US President Joe Biden and many Democrats have argued for a . They seem to emulate Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that pulled the US out of the Great Depression. They believe that public investment in green energy and new technologies will fight climate change, create high-paying jobs in the US and boost the American economy.

We spoke to Contributing Editor Christopher Roper Schell, a Capitol Hill veteran who has also worked on the Pentagon, to make sense of the Green New Deal in the context of soaring oil and gas prices, and the prospect of blackouts.

Christopher Roper Schell on Joe Biden’s Energy Policy

(We have edited this transcript lightly for clarity.)

Is clean energy a mirage? 

Christopher Roper Schell: It depends on what you mean by clean energy. 

If you think windmills and solar panels are going to run the US electric grid, that’s not going to happen.

What we need is baseload power and baseload power is going offline primarily because of the economic incentives behind green energy in the United States. Interestingly, CO₂ has been declining substantially, primarily because natural gas is simply cheaper.

What we’ll have to concern ourselves with is to ensure that we do not have the blackouts we’re being warned against. A semi-regulatory body has issued a warning that up to 2/3 of America could experience blackouts this summer. That is simply unacceptable to Americans and a green energy future that eventually has blackouts is not going to transpire.

What is the significance of high gas and nickel prices? 

Christopher Roper Schell: For the Greens, high gas prices are the point: they actually want gasoline prices to go up. However, Americans have rejected this.

They’re getting a look at what a potential carbon tax would look like, and they don’t like it. The Biden administration has tried to suffocate traditional energy sources such as natural gas and oil. In fact, the Chevron CEO said last week that he didn’t envision another refinery ever in the United States.

There’s clearly a rebellion against high gas prices and also against nickel prices. Nickel goes into almost everything that’s green and the US doesn’t produce that much of it. There is one single nickel mine in the US.

And we’re seeing nickel prices that are at peaks that we have not seen for the last 30 years. America cannot go green without producing a lot of nickel cheaply, and that’s not happening. 

Watch the full video here

Is there a supply-side threat from China? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Yes, there is. China produces four times more rare earths than America does. China has six rare earths mining companies. America has one mine.

In terms of solar panels, most of the US solar panels that are installed come from foreign shores; about 90% in fact. 

Interesting story — is this little bitty US domestic solar panel producer, and they have filed a complaint with the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department began investigating and the installation of solar panels completely froze in this country. Ultimately, the Biden administration stepped in and declared that there would be no new tariffs on imported solar panels to prevent the market from collapsing.

So in this rush to green utopia, the administration decided that it’s OK to support China and to essentially leave their own domestic suppliers out to dry. 

Is the Keystone XL pipeline the answer? 

Christopher Roper Schell: No one disputes that Keystone XL would have produced 830,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s a drop in the bucket in terms of global consumption.

The big problem today is that we just need to produce more oil and currently producers are not responding to price signals. Why? Because they’ve been punished.

Last week, Biden said of Exxon, pay your taxes. I didn’t know that oil producers had ever stopped paying taxes, but the president is using all sorts of regulatory methods to disincentivize the production of oil and gas.  Amongst other things, as I mentioned earlier, he’s not holding . I know he will say that there are already loads of outstanding leases, but that also means that they need permits. And oftentimes, the Biden administration has not allowed permits.

Either way, it’s better to get oil from places like the US and Canada via Keystone vis-à-vis places like Iran and Venezuela. 

Is the Green New Deal now dead? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Let me put it this way, no politician right now is saying if you like your new high gas prices, you can keep your new high gas prices. 

[There is now no appetite for] a carbon tax. The Green Deal is dead if it ever was alive. While people may virtue signal with their post-consumer cup or rich people may drive around feeling very fancy in their electric cars, the fact is that most people aren’t willing to make the major compromises they will have to make for a Green New Deal type future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Experts are arguing as to what lies around the corner for Russia after a so-far disastrous war. In western capitals like London and Washington, many believe that the Vladimir Putin regime could fall. They believe that Russia could disintegrate. In places like India and China, many take the view that most of the news about the war is western propaganda that has to be taken with a handful, not a pinch, of salt. They believe that Russia will overcome its initial setbacks, take over the Ukrainian coast and leave Ukraine as a landlocked rump state.

