Ending the War in Ukraine

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Ridiculous as it might sound, it is my tiny attempt to act against ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine, to somehow fight this sense of helplessness, being forced to watch the events unfold, without being able to do much.

Building Up to War in Ukraine

It all started a couple of days before February 24, which is when Russia invaded Ukraine. I was preparing for a trip to Kyiv to check on my friends in the Ukrainian capital. Following the latest developments, I tried to find any information that would confirm what the Russian ambassador to the EU had on February 16. Vladimir Chizhov said there would “be no escalation in the coming week, or in the week after that, or in the coming month.” Saying one thing and doing another has long been part of the Russian political playbook. Yet the cynicism in saying that wars in Europe “rarely start on a Wednesday” — in reference to US intelligence — just to actually invade eight days later is unacceptable.

On Sunday, February 20 at around 10 pm, I ultimately decided not to set the alarm for later that night in order to arrive at the airport on time. I went to bed with a heavy heart and a sense of cowardice: I decided not to travel to Kyiv. I felt as if I had betrayed the Ukrainian people, especially my friend, who assured me that everything was fine and everyone was calm. Over the next few days, I tried to drown out the voice in the back of my head saying, “You should have gone” by repeating this mantra to myself: If you bring an umbrella, it will not rain.

And then we all heard the news. I can only imagine how it must have felt to be actually woken up by air raid sirens — it’s unfathomable. I saw a of Ukraine showing where the Russian bombs hit. I reached out to friends and colleagues in these places. So far, they are fortunately all fine. I admire their strength and bravery for remaining in Ukraine.

Back in the office in Vienna, I sat with my colleagues. While we tried to at least grasp what this meant for all of us, we began to realize that this was not just another crisis; this was a decisive development in history. This is war in Europe. It is not the first conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. It is not even the first in Ukraine; the country has been at war since 2014. Back then, during the Revolution of Dignity, the Euromaidan, Ukrainians gave their lives for democracy, our democracy.

That is precisely why it is only logical for Ukraine to apply for membership in the European Union. Although there is no shortcut to joining the EU, under certain circumstances, it can become possible. Membership in the union should not only remain symbolic. I have written more about this . In fact, I have been arguing with colleagues about granting such rights to all eastern partnership target countries since . This would, of course, not have prevented anything today. Other actions might have, such as reducing the import dependency on natural resources after the Russia–Ukraine gas crisis of the same .

But there is no use in dwelling on the past. Instead, I want to think about the future. Therefore, I have compiled five different scenarios about how the situation in Ukraine could develop. None of them must become a reality, and some of them, hopefully, will not.

1: All-out (Nuclear) War

Nuclear war is certainly the worst-case scenario for all sides. An increasingly frustrated and isolated Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, decides to use tactical nuclear weapons to submerge the Ukrainian resistance. Even if it will “only” involve non-nuclear attacks continuing the obliteration of whole cities and committing war crimes, the democratic international community seriously asks themselves if they can allow this to happen.

Even if they do, the probability that Putin will stop at the border with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Baltics or Finland is . Consequently, NATO, sooner or later, has to get involved, resulting in World War III.

I believe that we are actually already at war since February 24 but haven’t realized it yet. It might also continue as a war of attrition and continue indefinitely.

2: Novorossiya

This second scenario refers to what Putin himself mentioned in one of his television Q&As in 2014. It has been used in various contexts, with reference to Alexander Dugin, but also as an idea raised by the so-called People’s Republics in Donetsk and Luhansk of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The planned was ultimately not implemented.

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The reference dates back to a more or less geographically same area referred to as “New Russia” during the Soviet era until the turn of the century. In any case, Putin mentioned the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa — essentially the whole Black Sea coast of Ukraine, linking up the Russian Federation with Transnistria. Since the Transnistria War in 1992, Russian troops have been stationed in the breakaway territory, which is officially part of Moldova.

This scenario involves the creation of many more “people’s republics,” which are under the influence — politically and economically — of the Kremlin and dependent on it. Recognition of such republics by Moscow or even integration into the Russian Federation is also a possibility.

Further separatist regions beyond Ukraine are also declared, expanding Russian influence even more. This takes place mostly in the Caucasus, but also in the direction of the former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

3: Fragmentation

In a more hopeful scenario, �ʳܳپ���’s aggression leads to destabilization within the Russian Federation. While having to devote a majority of the country’s military capacities but also attention and political capital toward Ukraine, old separatist attempts resurface.

The control over Chechnya is substantially weakened due to the de-facto defeat of Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces. But also further disintegration occurs. Not necessarily violently, but more economic-based toward dependence of Siberia on China or Vladivostok on Japan. The resulting fragmentation and volatility have major consequences for the whole neighborhood but also geopolitically.

4: Coup d’état

There have been (too optimistic) rumors about a possible coup being planned by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia. Leaks from the “” lead to an ousting of Putin and his closest circle.

While it cannot be ruled out, there should not be any false hope. If the security forces and/or the military carry out a coup d’état, we will not see any democratic regime change.

Most likely, the people belonging to the closest circle of power are replaced, but the mafia system continues with a new godfather who ends the war but distributes the spoils. It is also possible that we will see a military hard-liner taking charge, which could then end in scenario one.

5: Democratic Revolution

The most optimistic, but unfortunately most unlikely, scenario would foresee the sanctions against Russia and the isolation of the federation as leading to the people bringing regime change and possibly democratization.

In a Maidan-style occupation of the Red Square, Putin is unable to suppress the opposition any longer. It takes a lot of time to account for past actions, reconciliation and anti-corruption measures, but the missed opportunity of the 1990s is finally taken up. Coupled with the enlarged EU economic and security cooperation, there is now a counterpart to the geopolitical volatility caused by China’s ambitions and the political instability of the United States.

The Outlook

Regardless of which direction the situation takes (although I most certainly have a preference), it is necessary to be prepared for all eventualities. It is a good sign that there has been enough awareness for Ukraine as well as the necessity to think about the economic requirements to rebuild after the war.

Nevertheless, it is possible to achieve peace, especially with regard to the importing of oil and gas from Russia. Far too often, we are focused on the immediate costs and do not look at the possibilities. A transition to renewable energy is more necessary than ever, but the hesitancy has kept us dependent on Moscow. Just imagine what the situation would have looked like if a transition had been sped up in 2009.

Hopefully, we have finally learned the lesson. After all, the price we pay is just money. Ukraine is paying with its life, its infrastructure and, ultimately, its future.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

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

The post What Is Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s Endgame? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Less officially, President Joe Biden has been emphasizing the emotional side of US motivation when he wants to turn Russia into a “pariah,” while branding its president as a “war criminal” and a “murderer.” Biden’s rhetoric indicates clearly that whatever purely legal and moral point the United States cites to justify its massive financial engagement in the war, its true motivation reflects a vigilante mindset focused on regime change.

A Russian-American Game of Mirrors

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The administration denies it has regime change on its mind. But Ferguson cites a senior administration official who privately confided that Biden’s “end game now … is the end of Putin regime.” The historian concludes that rather than seek a negotiated end to the war, the US “intends to keep this war going.”

As usual in foreign policy matters, Ferguson notes a certain convergence of viewpoint from his own government. He quotes an anonymous source affirming that the United Kingdom’s “No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” A little later in the article, Ferguson qualifies as “archetypal Realpolitik” the American intent “to allow the carnage in Ukraine to continue; to sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians ‘b������ Russia �����.’�ĝ

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bleed (a country):

To encourage and prolong an unnecessary and unjustified conflict in the interest of sucking the life out of the political establishment of a declared enemy, a process that usually automatically implies sucking the life out of at least one other country, including eventually one’s own

Contextual Note

Ferguson dares to question the dominant belief in the US that bleeding Russia is a recipe for success. “Prolonging the war runs the risk not just of leaving tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead and millions homeless, but also of handing Putin something that he can plausibly present at home as victory,” he writes.

When the focus is both on bleeding and prolonging the combat, there is a strong likelihood that the bleeding will be shared. If a boxer sees a cut over his opponent’s eye, he may strategically focus all his punches on the opponent’s face hoping for a technical knockout. But, by focusing on the loss of blood, he may drop his guard with the risk of getting knocked out or opening his own bleeding wound.

“I fail to see in current Western strategizing any real recognition of how badly this war could go for Ukraine in the coming weeks,” Ferguson observes. The reason may simply be that the hyperreal moment the Western world is now living through is proving too enjoyable to critique, at least for the media. The more horror stories of assaults on innocent civilians make their way into the headlines, the more the media can play the morally satisfying game of: here’s one more reason to hate Vladimir Putin.

If the White House is focused, as it now appears, not on saving Ukrainian democracy but on bleeding Russia, all the stories of Russian abuse of brave civilians are designed with the purpose of prolonging the war, in the hope that, discredited by �ʳܳپ���’s failure to break Ukraine’s resistance, Russians will revolt and depose the evil dictator. In the meantime, those Ukrainians who manage to survive are being asked to play the supporting role of watching their country reduced to ruins.

Ferguson speculates that US strategists have come to “think of the conflict as a mere sub-plot in Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real opponent.” That would be an ambitious plan, riddled with complexity. But the Biden administration has demonstrated its incapacity to deal effectively even with straightforward issues, from passing the Build Back Better framework in the US to managing a pandemic.

The Ukraine situation involves geopolitics, the global economy and, even more profoundly, the changing image of US power felt by populations and governments across the globe. At the end of his article, the historian describes this as an example of dangerous overreach, claiming that “the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake in thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.”

Historical Note

One salient truth about Americans’ perception of the Ukraine War should be evident to everyone. Today’s media thoroughly understands the American public’s insatiable appetite for the right kind of misinformation. Niall Ferguson makes the point that the US government may nevertheless be inept in providing it. The history of misinformation in times of war over the past century should provide some clues.

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In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book describing the logic behind his own service on several continents. Its title was “War Is a Racket.” He described the American vision of war as a quest for corporate profit. He tried to warn the nation of the inhumanity of such an approach to the use of military force. He manifestly failed because he was late to the game. Back in 1917, Edward Bernays, the “father of Public Relations,” seduced the American public into believing that the only motive for the nation’s invasions and wars is the spreading of democracy. It was Bernays who provided Woodrow Wilson with the slogan “make the world safe for democracy.”

For the rest of his life, Bernays not only helped private companies boost their brands, he also consulted on foreign policy to justify regime change when it threatened a customer’s racket. In 1953, working for United Fruit, he collaborated with President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz had a plan to redistribute to the country’s impoverished peasants “unused land” monopolized by United Fruit. In a 2007 article for the Financial Times, Peter Chapman that both Dulles brothers were “legal advisers” to United Fruit. Chapman notes that the company was also involved in the 1961 CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion.

In other words, concerning their impact on the American psyche, Bernays the PR man defeated Butler, celebrated at the time as �������������’s greatest living war hero. His fame was such that a group of powerful fascist-leaning businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the infamous 1933 “.”

Americans continue to rally around Bernays’ genius for reducing a suspect ideology to a catchy slogan. American interventions abroad are framed as noble efforts to support democracy and promote American business (Butler called them rackets). It’s a population of avid consumers of the media’s plentiful supply of misinformation.

There are nevertheless odd moments when real information breaks through, though it rarely leaves much lasting impact. Last week, the Pentagon leaked news the narrative the State Department, the intelligence community and US media have unanimously adopted and promoted. In the Defense Department’s view, ��ܲ�������’s invasion is not an example of unrestrained sadism toward the Ukrainian people. “As destructive as the Ukraine war is,” Newsweek reports, “Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.”

The US military establishment calls it the “Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” observing that Russia has acted with restraint. It realistically assesses that, far from seeking to subdue and conquer Ukraine, �ʳܳپ���’s “goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.”

Ferguson has gleaned his own evidence concerning US and UK strategy that “helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.” Peace is no objective. Punishment is. This is a case where the Pentagon has received the message of Smedley Butler and dares to contradict an administration guided by the logic of Edward Bernays.

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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The Risk Posed by Global Inflation

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In manufacturing, AI promises to increase productivity by extending the capabilities of humans and by helping businesses achieve more efficiency, including through direct automation, predictive maintenance, reduced downtime, 24/7 production, etc. However, as Ezekiel Kwetchi Takam rightly points out, “this automation will be deployed at the expense of some human labor whose skills will be deemed irrelevant.”

In public administration, the adoption of AI can contribute to better public services, for example, by interacting with service users through virtual assistants or by enabling smarter analytical capabilities and better understanding of real-time processes. There is a risk, however, when using data, to amplify existing biases and produce discriminatory and unethical outcomes for different individuals. Moreover, as economist Etienne Perrot explains, “by developing algorithms based exclusively on computation and stochastic data, AI substitutes statistical correlations for (human) causal relationships. The lack of conflicting interpretations inherent in AI creates a human cost that can already be observed in predictive justice.”

To mitigate these risks, Domingo Sugranyes argues, regulation is needed both “on input (quality of data, bias avoidance, data ownership, purpose of automated processes) and output (reasonability of results) rather than on software itself.” In addition, as pointed out by Perrot, any “regulation in AI must aim to keep the human factor and its responsibility at the heart of all economic, judicial and political decisions.”

While AI can have positive impacts for humanity, it seems to have raised at least as many questions as it has answered, opening Pandora’s box. To ensure that the costs, benefits and risks generated by AI are equitably shared among citizens and stakeholders while respecting democratic values and human rights, public authorities have a crucial role to play to set up such a regulatory framework. One way to do so could be “to define a specific taxation of AI that will serve to: 1) guarantee an unemployment income to those who could be called the ‘economic neglected by the technological evolution’; 2) finance their training and their professional conversion,” says Takam.

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: How to prepare for AI? Does AI deserve — and, if yes, why — specific regulation, guidance or taxation ?

“…the lack of conflicting interpretations inherent in AI creates a human cost… ”

“T��� main challenge of artificial intelligence is twofold: On the positive side, the optimization of industrial and commercial processes (with the elimination of human intermediaries); on the negative side, on the one hand, the weakening of intra-systemic information and the concealment of risk and, on the other hand, the dehumanization of administrative and judicial relations. By developing algorithms based exclusively on computation and stochastic data, AI substitutes statistical correlations for (human) causal relationships. The lack of conflicting interpretations inherent in AI creates a human cost that can already be observed in predictive justice. Any regulation in this area must aim to keep the human factor and its responsibility at the heart of all economic, judicial and political decisions.”

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“…it is urgent to define a specific taxation of AI… ”

“Artificial intelligence will increase the productivity in manufacturing while developing new areas of employment and expertise. Unfortunately, this automation will be deployed at the expense of some human labor whose skills will be deemed irrelevant for this new market. It is therefore urgent to define a specific taxation of AI that will serve to: 1) guarantee an unemployment income to those who could be called the ‘economic neglected by the technological evolution’; 2) finance their training and their professional conversion.

In public administration, AI will contribute to develop a new ‘algorithmic governance,’ defined by Muller-Birn et al as a form of governance that integrates algorithmic systems. It is therefore important to regulate this new governance dynamic by involving citizens in the process: through democratic participation, the citizen must be the evaluator and co-constructor of this new form of public service.”

Ezekiel Kwetchi Takam — PhD candidate in theological ethics of artificial intelligence at the University of Geneva

“…there is a need to educate a capacity for discernment in digital environments…”

“AI and big data are transforming areas like advertising, media, finance, insurance, manufacture, health and medicine, weather forecast, catastrophe prevention, justice administration … It is a universal purpose technological revolution with huge impact on work, culture, civil life and social structures. Regulation is needed on input (quality of data, bias avoidance, data ownership, purpose of automated processes) and output (reasonability of results) rather than on software itself. Public intervention is needed to protect competition against monopolistic practices, which is difficult because tech markets work in ways that differ from classical ones. Above all, there is a need to educate a capacity for discernment in digital environments at all levels and age groups, and to promote universal access to digital services.

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, past executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

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“…it is vital to avoid the exclusive focus on economic efficiency… ”

AI comprises forms of intelligence demonstrated by machines in three different areas: 1) advanced automation; 2) computer-based central nervous system research; and 3) bridging one and two through the use of neurophysiological models in designing machines to perform practical tasks, mostly robots (see the well-known classification of James Lighthill). Already, important parts of social and economic organization have been affected by AI, and this process can be expected to continue. In addressing institutional design, it is vital to avoid the exclusive focus on economic efficiency as narrowly understood — in particular, replacing mostly but not exclusively semi-skilled and unskilled labor with machines. Innovations can already be conceived that increase the tasks ordinary workers are able to perform, for example, through new technologies allowing workers to perform tasks previously performed by more skilled people or enabling the provision of more specialized services by existing workforces.

