital to restore an old waterway. Nicknamed the “bulldozer,” Lee entered the presidential office with the potential to combine both economic growth and sustainability.

      Shortly after becoming president in 2008, Lee unveiled his “Green Growth” program. “Lee Myung-bak’s policy vision was one of Green competitiveness,” explains Lee Taedong. “He wanted to make South Korea the seventh-largest economy by 2020 and the fifth-largest by 2050.” The new president also pledged considerable government funds — 56.9 trillion won or about $60 billion — for the mitigation of climate change and the securing of energy independence. Another $30 billion was allocated to creating new engines of economic growth, while $30 billion more went into improving quality of life and enhancing the country’s international standing.

      The Green Growth program aimed to decouple growth and carbon emissions by reducing fossil fuel use, expanding green infrastructure and growing the economy, albeit sustainably. Expanding nuclear power was a key part of the Green Growth plan, to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lessen the country’s reliance on imports. Nuclear energy currently provides between one-quarter and one-third of the country’s electricity.

      Lee also imagined that South Korea could become a green growth leader in the international community. He attracted the Global Green Growth Initiative, an intergovernmental development organization, to establish its headquarters in Seoul in 2010. That same year, the UN organization devoted to assisting the Global South in addressing climate change, the Green Climate Fund, also set up shop in Seoul.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Central to the Green Growth program was separating growth from its usual connection to increased carbon emissions. “Some European countries achieved decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emission,” Lee Taedong explains. “Those that engaged in an emission trading system are more likely to achieve decoupling.”

      South Korea under Lee Myung-bak did not, however, achieve decoupling. The country’s economy grew modestly during his five-year term, but its greenhouse gas emissions also continued to rise. Nor did the Green Growth plan achieve much in the way of economic equity. “One big part of Green Growth was the aim to create jobs,” Lee Taedong continues. “However, there is no measure or report of how many jobs were created.”

      Another criticism of the Green Growth initiative was all the money that went into construction projects. “We spent a lot of money,” Lee points out, “but we didn’t get a lot of environmental goods from it. For the future, we need to consider how we steer these stimulus funds to make sure that we build up real green infrastructure.”

      Elements of the Green New Deal

      South Korea’s most recent parliamentary elections took place in April 2020. The ruling DPK, along with its partner Platform Party, won 180 out of the 300 seats. With the Green New Deal as a centerpiece of its platform, the DPK increased its parliamentary delegation by 57 seats and gained a legislative supermajority.

      The ruling party’s Green New Deal manifesto contributed to its electoral success. “The key concepts of the Green New Deal manifesto were to achieve carbon neutrality and achieve a carbon-zero society vision by 2050,” explains Kim Joojin. “It promoted market mechanisms including RE100 [a global initiative bringing together the world’s most influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity] and allowed more renewable energy producers to supply renewable energy to more consumers. It prohibited coal financing by public institutions. It talked about reforming the power sector and how that sector has not been helpful in terms of renewable energy deployment, which is still an ongoing problem.”

      In July, after considerable discussion of the need for a pandemic-related economic stimulus, the government announced the Green New Deal as official policy in July 2020. But, as Kim points out, the new initiative was not focused on climate issues. It devoted only $65 billion to the reduction of carbon emissions by about 12 million tons by 2025. “That’s about $5,000 per ton,” he says. “The current price of carbon is $33 ton, so reducing carbon emissions was not really part of the discussion.”

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      Instead, the focus was on infrastructure — such as zero-energy buildings, restoring ecosystems and creating safe water management systems — as well as Green innovation with renewables, electric vehicles and other Green technologies. “My intuitive sense is that it’s really a repackaging of already existing policies,” Kim continues. “So, there was a lot of criticism coming from the public, especially young people, who were asking, ‘Is it a Green New Deal or a Grey New Deal?’”

      The price tag for the program is 73.4 trillion won or about $62 billion. The funding is thus less than what the earlier administration devoted to the Green Growth initiative.

      Another key element of the program is the creation of 659,000 jobs by 2025. Lee Taedong warns that the Green Growth initiative didn’t follow through on its job promises. “We don’t want to see the same outcome from the Green New Deal. If we don’t see clear evidence, this policy won’t be worth very much,” he suggests.

      The Green New Deal is part of a larger government stimulus package that includes a “Digital New Deal” and a stronger social safety net. It is intriguing that the Korean government separated out the environmental component of its stimulus package from the equity elements and the high-tech digital projects. It is also interesting that, although the investments into digital infrastructure are less than half of those going into the Green New Deal, they were projected to create many more jobs (903,000) by 2025.

      Many environmental activists in Korea view the Green New Deal as necessary but insufficient. Six youth organizations held a press conference two months before the government released the program demanding that the government detail how South Korea would reach net carbon zero in 2050, that it protect and retrain workers in carbon-intensive industries, and that it create a mandatory educational curriculum for climate change and the environment. In addition, the groups demanded that the government phase out coal by 2030 and increase the share of renewable energy.

      When it was launched, the Green New Deal reflected only a small portion of these demands. Still, one of those youth groups, the Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK), participated in a video commending the Korean Green New Deal. “We considered the Green New Deal a milestone,” explains GEYK activist Kwon Yoo-Jung. “We wanted our youth to understand why it was so important, to make sure that they understand that it’s a Green New Deal not a Grey New Deal.”

      Korea’s Overall Energy Picture

      Lee Myung-bak had hoped that his Green Growth program would catapult South Korea to the very top ranks of the global economy. By 2020, South Korea had risen from 16th place to the 10th spot, just ahead of Russia. The country hadn’t become the seventh-largest economy in the world as Lee had hoped, but it was still an impressive achievement.