Atul Singh on the Political Consequences of Russia-Ukraine War

In this episode of FO° Insights, Atul Singh makes sense of what is going on. You can watch the video above and/or read what he has to say below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Is this the second round of the 1991 Soviet collapse?

Atul Singh: Zhou Enlai once reportedly said of the influence of the French Revolution — he said it for 1968 but it was construed to be 1789 — that it was too early to tell. I think it’s too early to tell.

The Russian Empire was a hastily-built contraption. Russia expanded east to the Pacific just as America went west to reach the same ocean. But the American Empire was built on sturdier grounds, while the Russian one was a helter-skelter, disorganized affair.

The Soviet Union that emerged in 1917 collapsed in 1991. Now you could have places like Dagestan, Chechnya and other regions secede. If and this is the big if if the military defeat is catastrophic. If the casualties are too high, which so far they are, but they are not yet too too high, and if people start losing the shirts off their backs and start suffering for food and basic services, then Russia could fall apart.

Furthermore, Russia is ruled by a kleptocratic regime. It is not one built on ideology. Unlike Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin is not delivering economic growth or tremendous industrialization. In fact, Russian factories are reliant on spare parts from around the world. Russians do not make silicon chips, so they can’t do much advanced stuff without help from others. So yes, Russia could collapse, but the jury is still out whether it would. 

Has Vladimir Putin run out of rope?

Atul Singh: My personal feeling is eventually Vladimir Putin is bound to go because most dictators lose touch and dictators who end up in wars that end badly don’t seem to stick to the saddle for too long. This war isn’t going very well for Putin, so he may have run out of rope, and the reason may not necessarily be just the war. The reason really might be the fact that he has presided over a regime that has engaged in massive theft. And there is no real moral or ideological underpinning to his regime. 

Putin’s regime is a fake tsarism, it’s tsarism without the tsar with its private properties, with its fancy castles, with oligarchs and an absolute concentration of power. At the end of the day, Putin’s regime is not like the Soviet regime which had true believers. It is all built around a nostalgia for past grandeur and that might end in defeat in Ukraine, or let’s say a pyrrhic victory, which is often not much better. 

Can Russia still export its military equipment?

Russia has made its name as a mighty military power, exporting its T-90 tanks, S-400 missiles, Sukhoi Su-30s and whatnot to many countries around the world, including China and India. Now, Russian factories will have to work overtime to supply their own military. Also many of the engines for Russian military equipment came from Ukraine. In fact, that is what the Indians are finding out and Russia will find it very difficult to ramp up its production and supply other countries.

Russia’s strength as a defense exporter is going to weaken. The country is certainly going to be on its back, if not its knees, and should things go very badly. Of course, Russian kit now has a bad reputation, given the mauling it has had, but should the war go even more badly, the days of Russia as a top arms exporter might be in doubt. The Chinese might be looking at Russia, or the Russian disaster, a bit more cheerily than the West. They could step in to supply the gap. 

Will Russia fall under China’s thumb?

Well, that is the nightmare for a lot of my friends in the Pentagon. I have heard so many arguments that the real enemy is China and Russia is a distraction. Some of these ladies and gentlemen believe China is supporting Russia through back channels and shady deals are propping up Vladimir Putin. 

Bit by bit, a giant pipeline that is being built to supply Chinese energy needs. This will supply Russia with much of the cash to keep going over a period of time. Russia is increasingly too beholden to China. If Beijing emerges triumphal or triumphant, we could get something like a Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire alliance before World War I.