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

“…AI may become the single most influential human innovation in history…”

Artificial intelligence is raising important questions for society, economy and governance. The world is on the cusp of revolutionizing many sectors through AI, but the way AI systems are developed needs to be better understood due to the major implications these technologies will have for society as a whole. In order to balance innovation with basic values, recommendations include improving data access, increasing government investment in AI, promoting AI workforce development, creating a civic advisory committee, engaging with the state to ensure they enact effective policies. These processes need to be better understood because they will have a substantial impact on the general masses soon and in the foreseeable future. AI may become the single most influential human innovation in history.

Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

*[An earlier version of this article was published by .

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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What England’s Premier League Did for Football

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I thought of this shortly after Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club in 2003 and launched the most extravagant spending splurge in the history of sport. In his first year in charge, his total spending in the player transfer market equated to of the entire Premier League’s expenditure on players. Was this man trying to prove he could buy anything he wanted?

The club was easy: Already deeply in debt (£60 million — around $79 million), Abramovich just paid off the creditors and took control of Chelsea. Then he assembled the strongest playing squad available. The cost of the transfer fees plus salaries far outweighed the club’s income, and in his first five years, Chelsea posted losses of £447 million — a sum that sounds less fantastic today than it did in the 2000s.

Money, Money, Money

Chelsea, at the time of Abramovich’s arrival, was a club of comparable size to, say, West Bromwich Albion. The clubs had similar histories of achievements, comparable fan bases and stadiums. Chelsea was not included in the original elite when plans for the Premier League were formulated in the early 1990s. Abramovich commissioned the transfer of players such as Didier Drogba (in 2004), Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack (both in 2006), signaling that no player was too big — or too expensive — for Chelsea.  

The rewards were abundant. Chelsea won the Premier League in the 2004-05 season, losing only one game under the management of Jose Mourinho, and this was but one of a total of 21 trophies, including five Premier League titles, two UEFA Champions League triumphs and a FIFA Club World Cup championship. Chelsea became one of the most garlanded clubs in the history of the Premier League and could lay a legitimate claim to being the best team in the world for long periods in recent history.

If Abramovich’s project was something like that of Magic Christian’s protagonist, it worked like a charm. Actually, Abramovich didn’t need Prospero-like charms — all he needed was money. He spent lavishly and luxuriated in the rewards. But the costs were prodigious. Last year, for example, Chelsea £145.6 million. Abramovich made good on the money, as he has done since he took over, by making deposits in the holding company , which technically owns Chelsea FC, and which Abramovich owns outright.

Abramovich never explained his profligacy. He didn’t give interviews and seemed to prefer anonymity. I was once asked to divine Abramovich’s motivation and answered by comparing his ownership of Chelsea with his love of art. He has a formidable collection that includes Bacon’s Tryptych, for which he paid $86.3 million. “He has the means to possess things he loves,” I said. “He might have bought Chelsea as a trophy at the outset, but he seems to have formed a loving attachment.”

Even if he did start with a testable hypothesis, the club became more a passion than a project.  He ran Chelsea Football Club not as a business in the conventional sense, but more like a charitable foundation or an endowed college with only one benefactor.

Prised From His Grasp

And now it is over: Abramovich has had the club he created prised from his grasp. He won’t appear at Stamford Bridge again and will probably never again set foot on English soil. The British government, as we know, has invoked powers to freeze his assets (of which Chelsea FC is one; the may be another), forced him to put the club on the market and denied him access to the proceeds of the sale. He has set the asking price of £3 billion, presumably reflecting the money he has sunk into the club over his tenure, but he won’t see a penny of it. (The pertinent is the Economic Crime Bill, which was rushed through Parliament in early March.)

We shouldn’t underestimate how much pain he must be feeling as he reads about the bids for his club. Negotiations are being handled by US merchant bank Raine. Abramovich himself is not allowed any input. As an aside, Abramovich has not committed a criminal offense and is guilty only of having “links” (whatever they may be) with Russian President Vladimir Putin or his regime. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson , “T���re can be no safe havens for those who have supported �ʳܳپ���’s vicious assault on Ukraine.” Abramovich has consistently historical associations with Putin and has done so for at 11 years.

As I write, a shortlist of bidders for the club is being considered by Raine. Eventually, the preferred bidder will be selected and — extraordinarily — will then be screened by the government. Paradoxically, the only bidder that would be likely to continue Abramovich’s munificence was a group from Saudi Arabia, which has withdrawn, presumably sensing tenders from that part of the Middle East would not be received favorably at the moment. The others are consortia — associations of several companies.

Whoever buys Chelsea will not need due diligence to realize they will have to hemorrhage money, at least for the immediate future. The club has been promising to break even since at least 2009, when then-chief executive Peter Kenyon the club would be “self-sustaining” by 2010. It hasn’t come close. Will new owners persist with the lose-money-to-win-trophies approach?

Football’s Land of Milk and Honey

It’s not inconceivable that a consortium could introduce dramatic downsizing over the next three or so years, allow existing contracts to expire, trade prudently in the transfer market and perhaps model itself on , a football club owned since 2010 by Fenway Sports Group Holdings, which also owns the Boston Red Sox of Major League Baseball.

If so, transfers on the scale of the £97.5-million Romelu Lukaku deal in 2021 are likely to be a thing of the past for Chelsea. There may also be some surprise departures to lighten the wage load.

Lionel Messi’s move from Barcelona to Paris St Germain came as a bolt out of the blue last year; at least, till the full extent of Barcelona’s debt came to light. The club owed about ($1.1 billion) and Messi’s salary was reputed to be over €50 million. (The ill-fated European Super League was not motivated by greed, as was widely reported, but by the will to survive. Most of the clubs in the original project are ravaged by and presumably thought the league offered a route to liquidity.)

The next owners of Chelsea FC will not bring the inexhaustible supply of money Abramovich did. They will be legally bound to honor existing agreements, so players like Lukaku, who earns £16.5 million per year, and N’Golo Kante, who gets £15 million, will be paid for the remainder of their contracts. But the club is unlikely to offer salaries of this size in future.

More likely, the new owners will introduce some kind of internal salary cap. Arsenal has long operated with a wage structure. Other clubs without benefactors typically try to keep a lid on their salaries. Manchester City is owned largely by the Abu Dhabi United Group and spends with the kind of improvidence associated with Abramovich. Whether Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund will turn Newcastle United into another Chelsea remains to be seen. But Chelsea’s new owners will almost certainly take a more businesslike approach.

UEFA, football’s governing organization in Europe, may complicate life for Chelsea’s new owners if it restricts clubs’ spending to of their income. Back-of-an-envelope calculations suggest Chelsea has typically spent more than the whole of its yearly income on transfers and salaries. Even if it expects income of, say, £400 million, the club will have to exercise self-restraint unheard of during the Abramovich era. Presently, wages alone are thought to be .

The Chelsea case presents an insight into English football’s rise over the past 30 years. In 1985, England’s clubs were banned from European competition for five years (six for Liverpool) due to violence amongst supporters. Since their return, they have grown to dominance. This is due in no small part to Abramovich. After his takeover, international entrepreneurs enthusiastically bought into Premier League clubs and introduced the kind of money that brings bargaining power in the transfer market. Today, owners include investors from the United States, the UAE, China, Thailand, Egypt and Iran.

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England has become football’s land of milk and honey. Love him or loathe him, Roman Abramovich is sport’s latter-day Abraham. He has instigated a revolution. At a time in history when sport’s integration into the entertainment industry was almost complete, Abramovich took Chelsea from a respectable but ordinary English football club to one of the world’s foremost names in sport and a brand thrumming with elan and glamor.

A rapacious capitalist to some, a tyrant’s accomplice to others and a moral nightmare to a few more, Abramovich remains, without doubt, the most influential presence in football over the past 20 years. People may not approve of what he’s done, but the effects — good or bad — of his breathtaking foray into sport will be felt for decades to come.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of .]

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

The post The End of the Extraordinary Abramovich Era appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Under this agreement, the Taliban are obligated to take measures to prevent terrorist groups from threatening the security of the US and its allies and to engage in a comprehensive intra-Afghan dialogue that would produce a political settlement. The hasty US troop withdrawal in August 2021 emboldened the Taliban to disregard their obligations under the deal and encouraged them to prioritize political takeover instead of a sustainable peace mechanism for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Public Intellectuals Fail to Denounce the Taliban

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The Doha Agreement and its contents undermined the sovereign government of Afghanistan at the time and provided an upper hand to the Taliban in both war and peace. Certain assurances in the deal enabled the Taliban to become stronger in both battlefield action and narrative propagation.

These the agreement’s references to a “new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government”; clauses on the release of Taliban combatants referred to as “political prisoners”; indirect legitimization of the Taliban shadow government by virtue of stipulations such as “the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents”; and a complete lack of any mention of human rights protections in Afghanistan.

Another Case of Failed Peacemaking

The agreement is not the only pact that was expected to bring a peaceful end to the conflict in the country. In 1988, the  concluded under the auspices of the UN between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the US and the Soviet Union serving as state guarantors, provided an overall framework for the settlement of the Afghan conflict and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Likewise, the  in 2001 — irrespective of whether it is categorized as a peace deal —established a process to manage the political transition in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. It briefly outlined steps from the formation of an interim administration to the development of a new constitution and holding elections.

However, neither the Geneva Accords nor the Bonn Agreement were successful and ultimately failed to foster conditions necessary for enabling a comprehensive settlement to Afghanistan’s complicated problem. More recently, the Taliban’s abject disregard for their commitments under the Doha Agreement, combined with the United States’ rushed exit, sped up the Taliban’s reemergence, once again closing an already narrow window of opportunity for achieving a durable political solution to the protracted conflict in Afghanistan.

There is indeed a qualitative difference between the Geneva Accords, the Bonn Agreement and the Doha Agreement. However, one of the key reasons for their failure, among other factors, is that they are silent on the main cause of the conflict in Afghanistan — i.e., ethnic conflict.

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country where the various ethnic groups are also geographically fragmented. Historically, divisions over who should lead the country and how have been among the core contentious issues in Afghanistan. Disagreements on this matter have manifested in violent ways in the 1990s and non-violent ways in the outcome of four presidential elections held based on the 2004 constitution. Overlooking of the main cause of the conflict and an absence of a viable mechanism for power redistribution among ethnic groups is a common thread that connects each of the three agreements that failed and continued to fuel instability.

The Current Situation

Less than two years since the Doha Agreement was signed, in August 2021, Kabul, the Afghan capital, fell to the Taliban. In the aftermath of this development, residences of several former government officials, particularly those from the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were raided and these personnel members were either killed or imprisoned. A  found that over 100 personnel from the Afghan security forces and others associated with the former Afghan government have been killed in the country, despite the Taliban announcing a general amnesty. 

Moreover, despite the demands from the international community for the formation of an inclusive government, respect for human rights and counterterrorism assurances, the Taliban have refused to make any concessions. They have brazenly continued suppressing all dissenting voices, severely limiting women’s rights and persecuting civil society members and journalists.

Peace in Afghanistan?

It was apparent from day one that the prospects of the post-July 2018 efforts for a political settlement in Afghanistan were uncertain at best. The Doha Agreement simply laid out a possible schedule for the US withdrawal instead of guarantee or measures enabling a durable political settlement or peace process. The Taliban too negotiated the deal with the US with the aim of winning the war rather than seeking a peace deal or political settlement with their opponents.

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The chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the mayhem at Kabul airport — which was reminiscent of the US pullout from Vietnam — has not only damaged the image of a powerful country like the US around the world, but has also established its reputation as an unreliable ally in times of difficulty. Given historical patterns and the Taliban’s track record, in the absence of any qualitative change of circumstances on the ground, the international community’s positive overtures to the Taliban might be yet another folly.

As it stands, the prospects for peace in Afghanistan will remain distant for as long as the Taliban own the entire political apparatus rather than participate as a party in an inclusive and representative government and respect dissenting voices. In the meantime, the international community should use sanctions mechanisms and official recognition as the few remaining tools of leverage to hold the Taliban accountable to their commitments and to international legal standards.

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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Initially, he’d hoped to do so by seizing Kyiv, replacing the government and absorbing as much of Ukrainian territory into Russia as he thought feasible. Now, after the resistance of the Ukrainians, he is looking to eliminate their country by a different method. He will bomb it into submission from the air and depopulate the country by turning millions of its citizens into refugees.

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The outflow of Ukrainians has the additional benefit, from �ʳܳپ���’s point of view, of putting pressure on the rest of Europe and sowing discord among NATO members. Putin saw how effective Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko was last year in using thousand desperate migrants from the Middle East as a weapon to provoke European countries. Putin is calculating that a wave of refugees several orders of magnitude larger will swell the anti-immigrant sentiment that has strengthened far-right parties and put the European project at risk.

So far, neither of these strategies is working. With a few exceptions, the European far right has  Putin, and the EU has embraced a double standard on immigration by extending a welcome to Ukrainians that few countries were willing to offer to those fleeing from Afghanistan or Syria.

Meanwhile, NATO is emerging from this crisis with greater cohesion. Putin has forgotten an elemental lesson of geopolitics: a common threat serves as the glue that holds alliances together.

For all of these reasons, Putin is not interested in ending his war in Ukraine. Simply put, as Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently , the Russian president has not yet achieved his aims. But he might be forced to end his war for other reasons.

The View from Kyiv

Volodymyr Zelensky has a very clear strategy for ending the war in his country. The Ukrainian president is mobilizing his defenses at home and his supporters abroad. He hopes he can achieve a stalemate on the ground and force Russia to compromise at the negotiating table.

So far, in the first month of the war, both strategies have met with success. The Ukrainian military has blocked the Russian advance on all the major cities, forcing the Kremlin to rely more heavily on an increasingly indiscriminate air war.

The Russian military has expanded its control over the Donbas region in the east. It has taken one major city, Kherson, in the south. But it has not been able to overcome the defenders of Mariupol, a port that represents the last major obstacle to connecting the Crimean peninsula by land to Russia proper.

According to Western intelligence , the Russian army has so far lost at least 7,000 soldiers while 20,000 more have been wounded, which would mean that Russian forces inside Ukraine have been reduced by a third. Unless the Kremlin can send in a lot of reinforcements — Belarussians, Syrians — it will have difficulty taking any major Ukrainian cities, much less hold on to them for any period of time. Ukrainians are  to the country to take up arms, and volunteers are  up to fight alongside Ukrainian soldiers, so David is starting to bulk up against Goliath.

Meanwhile, on the international front, the sanctions have attracted widespread support, although some powerful countries like China and India continue to support Putin economically. Some of the sanctions target the lifestyles of the rich and powerful, such as asset freezes and travel bans for top officials. Other measures are beginning to affect ordinary Russians, such as all the job losses from Western businesses like  and Starbucks pulling out of the country.

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However, a number of companies are suspending operations in a manner that tries to avoid hurting their Russian staff, like McDonald’s  to pay their employees even if the restaurants are closed. Also, the sanctions do not target essentials like medicines. Still, the sanctions are expected to drive Russia into a significant recession, with the economy shrinking by as as 7%. In 2020, the Russian economy contracted by 3 percent as a result of the COVID shutdowns, which at the time was considered a major setback.

Losses on the battlefield and in the global economy are what’s likely to force Putin to end his war before he gets what he wants. No diplomatic solution is possible without this kind of pressure.

Terms on the Table

The major issue going into the war will likely be the major compromise coming out of the war: Ukraine’s status in the European security system.

Putin not only wants NATO membership off the table for Ukraine, he would like to see the security alliance rewind the clock to 1997 before it expanded into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. However bone-headed NATO expansion was — and it truly was a major  on the part of the West — Putin is not going to be able to negotiate a significant drawdown of the alliance’s footprint. Indeed, as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, NATO may well expand to  Finland and Sweden, for starters.

Ukrainian neutrality, on the other hand, is very much a possibility. A report last week about a 15-point draft of a preliminary deal  “Kyiv renouncing its ambitions to join NATO and swear off hosting foreign military bases or weaponry in exchange for security guarantees from countries such as Britain, the United States or Turkey.”

Security guarantees? That’s precisely what NATO membership is supposed to provide. And it’s difficult to envision any of the countries mentioned agreeing to come to Ukraine’s defense in the case of a subsequent Russian attack. They are quite clearly not doing so now. Still, if renouncing NATO membership gets Russia to pull back and stop its air attacks, it would be a worthwhile quid pro quo to pursue.

But then the other major sticking point enters the picture: territory. How much would Russia actually pull back? Would it give up the gains it has made so far in the war? Would it stop championing independence for Donetsk and Luhansk? Would it give back Crimea?

Ukraine to date has refused to acknowledge even the loss of Crimea, so compromise will be challenging. But Zelensky has hinted at the potential of rethinking Ukraine’s borders, contingent on a  on the necessary constitutional changes. Perhaps an agreement to return to the status quo ante — with some strategic ambiguity about the final status of Crimea and the Donbas — might be a feasible interim agreement.

The last major question is the composition of the Ukrainian government. Putin has called for the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. In the best-case scenario, he might be willing to accept some restrictions on the participation of the Azov Battalion in the military. In the worst-case scenario, Putin will not stop until he has installed a “friendly” government in Kyiv.