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      That growth was accompanied by increased carbon emissions, which peaked finally in 2018. Traditionally, Korean economic growth has been associated with heavy industry: car manufacturing, shipbuilding, steel production. And that industry has drawn heavily on the energy derived from fossil fuel.

      Currently, Korea is home to three of the largest oil refineries in the world, all located near the zones of heavy industry in the southeast: the SK energy complex in Ulsan, the GS-Caltex refinery in Yeosu and the joint project of Aramco and Hanjin also in Ulsan. South Korea also has three of the top seven coal-fired power plants in the world at Taean, Dangjin and Yeongheung. These and other facilities have helped make South Korea a leader in the production of fine particulate matter (PM) — a key element of air pollution — with the highest PM2.5 concentration in the OECD.

      These fossil fuel interests form a powerful lobbying force in Korean society that has made a transformation of the energy infrastructure very difficult. “The industry-related stakeholders, including academics in government, are very powerful, their lobbying power is very strong,” notes Hong Jong Ho.

      This is not just a domestic problem. South Korea has also been a key player in promoting fossil fuels around the world. Until recently, it was financing coal-fired power plants, particularly in Southeast Asia. Its shipping yards also produce many of the vessels that transport fossil fuels. For instance, South Korean companies have a virtual lock on the production of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, manufacturing 98% of them in 2018 and securing 94% of orders so far this year.

      “The Korean Export-Import bank provides a lot of money for oil and gas financing,” explains Kim Joojin. “In fact, it’s 13 times higher than coal financing.” South Korea is no longer financing overseas coal projects, but it didn’t join the 20 countries that agreed in Glasgow to end public financing of all overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. Earlier, the Asian Development Bank made a similar pledge, so Korea is increasingly out of step with the region as well. “There’s a discussion in Korea as well as in Europe about whether gas can be considered Green, and behind that is a strong gas lobby,” Kim continues. “COP26 struck a critical blow against coal. The next climate discussion will be gas.”

      Given the power of fossil fuel interests, it’s not surprising that South Korea has such a dismal record of incorporating renewable energy into its overall electricity generation. “In 2020, renewables in South Korea were only 7.2% of its energy,” explains Hong Jong Ho. “The OECD average is over 30%. Germany and the UK are close to 50%, while Denmark and Austria are around 80%. Even Japan and China are close to 20%.”

      Most of South Korea’s electricity production is derived from coal, liquefied natural gas and nuclear energy. “South Korea has the highest nuclear power plant density in world,” Hong continues. “Korea is the only OECD country with over 90% of its electricity coming from the traditional three sources (nuclear, coal, natural gas).”

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      Moon Jae-in ran on an anti-nuclear energy platform but has since embraced nuclear power as a way to reduce carbon emissions and maintain economic growth. But nuclear energy is not carbon-neutral. When factoring in the entire life cycle of a nuclear power plant — construction, operation, transport of spent fuel, decommissioning — such facilities produce three to four times as much carbon emissions as solar panels across their life span.

      Another important aspect of Korea’s energy market is the pricing. “The energy market is so distorted,” Hong Jong Ho points out. “No country in the OECD has this type of energy price system. The government totally controls the price of energy.” Electricity is generated by the Korean Electricity Power Company (KEPCO), whose six subsidiaries effectively form a monopoly and which favors through its pricing the coal, gas, and nuclear facilities. The market power of KEPCO keeps the prices of renewable energy inflated and discourages the entrance of private actors into the renewable sector.

      The overemphasis of coal, gas, and nuclear also has employment implications. “If you can expand the renewable energy sector alone, we can create a lot of jobs in the coming years,” Hong continues. “Compared to nuclear or coal, the renewable sector can create many more jobs.” According to his calculations, a moderate transition scenario would create 24,000 jobs by 2050, an advanced scenario would generate 270,000 jobs, and a 100% renewable future would create 500,000 jobs. In comparison, about 490,000 Koreans are currently employed directly and indirectly in the auto sector.

      The resistance to renewables doesn’t come only from the coal, gas and nuclear lobbies. Farmers are often uncomfortable with on-shore wind power while fisherfolk are often opposed to off-shore wind. It’s not just a question of livelihoods. It’s often a question of values.

      “The older generation, including my parents, endured prolonged poverty in the 1960s,” Hong recalls. “Their goal was the modernization of Korea. They all know that fossil fuel and nuclear have been the driving source of energy to have the rapid economic growth in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They are so accustomed to this idea of supply-oriented, centralized generation. On the other hand, renewable wind and solar are very different, with distributed generation and an emphasis on demand management, energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption. This is an idea very different from what the older generation has become accustomed to.”

      Hong laughs when he thinks about how his parents view his work. “Whenever I talk to my parents, my father scolds me. ‘Your idea is wrong,’ he says. ‘How can wind and solar generate enough electricity to continue to power our economic growth in Korea. That’s absurd!’”

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      The focus on overcoming poverty, dealing with political disruptions and ensuring that Korea becomes an advanced industrialized country has meant that “Koreans generally focus on the present,” Hong adds. “The future is not something they have the presence of mind to consider. But the climate crisis is a long-term problem that requires a consistent policy to be successful.” Still, the situation is changing. “The Korean people are slowly trying to understand the circular relationship between economy, climate and jobs,” he continues, “and familiarize themselves with the virtuous cycle between climate, economy and more employment.”

      One hopeful sign is a statement on June 5, 2020, from 226 local government heads — mayors and provincial governors — that declared a climate emergency and called for a transition to a sustainable society. Since there are only 229 local autonomies in Korea, this list represents virtually all the heads of local governments.

      “Irrespective of political party or whether they’re liberal, conservative, or progressive, they all joined together to say that the climate emergency is a critical issue,” Hong points out.