This could then take on the West. In fact, this Eurasian alliance could emerge as a challenger to Washington and European capitals. Of course, Russia and China have thorny border issues. They have a long border. They also have geopolitical rivalry in Central Asia.They have had tiffs, even under communism when they were supposedly under the same ideology. But pressure from the West might be pushing them together, certainly right now. The Russians need the Chinese more than the Chinese need the Russians. So Russia is certainly going to be under China’s thumb.

What lies ahead for Russia?

A bleak winter, I suppose, after a tough summer. Russia is not in the best shape. Yes, its ruble is not falling to the same degree anymore — they have backed it with gold. Yes, Russia has a fortress economy. Yes, it can grow wheat. Yes, it has bread and oil. But at the end of the day, Russians have not really invested in their own country and manufactured stuff. The ability of a country to fight a war and win a war depends on its ability to make things, and that was what Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was good at for all its catastrophic loss of life and the killing of millions. 

Under Vladimir Putin, Russian oligarchs have bought yachts, properties in London and beautiful villas in Monaco and elsewhere. And Russians don’t make stuff anymore. They export commodities. So Russia can certainly cause a giant crash of the global economy. It can send inflation ricocheting around the world. It can cause collapse of regimes such as in Egypt and even countries such as Lebanon.

However, Russia does not make anything advanced anymore and it doesn’t produce silicon chips, which is important for the next generation of manufacturing. So, the future for Russia is bleak, and there is certainly going to be a massive shakeup in the way Russia is run and perhaps even the way Russian borders are drawn when the dust settles.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Even as is writing about “the coming food catastrophe,” the Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey is admitting to be unable to stop UK inflation hitting 10%, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is recording 8.3% inflation for April, Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh looks under the surface and around the corner to make sense of what to expect in the global economy.

Atul Singh on the Economic Consequences of Russia-Ukraine War

In this episode of FO° Insights, Atul Singh makes sense of what is going on. You can watch the video above and/or read what he has to say below. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

What are the economic consequences of the Russia-Ukraine war?

Atul Singh: The consequences are disastrous. The war could not have come at a worse time. We had a global financial crisis in 2007-08. After that, central banks followed loose monetary policy with quantitative easing. And then of course governments had to be fiscally loose to combat a pandemic.

Now, the war gives a supply-side shock, which means energy economics is back, food economics is back, and of course, commodities economics is back. 

Energy economics? Very simply, the price of oil and gas has shot up. Inflation is ripping through the world and even rich countries are suffering. 

Food? Well, we read in The Economist, no less, about an impending food catastrophe — 250 million people are at risk of famine.

Commodities? Russia is the biggest exporter of natural gas, the second biggest of oil and the third biggest of coal. About 25% of battery-grade nickel comes from Russia. In fact, 50% of USA’s uranium imports come from Russia and this is not to mention copper and palladium and whatnot. 

So, there’s a real supply-side shock of monumental proportions. Add to that ships not leaving the Black Sea, and you can see this is going to end very badly. 

Who will suffer most?

Atul Singh: It will be people who need food who will suffer the most. The first requirement to live is of course water and then it is food. It is important to remember that Russia and Ukraine supply 28% of the world’s wheat, 29% of the world’s barley, a lot of the maize and, of course, 75% of sunflower oil. 

Egypt relies for 86% of its imports on Russian and Ukrainian wheat and 30% of Egypt’s caloric intake is bread. So it’s a case of bread and oil. With oil prices rising, food prices get a double kicker because costs of production in places like the US, India and China goes up.

India is having an exceptionally hot summer, so its supply is going to go down. China has had delayed rains. So, we have falling harvests combined with rising food and oil prices to make a perfect storm.

And of course, let’s not forget Sub-Saharan Africa where 40% of the family budget goes on food. Everyone will suffer and the big victims are going to be Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, of course, I’ve mentioned them before, and Lebanon, which after the explosion in 2020 can just store a month of food. So rocky times ahead.

What are the results of sanctions?