The threat of Russian influence in Ukraine was a main motivation for Zelensky recently to ban 11 , including the largest opposition party, the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life. On the one hand, Ukraine’s democracy is one of its main selling points, so any restrictions on that democracy tarnishes its image. On the other hand, Putin has no qualms about exploiting divisions within Ukrainian society and would rely on these opposition parties to staff any future “friendly” government. Some democratic governments like Germany and Spain have banned political parties that pose a national security threat to their democratic governance.

Zelensky is also well aware of the three foiled plots on his life, all sponsored by Russia. The likelihood that anti-war elements within ��ܲ�������’s own intelligence services tipped off the Ukrainians suggests that Putin has as much to worry about hostile elements within his political ranks as Zelensky does.

Getting to Yes

The various peace deals that are leaked to the press could signify combat fatigue, particularly on the Russian side. Or it could be a ploy by Putin to lull his interlocutors into thinking that because they’re dealing with a reasonable negotiating partner it’s important to hold off on another round of sanctions or arms sales.

While I have no illusions about Putin — I think he’s a ruthless  — it’s still important to offer him diplomatic off-ramps. There’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered dictator with nuclear weapons.

The goal must be to stop the war and preserve what’s left of Ukrainian sovereignty. Russian troops must leave; the Ukrainian people must decide their leadership, not the Kremlin. Meanwhile, it’s likely that the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees want to return home and rebuild their country, just as the bulk of Kosovars did the end of the war with Serbia in 1999. The West must be at least as generous with resettlement and reconstruction funds as it has been with arms deliveries.

The Kosovo case is instructive for another reason. Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a communist apparatchik turned political opportunist who became a vehement nationalist when circumstances propelled him in that direction, over-reached in 1999 in an effort to prevent Kosovo from becoming independent. His military campaign failed, and the very next year, the opposition swept him from power in elections. By 2001, he was arrested in Serbia and then delivered to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. He died in disgrace.

Putin certainly wants to avoid that fate. Megalomania, however, has nudged him in that direction. So, now begins the challenge of peeling away �ʳܳپ���’s sense of his own invincibility—first in Ukraine, then in Russian politics, and finally in the court of international law.

*[This article was originally published by .]

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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Evidently, Devi has free access to every part of the house, including the kitchen, once considered inviolable by Brahmins. Four or five decades ago, an act like this would have been utterly inconceivable. Growing up, I remember servant maids barely had permission to walk inside our home, let alone enjoy unfettered access to the kitchen. When they did come inside, it was only to sweep and mop the floor, spending the minimal amount of time necessary to accomplish those chores.

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The rest of their tasks, such as cleaning the vessels, washing the clothes and drying them on a clothesline, would be done in the backyard. Taking their sense of cleanliness to a new height, vessels cleaned by the servant maid would be rinsed once again with water untouched by the servant before they eventually found their way into the kitchen.

I couldn’t help but reflect on the dramatic shift in attitude I observed in my family, belonging to the elite Tamil Brahmin upper caste, toward Devi, belonging to one of the lower castes. Is this experience unique to me and my family? Or is it something that is a reflection of the changing times in the traditionally conservative Tamil Brahmin community?

I knew scientific evidence based on facts regarding the social change I was ruminating on would be hard to come by. But I was convinced that if I tried, I would find anecdotal evidence of this shift toward a more liberal way of life among other Tamil Brahmin — or colloquially, Tam Brahm — families.

A Liberal Infusion

Every parent desires upward mobility and better quality of life for their offspring. Not surprisingly, Tam Brahms also subscribed to the same sentiment. This quest for upward mobility among Tam Brahms resulted in a generational shift in the type of career they aimed for. Gone was their desire to secure a steady job in a bank, central government organization or, as a distant consolation prize, in a state government organization. Instead, they set their eyes on professional careers, armed with degrees in engineering or medicine. Some sought to become entrepreneurs, a rarity in the past.

Securing professional degrees did not come easy for Tam Brahm youngsters. The Tamil Nadu state’s 69% caste-based in higher educational institutions meant many had to leave the comfort of their home and their home state in pursuit of those credentials. They may have left with apprehension, but that provided them an exposure to the outside world that was erstwhile impossible in the cocooned Tam Brahm way of life.

At a recent high school reunion, I had the opportunity to meet several of my childhood friends after a gap of more than 30 years. While many had spread their wings and flown far and wide, there were few who had stayed their entire life in Madurai, the town where I spent the bulk of my childhood. Conversations rarely went beyond the friendly banter befitting a reunion among childhood friends, but there were clear indications on where one stood on the conservative-liberal divide.

 A scientific survey, had one been done, would have corroborated the following hypothesis: Those who had the opportunity to explore the outside world, especially at the defining moment immediately following high school, typically subscribed to more liberal views.

Aging and Necessity

Decades ago, living in the rural towns of Tamil Nadu, my parents were steeped in caste-based hierarchical distinctions. Being young, they had little reason to question their belief system or modify their core values. Surely, views and beliefs passed down through generations wouldn’t crumble with the nascent liberal perceptions of their youngest children? They did not.

During the phase when they were still strong and able, and I was behaving like an insufferable know-it-all, there were many occasions we simply had to agree to disagree. The shift I allude to started happening only as my parents started aging and developing a dependency on others. That shift accelerated when their primary caregivers, my older brother and sister-in-law, also entered the post-retirement phase of their life.

Most interestingly, the interactions I shared with my parents played out in a slightly modified form among my brother’s own family. Dispelling my doubts that this could be unique to my immediate circle, Purushothaman and Sathesh, two Tam Brahm friends of mine, corroborated very similar developments in their respective families.

Sathesh remarked that his mom started yielding gracefully once she realized that resistance was futile. Puru concurred, albeit, in a less colorful, non-Star Trek language, saying that his mom is not where he is (on the conservative-liberal social spectrum), but that she is far more tolerant compared to her past self.

As my mother entered her 90s, the demands on the care she needed increased. This set the perfect scenario for Devi to start playing an increasingly prominent role in the household work in order to ease the pressure on my brother and sister-in-law. It was not before the sexagenarian couple started embracing the help from their servant maid from an entirely different angle, while the nonagenarian matriarch was forced to let go of her deeply entrenched hierarchical distinctions.

Far from reluctant tolerance, Devi’s presence has found grateful acceptance among my family members.

Altruism?

In the past, Brahmins asserted their superiority by employing a variety of oppressive techniques. While many of them involved dehumanizing and stripping away the agency of those beneath them, withholding knowledge was by far the most effective technique they employed to stay on top of the caste totem pole. It is no surprise that the caste-based reservation system targets this very aspect in higher educational institutions, offering preferential treatment to a staggering number of and communities.

This is not an article on the caste system in India, but I would unequivocally recommend “Annihilation of Caste,” a speech Dr. B. R. Ambedkar wrote in 1936, as a must-read for anyone interested in understanding this woeful practice.

In a dramatic U-turn from the behavior of withholding knowledge, it is now commonplace to see Tam Brahm households sponsoring the education of their servant maid’s children. Not only does this act guarantee upward mobility for those kids, but it also effectively reduces the supply of future maids.

I asked Puru if this isn’t akin to shooting yourself in the foot. Puru, who had sponsored the school education not just of his servant maid’s children but also that of his neighborhood vegetable vendor’s son, commented succinctly, “It is the right thing to do.”

A Glimpse Into the Future?

If I thought I am liberal in my outlook, my children effortlessly put me to shame. The extent to which their ideas challenge the social status quo is more than evolutionary. They are downright revolutionary. But that is a topic for another article.

What is important here is the concept of identity. While I still acknowledge and accept my Tam Brahm identity, to my children, it would hardly be a matter of significance. Sathesh wholeheartedly agreed, remarking that, while growing up, and even now, he was proud of his Tamil Brahmin heritage, but he sees that it makes absolutely no difference to his kids. Thinking about his older son who is a trained classical Carnatic musician, Puru chimed in, saying that despite the rigorous traditional gurukul education, his son espouses far more liberal views than him.

The reshaping of this identity has many ramifications, the most prominent one being the number of inter-cultural and inter-caste marriages involving Tam Brahms. In the last decade, we have welcomed Gujarati, Malayalam and Punjabi grooms into our family. What was once unthinkable is now so commonplace that it has found broad social acceptance.

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Tamil Brahmins, who account for less than 3% of the state’s population, may already be an as the pendulum of poetic justice swings hard to the other side. The threat to their identity from within and without causes many to lament about the future of Tam Brahms as a community. Particularly concerning is the plight of the learned priests, whose profession it is to administer and uphold the rituals and practices in Tamil Brahmin homes, temples and elsewhere.

Me? I am simply glad that my family has embraced humanity over conservative traditionalism — and hope that the anecdotal evidence I have observed in my small circle of friends and family is a harbinger of things to come.

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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The case concerns a series of investigative articles about a military intelligence research center operated by the Finnish defense forces. If found guilty, the journalists face up to four years in prison, with a minimum sentence of four months.

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Despite Finland’s status as a leading example for freedom of the press, it has not been , particularly with targeted of journalists. However, the case against Helsingin Sanomat’s journalists has opened up an entirely new front for defenders of press freedom. It has also raised uncomfortable issues from Finland’s past, which the country is still grappling with.

A Small Country With a Large Neighbor

Finland, with a population of 5.5 million, shares a border of more than 800 miles with Russia and its population of more than 144 million. For Finnish leaders, this has meant taking a realist approach to foreign policy. In particular, the  of 1939-40, when Finland resisted an attack by the Soviet Union, is one of the defining events in the country’s history.

The decades that followed World War II were challenging for Finland, a small country ravaged by war. Maintaining good relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was a necessity. Finland successfully avoided Soviet occupation and remained a democracy, but it paid the price in the form of “,” which meant strict political neutrality and not challenging the influence of the Soviet Union.

Finland’s national security is founded on conscription, a trained reserve, defense of the entire country and a willingness to defend it from attack. The aim is to make it an unappealing target for a would-be aggressor state.

A recent  to renew Finland’s aging fleet of Hornets with 64 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II fighter jets, popular with NATO countries, forms part of the strategy. Maintaining good international relations and participating in international military crisis management are other key elements. Finland is not a member of NATO, but it joined the European Union in 1995. Polls that support for NATO membership has grown significantly following ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Prosecution Before Publication

The case against the three journalists was triggered by an article that Helsingin Sanomat published in 2017. Legislative changes that aimed to extend the information-gathering powers of the security services were underway at the time. The newspaper’s representatives have argued that there were strong public interest reasons for publishing the story.

The police investigation included a raid on one journalist’s home and left them stuck in limbo for four years. The decision to prosecute, announced in late October 2021, concerns the article published five years ago and material for a series of unpublished articles. The prosecution based on unpublished material has understandably raised concerns.

There are currently limited facts available about the basis for the prosecution or the details of the case, but more information is expected to become public at a later stage. Based on the available information, it appears likely that one of the central questions in the case will hinge on when an investigative journalist’s research potentially crosses the line into an attempt to disclose state secrets.

The Finnish Union of Journalists has strong concerns about the case, pointing out that it could set a precedent and mean that a journalist’s unpublished notes might result in a conviction. The union and the Council for Mass Media, the independent media regulator, have for openness in the legal proceedings.

While not taking a position on the case, the council has expressed concerns that it could result in restrictions on freedom of expression on grounds that may remain secret. The council has emphasized the need for clarity about the circumstances in which considering material for publication or finalizing material, without actually publishing it, could constitute a crime.

The issues raised by the Council for Mass Media include concerns about the risk of self-censorship. This is a sensitive historical issue, as the era of “Finlandization” included heavy self-censorship in the media and in publishing. Writing about the case for  academic scholars Anu Koivunen and Johanna Vuorelma warn against the risk of a return to a Cold War-era media environment, where every decision to publish was assessed from a security perspective.

Welcome to the Land of Free Press

In 2018, hundreds of commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat famously greeted Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on their visit to Helsinki with messages such as, “Mr. President, welcome to the land of free press.” The case against Helsingin Sanomat’s journalists may test whether Finland still is that land of a free press.

Whatever the outcome of the case, it has given Finland, the world’s country, cause for serious self-reflection.

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

The post The State of Press Freedom in Finland appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Despite the rapid surge, inflation was not totally unexpected since it is partially attributable to measures taken to reopen national economies, resulting in increased demand and disruptions of supply chains and production, says Archana Sinha, the head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute. In this sense, the current inflationary environment differs from the one in the late 1970s and may prove only transitory.

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There are, however, other drivers of inflation that may prove more long-lasting. This includes, as Domingo Sugranyes of the Pablo VI Foundation points out, decarbonization and economic concentration, allowing excessive pricing power. Additional factors are rising property and stock prices, as well as the increase of raw material prices, Etienne Perrot explains.

As a result, as Valerio Bruno mentions, central banks’ instruments, such as raising interest rates, may not suffice to reverse current inflationary pressures. Bruno, a researcher, says that we can “expect a long period of high inflation.” That being said, it is far from certain that central banks are willing to use these instruments because of their concern with financial stability that a selloff on financial markets may jeopardize.

From a socioeconomic perspective, Andrew Cornford recalls that inflation is not a “uniform problem” since its effects vary among countries, sectors and groups. The main problem, Bruno points out, is that “the wages of workers, in particular the middle class, suffer greatly from a declining purchasing power. If wages are not adjusted to inflation, consumptions and companies’ profits are affected, leading to a possible economic recession.”

On the other hand, inflation may benefit debtors by depreciating their debts. However, Cedric Tille, a professor in macroeconomics, warns that “any persistent inflation will raise the cost of additional borrowing” in the future and therefore “any gain from inflation for some actors is likely to be temporary.” For instance, Sugranyes says, “many weaker debtors will find growing difficulty in refinancing at higher interest rates.”

The current rise of inflation pressure may prove to be only temporary — not inflation in the pure sense — but it has to be taken seriously because it could dash hopes of economic recovery and weigh on the morale of populations exhausted by waves of social restrictions.

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: What are the main threats, but also possibly the main opportunities, related to inflation?

“… inflation is not new … ”

“Inflation is not new; it was hidden behind rising property and stock prices, leading to properties disparities. As international competition has diminished, the rise in energy and raw material prices has a direct impact on consumer goods. Its social effects (on pensioners and various marginal groups), as well as its economic consequences for long-term investments (distortions) and interest rates (rise), must be taken into account. On the other hand, inflation favors, for a time, companies, indebted households and massively borrowing states. Debtors become more credible in financing the investments needed for the ecological transition”

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“… any gain from inflation for some actors is likely to be temporary … ”

“While inflation has a short-run benefit for debtors, one must bear in mind that these debtors will borrow additional amounts in the future. Any persistent inflation will raise the cost of these additional borrowing, including a term premium. Therefore, any gain from inflation for some actors is likely to be temporary. Looking through the inflation movements of the coming months, which hopefully will prove temporary, the reasons underpinning central banks’ mandates of symmetric price stability remain as valid as they have ever been.”

Cedric Tille ­— professor of macroeconomics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva

“… inflation does not entail any real benefit …”

“Inflation does not entail any real benefit for most governments and businesses. Although debts may be depreciated in the long term, many weaker debtors will find growing difficulty in refinancing at higher interest rates and will see financial flows fleeing toward ‘safer’ harbors. There are objective reasons for cost increase, like decarbonization or restructuring of supply chains, which should lead us to admit that we are slightly poorer than we thought. Concentration also may allow business excessive pricing power. The vicious circle of inflation is an illusionary way of denying these facts, leading to even worse impoverishment. Some governments may be tempted to print money, [but] there will be growing pressure for automatic indexation of salaries and pensions. Difficult challenges!”

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

“… policy responses must address distributional dimensions … ”

“Inflation is not a uniform problem. It varies among countries (high, middle and low-income), among income groups within countries, among goods and thus producing sectors (e.g., energy and primary commodities used for food), and amongst services (e.g., health-related, finance and travel). As is generally acknowledged, policy responses — both national and those involving international finance and aid — must address distributional dimensions, avoiding links to austerity and other attached conditions likely to increase poverty. In developed countries, policy design will frequently be handicapped by a lack of pertinent data, especially regarding wealth in the form of financial assets and tax liabilities. An option here would be a once-and-for-all capital levy high enough to help a government to deal with immediate increases in its financial liabilities, while leaving permanent solutions to the problem of enormous inequalities of wealth to be attained as part of a future response to longer-term needs and objectives.”

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

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“… the risks of inflation far outweigh the possible benefits … ”

“It seems to me that the risks of inflation far outweigh the possible benefits. To make effective use of the tools available to central banks, it would be necessary to understand the real causes of inflation (a ‘drugged’ financial economy, monopolies and oligopolies, or the costs of raw materials). Unfortunately, central banks’ instruments, such as raising interest rates, are not always sufficient to reverse this trend. We can therefore expect a long period of high inflation, with ‘classic’ safe-haven assets as gold reaching historic highs. The main problem with inflation is that the wages of workers, in particular the middle class, suffer greatly from a declining purchasing power. If wages are not adjusted to inflation, consumptions and companies’ profits companies are affected, leading to a possible economic recession.”