      Overseas Coal Financing

      Over the years, South Korea has financed coal-powered plants in India, Morocco and Chile. But it has focused on Southeast Asia where it financed three projects in Indonesia and seven in Vietnam. This kind of financing was long considered a natural extension of South Korea’s own coal-powered industry.

      But that picture began to change about four years ago. Civic pressure on industry and government was enormous. “There were ads in publications with global circulation, like one that said, ‘President Moon, is this really Korea’s idea of a Green New Deal?” Kim Joojin recalls. “And there was one in the Financial Times that read, ‘Samsung, make the right call on coal.’ There were demonstrations in front of big institutions.”

      Young people were a major part of that civic pressure. Established in 2014, the Green Environment Youth Korea (GEYK) is an organization of around 60 youth activists who are working to ensure that youth are at the forefront globally to press for climate justice. In a busy district of Seoul, they participated in a campaign of chalk painting on the sidewalk devoted to phasing out coal as well as a social media campaign that bombarded key players — Hanabank, KEPCO, the Blue House — to communicate that citizens were not happy with their policies. Back in 2017, they were involved in a coal-ending bicycle trip from the city of Cheonan to Dangjin, where the largest coal plant in the world at the time was located.

      Embed from Getty Images

      “This plant was not something to be proud of,” says GEYK activist Kwon Yoo-Jung. “It was something to be ashamed of given the impact of the coal-fired plants on community health.”

      In 2017, debate over coal financing began in the Korean parliament. “In 2018, two Korean pension funds announced that it would make no new coal commitments,” Kim Joojin continues. “In 2020, KEPCO, the national utility finally decided to no longer sponsor coal projects. Samsung said it would not do any more coal financing in the future. Also that year, there was a national debate around the Korean-financed projects in Indonesia and Vietnam. Those projects eventually went forward, but close to 100 financial institutions committed to not financing coal projects. Coal became a no-go zone in our financial sector.”

      As part of their activism, GEYK members went to the areas overseas where the coal plants were planned under the banner, “People Live Here.” South Korean activists linked up with residents in Indonesia who were protesting the plants. “Due to the impact of the coal plant emitting so much air pollution, they can’t continue their way of living,” Kwon Yoo-Jung notes. “This is a moral question as well. Local residents had no say in the decision-making process, even though they suffer all the impact from the project. The community faces severe health issues. People are moving out of village.”

      Furthermore, she explains, the coal-fired plant in Indonesia will soon become a “stranded asset,” because electricity from solar energy will be cheaper to produce than electricity from coal three years after the plant comes on line.

      The pressure campaign culminated in April 2021 at a summit convened by US President Joe Biden when Moon Jae-in announced no more coal-financing projects in 2021. It was part of a trend. “Japan made a similar announcement at the G20 in the United Kingdom the following June,” Kim Joojin notes. “At the UN General Assembly in September, Xi Jinping said that China would no longer finance coal. There’s some discussion about how specific these commitments are and what they will cover, but the heads of the state of these economies were saying that coal financing was wrong.”

      As a result of these announcements, “Indonesia and Vietnam had to dramatically cut their coal portfolios, especially new coal projects,” he adds.

      Phasing out coal is an integral part of reforming Korea’s energy sector. The official date for a phase-out is 2050, though the National Council on Climate and Air Quality, chaired by former UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, has recommended an earlier date of 2040 or 2045. “Five years ago, there was not much discussion of whether coal is the right thing to do,” Kim continues. “There were 11 coal-fired plants commissioned in 2016-17, and seven began construction. But then came efforts from provincial governments, and the social license of coal power dramatically changed.”

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      “The reality is that our government can provide a more ambitious coal phase out, for instance, in the 2030s,” he points out. “But what’s bogging down our government is how to compensate the already made investments. The same discussion is taking place in Germany around coal phase-out, but here in Korea, at least there is practically no coal mining.”

      Korea has made a commitment to net zero carbon in 2050. But with such a large coal portfolio, meeting the goals in the near term will be difficult. Cutting carbon emissions by 40% by 2040 “relies on overseas offsets and carbon sinks that are not considered policies with the most environmental integrity,” Kim notes.

      With its Green New Deal, South Korea is addressing both climate change and economic equity. But the effort is not yet commensurate with the challenge. Quoting Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a poet from the Marshall Islands who addressed the UN Climate Summit in 2014, Kwon Yoo-Jung concludes: “We deserve to do more than just survive. We deserve to thrive.”

      *[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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      10 Problems With US Foreign Policy Under Biden

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      The Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed — or even infuriated. 

      There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Barack Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.

      By and large, though, President Joe Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past 20 years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of US foreign policy. In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Donald Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but, for the most part, delivered more endless war. 

      Biden’s New Culture of Brinkmanship

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      By the end of his second term, Obama did have two significant diplomatic achievements with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and the normalization of relations with Cuba in 2014. So, progressive Americans who voted for Biden had some grounds to hope that his experience as Obama’s vice-president would lead him to quickly restore and build on the achievements of his former boss with Iran and Cuba as a foundation for the broader diplomacy he promised.

      Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and its neighbors — from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world. There is also still no word on cuts to a military budget that keeps on growing.    

      Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, President Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are 10 of the lowlights.

      1) Rejoining the Iran Nuclear Agreement

      The administration’s failure to immediately rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — aka the Iran nuclear deal — as Senator Bernie Sanders promised to do if he had become president, has turned an easy win for Biden’s promised commitment to diplomacy into an entirely avoidable diplomatic crisis.

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      Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 and the imposition of brutal “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran were broadly condemned by Democrats and US allies alike. But now, Biden is making new demands on Iran to appease hawks who opposed the agreement all along, risking an outcome in which he will fail to reinstate the JCPOA. As a result, Trump’s policy will effectively become Biden’s policy. The administration should reenter the deal immediately, without preconditions.