Atul Singh: Well, the obvious results of sanctions are really-damaged Russian economy. Russia has been shut out of the global financial system. Russian factories are finding it difficult to find spares to keep running. Big brands have pulled out of Russia. Law firms have left Russia. Coca Cola is out, McDonald’s is out and so on and so forth now. 

The damage to the Russian economy is obvious. Damage to the Ukrainian economy is obvious too. There are many, many, many reports talking about how the Ukrainian economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, and perhaps could not sustain a longer war. But apart from Russian and Ukraine there are second order and third order effects.

The results of sanctions are loss of profits for a lot of European companies. German companies are suffering. Obviously, French ones are suffering. And then of course, Chinese companies that operate in the West cannot operate in Russia, at least with the same freedom as they did before. So can’t Indian companies. 

There is, of course, the threat of counter sanctions. What if Russia says this is a game two can play? We switch off the supply of nickel. Goodbye to your green economics. Goodbye to your clean cars. The results of sanctions are manifold.

Then there is the question of the global financial system. Assets of Russia’s central bank have been frozen and Russia has been shut out of SWIFT. What do the other countries such as Saudi Arabia and China do in response?

Could there be a blowback from sanctions?

Atul Singh: Of course, there could and would be blowback. There are always unintended consequences to these things. Now. Russia could shut off supplies at nickel, palladium etc. Sanctions are a game two can play. 

Saudi Arabia is worried. Not too long ago, a certain journalist was chopped up in Istanbul and sanctions against Russia could very well be used against the Saudis. It’s a good precedent. China isn’t too popular either in Washington or in European capitals these days. So talk of a petrol-yuan trade has emerged which challenges the dollar, talk of rupee-ruble trade has emerged and talk of renminbi-ruble trade has emerged. 

With all these different countries starting to trade in their own correct currencies, this is possibly a challenge to the dollar. Also remember Russia has been kicked out of SWIFT, the global financial transactions and payments network.  SWIFT is expensive. Certainly it’s secure, but this could push for the development of an alternative system that is cheaper and works around SWIFT. The world might be about to get very interesting. 

Will the Russian economy hold or will the dollar dominate?

Atul Singh: Well, one view is it’s curtains for Russia. Inflation is going to cause the collapse of the regime, just as a combination of economic meltdown and military defeat ended the Tsars in 1917. Another view is Russia as a fortress economy. It has food, it has energy and it’ll survive.

If you take the latter point of view, you can say that the ruble has recovered. The Russians have linked it to gold. Russia has the fifth highest gold reserves, and the Russian economy is doing better than expected.

The jury is still out as to what will transpire but Russia is under acute stress and the test of the pudding is in the eating. Let’s see how Russia fares by the end of this year.

Will the dollar dominate? The answer is yes, but the dollar will weaken because sanctions have made big economies like India and China very nervous and these are economies with high growth rates. These are economies that want cut-price oil as oil prices go up. These countries don’t have natural energy resources. So increasingly they are going to try and work around western sanctions through backroom deals.

Also, some sort of a parallel financial system will emerge. We will be seeing a more fragmented world, economically, at the end of this conflict, thanks to the pressures, the inflationary pressures, that the conflict has unleashed around the world.

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Even as US President Joe Biden leaves for his inaugural Asia visit, American foreign policy is in turmoil in the aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam-like withdrawal from Afghanistan and the catastrophic Russia-Ukraine War. 

Therefore, we spoke to Contributing Editor Christopher Roper Schell, a Capitol Hill veteran who has also worked on the Pentagon, to make sense of Biden’s foreign policy.

Christopher Roper Schell on Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy

How do you rate Joe Biden’s foreign policy?

Christopher Roper Schell: Biden’s foreign policy is coalition-based but it is weak and naive.

Why? Because it doesn’t contemplate realpolitik. Some people don’t care about your rules-based order or the values that matter so much to you, or ideals that are inconsequential in the face of power. In many ways he is a lot like Obama 2.0. Biden doesn’t necessarily enforce things, he just states what cannot be done.