Valerio Bruno — researcher in politics

“… inflation at these levels is a cause for concern …”

“Labor market conditions are improving but tempestuous, and the pandemic continues to threaten life and economic activity. The rapid reopening of the economy has brought a sharp advance in inflation. These are challenging times for the public. The dynamics of inflation are complex, and inflation can be assessed from a number of diverse perspectives, including the absence of inflation pressures; moderating inflation in high inflation items; wages; and long-term inflation expectations. Businesses and consumers widely report upward pressure on prices and wages. Inflation at these levels is a cause for concern. This assessment is a critical and ongoing one as we continue to monitor inflation data against each of these perspectives.

Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

*[An earlier version of this article was published by .

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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One good example is an in The American Purpose by the National Endowment for Democracy’s vice-president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. In the piece titled, “T��� Kleptocratic Sources of Russia’s Conduct,” Walker builds his case around the idea that “Vladimir Putin and his gang are fixated on wealth and power.” The author admits being inspired by political analyst Daniel Kimmage, who in 2009 produced what Walker terms a “clear-eyed assessment of �ʳܳپ���’s Russia.” He cites this wisdom he gleaned from Kimmage: “T��� primary goal of the Russian elite is not to advance an abstract ideal of the national interest or restore some imagined Soviet idyll,” but “to retain its hold on money and power.”

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Kimmage sums up one difficulty Americans have felt when dealing with Putin as an ideological adversary. Whereas the Soviet Union’s embrace of communism made the ideological gap visible even to moronic voters, Putin reigns over a nation that American consultants transformed in the 1990s into a capitalist paradise (i.e., a paradise for owners of capital). To distinguish �ʳܳپ���’s evil capitalism from �������������’s benevolent capitalism, Kimmage called the Russian version a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy.”

Walker notes that “the system of ‘selectively capitalist kleptocracy’ in Russia that Daniel Kimmage described” 13 years ago has now “evolved in ways that are even more threatening to democracy and its institutions.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Kleptocracy:

The form of government universally adopted by all powerful nations at the end of the 20^th century.

Contextual Note

An acerbic critic might be excused for not feeling particularly illuminated to learn that Putin and his cronies “are fixated on wealth and power.” Who would expect them to have a different philosophy and mindset than the leaders of every other powerful country in the world? The list includes those that claim to be faultless democracies, committed to implementing the will of the people. The first among them is, of course, the United States, but France, the United Kingdom and others adhere to the same sets of values, even if each of them has worked out more subtle ways of applying them. And, of course, Saudi Arabia stands at the head of everyone’s class as the exemplar of leaderships fixated on wealth and power.

Kimmage’s description of Russia as a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy” may be helpful in ways he may not have intended. ��ܲ�������’s selective capitalist kleptocracy contrasts with �������������’s non-selectively capitalist kleptocracy. The real question turns around what it means to be selective or non-selective. Walker makes no attempt to differentiate the two because he believes the term kleptocracy only applies to Russia. But statistics about wealth inequality reveal that the American capitalist system has become a plutocracy that can make its own claim to being a kleptocracy.

In 1989, the top 10% of income earners in the United States earned 42% of the total , which is already significant. In 2016, they accounted for 50%. “By the start of 2021, the richest 1% of Americans held 32% of the nation’s wealth,” to The New York Times. Between the start of 2020 and July 2021, “the richest 1% gained $10 trillion” in accumulated wealth.

The gap is destined to keep widening. Unlike �ʳܳپ���’s oligarchy, composed of his “selected” friends and other winners of ��ܲ�������’s industrial casino, the 1% in the US have non-selectively emerged to constitute a kleptocratic class that, thanks to a sophisticated system of governance, writes the laws, applies the rules and captures the new wealth that is programmed to gravitate towards them.

Kimmage’s idea of a fixation “with wealth and power” correctly describes the mindset of the members of the American kleptocratic class, whether they are entrepreneurs with names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, or politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who rose from poverty to convert power into riches and earn their place as servants of the kleptocratic class.

Unlike �ʳܳپ���’s mafia-like political culture, the system in the US is subtle and sophisticated. It contains convenient paths to join the kleptocratic class, such as a Harvard or Stanford degree. But mostly it relies on fixation. Within the US kleptocratic class diversity exists. Some may be more focused on power (including cultural power) than wealth. But the fascination with both wealth and power is common to all. The system is built on the symmetrical principle that wealth feeds power and power feeds wealth.

Walker accuses Putin of another grave sin, beyond kleptomania but including it: expansionism. He denounces the “spread of the roots and branches of a transnational kleptocratic system that stretches well beyond the Russian Federation to pose a multidimensional threat to free societies.”

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How could a discerning reader not notice the dramatic irony here? Has Walker forgotten that �ʳܳپ���’s complaint about NATO is that, despite promises made to the contrary, it has spent 30 years aggressively expanding toward ��ܲ�������’s most sensitive borders? Putin may be interested in expansion, but Eastern Europe has become a slow tug-of-war in which NATO, under US impulsion, has been the most active and insistent aggressor.

In short, Walker has produced an essay that correctly identifies very real political evils within the Russian system. But they share the same basic traits as the politico-economic culture of the West under US leadership. In an absolute failure of self-recognition, Walker somehow manages to avoid acknowledging his own culture’s image reflected back to him into the mirror that has become the target of his complaints. That is because, in this article, he has focused on producing just one more example of what has now become the shameless, knee-jerk propaganda that pollutes Western media in this climate of an existential war from which the US has abstained, preferring to let the Ukrainians endure the sacrifice for the sake of American principles.

Historical Note

In the 17^th century, European history began a radical transformation of its political institutions lasting roughly 300 years. After England’s Puritans beheaded their king and declared a short-lived Commonwealth, European intellectuals began toying with an idea that would eventually lead to the triumph of the idea, if not the reality of democracy, a system Winston Churchill generously called “the worst form of government except for all the others.”

For the best part of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, representative democracy became the standard reference for everyone’s idea of what an honest government should be like, while struggling to find its footing with the concurrent rise of industrial capitalism. Capitalism generated huge inequality that seemed at least theoretically anomalous with the idea of democracy.

During the late 20^th century, industrial capitalism that had previously focused on production, productivity and mass distribution, gave way to financial capitalism. This new version of capitalism focused uniquely on wealth and power. In other words, democracies switched their orientation from a belief in their citizens’ anarchic quest for personal prosperity in the name of the “pursuit of happiness” to the elite’s concentrated focus on the acquisition and accumulation of money and clout.

This new social model merged the logic of democratically designed institutions with economic and legal mechanisms that created a sophisticated system at the service of a small number of individuals who understood and controlled the levers of wealth and political power. Their major cultural achievement consisted of giving a sufficiently wide base to this new form of plutocracy that disguised its kleptocratic reality.

For nearly half a century, the Cold War promoted the spectacle of a combat between democratic capitalism and autocratic communism. Both sides seized the opportunity to build military powerhouses that could provide an effective shelter for the kleptocratic class. Once the heresy of communism was banished from Russia, it could morph, under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, into a caricature of the much more subtle kleptocracy encapsulated in Reaganomics.

The Russian and American versions of economic power management shared the same orientations but deployed them in contrasting ways. Kleptocratic rule was at the core of both. Using a musical analogy, the American philharmonic version of kleptocracy was delivered in Carnegie Hall, with a fully orchestrated score. Russia offered an improvisational version delivered by local musicians in an animated tavern. In both cases, as the proverb says, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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Currently, political fragmentation and polarization under the Taliban have become an existential conflict over culture and ethnicity. The Taliban are a terrorist group, having successfully synthesized both Islamic extremism and Pashtun/Afghan ethnic chauvinism as their ideology. Ironically, they rule over one of the most diverse countries in the world.

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The Taliban use two vague criteria to dismiss all progress made in the past two decades or, for that matter, any undesirable but transformational changes that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s: Afghan and Islamic values. The first category denies internal social diversity while the second rejects Islamic pluralism. After usurpation of power by force, the group proudly boasted of committing over a thousand . Now, it is officially a suicide bombers brigade within its security agencies. 

Organic Intellectuals

The exponents of Afghan ethnonationalism desperately aim to present a benign image of the Taliban. Having fundamental, political and social ties with the Taliban, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, they form the Taliban’s “organic intellectuals.” Unlike the traditional intellectuals, Gramsci argues, organic intellectuals are linked with a social class. Contrary to Gramsci, I use it as a negative term as they represent the extreme right. Their genuine undeclared mandate is to articulate and represent the interests and perceptions of the Taliban and to downplay the risks of the group’s rule.

In other words, these organic intellectuals are systematically engaged in PR for the Taliban. The irony is that the same people are recognized as the voices of Afghanistan rather than of the Taliban in Western academic and think-tank circles. Afghan ethnonationalism and its exponents are only challenged by the Persian-speaking Tajik and Hazara intellectuals, whose voices have been relegated to the margins due to acceptance of the Taliban order as the new normal.

The organic intellectuals have the nature of a chameleon, speaking in two different languages to address different audiences and constituencies. On the one hand, they praise and welcome the establishment of the so-called “order,” albeit Taliban-centric, but, with a liberal audience, they speak the language of peaceful coexistence, “cultural particularism,” relativism and political pragmatism. To incorporate such a self-contradictory stance, they adopt a fence-sitting position.

The justifications of the Taliban made by these organic intellectuals contradict both the realist and moralist approaches in political philosophy. First, let us address the five justifications before returning to the philosophical questions.

The Taliban Order

To begin with, treating the Taliban-centric order as default and ignoring the ideological dimension of the Taliban, it argues that the group is adaptable to political and policy reforms. Thus, it tries to undermine the possibility of a thorough transformation of the current scenario through any means.

The telos of political reform is expanding the horizons of rights and liberties. In a totalitarian regime, the goal of reform is not to improve the condition of individuals and communities but to consolidate the regime’s power. To suggest political reform essentially means to work with the existing political framework, not its transformation. This entails admitting the terms and conditions of the totalitarian regime.

Compared to reforms in an authoritarian regime, the prospect of successful political reform and change toward emancipation in the totalitarian regime is limited because, in the latter, the state is based on a rigid doctrinal ideology. An ideological state does not accommodate change and reform unless there is an alteration in the constituent ideology. The longer a totalitarian regime stays in power, the less likely the possibility for political transformation. Thus, change in a totalitarian regime is easier to achieve in the early stages, when its power is not consolidated. 

The Taliban government currently installed in Afghanistan is not simply another dictatorship. By all standards, it is a totalitarian regime. A totalitarian regime, according to British philosopher John Gray, is not the one that negates liberal democracy — it is one that brutally suppresses civil society. The Taliban have created a monstrosity equivalent to that of other totalitarian states. 

Political Pragmatism

The second justification of Taliban apologists is political pragmatism — the Taliban is a reality that could not be done away with and thus it shall be acknowledged. As part of my on the Afghanistan peace process, I conducted an opinion poll in 2018 that showed the Taliban’s popularity as below 10% across the country. Thus, this so-called pragmatism is constituted upon a false assumption. But the Taliban are a reality, like racism, Islamic fundamentalism, bigotry and slavery. Also, they are a reality fostered by sponsors: the Pakistani establishment.

Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that bigotry, racism and fundamentalism could not be eradicated through endorsements by the intellectuals and those who have a moral commitment to fight them. Irrespective of the logic of morality, one cannot buy the argument to accept bigotry or extremism just because they were a reality. Endorsing the Taliban is equivalent to recognizing their wicked acts. 

Third, it is proposed that if we accept the Taliban as a reality, the costs of establishing political order would be reduced. For example, it can prevent another civil war. This argument is built based on a false assumption regarding the nature of the Taliban. Historically, the group has been extremely violent by nature: War, jihad and suicide bombings are an of its ideology. What country in the world prides itself on having suicide squads?

In the seven months of their rule, the Taliban have killed, tortured and humiliated numerous civilians, former security officers and women’s rights activists, primarily ethnic groups like the Tajik and Hazara. Moreover, they maintain strong ties with an international community of jihadists, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Turkistan Islamic Party, among others. 

There is an inherent contradiction in the nationalist stance advocating for so-called reconciliation. The nationalists argue that war is costly and hence we should accept working with the Taliban. However, countless civilians being slaughtered or abused by the Taliban on a daily basis is ignored as the human cost of Taliban rule. A doctrinal state imposes its ideology on every single individual even if it is at the cost of the individuals’ lives. 

Naïve Intellectualism

Fourth, the naive social-media public intellectuals suppose that they can hold the Taliban accountable by citing some verses of the Quran or some articles of the law of Afghanistan. It is not that ideological totalitarian regimes do not understand what law is; rather the Taliban misuses the law to further limit the sphere of civil society and expand the regime’s control. Hannah Arendt argued that totalitarianism is primarily a denial of law, the emergence of a state in the absence of law. By this standard, the Taliban are simply a totalitarian entity.

The assumption that the Taliban would be held accountable through a Twitter post is naïve. The issue is not negligence in the application of the law by the Taliban; rather, the fundamental issue is the group’s illegitimate rule. The Taliban have suspended a functioning state apparatus by military takeover of the state that led to the collapse of the republic, purging many technocrats from bureaucracy and creating an environment of terror, intentionally undermining the Doha peace talks.

Lastly, cultural particularism suggests that the Taliban represent a specific culture and shall be given time to adapt and develop according to its own history and context. Taking a relativist stance, it is said that there is no ultimate truth and no one is a final arbiter. Thus, relativist logic fails to recognize evil in its totality. The truth about the evil nature of the Taliban could not simply be dismissed by reducing the issue to a matter of a difference of opinion.

Unlike relativists, cultural pluralists are not naïve enough to engage with evil. According to their line of thinking, although ultimate values are diverse, they are knowable; any order which negates and denies peaceful coexistence is outlawed. The Taliban eschews all forms of coexistence. They treat the Persian-speaking Tajiks, Hazaras and other nationalities as second or third-class subjects. They campaign against Persian cultural heritage such as Nawroz celebrations, the Persian language and much of the country’s pre-Islamic heritage.  

The Realist/Moralist Challenge

Exponents of the Taliban have to respond to both a moralist and a realist question in politics. From a moralist standpoint, by neglecting or dismissing any moral standard, they adopt a peace activist cover. They aim to humanize the Taliban in order to make the group pleasantly acceptable. 

The question here is, what is a morally correct stance against a terrorist group that has a track record of deliberately inciting ethnic hatred, racism, ethnic supremacy, oppression, mass atrocities and terror? The answer is clear: Any act that demonizes humans and perpetuates violence for the sake of subjugation of others is condemned. The perpetrator would thus be fully responsible.

On the contrary, any single word that misrepresents the Taliban and presents a false benign image of the group is a betrayal of the moral principle of justice, liberty and claims of intellectualism. Any responsible citizen and public intellectual has a moral obligation to not just renounce them publicly but to denounce totalitarian regimes and any act of terror.

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Denunciation not only entails a public condemnation of evil in its totality but also an avoidance of any word or deed that contributes to the consolidation of the regime. By any standard, a terrorist group does not have a right to rule. Anyone who advises or applauds terrorist statements or policies is morally bankrupt. When faced with a totalitarian regime, one can only be either for or against it.

Lastly, the realist question is what British philosopher Bernard Williams calls the Basic Legitimation Demand (BLD): “the idea of meeting the BLD implies a sense in which the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject.” This is the very first question in politics.

Before any other virtues, a state has to present an acceptable answer to those that it rules. Otherwise, the people who consider themselves alien to the rulers and have a basic fear of subjugation, humiliation and persecution, as well as those who are radically disadvantaged, have every right to disobey. As Williams says, “there is nothing to be said to this group to explain why they shouldn’t revolt.”

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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FADE IN:

EXT. Georgetown Street — Late Afternoon

DYSON: General, if you could spare a minute, I’d like to get your take on how the Ukraine war’s going. Are you satisfied we’re achieving our objectives?

MORAN: You’re a reporter. Read the papers.

DYSON: I write for the papers, so I don’t necessarily trust everything I read. I’d like to get it from the horse’s mouth.

MORAN: Look, you’re asking the wrong stallion. Address your questions to the politicians. The military’s job is to obey orders, not give interviews. Our opinion means nothing.

DYSON: I’ve been talking to the politicians. I know what they’re saying, which is why I’d like to hear your thoughts. I’m interested in the military perspective, the feelings you guys have about your mission.

MORAN: We don’t have feelings. We have orders. Orders lead to actions. Feelings come later.

DYSON: OK, but everyone is acting like we’re engaged in a war. And you know much more about war than any politician.

MORAN: Officially we’re at peace. So I have nothing to say.