      2) Waging Bombing Campaigns

      Also following in Trump’s footsteps, Biden has escalated tensions with Iran and Iraq by attacking and killing Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria who played a critical role in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group. US airstrikes have predictably failed to end rocket attacks on deeply unpopular American bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution to close over a year ago.

      US attacks in Syria have been condemned as illegal by members of Biden’s own party, reinvigorating efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force that presidents have misused for 20 years. Other airstrikes the Biden administration is conducting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, since it has not resumed publishing the monthly airpower summaries that every administration has published since 2004 but which Trump discontinued in 2020.

      3) Refusing to Hold Mohammed bin Salman Accountable

      Human rights activists were grateful that President Biden released the intelligence report on the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that confirmed what we already knew: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman approved the killing. Yet when it came to holding him accountable, Biden choked. 

      At the very least, the administration could have imposed the same sanctions on Mohammed bin Salman, including asset freezes and travel bans, that the US imposed on lower-level figures involved in the murder. Instead, like Trump, Biden is wedded to the Saudi dictatorship and its diabolical crown prince.

      4) Recognizing Juan Guaido as President of Venezuela

      The Biden administration missed an opportunity to establish a new approach toward Venezuela when it decided to continue to recognize Juan Guaido as “interim president,” ruled out talks with the Maduro government and appeared to be freezing out the moderate opposition that participates in elections. 

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      The administration also said it was in “no rush” to lift the Trump sanctions. This was despite a recent study from the Government Accountability Office detailing the negative impact of sanctions on the economy and a scathing preliminary report by UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan, who noted their “devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela.” The lack of dialogue with all political actors in Venezuela risks entrenching a policy of regime change and economic warfare for years to come, similar to the failed US policy toward Cuba that has lasted for 60 years.

      5) Following Trump on Cuba Instead of Obama

      On Cuba, the Trump administration overturned all the progress toward normal relations achieved by President Obama. This included sanctioning the Cuban tourism and energy industries, blocking coronavirus aid shipments, restricting remittances to family members, putting Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and sabotaging the country’s international medical missions, which were a major source of revenue for its health system.

      We expected Biden to immediately start unraveling Trump’s confrontational policies. But catering to Cuban exiles in Florida for domestic political gain apparently takes precedence over a humane and rational policy toward Cuba.

      Biden should instead start working with the Cuban government to allow the return of diplomats to their respective embassies, lift all restrictions on remittances, make travel easier and work with the Cuban health system in the fight against COVID-19, among other measures.

      6) Ramping Up the Cold War With China

      Biden seems committed to Trump’s self-defeating Cold War and arms race with China, talking tough and ratcheting up tensions that have led to racist hate crimes against East Asian people in the United States.

      But it is the US that is militarily surrounding and threatening China, not the other way round. As former President Jimmy Carter patiently explained to Trump, while the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st-century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.

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      The greatest danger of this moment in history, short of all-out nuclear war, is that this aggressive military posture not only justifies unlimited US military budgets, but it will gradually force China to convert its economic success into military power and follow the Americans down the tragic path of military imperialism.

      7) Failing to Lift Sanctions During a Pandemic

      One of the legacies of the Trump administration is the devastating use of US sanctions on countries around the world, including Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. UN officials have condemned them as “crimes against humanity” and compared them to “medieval sieges.” 

      Since most of these sanctions were imposed by executive order, President Biden could easily lift them. Even before taking power, his team announced a thorough review, but months later, it has yet to make a move. 

      Unilateral sanctions that affect entire populations are an illegal form of coercion — like military intervention, coups and covert operations — that have no place in a legitimate foreign policy based on diplomacy, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are especially cruel and deadly during a pandemic, and the Biden administration should take immediate action by lifting broad sectoral sanctions to ensure every country can adequately respond to the health crisis.

      8) Doing Enough for Yemen

      Biden appeared to partially fulfill his promise to stop US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen when he announced that the US would stop selling “offensive” weapons to Saudi Arabia. But he has yet to explain what that means. Which weapons sales has he canceled?

      We think he should stop all weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, enforcing the Leahy Law, which prohibits military assistance to forces that commit “gross human rights violations,” and the Arms Export Control Act, under which imported US weapons may be used only for legitimate self-defense. There should be no exceptions to these US laws for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt or other allies around the world.

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      The US should also accept its share of responsibility for what many have called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, and provide Yemen with funding to feed its people, restore its health care system and rebuild its devastated country. A recent donor conference netted just $1.7 billion in pledges, less than half the $3.85 billion needed. Biden should restore and expand funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and American financial support to the UN, the World Health Organization and World Food Program relief operations in Yemen. He should also press the Saudis to reopen the air and seaports and throw US diplomatic weight behind the efforts of UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to negotiate a ceasefire.

      9) Backing Diplomacy With North Korea

      Trump’s failure to provide sanctions relief and explicit security guarantees to North Korea doomed his diplomacy. It became an obstacle to the diplomatic process underway between Korean leaders Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Moon Jae-in of South Korea. So far, Biden has continued this policy of Draconian sanctions and threats.

      The Biden administration should revive the diplomatic process with confidence-building measures. This includes opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American and North Korean families, permitting US humanitarian organizations to resume their work when COVID-19 conditions permit, and halting US-South Korea military exercises and B-2 nuclear bomb flights.

      Negotiations must involve concrete commitments to non-aggression from the US side and a commitment to negotiating a peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. This would pave the way for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the reconciliation that so many Koreans desire and deserve.