What must not be done? The red line in Syria comes to mind for Obama. And Biden seems to be making himself another version of Obama. Policy is based on the notion that this is who we are. This statement often employed by Biden and by Obama alike is utterly meaningless.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing is that Biden is negotiating simultaneously with the Iranians as he seeks to curtail Russia. However, he cowers every time Russia mentions a nuclear weapon. Well, what do you think the Iranians and the others are thinking? Get a nuclear weapon as soon as possible and no one messes with you. 

Did Biden play his cards well against Russia in Ukraine?

Christopher Roper Schell:  Biden was initially strong out of the gate. His decision to reveal classified information relating to a supposed false incursion by the Ukrainians, which the Russians would then use as a provocation to retaliate, was a great idea, as was his decision to provide a list of names of the people Moscow could have used to run Ukraine. 

However, from thereon Biden’s will flagged. Indeed, he was dragged virtually kicking and screaming to impose sanctions. Once he saw that the Congress was going to act, Biden didn’t want to be left behind. Similarly, when the Russians withdrew from Northern Ukraine, we should have been arming Mariupol to the teeth. We did not do this.

So, there seems to be an absence of confidence or will to provide any real defense to the Ukrainians. For example, the MiGs out there should have been sent to Ukraine. If the US could not send the entire planes, why not chop them up into parts and send them to Ukraine? Or leave the keys in the car and say we don’t know who took them…

So we are left in a situation where there could potentially be a frozen conflict for a long time. Ukraine could be left as a rump state. And there doesn’t seem to be the will to ensure that Russia loses, as Biden claims he wants. 

What do you make of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Christopher Roper Schell: It was a masterstroke. It was brilliant. It was perfectly executed, no, I’m kidding you. It was a dumpster fire. It was a mess. Now I grant you Trump left Biden in a bad position. Right? Right? 

Withdrawal timelines being what they are, Biden didn’t have a lot of good options but I mean, really, this was the best you could make of this? I mean, the region is now a mess.

For the American side, there hadn’t been casualties in a year. We had 2,500 to 3,500 people there keeping the top on this. And we withdrew everyone on such an artificial political timeline like 9/11. 

That’s the day you decide that you’re going to pull out, and when that doesn’t work and you see it’s kind of sort of going south, you think, oh, I know this isn’t working out. Let’s like move the timeline up, ’cause that’s way better, right? No, no.

Biden wanted a triumphant political 9/11 20-year wrap up ceremony. Instead, he got Saigon and I guarantee you his advisers were like no helicopters on rooftops, no helicopters on rooftops. And when he got helicopters on rooftops, those same advisers were probably saying nobody’s falling from the sky. Guess what? He got bodies falling from the sky strangely reminiscent of 9/11, and it was an absolute debacle. And of course this also eroded American credibility. I mean, regionally, once again it’s a complete mess. So, dumpster fire!

How has Biden handled the Middle East?

Christopher Roper Schell: The Middle East is a mess. What else is new? However, the new caveat here is that Biden has absolutely infuriated the Saudis, and he’s done so on numerous and different fronts. I wrote about this in my first The View from the Carriage House.

And Biden has completely alienated the Saudis. They won’t even take his calls, and he’s asking them to pump more oil. Not going to happen. At the same time, Biden is negotiating a contract with the Iranians, the Saudis’ mortal enemy. So what do you think the Saudis are going to do?

You’re talking about delisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). You’re talking about giving the Iranians all sorts of goodies. We’ve already delisted the Houthis and we also wouldn’t even sell the Saudis Patriot Missiles. So they’re quite frustrated and the place is a mess and we don’t seem to be making any headway on the Iranian Deal.

It’s a wash-rinse-repeat cycle of negotiations, pocketed gains, going back to the negotiation table, so the Middle East in general is not going well at all. 

Has Biden done well with allies like France, Australia and India?