DYSON: We’re definitely in a major economic war that sits on top of a local shooting war. That’s a unique situation. The media are whipping the public into a frenzy of war fever. Do you feel you’re being sidelined?

MORAN: Do I feel…? I told you, don’t ask me about my feelings.

DYSON: Well, you and your colleagues must be wondering about what this frenzy means. You can see everybody in the media itching to take on the Russkis. Anyone who thinks a war isn’t necessary can be called a traitor. But at the same time, the official message is that we’re not going to battle.

MORAN: We’re ready for any action that’s required. That’s all. For the moment, it’s the State Department’s war, not ours. Their weapons are sanctions and they have quite an arsenal.

DYSON: So you admit that applying sanctions is the equivalent of war?

MORAN: Sanctions actually kill people more surely and on a more massive scale than any non-nuclear weapons.

DYSON: That’s the point. Critics point out that they target civilians and disrupt the survivors’ lives, people who have nothing to do with politics or combat, whereas war is supposed to be about opposing armies. Are you saying you consider sanctions a legitimate way to conduct war?

MORAN: Well, if you really want my opinion, I’ll tell you. Sanctions make a mockery of the idea of war, which is always has been and should always be considered a noble pursuit. Politicians have no idea what true war is all about. They say they have a strategy, but they have no sense of operational goals.

DYSON: If you admit they have a strategy, how would you assess their tactics?

MORAN: We don’t try. All we can do is hope they come out victorious.

DYSON: Have they given you military people any idea of what victory would look like?

MORAN: From what I can tell, it’s bringing down the evildoer, Vladimir Putin.

DYSON: So, it’s regime change?

MORAN: That’s what it looks like.

DYSON: Blinken absolutely denied that last week on “Face the Nation.” But he does say it’s about provoking the devastation of the Russian economy.

MORAN: Pretty much the same thing.

DYSON: The French minister Bruno Le Maire said something similar, about provoking the total collapse of the Russian economy. It’s beginning to sound like “Carthago delenda est.”

MORAN: Is that French?

DYSON: No, Latin. You know, Cato.

MORAN: Are you telling me the French minister works for the Cato Institute here in DC?

DYSON: No, it’s what Cato the Elder said during one of the Punic wars.

MORAN: It’s disrespectful to call any of our wars puny, even if we have to admit there were a few failures.

DYSON: I’m talking about ancient Roman history. Cato was a Roman politician who preached the destruction of Carthage around 200 BC. He ended all his speeches at the Senate with the catchphrase, “Carthage must be destroyed.” You must have studied the Punic wars? The Romans went ahead and definitively wiped Carthage off the map in 146 BC, killing or enslaving every one of its citizens.

MORAN: Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about that in my history classes at West Point. That was a time when politicians knew how to finish off the quarrels they started.

DYSON: So, is that what we’re talking about now? Destroying Russia?

MORAN: Don’t see how that can work without a nuclear attack. But if they can bring down the regime with sanctions, more power to ‘em. After the habitual “mission accomplished” moment they always love to stage, they’ll probably call us in to clean up the mess. That generally doesn’t go very well, but we’ll make the best of it.

DYSON: As you always do, I guess. Well, thanks for the valuable insight. I’m very grateful.

MORAN: You’re not going to quote me on any of this? You do and I’ll make sure every officer down to the rank of lieutenant knows your name. You’ll never get another story from the Pentagon.

DYSON: Hey, I was only interested in your ideas. And, don’t worry, I won’t take any direct quotes or mention your name. Trust me, I work for The Washington Post.

Disclaimer: This fictional dialogue exists for entertainment purposes only. The ideas expressed in it are totally imaginary. Its eventual inclusion in any Hollywood movie or television script will be subject to negotiating authoring rights with 51�Թ�. That is nevertheless highly unlikely for the simple reason that some of the reflections in the dialogue appear to contradict the widely held beliefs spread in the propaganda that now dominates both the news media and the entertainment industry.

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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Gravitational Pull to the Right

As of February 2020, across Germany, approximately  pupils attended the 254 state-recognized Waldorf schools, whose curricula originate in an anthroposophical worldview. According to the Anthroposophical Society, the Waldorf pedagogy system, which was developed by the Austrian spiritualist in the early 20^th century, “ways of recognizing and exploring the supersensible-spiritual world that exists in the sensory-material world. This ‘spiritual science’ sees itself as a new approach to a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of nature and man.”

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The behind Waldorf schools is a “developmentally appropriate, experiential, and academically-rigorous approach to education.” Compared to the pressure to perform in state-run schools, the goal is to strengthen individual responsibility as well as creative, practical and social skills. Another difference lies in self-administration by parents and teachers of a “hierarchically organized external control of the state schools.”&�Բ�����;

Through close personal ties with teachers, parents can actively influence everyday school life according to their with fewer interventions of internal school control bodies compared to state schools. Hence, the self-administration model makes independent schools to infiltration by far-right actors and conspiracy theorists. According to Ansgar Martins, a religious studies scholar at Frankfurt University, this structural weakness is by the “pronounced anthroposophical inclination toward conspiracy theories” of Waldorf schools that stems from Steiner’s original teachings.

Steiner held a developmental, esoteric and essentially view of humanity that saw the world divided into superior and inferior races, exemplified by countless discriminatory statements against Jewish and especially people: “How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? … The Negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nonsense that it now plays such a large role in Europe.”

These remarks are joined by Steiner’s pseudoscientific conception of the physical and intellectual superiority of the white race, reminiscent of the Nazi-era Volkstum concept according to which humanity reached its developmental endpoint in the : “If the blue-eyed and blond-haired people were to die out, people would become increasingly stupid unless they developed a kind of cleverness which is independent of blondness. … The white race is the future race, is the spirit-creating race.”

According to Germany’s Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, these “are to be regarded as particularly serious, since they are by no means random products or racist stereotypes caused by the spirit of the times. Rather, they are to be seen as manifestations of a specifically Steinerian esoteric racial science.” In the Stuttgart Declaration of 2007, the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools “any racist or nationalist appropriation of their pedagogy.” Nevertheless, this declaration did little to prevent attracting far-right conspiracy theorists even before the pandemic.

Far-Right Infiltration

In 2013, the managing director of a Waldorf school in the German town of Rendsburg was dismissed because of connections to the far-right (Citizens of the Reich) movement. He attracted attention by distributing leaflets in the school that “the Federal Republic of Germany … is not a state, but the managing legal advisor of a state simulation [is]. There is no de jure and de facto state of the Federal Republic of Germany.” 

The ��𾱳������ü������� is a heterogeneous movement that, referring to the historical German Reich, rejects the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany and its legal system, thus denying legitimacy to democratically elected representatives. A small proportion of the ��𾱳������ü������� movement is made up of , but the anti-state and conspiracy theory tenets of the entire scene facilitate a connection to anti-Semitic narratives that are central to the far-right domain.

At another Waldorf school in the German town of , a teacher taught unchecked for 20 years before his connections to ethno-nationalist right-wing extremist groups became known. Even before Wolf-Dieter Schröppe became a teacher, he maintained contacts with veteran Nazis, including the war criminal Erich Priebke — the man responsible for the massacre of 335 people as a captain in the and sentenced to life in prison. It took more than four months before the school terminated Schröppe’s employment contract, partly because some colleagues spoke out in his support.

In 2015, these incidents prompted the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools to publish a  conceding that the anthroposophy-based Waldorf pedagogy has a “great attraction” for the right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists, specifically for the ��𾱳������ü�������.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Waldorf anthroposophy again garnered attention. To this day, Steiner’s worldview translates into a greater vaccine skepticism in Germany as a whole and in Waldorf schools in particular due to public acceptance and influence of anthroposophy. Underlying Steiner’s philosophy is the dangerous belief that diseases serve a  purpose by stimulating child development and making amends for mistakes in past lives.

Hence, over the last decades, vaccine skepticism has itself in lower in Waldorf schools, resulting in regular measles outbreaks. In this respect, an incident at a school in the city of  came as no surprise when 117 COVID-19 cases were recorded and more than 50 forged medical certificates were discovered exempting students and teachers from wearing a mask.

At a Waldorf school in the Bavarian town of Landsberg, a father who is both a doctor and a homeopath issued certificates to families of other students to circumvent mandatory mask-wearing, people who choose to do so as “mask hypochondriacs.” At a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, he showed the indictable Hitler salute that resulted in criminal charges.

The Bavarian Ministry of Education  these incidents are not isolated cases. Mask exemption certificates were seven times more likely to be issued at Bavarian Waldorf schools than at state schools. Nevertheless, many Waldorf parents show resolve against COVID-19 deniers and far-right activities. According to the mobile counseling service against right-wing extremism in Bavaria, Waldorf parents “” reported similar incidents at schools during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Denier Schools

To evade resistance at state but also independent schools and shield children from COVID-19 measures, some parents and teachers went a step further, founding their own learning initiatives and so-called supplementary schools. Insights into the network groups behind those supplementary schools reveal political affinities not only with the ��𾱳������ü������� but with another the far-right esoteric movement.

In , Bavaria, an elementary and middle school teacher founded a (Lateral Thinkers) school to reflect the movement’s pandemic skepticism. More than 50 pupils were taught here by parents and educators, including herbalists, music teachers and shamans. On advertising leaflets, the school falsely claimed to be located on Russian territory so that German law would not be applicable.

The school principal was active in networks spreading far-right esoteric ideas of the movement, a decentralized conspiracy group of far-right esotericists and settlers, based on the protagonist of the “Anastasia” fantasy novel series by Russian author Vladimir Megre. According to sociologist Matthias Quent, the  “transport cultural racism and anti-Semitism. These are ideological patterns that we also know from National Socialism. According to them, modern society is doomed, and people must retreat to the native soil or family estates.”

Connections to the Anastasia movement also existed in the newly founded Bauernhofschule (farm school) in the state of Hesse, which was registered as a supplementary school. Hesse’s school  enables parents to establish schools with scant bureaucratic hurdles as long as they supplement, not replace state curricula. According to the German state of Hesse’s public broadcaster, HR, Telegram chat transcripts revealed that the school operators to teach children how to keep animals, grow vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, the chat was inundated with extremist, anti-Semitic views from the ��𾱳������ü������� and Anastasia movements.

Even Holocaust denial — a criminal offense in Germany — received indifferent or approving reactions in the chats. The ideological connections of the Bauernhofschule reach as far as the fringes of the QAnon movement, as Martin Laker’s membership in the group suggests. Laker is an active member of the Anastasia movement and runs his own online platform where he spreads QAnon myths.

Underestimating the Problem

Germany’s political establishment has been slow in reacting to the growing problem. While the authorities are taking action against the newly founded supplementary schools, including enforced closures due to a lack of permits, there is still no sign yet of German politicians taking the danger posed by far-right anthroposophists seriously enough.

In January 2021, the Green Party’s national parliamentary group issued a asking what connections between right-wing extremist opponents of the COVID-19 measures and anthroposophical groups are known to the German government and how it assesses “the potential danger in this regard, given the fact that anthroposophy in Germany maintains a far-reaching network of companies, foundations, and public institutions.” The answer: “The Federal Government has no knowledge of this.” 

This rection is particularly disappointing considering the fight against right-wing extremism has gained political traction in recent years due to record high of politically motivated crimes by right-wing extremists. In 2020, the government published a substantial  of measures accompanied by a 100-page final  on combating right-wing extremism and racism the following year. According to the report, programs to prevent extremism in state schools are to be promoted more vigorously but fail to mention the right-wing extremist slant of anthroposophical groups and independent schools.

It remains to be seen whether the new government under the leadership of Angela Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz will turn its eye to this blind spot. There seems to be no lack of will on the part of Scholz’s fellow party member and the new minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser, who at her first public appearance in the new role that “A particular concern of mine will be to combat the greatest threat currently facing our free democratic basic order, right-wing extremism.” 

The threat posed by far-right conspiracy theories and fake news might have only entered the public consciousness with the triumph of social media platforms. But conspiracy theories don’t germinate in a vacuum. Instead, often far-reaching causes are behind their emergence. In Germany, the societal impact of widespread anthroposophic views, promoted in state-approved institutions like the Waldorf schools, is one of the many causes that deserve increased critical, not at least political, attention.

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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It’s Time for #MeToo to Address Structural Racism

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The first official Women’s History Month was inaugurated in 1980 and has been celebrated every year since. There are indeed many milestones and accomplishments to celebrate, including the strides women have made in  and the , the increased  of women in government, and the hard-won legal and social equality. At the same time, white women have leveraged their relative racial privilege to make these gains at the expense of women of color.

Incomplete Picture

While it feels empowering to think of women as a collective group, this category is not a monolith. Failing to consider women and women’s history from an  perspective leaves out the range of experiences and needs of women who do not fit into the white middle-class mold. In short, when the broad range of women’s experiences is not acknowledged, the movement remains incomplete. 

Because historical and contemporary women’s movements have willfully and strategically omitted racial justice, there is a legacy of isolating racism from sexism. This ignores the lived experience of everyone except white women. It has ensured that white women see a competition between issues of racism and sexism, and feel that they lose if the conversation centers around the former. 

The made the deliberate decision to fight for the right of white — not all — women to vote, choosing not to collaborate with black female activists. More recently, the 2017 Women’s March organizers faced criticism for focusing primarily on white women’s issues. 

And in the peak of the #MeToo movement, celebrities like Alyssa Milano, who said that she  to be the vessel for the movement, and Rose McGowan, who  at not being credited with initiating the movement, have by and large been associated with the inception of #MeToo. In reality, , a black female activist and advocate, coined the phrase and spearheaded the movement to raise awareness of sexual violence against working-class women and women of color a whole decade earlier.

As sociologists and white women, we argue that the discomfort regarding engaging with racism in both the society in general as well as in women-centered movements stems from the idea that white people don’t have to talk about race and racism because they aren’t “our issues.” But, because we live in a , everyone has a racial identity.

Another way to think about this is by acknowledging that race is socially constructed, meaning that it carries a social, not biological categorization. However, the fact that it is socially constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real. In a racist society, race has very real consequences for people.

Real Change

To avoid injury and to build a more equitable and just society, white women must become better at talking about race and racism, and recognize that while we experience sexism, we benefit from racial privilege in society. These benefits range from not having to  when dating to more frequent  in the workplace compared to minority women to extensive when a white woman goes missing, among others. 

Real change will mean giving up some of our comfort and power. Making these changes may not feel nice to us as individuals, but will have life-saving consequences for black people and other people of color. 

Second, we must recognize racism is a  that is embedded into the fabric of American society. Dismantling it will require supporting anti-racist policies and politicians, and advocating for laws such as the , which aims to “improve maternal health, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups, veterans, and other vulnerable populations. It also addresses maternal health issues related to COVID-19.”&�Բ�����;

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To ensure that political leaders truly represent the American public, everyone must have a seat at the table. While there have been four women on the Supreme Court, this month, we have the opportunity to confirm , who would be the first black woman on the court. 

Finally, we cannot begin to address racism without a shared knowledge of the truth. Ideally, this means casting a wide net and engaging with people from different backgrounds. Black activists and authors can us the social world through their eyes. But even so, we can’t expect anyone to tell us what “good” white people we are. In the words of the late scholar and activist , there is no gold star for “challenging white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal values.”&�Բ�����;  

What’s more, since racism is structural, we will all say and do racist things at times. But if we care about making the world a better place, we must listen, learn, apologize and continue to improve. Of course, self-knowledge is not enough. As white women, we must simultaneously work to improve ourselves and engage in the difficult work of dismantling white supremacy. This won’t be easy work, but it’s work that is worth doing. 

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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The PCR test is the gold standard for determining if a person has COVID-19. It’s a very good test that gives us the yes-or-no binary information that we value so much for making decisions. Unfortunately, the test is not always readily available and it’s also expensive. And timing is critical. If you take the test too soon after you are infected, the virus may not have yet traveled to your nose where the sample is taken, and thus the result may be a false negative — you have COVID but the test indicates you don’t. Also, it often takes time in a laboratory to process the results — will you isolate or carry on while you’re waiting?

COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle

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Finally, what would prompt you to get a COVID test? Perhaps some event prompts you or requires a test by policy, but otherwise, you might take a test because you feel sick. If so, you already know you may be infectious. In that case, a positive COVID test merely confirms what you already suspect, and you normally get that confirmation a couple of days too late to do any good. Despite our heavy reliance on testing, it’s not as simple or as timely as we would like for deciding when to isolate.

We’ve had another way to separate the healthy from the sick during the COVID-19 pandemic: symptoms. For example, if you have a fever, then you may be infectious. But temperature-based screening has not been very effective at all, and a big reason why is that the US government has historically defined fever as 100.4°F (38°C) or above. If a person’s body temperature is 100.3°F, then according to the government, that person does not have a fever. Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, one of the distinguishing characteristics of COVID is the tendency of many infected people to have mild or even unnoticeable symptoms, including only slightly elevated body temperature, below 100.4°F. So, the government’s definition of “fever,” although simple and binary, has only confused the situation. Some people who were asymptomatic with COVID-19 took their temperature, found it to be below 100.4°F and assumed they did not have a fever. So, they carried on with normal day-to-day activities, often infecting others. Temperature-based screening systems typically use the government’s 100.4°F fever threshold, and, as a result, failed to prevent entry by many infected persons. Relying on the government’s 100.4°F fever definition has contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Where did this government standard come from, how can it be improved, and why has the US resisted change?