      10) Reducing Military Spending

      At the end of the Cold War, former senior Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. military spending could safely be cut by half over the next 10 years. That goal was never achieved. Instead of a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military-industrial complex exploited the crimes of September 11, 2001, to justify an extraordinary one-sided arms race. Between 2003 and 2011, the US accounted for nearly half of global military spending, far outstripping its own peak during the Cold War.

      Now, the military-industrial complex is counting on Biden to escalate a renewed Cold War with Russia and China as the only plausible pretext for further record military budgets that are setting the stage for World War III.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden must dial back US conflicts with China and Russia and instead begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. He should start with at least the 10% cut that 93 representatives and 23 senators already voted for in 2020. In the longer term, Biden should look for deeper cuts in Pentagon spending, as in Representative Barbara Lee’s bill to cut $350 billion per year from the US military budget, to free up resources we sorely need to invest in health care, education, clean energy and modern infrastructure.

      A Progressive Way Forward

      These policies, common to Democratic and Republican administrations, not only inflict pain and suffering on millions of our neighbors in other countries, but they also deliberately cause instability that can at any time escalate into war, plunge a formerly functioning state into chaos or spawn a secondary crisis whose human consequences will be even worse than the original one.

      All these policies involve deliberate efforts to unilaterally impose the political will of US leaders on other people and countries, by methods that consistently only cause more pain and suffering to the people they claim — or pretend — they want to help.

      President Biden should jettison the worst of Obama’s and Trump’s policies and instead pick the best of them. Trump, recognizing the unpopularity of US military interventions, began the process of bringing American troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, which Biden should follow through on.  

      Obama’s diplomatic successes with Cuba, Iran and Russia demonstrated that negotiating with US enemies to make peace, improve relations and make the world a safer place is a perfectly viable alternative to trying to force them to do what the United States wants by bombing, starving and besieging their people. This is, in fact, the core principle of the United Nations Charter, and it should be the core principle of Biden’s foreign policy.

      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 Assad Family Has Been Shaping Syria for 50 Years

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      It has been over a decade since a civil uprising began in Syria during the height of the Arab Spring. What started in March 2011 soon developed into a civil war between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian opposition, made up of various factions with different ideologies. Throughout the ongoing conflict, the opposition have been supported by international actors with interests not only in Syria, but in the wider region too.

      Will Saudi-Iran Talks Lead to Anything?

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      After years of conflict that have caused one of the biggest migration crises since World War II, it is clear that the Assad government, with the support of Russia and Iran, will maintain its grip on power. The question now is what a post-war Syria will look like with President Assad and his regime still in office.

      In order to understand what may lie ahead, it is necessary to understand the origins of the Assad family, their Alawite background and their influence on Syrian identity over the past 50 years.

      The Alawite Community

      The two largest sects in Islam are Sunni and Shia. Both sects overlap in most fundamental beliefs and practices, but their main difference centers on the dispute over who should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as leader after his death in 632. Today, between 85% to 90% of Muslims are Sunni and around 10% are Shia. Sunnis live in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan. Shias are largely located in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, with significant minorities in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

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      Alawites, although not doctrinally Shia, especially venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, one of the earliest Muslims and the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet. Shias consider Ali to be the first imam and rightful successor to Prophet Muhammad, while Sunnis see him as the fourth rightly-guided caliph who made up the Rashidun Caliphate. Before the French took control of Syria in 1920, members of the Alawite community considered themselves to be Nusayris. The French “imposed the name ‘Alawite,’ meaning the followers of Ali,” to emphasize the sect’s similarities with Shia Islam.

      Syria is ruled by Alawites, but the community itself is a minority making up around 12% to 15% of the pre-war Syrian population. Sunnis account for the majority of the country.

      The Rise of the Alawites

      After Syria attained independence in 1946, the Alawite community began to play an active role in two key areas: political parties and the armed forces. On the one hand, the Baath party, founded in 1947 by Arab politicians and intellectuals to integrate Arab nationalism, socialism, secularism and anti-imperialism, was “more attractive to Alawites than the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni religious organization” founded in Egypt with a large base in Syria.

      Furthermore, Alawites and other minorities continued to be overrepresented in the military due to two main factors. First, middle-class Sunni families tended to despise the military as a profession. Alawites, on the other hand, saw the army as an opportunity for a better life. Second, many Alawites, due to their difficult economic situation, could not afford to pay the fee to exempt their children from military service.

      The Alawite presence in the army culminated in a series of coups in the 1960s. Supporters of the rising Baath party were a minority in Syria at the time. As scholar Rahaf Aldoughli explains, the regime embarked on a course of “rigorous state-nationalist indoctrination to consolidate Baathist rule and establish” its popular legitimacy. Among other efforts, “the Baathists sought to manipulate tribal and sectarian identities, seeking patronage by” upgrading the status of previously marginalized groups. This included the Alawite community.

      The last coup d’état in Syria was carried out by General Hafez al-Assad, who had been serving as defense minister and was an Alawite. His actions brought the minority to power in November 1970. Three months later, Assad became the first Alawite president of Syria.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Once in office, “his project centered on homogenizing these diverse [marginalized] Syrians into a single imagined Ba’athist identity.” More broadly, Aldoughli adds, the overall aim of “nationalist construction was to subsume local identities into a broader concept of the ‘Syrian people,’ defined according to the state’s territorial” boundaries.

      The Sectarianism of the Syrian Civil War

      Shortly before the outset of the US-led war on terror, Hafez al-Assad died in 2000. His son, Bashar, took over the reins and continued in his father’s footsteps. This included policies of coopting the religious space and portraying a moderate Islam under the guise of a secular state that sought to curb Islamism and blur religious differences. Despite these efforts, the confessional fragmentation of Syrian society provided a factor of tension and instability for a state that ultimately never succeeded in addressing these differences in the political arena.