Christopher Roper Schell: France is America’s oldest ally, which is why it got a little bit awkward in the room when the Aussies decided to buy US submarines and not French submarines. The French seemed to be caught off guard by this and Biden was too. Biden claimed that honest to God he didn’t know that the French hadn’t been told.

Which kind of makes sense. I do think he probably was the last guy to know. Nonetheless the Aussies are getting serious. They were sanctioned by China in a pretty profound way and they have recognised that China is a threat. The French are OK, you know, some fences have been mended there.

Perhaps most interesting is the relationship with India, which is founded on the QUAD. And I think America has to come to a better understanding to get on top of India. The US has to recognize that India can’t just throw away 70% of its military hardware, which is Russian. It has to remember that the old non-alignment days weren’t truly non-aligned, that there was a bit more of a Russian influence, and the time has come to recognize India’s past but also forge a very strong relationship moving forward.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Therefore, we spoke to eminent French journalist Florence Biedermann about the first round of the presidential elections. They have thrown up the same two candidates for the final round as last time around. One candidate is Emmanuel Macron, whom many call “le Président des .” The other candidate is Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who risen in popularity in France. This is the first time in French political history that a far-right leader is so close to the winner of the first round.

Watch or read Biedermann make sense of it all.

Florence Biedermann on Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron and the French Elections

In this episode, we have the former chief editor of Agence France-Presse explain what is going on in France. You can read what she has to say below.

Why is Marine Le Pen so popular? 

Florence Biedermann: She really focused on a program for social matters, on social questions, on the cost of living and this is the main worry of the French people right now.

After the war in Ukraine, the price of energy has risen considerably. There is a stronger inflation and it is now one of the main topics for the French people. So she managed to put aside all the more extreme side of her program on immigration, of changing the institutions, and her resistance to the EU, and she really focused on the daily life of the people with small incomes, on their difficulties and has insisted that Emmanuel Macron was a kind of an elitist who was far away from those daily worries of the French people. 

Has Marine Le Pen detoxified the Le Pen name? 

Florence Biedermann: And that’s how she managed to somehow detoxify her brand, because for years she has been associated, of course, with extreme views and immigration. A few years ago, she was still against the EU, she wanted to withdraw from the EU. 

She is still very much a euroskeptic, but she gave up this project. She also gave up the fact that she wants to get out of the euro and she styled herself as a kind of innocuous housewife, a cat lover who raised her children on her own. She has presented herself as someone running an ordinary life and being close to ordinary people. And it really worked pretty well when you see the voting results now. 

After Trump and Brexit, could France be in for a surprise result? 

Florence Biedermann: So of course the big question now is whether she can win or not. I mean, all the polls still give Macron as the winner, but we know that polls failed before in predicting the victory of Trump, and the victory of Brexit. So everybody is pretty careful and obviously there is nervousness in the camp of Macron because he’s now campaigning really hard, which he didn’t do before the first round because he was busy with the war in Ukraine. 

So obviously there is a chance that she can win, especially because one of the measures proposed by Macron is very unpopular as it is to postpone the retirement age from 62 to 65 and if this election ends up finally being a kind of referendum on this question, then he may lose. 

What would a victory for Le Pen mean for France and Europe as a whole? 

Florence Biedermann: So for France on the international scene, a victory for Marine Le Pen would really be a disaster. France is one of the main countries trying to make the EU more dynamic, more efficient, which does not interest her. She wants to present France as a sovereign country where French laws would be more important than European laws. Let’s say you can really compare her to Viktor ������á��. She’s the same kind of leader.

And then of course in the EU with one of the main leaders being eurosceptic that would be a disaster. Also, she’s kind of very reluctant towards NATO. And let’s not forget she was an admirer of Vladimir Putin for years. She even needed to borrow from a Russian bank to finance her campaign. So definitely the image of France internationally would be completely downgraded. 