Origins of 100.4°F

In 1868, a German physician, psychiatrist and medical professor named Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich published a describing his assessment that normal body temperature is relatively constant, varies from 97.9°F to 99.3°F (36.6°C to 37.4°C), and averages 98.6°F (37°C). He found that patients with a disease often exhibited a symptom of fever that he found to average at or above 100.4°F. He based these findings on 1 million temperature measurements for 25,000 patients.

For the time, this scientific result was quite remarkable, and it changed medicine forever because it gave physicians the newfound ability to objectively assess the presence and severity of many diseases. However, Wunderlich’s patients were mostly German rather than being from different cultures, his thermometer may have been less accurate than those we have today, and people are a little now than they were then.

These are reasons to suspect that Wunderlich’s ideas of normal body temperature and fever are somewhat different today than they were in the mid-1800s. But, to be fair, Wunderlich observed differences in temperature based on many variables when healthy, and he advised that temperature averages have many “shades of gray.” In particular, Wunderlich noted that even smaller rises in temperature are cause for concern, and that there is no definite temperature threshold over which a person transitions from health to sickness. He said that any “elevation of the axillary [under the arm] temperature above 99.5°F (37.5°C) or any depression below 97.2°F (36.5°C) is always very suspicious.” He added: “But even when every precaution has been taken in making the observations, it is impossible to draw a hard and fast line to indicate by temperature the exact limits of health and disease.”

Today, clinical research suggests that Wunderlich’s findings should be , that the normal temperature range by the individual, and that there is no arbitrary fever threshold that works for everyone. Yet, the US government and some medical experts still regard 98.6°F as normal body temperature and 100.4°F or above as a fever. For COVID019, this is simple, easy and, for most people, wrong.

Improving on 100.4°F as a Fever Threshold

If you’re interested in seeing if 100.4°F is an appropriate fever threshold for you, try taking your temperature. Use a normal, digital, under-the-tongue thermometer for at least 60 seconds. Make sure you haven’t consumed anything for 15 minutes — a hot or cold drink or food will change your measurement. Keep your mouth closed during the reading. Assuming you are healthy, if your temperature is below 98.6°F, then it’s a good bet that your fever threshold is under 100.4°F.

If you were to take your temperature every day, preferably in the morning when you first wake, you would see that your normal temperature varies in a range of one degree or so. For example, in the image below is the normal temperature data for a person we’ll call JRDA5.

From this graph, we can see that JRDA5’s normal body temperature varies from 96.6°F to 97.4°F when healthy, and you can expect your own normal temperature to vary also.

In modern medicine, a fever is to be a temperature elevation above a person’s normal range. This definition of fever is more accurate than an arbitrary fever threshold like 100.4°F that is based on population averages and data from 150 years ago. A person’s normal temperature range depends on many such as age, sex, nutrition and level of activity, and so different people will have different fever thresholds.

Almost always, a fever threshold defined as above your normal temperature range is below 100.4°F. Therefore, if we use this new definition, there is significant potential for identifying sick people using temperature-based screening. Relying on 100.4°F is insufficient for identifying mild, pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic cases of COVID-19.

Why the Government Has Resisted Changing the Definition of “Fever”

A pandemic is not the best time for complicated methods. Perhaps the US government chose to stick with 100.4°F for simplicity and consistency. But, in this pandemic, nothing has been simple. We’ve learned to take advantage of vaccines that need boosting, tests that need repeating and symptoms that keep changing. People can figure out their normal temperature range and their own personal fever threshold if that means effective screening. Having a fever or not is still binary, even if we define fever as above your normal range. It’s still pretty simple.

Elevated temperature is not definitive proof you have COVID-19. We all like certainty, and the PCR test will remain the gold standard for COVID. But we don’t need certainty to make a decision to isolate. A fever should prompt isolation, even though it may not be caused by COVID. The next step is to get tested and then wait for the results. We can stop the pandemic if people isolate if they get a fever. Fever is the most timely indicator we may be infectious.

Asymptomatic cases may not exhibit any elevated temperature, so we cannot depend on temperature screening anyway. It’s possible that there are some people infected with COVID-19 who do not have any fever, perhaps because their immune system doesn’t work at all. However, we know that many asymptomatic cases are accompanied by elevated body temperature lower than 100.4°F. We can catch those people using the more correct definition of fever. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

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People hate change and the government is no different. It takes a lot to pass federal legislation and to modify federal regulations. But the government’s 100.4°F fever threshold isn’t working. The effort to change will help us control the pandemic.

How Redefining “Fever” Helps

Since the omicron variant of COVID-19 emerged, we’ve seen increased demand for testing, with many people standing in line for hours waiting to get a test. In the United States, the government has been ordering more tests to address the shortages. However, the demand for testing can evidently overrun our testing resources. By using a more accurate definition of “fever,” people will have a better idea of when they need to get tested. Today, about 75% of tests come back negative. We have clinical that fever and other readily available health data can predict test results. By redefining “fever,” we can make testing more efficient.

We can also monitor our health every day, conveniently, in our own homes. We can’t afford to give everyone a daily PCR test, and hardly anyone wants that anyway. In contrast, it’s easy, fast and affordable to take our temperature every day. It’s a smart, safe way to help keep our friends and family safe and do our part to fight the pandemic. A lot of people would self-monitor if they knew it would help.

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 evidently mutates easily, giving rise to variants, and we don’t expect that to change. It’s possible there are already variants that are not caught by current tests. Redefining “fever” can help identify cases that PCR tests miss. So far, fever is a symptom of all variants. More broadly, fever is a symptom of many other infectious illnesses, such as the flu. Isolating when you have a fever is appropriate for new variants and other viruses to help prevent the spread and keep everyone safer.

It’s high time for the government to redefine “fever” as body temperature above a person’s normal, healthy range. With a more accurate definition, temperature-based screening can be a powerful new tool for fighting the pandemic — and one well-suited to use by anyone, at home and in time to make a difference. Americans want to help fight the pandemic. It’s about time the government helps them do just that.

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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COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle

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The costs of the pandemic are being borne disproportionately by poorer categories of society since low-income households are more exposed to health risks and more likely to experience job losses and sharp declines in wellbeing. At the same time, the pandemic has been a boon for the wealthy. In response to the economic collapse in March and April 2020, central banks injected enormous amounts of liquidity into financial markets, keeping asset prices high while economic activity slowed down. Some of the biggest winners were those with high stakes in the technology sector.

Against this background, Kara Tan Bhala, the founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics, suggests using the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country or the world is to economic upheaval. “T��� Gini coefficient gauges the income inequality of a region, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality,” she says. “Perhaps nations begin seriously reforming economic policies when their Gini coefficients are above 0.4 (United States) and red lights start flashing trouble when a country scores above 0.5 (South Africa, Brazil).”

But how do we tackle inequality? According to economist Etienne Perrot, “the adequate responses must … address both property [ownership] rights through anti-trust regulations to counter the abuse of a dominant position, policies through redistributive taxes and education so as not to confuse emulation and competition.” Other policy responses may include “reforms of the transparency and other features of firm governance, broader acceptance of countries’ right to control cross-border capital movements,” as Andrew Cornford points out.

To implement these policies, the first condition is that inequalities should be on the political agenda, which is not the case everywhere, as professor Yuriy Temirov illustrates with the case of Ukraine. But policy measures alone are not sufficient to reduce inequalities. They have to be complemented by a cultural, transformative process for learning to “row together” (Fratelli tutti), as Domingo Sugranyes of the Pablo VI Foundation says, to increase our socioeconomic resilience.

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Inequalities seem to accelerate in every part of the world due to COVID-19 and other issues. Unlike the climate debate, in social issues, we do not have a proper threshold for catastrophe. This leads to a possible overestimation of social resilience and leaves the issue as such largely untackled. Drawing on the particularities of your region or on your area of expertise, what should/can be done?

“… perfectly predictable socioeconomic inequalities … ”

“T��� pandemic only reveals perfectly predictable socioeconomic inequalities. Pope Francis had alerted the international community as soon as the first vaccines appeared. The causes of these glaring social inequalities mix the institutional side through the right of property, the politics increasingly tempted by nationalism, and the spiritual bathed in the materialistic individualism of modernity. The adequate responses must therefore address both property right through anti-trust regulations to counter the abuse of a dominant position, policies through redistributive taxes and education so as not to confuse emulation and competition, distinguishing between the elite and the financial success.”

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“… the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country is to economic upheaval… ”

“In the global climate crisis, anything over 2°C above the average pre-industrial temperature leads to unmitigated disaster. In a similar vein, I suggest we use the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country or the world is to economic upheaval. The Gini coefficient gauges the income inequality of a region, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality. Perhaps nations begin seriously reforming economic policies when their Gini coefficients are above 0.4 (United States) and red lights start flashing trouble when a country scores above 0.5 (South Africa, Brazil). Of course, these watershed levels need further research, but it would be enlightening to have an idea of the income inequality thresholds of social disaster.”

Kara Tan Bhala —president and founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics

“… public support will be essential to act to avert a total catastrophe … ”

“Despite its importance, GDP as an indicator should no longer be the only way we measure economic success. Fairer economy would mean tackling health inequalities and getting to grips with issues that prevent individuals from certain ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds meeting their full potential. We need to embrace means of improving wellbeing and advancing social mobility, build on promoting social inclusion as well as addressing poverty. New plans must be put in place to achieve a more sustainable economy in a more equal and socially just society, and this cannot just be an aspiration — it must be seen as critical to our survival. In recognizing the profound challenges, public support will be essential to act to avert a total catastrophe. The coronavirus is still alive, and risk lies in whether this will be possible.”

Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

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“… rowing together (Fratelli tutti) …”

“I don’t see a theoretical answer to this extremely vast question. My reaction can only be in terms of (modest) action-oriented commitment: ‘rowing together’ (Fratelli tutti), i.e., trying to identify social projects of high solidarity value, which help people to emerge from poverty on their own capabilities, and look for means — money, goods, time — in order to increase the scope and impact of such communities. We need business and people in business to get much more decidedly involved in these kinds of projects. This is, among many other organizations, what we try to do with (VSF International) and . Everybody is welcome to join.”

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

“… an effective wealth tax and a global minimum corporate tax … ”

“With the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between the rich and the poor, in particular the income gap, has increased as Pope Francis, among others, has stated on several occasions. It is undeniable that the trend had already started several decades ago. However, with COVID-19, inequalities have reached record levels that do necessitate strong internal reforms. If no actions will be taken, such as an effective wealth tax and a global minimum corporate tax, the possibility of social turmoil and unrest will be inevitable. In Italy, political parties are literally unable to agree and set the slightest kind of agenda for a proper patrimoniale (wealth tax or asset tax), preferring to keep the country in an extremely dangerous status quo.”

Valerio Bruno —researcher in politics

“… fiscal measures, transparency, control of cross-border capital movements … ”

“Much attention has been given to the wealth as well as the income dimension of the inequalities — the associated rents of the minority at one end, and the much lower and often stagnating incomes of the remainder. The latter comprises not only the working class, but also parts of the middle class. Much commentary has also concerned the opportunities to hide wealth — and thus reduce tax exposure — provided by cross-border financial liberalization and offshore financial centers. Policy responses to the inequalities should include fiscal measures, including improved taxation of the wealth of individuals and firms, reforms of the transparency and other features of firm governance, broader acceptance of countries’ right to control cross-border capital movements, and changes in legal definitions designed to facilitate controls over firms’ domestic and cross-border access to different economic activities and industries and thus to restrict regulatory arbitrage and opaqueness in firms’ operations.”

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

“… imaginative countermeasures of income … ”

“T��� fundamental dynamic of any economy is summed up in the dictum, ‘To those who have shall be given and they shall have more than they can use, and from those who have not shall be taken even what they have.’ COVID also has set it in motion. Where the effects are beneficial — e.g., the reduction in travel by air — it should be encouraged. Further good news is that the deprivation inflicted by COVID on the deprived has been met — at least in places like Geneva — not by the usual blame, scorn and exclusion, but by imaginative countermeasures of income support and new forms of communication like Zoom.”

Edouard Dommen — specialist in economic ethics, former university professor and researcher at the UNCTAD and president of Geneva’s Ecumenical Workshop in Theology.

“… first we have to think about youth … ”

“T��� social deprivation problems are persistent, and this fact routinizes somehow their existence and hinders the definition of a social resilience threshold. Differentiated priorities emerged in South/Eastern Europe after the successive waves of crisis, but first we have to think about youth since no country can sustain without giving hope to its members through a micro/macro strategy that includes: i) an immediate recovery plan with emergency income support for the vulnerable groups; ii) long-lasting work-related policies and investments on youth employment (work-based training, tax reliefs for innovative enterprises); iii) strategies of sharing the risks with interregional cooperation and job retention schemes; and iv) protection and support of childhood integrity (tackling invisible work and poverty with financial benefits for low-income families and proper child/health-care, along with future-centered support, such as home learning environment and early schooling interventions).”

Christos Tsironis —associate professor of social theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

“… in Ukraine, social inequality will not become a priority soon … ”

“In Ukraine, social inequality has two primary sources: the legacy of the ‘socialist’ totalitarian past and deformed oligarchic capitalism. At the same time, the initial period of transformation with the exacerbation of the problems of social inequality has dragged on dangerously. From 1991 to 2014, the domination of the interests of oligarchic groups over national interests acted as a brake on reforms. After the Revolution of Dignity, there was a political will to implement unpopular reforms, but they had to be carried out in conditions of the population’s fatigue from reforms, in the realities of Russian aggression. The promotion of reforms by servants of the people is complicated by populism. In Ukraine, social inequality will not become a priority soon. At this stage of transformation, this issue cannot be a priority; the authorities do not have a correct understanding of the hierarchy of priorities, and society’s perceptions of equality/inequality are distorted by collectivism and paternalism.

Yuriy Temirov —associate professor, dean of the Faculty of History and International Relations at Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University

*[An earlier version of this article was published by  before the Ukraine War began.]

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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Not all countries have taken to manufacturing, though. Some of them have experienced premature deindustrialization, which economist Dani Rodrik has  extensively. ���Ի徱��’s manufacturing sector never reached full potential because of this phenomenon.

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Instead, India ended up with the “premature servicization” of its economy. This diminished its capacity to create enough well-paying jobs for its large population and did not allow for increased productivity.

���Ի徱��’s Drive to Industrialization and Innovation

Services now comprise more than half of ���Ի徱��’s GDP. As alluded to above, services do not deliver productivity growth in the same way as industry. Those who argue for free trade believe this does not matter. India can import industrial goods like cars and cellphones while exporting software writing and call center services.

Such arguments for a trade-based economy fail to recognize, or in many cases deliberately omit, increasing trade deficits when a country has poor manufacturing. In a volatile and uncertain world, these deficits can become a geopolitical liability for any nation because manufacturers can shut off access to the most basic of goods. Manufacturing does not only increase productivity and enhance security, but it also creates jobs and lowers inequality. For these reasons, India has recently embarked on a reindustrialization program. 

The new Production Linked Incentives (PLIs) to attract the more reputed global manufacturers, the best brains in industry and high-quality, long-term investments to India. Under PLIs, participants can manufacture for the domestic and/or export markets. The government applied these incentives to 14 sectors, of which telecoms, cellphones, electronic equipment and automobiles are benefiting already.

Many manufacturers station their Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India, which has become a global base for services operations. A June 2021  by Deloitte and NASSCOM states that 1,300 GCCs employed more than 1.3 million professionals and generated $33.8 billion in annual revenues in the financial year starting April 1, 2020, and ending March 31, 2021. Another  estimates that GCCs are likely to grow by 6-7% per year and rise to over 1,900 by 2025. It also says that these GCCs are evolving from back-office destinations to global hubs of innovation.

Digitization is aiding this transformation of GCCs. Now, industrial design is no longer a monopoly of a headquarters in Michigan or Munich. Thanks to fast-speed internet and powerful computers, research, design and development of new machines, goods and consumption articles can take place anywhere in the world. Software is playing an increasingly bigger role in creating new hardware, driving additive manufacturing and automating factories. A process of disintermediation of manufacturing is under full swing, leading to what can be called a “servicization of manufacturing.”

This trend gives India a unique opportunity. Global businesses need rapid, at-scale and cost-effective innovation. With its cost advantages and services ecosystem, India can provide that innovation to the world. Conventionally, innovation is associated with creating something new such as an iPhone or a Tesla. However, innovation occurs in less flamboyant ways as well. Any change in design or development that creates new value for the firm or provides an operational competitive advantage is an innovation too.