      The Arab Spring consequently arrived in Syria at a time marked by a crisis of legitimacy of secular ruling parties such as the Baath. The crisis of governability meant the secular balance imposed by the regime in society began to crack, exposing anger around the Alawite minority’s overrepresentation in the state apparatus and the Sunni majority’s underrepresentation. The result was anti-government protests that began in March 2011.

      Ultimately, the ensuing sectarianism of the Syrian conflict only makes sense if we also incorporate the geopolitical rivalries affecting the region. On the one hand, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran are the Assad government’s main supporters and are interested in propping it up. On the other hand, Sunni actors such as the Islamic State group, the al-Nusra Front and Saudi Arabia want the government to fall.

      That has failed. After 10 years of war, military forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad have retaken the vast majority of Syrian territory with the support of Iran and Hezbollah. As a result, both repression of the Sunni-dominated opposition and the strengthening of the Alawite community in the state apparatus are likely to remain part of a post-war Syria. How the Sunni majority reacts to the fact that Assad and the Alawites remain at the center of Syrian politics is unknown.

      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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      Biden’s New Culture of Brinkmanship

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      Taiwan is a problem. Historically separate from but linked to China, Taiwan was colonized by the Dutch and partially by the Spanish in the 17th century. Through a series of conflicts between aboriginal forces allied with the Ming dynasty and European colonial forces who also fought amongst themselves, by 1683, Taiwan became integrated into the Qing Empire. For two centuries, it evolved to become increasingly an integral part of China. In 1895, due to its strategic position on the eastern coast of China at the entry of the South China Sea, it became one of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese war and for half a century was ruled by the Japanese.

      Japan used Taiwan during the Second World War as the launching pad for its aggressive operations in Southeast Asia. At the end of the war, with the Japanese defeated and Mao Zedong’s communists in control of mainland China, Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan. This put the dissident government out of Mao’s reach. Chiang declared his government the Republic of China (ROC) in opposition to Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). For forty years a single-party regime ruled Taiwan following Chiang Kai-shek’s initial declaration of martial law in 1949.

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      Because the United States had defined its post-war identity as anti-communist, Taiwan held the status of the preferred national government in what was then referred to as “the free world.” The fate of Taiwan — still referred to by its Portuguese name, Formosa — figured as a major foreign policy issue in the 1960 US presidential campaign that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. The debate turned around whether the US should commit to defending against the People’s Republic two smaller islands situated between continental China and Taiwan.

      In short, Taiwan’s history and geopolitical status over the past 150 years have become extremely complex. There are political, economic and geographical considerations as well as ideological and geopolitical factors that make it even more complex. These have been aggravated by a visible decline in the supposed capacity of the United States to impose and enforce solutions in different parts of the globe and the rise of China’s influence in the global economy.

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      Complexity, when applied to politics, generally signifies ambiguity. In the aftermath of the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration established a policy based on the idea of backing Taiwan while seriously hedging their bets. Writing for The Diplomat, Dennis Hickey explains that in 1954, the US “deliberately sought to ‘fuzz up’ the security pact [with Taiwan] in such a way that the territories covered by the document were unclear.”

      Following President Nixon’s historic overture in 1971, the US established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This led to the transfer of China’s seat at the United Nations from the ROC to Mao’s PRC. The status of Taiwan was now inextricably ambiguous. US administrations, already accustomed to “fuzzy” thinking, described their policy approach as “strategic ambiguity.” It allowed them to treat Taiwan as an ally without recognizing it as an independent state. The point of such an attitude is what R. Nicolas Burns — President Joe Biden’s still unconfirmed pick for the post of US ambassador to China — calls “the smartest and most effective way” to avoid war.

      Recent events indicate that we may be observing a calculated shift in that policy. In other words, the ambiguity is becoming more ambiguous. Or, depending on one’s point of view, less ambiguous. There is a discernible trend toward the old Cold War principle of brinkmanship. A not quite prepared President Biden recently embarrassed himself in a CNN Town Hall for stating that the US had a “commitment” to defend Taiwan. The White House quickly walked back that commitment, reaffirming the position of strategic ambiguity.

      This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to be pushing back in the other direction, threatening the Chinese with “terrible consequences” if they make any move to invade Taiwan. Blinken added, the Taipei Times reports, that the US has “been very clear and consistently clear” in its commitment to Taiwan. 

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consistently clear:

      In normal use, unambiguous. In diplomatic use, obviously muddied and murky, but capable of being transformed by an act of assertive rhetoric into the expression of a bold-sounding intention that eliminates nuance, even when nuance remains necessary for balance and survival.

      Contextual note

      If Donald Trump’s administration projected a foreign policy based on fundamentally theatrical melodrama that consisted of calling the leader of a nuclear state “rocket man” and dismissing most of the countries of the Global South as “shitholes,” while accusing allies of taking advantage of the US, the defining characteristic of the now ten-months-old Biden administration’s foreign policy appears to be the commitment to the old 1950s Cold War stance known as brinkmanship.

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      In November, the CIA director, William Burns, comically threatened Russia with “consequences” if it turned out — despite a total lack of evidence — that Vladimir Putin’s people were the perpetrators of a series of imaginary attacks popularly called the Havana syndrome. This week, backing up Biden’s warning “of a ‘strong’ Western economic response” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was more specific. “One target,” France 24 reports, “could be Russia’s mammoth Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany. Sullivan said the pipeline’s future was at ‘risk’ if Russia does invade Ukraine.” This may have been meant more to cow the Europeans, whose economy depends on Russian gas, than the Russians themselves.

      These various examples have made observers wonder what is going on, what the dreaded “consequences” repeatedly evoked may look like and what other further consequences they may provoke. The US administration seems to be recycling the nostalgia of members of Biden’s own generation, hankering after what their memory fuzzily associates with the prosperous years of the original Cold War.