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Even as the focus has been on Ukraine, a bloody and brutal conflict has raged in Tigray for 17 months but hardly attracted global attention. On March 25, rebel Tigrayan forces declared that they would respect a proposed by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as long as sufficient aid was delivered to their war-scarred northern region “within reasonable time.”

Martin Plaut on the Tigray War, Ethiopia and More

In this episode, we have the former BBC World Service Africa Editor explain what is going on in the Tigray War in Ethiopia and you can read what he has to say below.

How significant is the humanitarian ceasefire in Ethiopia’s Tigray region?

This is the first real breakthrough in the negotiating process that we’ve had since the war began in November 2020. There have been terrible bitter months in which there has been a huge loss of life. As per estimates, up to 500,000 people have died either from the conflict or from starvation in Tigray. The whole of Tigray is surrounded by enemies with the Eritreans to the north and the Ethiopians to the south, the east and the west.

To avoid starvation, it is vital that supplies get through. The Tigrayans need something like a hundred (100) trucks a day. They’ve had 100 trucks in the last, I don’t know, six weeks. There’s starvation in Tigray and humanitarian assistance is desperately needed.

Why has the ceasefire taken so long?

Essentially the Ethiopians and the Eritreans who are prosecuting this war have used starvation as a weapon of war. They are trying to crush the Tigrayan population whom they loathe by any means possible. They attempted to invade the country in November 2020 but that didn’t work. The Tigrayans had to flee their capital but, after a few months, they reorganized and they pushed the Eritreans and the Ethiopians right out of most of Tigray.

There are only some areas on the west and in the far north of Tigray which are still occupied. So the Ethiopians and the Eritreans have basically used starvation as a weapon of war. They’ve cut all communications links, they’ve prevented medical supplies from coming in and they prevented the trucks from rolling in either through the east or through the south. The people are starving.

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How serious is the humanitarian situation?

The situation is terrible. As always, it is always the very young and the very old who die first. The problem is that we have no absolute certainty about what is going on because the government of Ethiopia and of Eritrea have refused to allow any journalists to the frontlines even on the Ethiopian and Eritrean sides, let alone into Tigray itself. All communications are cut to Tigray, banking services are cut, there’s no way of paying for anything, all fuel supplies going in have been prevented. So Tigray is almost like a sealed-off area and nobody knows really what is going on but we do get to know some things from whispers, and the whispers are terrible.

Why has this war attracted less attention than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

If you prevent all international journalists from going in, there’s a news vacuum. How do you cover a story when nobody is allowed to be on the ground? Then, you can’t actually get the shots, film the mother with the dying baby or the grandparents unable to feed themselves or look after themselves. You do not get this information we’re getting now, day in, day out, from Ukraine.

You’re getting nothing from Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, let alone the rest of the area, some of which is very remote. Most monasteries have been looted, women have been routinely raped, I mean literally routinely raped. Some of the testimony was so brutal it is truly some of the worst I have ever seen in my life.

What is at the stake for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa?

Essentially, there are two views of Ethiopia. As per one view, Ethiopia is an imperial country, a single unitary country that was developed in the 19^th century and should really essentially return to that. The Tigrayan have another view. They say that we are all ethnic groups, we must all have a federated system in which real power reverts to all of the ethnic areas. That is what the Tigrayans tried to do until 2018 when they lost power. They tried to create this federation sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully.

Essentially, those are the two views of how Ethiopia should be run and it’s equally the way in which the whole Horn of Africa should be governed.

How can Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed resolve this war?

My view is if he doesn’t really allow an alternative view of the way Ethiopia is run then it is unlikely that we will have a resolution of this conflict. That will mean that we’ll go back to war. We’ve already seen somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 people killed and that’s before you take in the deaths of the Somalis who fought in this war, of the Eritreans, tens of thousands of whom have been thrown into the frontline, so I mean the death toll could be immense.