A Unique Opportunity to Takeoff

Global companies aiming to operate faster, cheaper and better are increasingly operating in India. The country has become more innovative over the years. India granted 28,391  in the financial year 2020-21, up from 9,847 in 2016-17 and 7,509 in 2010-11. Last year, the press reported that India registered as many  in the past four years as in the previous 75. ���Ի徱��’s rank on the global innovation  has moved up from 81 in 2015 to 46 in 2021. The World Intellectual Property Organization also recognized India as the second most innovative low and middle-income economy after Vietnam.

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India missed out on the first and second industrial revolutions. The first one took place in Europe between the mid-18^th and mid-19^th centuries when India was fragmented and undergoing colonization by the British East India Company. The Second Industrial Revolution occurred in the 20^th century, but India was ruled by the British government directly, which had no interest in industrialization. London’s incentive was to use India as a provider of raw materials and as a captive market for finished British industrial goods.

After independence in 1947, India failed to industrialize unlike its East Asian counterparts. It chose a Soviet-style planned economy that was closed and protectionist. Only in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed did India embrace market reforms and liberalized its economy.

Today, India is  at 9% and its GDP is about to touch the $3-trillion mark. With strong global tailwinds, India can embrace industrialization and innovation, and finally enter what American economist  has termed the takeoff stage of economic growth.

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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The US and Ukraine have consistently and emphatically denied any even potentially offensive operations. The debate became complicated last week when at a Senate hearing, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted that the laboratories exist and were conducting research that might have dangerous consequences if it fell into Russian hands. She revealed nothing about the nature of the research. Various US officials explained that the research existed but aimed at preventing the use of such weapons rather than their development. That disclaimer may or may not be true.

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At the United Nations meeting, the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield categorically denied any activity with these words: “I will say this once: ‘Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program.’” As The Guardian, the ambassador then “went on to turn the accusation back on Moscow” when she accused Russia of maintaining a biological weapon program. That may or may not be true. In fact, both accusations have a strong likelihood of being true.

ABC News the issue in these terms: “Russia is doubling down on its false claims that the U.S. and Ukraine are developing chemical or biological weapons for use against invading Russian forces, bringing the accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

False claims:

Hypotheses that are likely enough to be true but difficult to prove conclusively

Contextual Note

The basic claim made by ABC News is true, at least if we reduce the message to the incontestable fact that the Russians brought the “accusation to the United Nations Security Council on Friday.” What may or may not be true is the reporter’s assertion that these are “false claims.” As noted above, the Russian claims may or may not be true, meaning they may or may not be false.

For news reporting in times of war, propaganda becomes the norm. It trumps any form of serious inquiry, that the legacy media in the US bases its reporting on two complementary suppositions: that everything US authorities tell them is true and that most everything Russians claim is false. Those same reporters who suppose their side is telling the truth and the other side is lying also suppose that their readers share the same suppositions. In times like these, propaganda is the most effective and especially the most marketable form of communication.

The second sentence in the ABC News article adds a new dimension to the assertion. It complains that a “web of disinformation, not only from Russian state media but also Chinese propaganda outlets and even some American voices, have increasingly spread the conspiracy theory this week.” The metaphor of a spider’s web conveniently brings back the sinister logic of the McCarthy era, when certain Americans were accused of being witting or unwitting vectors of communist propaganda. And it inexorably links with the idea of spreading a “conspiracy theory.”

It’s worth stopping for a moment to note that each sentence in the ABC News article is a paragraph. Single-sentence paragraphing is a journalistic technique designed to make reading easier and faster. Subtle writers and thinkers, such as Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara, can sometimes employ the to create a percussive effect. But in times of heightened propaganda, the popular media resorts to the practice to short-circuit any temptation on the reader’s part to think, reason, compare ideas or analyze the facts. In journalistic terms, it’s the equivalent of aerial bombing as opposed to house-to-house combat.

The third sentence in the ABC News article delivers a new explosive payload, this time with appropriately added emotion (“heightened concern”) and a horrified hint at sophisticated strategy (“false flag”). It speaks of “heightened concern among U.S. and Ukrainian officials that Russia itself may be planning to deploy chemical or biological weapons against Ukrainian targets or as part of a so-called ‘false flag’ operation.”

In just three sentences, the article has mobilized the standard web of associations journalists use for propaganda masquerading as news. The vocabulary may include any of the following terms: “disinformation,” “fake news,” “false flag,” “conspiracy theory,” “propaganda,” “misinformation,” and, on occasion, the more traditional pair, “deception and lies.”

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The article’s fourth sentence is a quote from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “This makes me really worried because we’ve been repeatedly convinced if you want to know Russia‘s plans, look at what Russia accuses others of.” That is a trope the Biden administration has been using throughout this controversy. Zelensky has read the script and the journalist is there to transcribe it.

Historical Note

The still-developing history of COVID-19 that has been with us for nearly two and a half years should have taught us at least two things. Governments have a penchant for presenting a unique version of the truth that insists no other version is possible. They also excel at putting in place a system that suppresses any alternative account, especially if it appears to approach an inconvenient truth. Whether you prefer the wet market or the lab leak theory is still a matter of debate. Both narratives have life in them. In other words, either of them may or may not be true. For a year, thinking so was not permitted.

The second thing we should have learned is that the kind of experimentation done in biological and chemical research labs will always have both a defensive and an offensive potential. From a scientific point of view, claiming that research is strictly limited to defensive applications makes no sense. Even if the instructions given to research teams explicitly focus on prevention, the work can at any moment be harnessed for offensive purposes. Victoria Nuland appeared to be saying just that when she expressed the fear that Russians (the bad guys) might seek to do something the Ukrainians and Americans (the good guys) would never allow themselves to do.

Or would they? That is the point Glenn Greenwald in citing the history of the weaponized anthrax that created a wave of panic in the days and weeks following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. George W. Bush’s White House, followed by the media, clearly promoted the idea that the “evidence” (a note with the message “Allah is Great”) pointed to the Middle East and specifically at Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Even before 9/11, Bush’s White House had the Pentagon to “accelerate planning for possible military action against Iraq.” In January 2002, the president officially launched the meme of “the axis of evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

In retrospect, even though no legacy news media will admit this, the most credible interpretation of the anthrax attacks that killed five Americans was as a failed false flag operation designed to “prove” that Iraq was already using biological weapons. As the White House was preparing for war in Afghanistan, it sought a motive to include Iraq in the operations. The plan failed when it became undeniable that the strain of anthrax had been created in a military lab in the US.

Years later, the FBI “successfully” pinned the crime on a scientist at Fort Detrick called Bruce Ivins, the Lee Harvey Oswald of the anthrax attacks. The FBI was successful not in trying Ivins but in pushing him to commit suicide, meaning there would be no review of the evidence or reflection on the motive for the attacks. This at least is the most likely explanation because it aligns a number of obvious and less obvious facts. Nevertheless, even this narrative accusing the Bush administration of engineering what was essentially a more lethal version of a Watergate-style crime may or may not be true. 

The moral of all these stories is that in times of conflict, everything we hear or read should be reviewed with scrutiny and nothing taken at face value. And just as we have learned to live with unsolved — or rather artificially solved — assassinations of presidents, prominent politicians and civil rights leaders, we have to live with the fact that the authorities, with the complicity of an enterprising media skilled at guiding their audience’s perception, will never allow us to know the truth.

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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And yet, three weeks into the war, the no-fly zone proposal just won’t die. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for air support almost daily. In protests and social media posts, millions of ordinary people around the world ask NATO to #closethesky. 

No, the Ban on Russian Athletes Should Not Be Lifted

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Here in America, a nationwide poll showed that 74% of Americans  a no-fly zone. And earlier this month, 27 foreign policy experts published an open  requesting a limited no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors. 

If a no-fly zone is so obviously impractical, why are we still talking about it? The answer — which is conspicuously missing from mainstream Western discourse — lays bare the fundamental problem in the US response to the war. 

A False Dichotomy

Politicians and the offer a  simplistic  against protecting Ukraine’s airspace: ��ܲ�������’s nuclear arsenal. Almost every official statement, article and op-ed can be summarized in one sentence: A no-fly zone would start World War III.

But here’s the part no one says out loud: What happens if the West doesn’t institute a no-fly zone? Will such a move keep us safe from nuclear Armageddon? Can the US manage to stay out of this war and out of ��ܲ�������’s crosshairs? 

Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s rhetoric — and his actions — offer a clear answer. The US can avoid direct confrontation but at a price: handing the Russian leader an absolute, total victory. In Ukraine, of course, but also in Moldova and Georgia and perhaps the Baltics, and who knows where else? And, of course, carte blanche to commit whatever atrocities he’d like worldwide (à la Syria). 

If Putin cannot win, he will lash out against enemies real and imagined. At that point, it won’t matter whether those enemies have instituted a no-fly zone. Putin has already likened sanctions and weapons deliveries to declarations of war on Russia, creating a ready excuse for retaliation. He’s set up a false narrative about Ukraine building a nuclear bomb, building a rationale to use his own nuclear weapons. 

�������������’s Choice 

The real question before the US government isn’t whether to institute a no-fly zone. It’s whether America is ready to help Ukraine win or prefers to stand by and watch the rise of a new Russian empire. 

If not, we must stand up to Putin now. There are multiple viable policy options for doing so. One is  a no-fly zone administered by the United Nations rather than NATO. Another is  Ukraine decommissioned Western fighter jets and several dozen volunteer air force vets who would be granted Ukrainian citizenship. Yet another would be to send only jets — Ukrainian fighter pilots have confirmed that they can, in fact, learn to fly Western jets in just a few days. 

The specific mechanism matters less than the political will — the decision to send Putin a clear message that the US will not let him take Ukraine, backed up by sufficient military support. This option is not risk-free. But it’s impossible for Ukraine to prevail without angering Putin. 

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Is the risk worth it? Ukrainians believe so because they see something most Americans haven’t yet figured out: World War III has already started. �ʳܳپ���’s grand ambitions are reminiscent of a certain German dictator 80 years before him, as is the US strategy of appeasement. In the end, US involvement is inevitable, so why not be strategic and proactive rather than reacting years later when the human and economic costs of �ʳܳپ���’s empire-building are too high to be ignored? 

Of course, the US government may disagree with this perspective and opt for appeasement 2.0. Maybe this time around, the unstable dictator will be more reasonable?

If this is the case, and the US government is not ready to stand up to Putin, it’s essential to make it clear that Zelensky is on his own. If we cannot make a commitment to let Ukrainians win, we should let them lose. Ukraine’s government deserves an honest understanding of what it can and can’t expect from the US so it can make decisions accordingly.  

The Worst of Both Worlds

So far, American politicians have spurned both of these options. Instead, they’re pursuing an immoral, dangerous fantasy, waiting for someone to stop Putin without America getting its hands dirty. To this end, they offer half-measures that drag out the conflict and cost thousands of lives. They wear blue and yellow, they send aid and enact sanctions, but they consciously steer clear of any support that could lead to a Ukrainian victory. 

This brings us back to the absurd situation we started with: ongoing calls for an impossible no-fly zone, which we can now see are absolutely logical. Let’s review.

America: Ukraine, we support you in your brave fight for freedom!

Ukrainians and their friends abroad: Great! So, the one thing we need is support with our airspace.

America: No can do. But believe us — we’re on your side here and we’re ready to help! 

Ukrainians: Thank you. We’re dying here and we can’t win without air support. 

America: Once again, no. But we stand with you.

This hypocrisy goes well beyond the debate over the no-fly zone. For instance, on March 6, Secretary Blinken gave the green light for Poland to donate its fighter jets to Ukraine. When Poland agreed to cede the jets to the US for immediate transfer to the Ukrainian army, American officials  in a truly impressive display of doublespeak. 

Ukraine cannot win this war without the US taking tangible steps to protect Ukrainian airspace. Pretending otherwise and willfully extending the bloodshed with partial measures is the worst possible option for the United States. 

The US government doesn’t owe Ukraine support. But it does owe Ukraine an immediate end to the falsehoods and the empty words — a bullshit ceasefire, if you will. An admission that, no matter how many civilian deaths, no matter what kind of banned weapons Russia uses or how many war crimes it commits, no matter if Russia drops a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, the US will not step in. 

Until then, Russia pushes new boundaries every day with impunity, Ukraine holds out hope for help that will never come and Joe Biden wavers while children die. 

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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However, shipping companies report limiting their transport due to the perceived danger and concerns about loss of business. Recently, Ukraine announced that it would restrict its own exports to secure domestic supply.

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Ukraine and Russia have become key players for the export of both grain and sunflower (oil) in the post-Soviet era. For quite some time, their crop yields have influenced international volumes and prices, with Ukraine providing on average 10% of the world’s wheat export supply, and Russia as much as 24%; for maize, Ukraine supplied 15% of the staple feed and fodder. 

The international market for fertilizer is even more concentrated. With trade shares of individual fertilizer components reaching up to 50%, Russia dominates the market for ammonium nitrate and Belarus, at 16%, for potash fertilizer.

Wartime Uncertainty

Due to general business uncertainty, the financial sanctions of numerous states and the EU against Russia currently affect agricultural exports indirectly while specific sanctions directly target respective exports. For example, last year, in response to the crackdown on the opposition in Belarus, the EU imposed sanctions on the market-dominating Belarusian potash producer Belaruskali, extending them last week.

Prices for many agricultural products determined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations currently already exceed the historic highs during the food price crises of 2007 and 2011. Fertilizer prices have also been rising to record levels for months. In addition, shortages due to reduced or canceled supplies of grain and fertilizer from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are driving up prices. 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia, like many countries, has been using export restrictions on agricultural products to secure its own supplies despite international warnings against these price-increasing measures. Just last week, the government recommended that Russian companies also limit fertilizer exports.

Besides Ukraine, crop and supply shortfalls initially affect countries that import agricultural products from the war-affected region and are currently looking for readily available alternative sources. This drives up prices on global markets, thereby burdening all importers worldwide but hitting low-income countries and people the hardest. Egypt has an import share of 60% of Russian grain and 20% of Ukrainian grain. 

To date, other countries that are already vulnerable to supply insecurity, such as Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Bangladesh and Turkey, also purchase the majority of their grain from the region. Chad and Niger imported up to 80% of their fertilizer and raw materials from Russia and Belarus; Europe, as well as many countries in Latin America, also purchased large shares.

Options for Adjustment 

Affected countries have different options for adjustment. Egypt still has limited but probably sufficient grain stocks of its own for the time being, despite strong supply dependence vis-à-vis the region. In Lebanon, on the other hand, the 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut destroyed wheat warehouses, reducing storage capacity from six months to one month, necessitating a continuous flow of supplies.

The remaining supply gaps that cannot be solved in importing countries by means of shifts in consumption toward more food rather than energy use require both food and fertilizer support. However, these are becoming more expensive as a result of rising prices for procurement and delivery. Transport and delivery must be additionally protected when sourcing from the region along vulnerable routes.

Trade must remain open and possibly protected on routes perceived as dangerous by shipping lines. Typical crisis-induced but price-pushing export restrictions must be avoided, both within the EU and internationally. Failing supplies from the major agricultural region will show their full effects in the coming autumn crop season, which may only be offset to a certain extent by crops from other major producers such as Australia, the US and the EU.

Large agricultural countries could pursue forward-looking, coordinated market relaxation in order to quickly identify food supply potentials. However, in order to avoid symbolic politics or protectionist reflexes to support domestic production, the volume and price effects of possible approaches — suspension of set-aside programs, reduced use of agro-fuels or land rededication from fodder to food production — need to be assessed accurately. If a contribution to market relaxation is to be expected, corresponding measures should be quickly initiated for the upcoming crop year as a temporary crisis measure. 

Similarly, the US is discussing the suspension of the conservation reserve program to allow farmers to bring set-aside areas into production. Price-driving sanctions with regard to fertilizers and agricultural goods should be avoided — or at least be accompanied by aid concepts to absorb linked supply risks.

As during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) — a monitoring mechanism developed by the G20 in response to past food price crises — should be used for an international information campaign to prevent price-pushing export restrictions by means of appeals. However, more important than appeals would be the adoption of strict criteria and deadlines for these measures that are enforceable at the World Trade Organization level.

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In the future, AMIS should cover not only agricultural products, fertilizers and energy sources but also the conditions of and access to trade infrastructure. Here, restrictions heavily influence supply and price and should be included in a comprehensive warning system for international supply potential.

Furthermore, a future international political offensive for fertilizers and their raw materials is needed. Not only must the market situation be monitored and, in the event of shortages, be accompanied by aid early on. Technologies to make their use more efficient and to increase fertilizer production capacities as well as approaches to their substitution, whether technologically or by cultivation, are also needed.

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

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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Should We Lift the Ban on Russian Sport?