      Historical Note

      Britannica defines brinkmanship as the “foreign policy practice in which one or both parties force the interaction between them to the threshold of confrontation in order to gain an advantageous negotiation position over the other. The technique is characterized by aggressive risk-taking policy choices that court potential disaster.”

      The term brinkmanship was coined by Dwight Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent in both of his elections, Adlai Stevenson, who dared to mock Secretary of State John Foster Dulles when he celebrated the principle of pushing things to the brink. “The ability to get to the verge,” Dulles explained, “without getting into the war is the necessary art…if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, inherited the consequences of Dulles’ brinkmanship over Cuba, the nation that John Foster’s brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles, insisted on invading only months after Kennedy’s inauguration. This fiasco was a prelude to the truly frightening Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when Kennedy’s generals, led by Curtis Lemay, sought to bring the world to the absolute brink.

      When, two years later, Lyndon Johnson set a hot war going in Vietnam, or when, decades later, George W. Bush triggered a long period of American military aggression targeting multiple countries in the Muslim world, the policy of brinkmanship was no longer in play. These proxy wars were calculated as bets that fell far short of the brink. The risk was limited to what, unfortunately, it historically turned out to be: a slow deterioration of the capacities and the image of a nation that was ready to abuse its power in the name of abstract principles — democracy, liberation, stifling terrorism, promoting women’s rights — that none of the perpetrators took seriously. Threats and sanctions were features of the daily rhetoric, but the idea at the core of brinkmanship — that some major, uncontrollable conflagration might occur — was never part of the equation.

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      The Biden administration may have serious reasons for returning to the policy of brinkmanship. The position of the United States on the world stage has manifestly suffered. Some hope it can be restored and believe it would require strong medicine. But there are also more trivial reasons: notably the fear of the administration being mocked by Republicans for being weak in the face of powerful enemies. 

      Both motivations signal danger. We may once again be returning to the devastating brinkman’s game logic illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”

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

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

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      9/11 and the American Collective Unconscious

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      A little more than a month ago, the most newsworthy controversy surrounding the imminent and highly symbolic 20th anniversary of 9/11 concerned the message by families of the victims that Joe Biden would not be welcome at the planned commemoration. They reproached the US president for failing to make good on last year’s campaign promise to declassify the documents they believe will reveal Saudi Arabia’s implication in the attacks.

      That was the story that grabbed headlines at the beginning of August. Hardly a week later, everything had changed. Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban and soon the 20-year war would be declared over.

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      Though few paid attention to the phenomenon, this also meant that the significance of a commemoration of the attacks, would be radically different. For 19 years, the commemoration served to reinforce the will and resolution of the nation to overcome the humiliation of the fallen twin towers and a damaged wing of the Pentagon.

      Redefining the Meaning of the Historical Trauma

      In the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, politicians quickly learned to exploit the date as a painful reminder of a tragedy that had unified an otherwise chaotically disputatious nation in shared horror and mourning. Ever since that fatal day, politicians have invoked it to reinforce the belief in American exceptionalism.

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      The nation is so exceptional in generously providing its people with what President George W. Bush called “our freedoms” — and which he identified as the target of the terrorists — that it was logical to suppose that evil people who didn’t possess those freedoms or were prevented from emigrating to the land of the free would do everything in their power to destroy those freedoms. To the degree that Americans are deeply thankful for possessing such an exceptional status, other ill-intentioned people will take exception to that exceptionality and in their unjustified jealousy will threaten to destroy it.

      On a less philosophical and far more pragmatic note, the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks has conveniently and consistently served to justify an ever-expanding military budget that no patriotic American, interested in preserving through the force of arms the nation’s exceptional status, should ever oppose. It went without saying, through the three previous presidencies, that the annual commemoration provided an obvious explanation of why the forever war in Afghanistan was lasting forever.

      The fall of Kabul on August 15, followed by the panicked retreat of all remaining Americans, caught everyone by surprise. It unexpectedly brought an official end to the war whose unforgettable beginning is traced back to that bright September day in 2001. Though no one has yet had the time to put it all in perspective, the debate in the media has shifted away from glossing the issues surrounding an ongoing war on terror to assessing the blame for its ignominious end. Some may have privately begun to wonder whether the theme being commemorated on this September 11 now concerns the martyrdom of its victims or the humiliation of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. The pace of events since mid-August has meant that the media have been largely silent on this quandary.

      So, What About Saudi Arabia?

      With the American retreat, the controversy around Biden’s unkept campaign promise concerning Saudi Arabia’s implication in 9/11 provisionally took a backseat to a much more consequent quarrel, one that will have an impact on next year’s midterm elections. Nearly every commentator has been eager to join the fray focusing on the assessment of the wisdom or folly of both Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and his seemingly improvised management of the final chaotic phase.

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      The human tragedy visible in the nightly news as throngs of people at Kabul airport desperately sought to flee the country easily eclipsed the genteel but politically significant showdown between a group of American citizens demanding the truth and a government committed to protecting the reputations of friends and allies, especially ones from oil-rich nations.

      The official excuse turns around the criterion that has become a magic formula: national security. But the relatives of victims are justified in wondering which nation’s security is being prioritized. They have a sneaking suspicion that some people in Washington have confused their own nation’s security with Saudi Arabia’s. Just as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt not long ago revealed that plenty of people within the Beltway continue to confuse US foreign policy with Israel’s, the families may be justified in suspecting that Saudi Arabia’s interest in hiding the truth trumps American citizens’ right to know the truth.