And we don’t want to see any more of this suffering so we really do need some kind of resolution that addresses the political as well as the humanitarian issues.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of the Tigray War in Ethiopia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

FO° Insights is a new feature where our contributors make sense of issues in the news.

Katerina Manoff on the No-Fly Zone Issue and More

Hi, I’m Katerina Manoff and I’m a Ukrainian-American nonprofit leader and writer and I am also a volunteer in the war effort focusing on media work and supporting the Ukrainian Air Force.

What is a no-fly zone?

We’ve all heard the term no-fly zone. You may also hear terms like air superiority or air dominance. These terms refer to the same broad concept: the idea of controlling the sky. The party who is dominant in the air can protect its own ground troops while attacking the troops, supply chains and critical infrastructure of the enemy. The other combatant literally cannot fly out because they will be shot down if they do. Hence, no-fly zone.

To gain air dominance you need the full arsenal tools, which include fighter jets in the sky and medium and long range missile defense systems on the ground. Ukraine is vastly outnumbered in the sky. Depending on how you count military equipment, Russia has anywhere from six to ten times as many air defense weapons, both in the sky and on the ground. That was at the beginning of the war. With Ukraine losing many of its weapons in battle and not really having a way to replenish those, the differential is even greater.

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Can Ukraine repel Russian forces without a no-fly zone?

The situation is pretty dire. Ukraine’s Air Force does not have the tools that it needs to repel Russian attacks, and the US and NATO are refusing to provide or sell these tools. When we hear about Ukraine successes on the ground — you know — tractors towing tanks or Ukrainian troops having higher morale or retaking dozens of villages, we have to put that into context. Unfortunately, these stories don’t mean very much in the big picture, unless Ukraine’s allies change their current policy of refusing to provide air defense support.

Why has a no-fly Zone been rejected?

I think there are two answers. The first is that it could be just another symptom of a bumbling reactive foreign policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a threat for years, if not decades. The West has bungled its response to his aggression in Georgia and Syria as well as his takeover of Crimea. If we think back to Syria and then US president Barack Obama’s infamous red line, we can see this is not just a problem with the current administration. This is also not just a Ukraine problem. Rather, it’s a deeper leadership failure in the United States. America is acting based on principles of fear and appeasement of dictators.

The other answer could be that this US policy towards Ukraine might be very calculated. Washington could have made a conscious decision to let Putin slowly destroy Ukraine and weaken Russia in the process. If this is the case, then US President Joe Biden and his advisers are purposely giving Ukraine just enough aid to keep fighting and keep bleeding the Russians, but refuse any substantive help that could actually end the war and help Ukraine win.

Wouldn’t a no-fly zone start World War III?

Fears of World War III play right into Russia’s hands. If we use fear of nuclear war as an excuse to allow mass murder, rape and torture, and let war crimes go unpunished, that just emboldens Putin and other dictators to keep going, to conquer more lands and to kill more people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been saying for weeks that if the US and NATO are afraid of nuclear war, they don’t need to enforce a no-fly zone themselves. They can just give Ukraine the tools needed to do the job. If Ukrainian pilots and soldiers are flying the planes and operating the missile defense systems, then NATO is not entering the conflict directly.

What should the West do to help Ukraine?

The West needs to figure out a way to get Ukraine the fighter jets and missile defense systems it needs. This is the only way the war can end. Current policies such as economic sanctions, humanitarian aid and military support in the form of other types of weapons are all useful and should continue. However, it is important to recognize these steps for what they are: secondary policies that cannot end the war without filling the primary need for air defense.

The current US policy is really the worst of both worlds. The US should choose one way or another. Either Washington should actually support Ukraine and provide the weapons needed to win the war, which are fighter jets and medium and long range missile defense systems. Or, if Washington is not willing to do so, the Biden administration should be honest about its intentions and not leave Ukrainians hanging, waiting for aid that’s never going to come.

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of Ukraine’s Call for a No-Fly Zone appeared first on 51�Թ�.