      To appease the families of 9/11 victims and permit his unimpeded participation in the commemorations, Biden offered to release some of the classified documents. It was a clever move, since the new, less-redacted version will only become available well after the commemoration. This gesture seems to have accomplished its goal of preventing an embarrassing showdown at the commemoration ceremonies. But it certainly will not be enough to satisfy the demands of the families, who apparently remain focused on obtaining that staple of the US criminal justice system: “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

      Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, may have shown the way concerning the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Like MBS, the White House prefers finding a way to release some of the truth rather than the whole truth — just the amount that doesn’t violate national security or tarnish the reputations of any key people. Those two goals have increasingly become synonymous. If the people knew what actual political personalities were doing, the nation’s security might be endangered, as the people might begin to lose faith in a government that insists on retaining the essential power of deciding how the truth should be told.

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      Here is how the White House officially formulates the legal principle behind its commitment to unveiling a little more truth than is currently available. “Although the indiscriminate release of classified information could jeopardize the national security — including the United States Government’s efforts to protect against future acts of terrorism — information should not remain classified when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.”

      The White House has thus formulated an innovative legal principle brilliantly designed to justify concealing enough of the naked truth to avoid offending public morals by revealing its stark nakedness. Legal scholars of the future may refer to it as the “indiscriminate release” principle. Its logical content is worth exploring. It plays on the auxiliary verbs “could” and “should.” “Could” is invoked in such a way as to suggest that, though it is possible, no reasonable person would take the risk of an “indiscriminate release of classified information.” Later in the same sentence, the auxiliary verb “should” serves to speculatively establish the moral character of the principle. It tells us what “should” be the case — that is, what is morally ideal — even if inevitably the final result will be quite different. This allows the White House to display its good intentions while preparing for an outcome that will surely disappoint.

      To justify its merely partial exposure of the truth, the White House offers another original moral concept when it promises the maximization of transparency. The full sentence reads: “It is therefore critical to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency.”

      There is of course an easy way to maximize transparency if that is truly the government’s intention. It can be done simply by revealing everything and hiding nothing within the limits of its physical capability. No one doubts that the government is physically capable of removing all the redactions. But the public should know by now that the value cited as overriding all others — national security — implicitly requires hiding a determined amount of the truth. In other words, it is framed as a trade-off between maximum transparency and minimum concealment. Biden has consistently compared himself to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perhaps that trade-off between transparency and concealment is what historians will call Biden’s New Deal.

      But the White House’s reasoning is not yet complete. The document offers yet another guiding principle to explain why not everything will become visible. “Thus, information collected and generated in the United States Government’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed,” it affirms, “except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.” Those reasons, the document tells us, will be defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its “declassification reviews.” This invocation of the “strongest possible reasons” appears to empower the FBI to define or at least apply not only what is “strongest,” but also what is “possible.” That constitutes a pretty broad power.

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      The document states very clearly what the government sees as the ultimate criterion for declassification: “Information may remain classified only if it still requires protection in the interest of the national security and disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security. Information shall not remain classified if there is significant doubt about the need to maintain its classified status.” The families of the victims can simply hope that there will not be too much “significant doubt.” They might be forgiven for doubting that that will be the case.

      One September Morning vs. 20 Years of Subsequent Mornings

      Twenty years ago, a spectacular crime occurred on the East Coast of the United States that set off two decades of crimes, blunders and judgment errors that, now compounded by COVID-19 and aggravated climate change, have brought the world to a crisis point unique in human history.

      The Bush administration, in office for less than eight months at the time of the event, with no certain knowledge of who the perpetrator might have been, chose to classify the attack not as a crime, but as an act of war. When the facts eventually did become clearer after a moment of hesitation in which the administration attempted even to implicate Iraq, the crime became unambiguously attributable, not to a nation but to a politically motivated criminal organization: Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda that back then was operating out of Afghanistan, which was ruled by the Taliban.

      The administration’s choice of treating the attack as an act of war not only stands as a crime in itself, but, as history has shown, as the trigger for a series of even more shameless and far more destructive — if not quite as spectacular — crimes that would roll out for the next two decades and even gain momentum over time. Had the 9/11 attacks been treated as crimes rather than acts of war, the question of national security would have had less importance in the investigation. By going to war with Afghanistan, the Bush administration made it more difficult to investigate all the possible complicities. Could this partially explain its precipitation to start a war?

      Bin Laden, a Saudi, did not act alone. But he did not act in the name of a state either, which is the fundamental criterion for identifying an act of war. He acted within a state, in the territory of Afghanistan. Though his motive was political and the chosen targets were evocatively symbolic of political power, the act itself was in no way political. No more so, in any case, than the January 6 insurrection this year on Capitol Hill.

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      Though the facts are still being obscured and the text describing them remains redacted in the report of the 9/11 Commission, reading between the redacted lines reveals that bin Laden did have significant support from powerful personalities in Saudi Arabia, many of them with a direct connection to the government. This foreknowledge would seem to indicate complicity at some level of the state.

      On this 20th anniversary of a moment of horror, the families of the victims quite logically continue to suspect that if a state was involved that might eventually justify a declaration of war by Congress (as required by the US Constitution), the name of that state should not have been Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia. It is equally clear that the Afghan government at the time was in no way directly complicit.

      When the new version of the 9/11 Commission’s report appears with its “maximum transparency,” meaning a bare minimum of redaction, the objections of the victims’ families will no longer be news, and the truth about the deeper complicities around 9/11 will most probably remain obscured. Other dramas, concerning the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasingly obvious consequences of climate change and an upcoming midterm election will probably mean that next year’s 21st commemoration will be low-keyed and possibly considered unworthy of significant mention in the news.

      In 2021, the world has become a decidedly different place than it has been over the past two decades. The end of a forever war simply promises a host of new forever problems to emerge for increasingly unstable democracies to deal with.

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