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Furthermore, Cashmore maintains, experience shows that sports bans largely failed to have a significant impact on regime policies in the past. South Africa is a case in point. There are good reasons to believe that the bans and boycotts the country was subjected to did little to hasten the collapse of apartheid. The same could, of course, be said about sanctions in general, as Peter Isackson has recently noted in these pages. Cuba is probably the most prominent example of the failure of prolonged sanctions to undermine a regime; Iran is another. 

This could also be said about resolutions passed by the United Nations General Assembly condemning acts of aggression. The most recent vote following ��ܲ�������’s attack on Ukraine has demonstrated once again the futility of symbolic gestures, even if supported by the vast majority of the international community. The reality is that for despots and autocrats, the only thing that counts is brute force. After all, what brought Nazi Germany to heel was not boycotts and sanctions but the overwhelming military might of the allies. 

The Importance of Sport

Should we, then, lift the ban on Russian sport? In fact, should we lift all sanctions imposed on Russia, given the fact that, empirically, sanctions more often than not turn out to be counterproductive? The answer to the second question is obvious, at least to me. Sanctions might not be particularly effective in their impact on regime behavior, but they serve as an expression of moral revulsion, a signal that we don’t want to have anything to do with you, or at least as little as possible. This involves all areas, not only economics — and particularly sport.

It is easy to state, as Cashmore does, that “it would be foolish to hyperbolize the importance of sport; obviously it is not as serious as war, or a million other things. So, why hurt people who are not responsible for the original sin?” Anyone who has ever watched Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film “Olympia,” which documented the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, is likely to get a sense of the importance of sport to autocratic regimes. 

The Berlin Games were supposed to demonstrate the superiority of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan race. But a black athlete from the United States, Jesse Owens, had the audacity to steal the show, making HItler’s sport — “swift as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel” — literally eat dust. The Führer was not amused; he hastily left the stadium so not to have to bear witness to the Aryan humiliation.

A famous German strategist once characterized diplomacy as war by other means. The same could be said about sport, particularly during the Cold War period. This was certainly true in the case of the in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). For the regime, sport was more than a competition, it was a Systemfrage — a question of system, socialism vs. capitalism. Sport victories, particularly against West German athletes, meant confirmation of the superiority of the socialist system and, of course, of the Soacialist Unity Party. 

At the same time, sport provided the regime with the international visibility it so desperately craved. For this, no price was high enough, including the health of the athletes. Starting in the early 1970s, the regime embarked on a broad-based systematic . Already at a young age, promising athletes were pumped full of drugs, designed to enhance their performance and competitiveness. Many of them still suffer from the long-term consequences.

The East German case is extreme but hardly exceptional. Anyone who has ever visited Rome can attest to that. Rome hosts an Olympic stadium that dates back to the late 1920s, initially forming part of the larger Foro Mussolini. In the 1930s, the stadium was expanded, in preparation for the 1940 Olympics. The games were ultimately canceled because of the war, depriving Mussolini of the opportunity to showcase his Fascist revolution: the massive obelisk at the entrance of the Foro, with its “Mussolini Dux” inscription, the mosaics leading up to the stadium, glorifying the Fascist takeover, the granite blocs bearing excerpts of Mussolini’s speeches. 

Mussolini’s reign ended in April 1945 at a gas station in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. Yet at the centennial of Mussolini’s March on Rome, later on this year, the obelisk is still there, in Rome, in front of the Olympic stadium, together with the mosaics and the granite blocs — a silent testimony to a dictator’s hubris and the role of sport in it.

Get Real

One of the most often heard arguments these days on the subject of the sport ban is that it is the “innocent” athletes who are most directly affected by it. “I only feel sorry for the athletes” has been an often repeated mantra by those commenting on the ban. Let’s get real. Compared to the suffering and anxieties of millions of Ukrainian civilians subjected to Russian terror bombing, the chagrin of Russian athletes deprived of the opportunity to compete internationally is of little consequence — except, of course, for those, like Daniil Medvedev, who lose money. But then, the ATP has so far refused to follow other sports and ban Russian players. 

Finally, one last thought. Before FIFA banned Russia from its World Cup competition, Poland, followed by Sweden and the Czech Republic, made it clear that they would not play Russia in the playoffs for the World Cup at the end of this year. Robert Lewandowski, Bayern München’s star forward and winner of the Best FIFA Men’s Player title two years in a row, was particularly adamant in his refusal to play against Russia. 

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I am quite curious to know what would have happened had FIFA not banned Russia. Would Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic have been sanctioned for refusing to play the Russian national team? What would have it done to FIFA’s already dismal image if, as a result, Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s aggression against his neighbor had been compensated with ��ܲ�������’s automatic World Cup qualification? 

The reality is that international competitions in certain sports, such as football and ice hockey, are more than just sports. They are sources of national pride and national prestige, particularly for countries with autocratic regimes, with star athletes as national icons who are more often than not close to the regime. Alexander Ovechkin, arguably the best hockey player at the moment, has a long history of supporting Putin, including the 2014 annexation of Crimea. 

As Czech hockey great Dominik Hasek , this is not a personal matter: “Every athlete represents not only himself and his club, but also his country and its values and actions. That is a fact.” It is for this reason that the ban on Russian sport was imposed. It should not be lifted.

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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Since the Start of the Pandemic, Americans Are Drinking Too Much

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But this new relaxation of standards might be a problem when it comes to posture. The usual office equipment people relied upon didn’t come home with them at the beginning of the lockdown. Futons and laptops ergonomic chairs and desktop computers for weeks, then months and now years. Working from a laptop computer is one of the worst for one’s back. Working from a sofa might be the worst. 

From Back Problems to Developing an App

Three years ago, I suffered from spinal disc subluxation. This isn’t typical for a teen. In fact, it’s so rare that, in a on the prevalence of subluxation, people under the age of 65 were excluded because researchers didn’t see them as a statistically significant population. As I waited in line for care, I talked to other patients who explained to me how much my problem might be caused by poor posture.

Movies like “My Fair Lady” and even “Pretty Woman” taught us that there’s one correct posture. It’s a classist and sexist idea that someone has to be in on the polite secret that there’s one right way to sit or stand. But no one-size-fits-all optimizes health. Rather, everyone has their own correct posture. 

Because of my experience, I developed an app called whereby users can take a photo of their backs and see if their posture is optimal. It’s not a replacement for medical advice, of course, but it’s a nudge to get people to see that how they’re sitting and standing might not be up to snuff — for their particular bodies. 

Balancing a book on one’s head Eliza Doolittle-style seems petty next to a global pandemic, but posture isn’t a trifling concern. About of a country’s population will develop lower back pain in their lives and suboptimal posture contributes to it. It’s the number-one of disability worldwide. The way chronic back pain impacts quality of life makes it a real threat. 

And that threat has actually been magnified by the conditions imposed by the global health crisis. Between shifting all activity to our home spaces, the challenges to our mood (there’s an undeniable link between posture and — change one and the other follows) and a deterioration of our behavioral standards, people aren’t attuned to the same details they once were. We’re so off our game that some workers may have to “” politeness when offices open back up. Virtual work/school may benefit many, but regardless of one’s appreciation of the home office or school, we must admit that we don’t act the same when we work or study outside of the office or classroom. We get lax.

Are You Sitting Upright?

No one has studied this specifically, but I would venture that posture has deteriorated population-wise during the pandemic. It’s a mere matter of common sense. As the world crumbles, people likely aren’t sitting and standing ramrod straight. In the scrum for masks, tests and toilet paper, posture wasn’t a characteristic that made a person more likely to survive. And the invitation to slump and relax was too good to pass up. 

It can be alarmist to predict spin-off epidemics. Between anxiety and to to sleep to substance , the COVID-19 pandemic caused a cascade of health problems. It’s unclear how we stay out of a permanent state of panic.  

But panic prods prevention, and prevention is good politics. And back pain, a preventable chronic condition, costs us a lot of money every year. It’s the second-highest of health burden in China. It also costs $67.5 and $94.1 billion globally. It’s also the leading cause of sick , the days when employees accomplish little to nothing, whether they’re in the office or not. It’s the sixth-largest on the health economy in the United States, and it causes of billions of pounds in lost productivity in the United Kingdom.

Work From Home and Remote Learning

Neither working from home nor learning remotely is over. As of September 2021, of full-time employees in the US were working from home. Now, of them want to stay put. The city of Flint, Michigan will be schooling its students for the near future. Even without pandemic risks, some school districts have come to lean on distance learning because of school . That means we will probably continue to cut ourselves slack with how we sit and stand. 

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In China, 45% of offer work-from-home situations. Around 57% of employees like a hybrid model of three days in the office and two at home. Students in the city of Xi’an were allowed back to in-person school in January after another lockdown. Schools throughout China are preparing for the eventuality of to distance learning, if not for COVID-19, then for another reason. The preparation comes as most parents in China realized that the initial switch to remote school was implemented quickly, which meant that education over virtual portals was less than ideal.

At-home employees and remote-based students can buy better computers, desks and chairs if they can afford them. But none of that will help if they don’t know what position works best for them. Just being aware that posture is at risk is important for long-term health. 

Even a return to the workplace or school doesn’t guarantee that people will sit upright. And some medical experts that posture and back pain aren’t connected. My experience tells me otherwise. 

I don’t think that differing opinions on posture and back pain should be enough to convince people not to take their posture more seriously in a post-pandemic world. My pain was so bad that I often curled up in pain and I suffered for months. People should pay more attention to their posture as we climb out of this terrible time. There’s no reason to risk feeling even worse one day in the future when we’re supposed to be feeling better. 

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

The post Is Back Pain the Next Epidemic? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: True Toll

In this month of March, the world is understandably somewhat reluctant to commemorate the second anniversary of the moment when the nations of the world unanimously declared COVID-19 a pandemic and began their largely concerted actions of lockdown. The story that unfolded afterward included a variety of traumatic episodes, including speculation about a diversity of possible preventive and curative treatments, sporadic outbreaks of revolt against enforced public policies and a scientifically successful campaign to produce effective vaccines. Despite their promise, the effectiveness of those vaccines nevertheless proved to be far from absolute.

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A group of over 100 public health, medical and epidemiology experts, after assessing the global results, has chosen this second anniversary to react and call into question the decisions taken by governments presumably capable of doing more. From the very early days, the scientific experts knew that, given the capacity of the coronavirus to mutate over time, any complication or holdup related to manufacturing and global distribution could undermine the entire logic of vaccines. They should have known that the biggest complication would come from a political and economic system that works according to principles that make it impervious to understanding the logic of a virus.

On March 9, the group of experts addressed a letter to the Biden administration to express their frustration with a situation that has evolved very slowly and largely inadequately outside the wealthy nations. This is not the first time concerned experts have urged “the administration to share Covid-19 vaccine technology and increase manufacturing around the world,” Politico . For the past two years, they have regularly been rebuffed, as governments preferred to pat themselves on the back for the short-term efforts they were making to protect their own populations, while creating the conditions that would allow the virus to mutate and gain strength elsewhere before returning to provoke new research and the promise of further commercial exploitation with boosters and new treatments.

Principles vs. Ideals

The experts should have realized by now that there is a principle at work that overrides every other scientific or medical consideration. It was established early on by the coterie established around Bill Gates, big pharma executives and other important influencers sharing their industrial mindset. It can all be traced back to the wisdom of Milton Friedman, who loved to repeat the slogan, “T���re’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The principle is self-explanatory: In a competitive world, the idea of sharing simply cannot compete with the idea of competing. If you can’t afford lunch, you’ll just have to go without eating. That works when the only outcome is seeing people starve. It doesn’t work when the effects of their starvation are somehow transmitted back to those who have a permanent place at the banquet.

US culture has cultivated the idea that life itself is a competitive race for advantage and the promotion of self-interest stands as the highest of virtues. Health like wealth must play by the rules of the competitive game. That same culture insists heavily on a form of discipline based on the idea of respecting “principles,” which it sometimes perversely confounds with “laws of nature.” The divinely ordained requirement to solve all problems through competition is a prominent one, but not the only one. 

The problem with such principles that are taken to be universal laws is that once you believe it is a law, you no longer need to reflect on its appropriateness or assess its very real effects. We are witnessing an example of it today in the Ukraine conflict. The United States has invoked the defense of the sacred principle of “sovereignty,” reformulated as the right of a nation to determine its own foreign policy, including the choice to join a distant empire. That may be a principle, but is it a law? Insisting on it instead of reflecting and debating the question has provoked a disastrous and increasingly out of control war that, like the COVID-19 pandemic, has already had severe unintended knock-on effects, wreaking havoc on the global economy as well as destruction in Ukraine itself. 

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Every culture must realize that its own principles may not be universally applicable, that they may not be perceived by others to have the status of laws. Any attempt to apply them as universal truths may cause immense human suffering. And that reveals the very dimension of the problem the health experts are pointing to. A potentially criminal complacency exists when the suffering caused by the inflexible application of the principle is directed toward others, at the same time when the purveyors of the principle are taking measures to protect their society and their environment. The principle of Ukraine’s sovereignty is already damaging not just Ukraine itself and now Russia, thanks to the application of the principle, but also Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which will be cut off from vital supplies of energy, food and fertilizer.

For the past two years, the concerted defense of the ideal of competition by the pharmaceutical companies in their supposed combat to defeat COVID-19 has clearly aggravated the effects of a pandemic that might have been contained if the idea of sharing had been elevated to the status of principle. But sharing doesn’t deserve to be regarded as a principle. For Americans, it is based on soft ideas like empathy and compassion rather than hard reasoning about what might be financially profitable.

Reflecting on two years of struggle, the group of experts noted “that the development of U.S. vaccines was largely successful, bringing protection to the public in record time,” Politico reports. That’s the good news. And now for the bad news: “But getting shots in arms in low- and middle-income countries has been a ‘failure.’”

Out for the Count

No precise statistics can account for the difference between the damage actually done by COVID-19 and what might have happened had governments effectively managed the global response in the earlier phases of the pandemic. “T��� true toll of this failure will never be known,” the experts explain, “but at this point almost surely includes tens of millions of avoidable cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid.”

The “true toll” they cite reminds us of John Donne’s on the bells rung for the dying in a time of plague. The poet and dean of St Paul’s affirmed that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Might we hope that 400 years after Donne wrote these words, pharmaceutical companies and politicians could, for once, take them to heart?

But there is yet another much more concrete  meaning of “toll,” as in “toll road.” It is the price humanity is expected to pay, in dollars and cents, to the pharmaceutical companies that have so diligently used their patents to protect their exclusive rights to exploit and enrich themselves thanks to the global potential for suffering of others.

The final and fundamentally political irony of this sad tale relates to the fact that to do what the experts insist needs doing requires “more funding from Congress.” At a time when prominent members of Congress have become obsessed by the threat of inflation, while at the same time unabashedly inflating military budgets and responding urgently to the “sacred” needs of NATO in times of peril, the likelihood that Congress might suddenly address a global problem it has avoided addressing for two years seems remote.

One of the experts, Gavin Yamey, suggests that COVID-19 “could follow the path of diseases like HIV or tuberculosis: become well controlled in wealthier countries but continue to wreak havoc in poorer nations.” Geopolitics in this increasingly inegalitarian world appears to be following a trend of domestic demographics in the US, marked by the separating of society itself into two groups: the denizens of gated communities and the rabble, everyone else out there.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The first is 1.2 trillion rand ($85 billion). It is the estimate of how much money has been lost to corruption. The government’s commission, chaired by Justice Ray Zondo, has been unearthing corruption on an industrial scale.

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Nelson Mandela himself pointed to this scourge back in 2001, when he : “Little did we suspect that our own people, when they got a chance, would be as corrupt as the apartheid regime. That is one of the things that has really hurt us.”

Yet the graft revealed by Zondo has been eyewatering. This is how The Washington Post the key finding: “[G]raft and mismanagement reached new heights during the 2009-2018 presidency of Jacob Zuma. While details remain murky, observers estimate that some 1.2 trillion rand ($85 billion) was plundered from government coffers during Zuma’s tenure.”

This is a sum that no middle-income country can afford to squander. Many hoped that President Cyril Ramaphosa could rectify the situation, but the glacial pace of his reforms has disappointed many who believed in him.

The other figure is 75%. It is the percentage of youths who are . While the ANC, and the well-connected elite that run the government, help themselves to taxpayers’ cash at will, the young languish without jobs.

Little surprise that the ANC’s appeal is fading. The party fewer than half all votes for the first time when the municipal elections were held in November last year.

Racial Classification in South Africa

Bad as this tale is, at least one could assure friends that state-enforced racial classification is a thing of the past. Gone is the notorious apartheid system that divided every man, woman and child into four racial : “African,” “Indian,” “colored,” “white.” One might have assumed that this madness was scrapped when white rule was eliminated in 1994 — or so one might have thought. Yet every South African is still racially classified by law.

Take one case. Anyone wanting to lease a state farm in August 2021 would be that: “Applicants must be Africans, Indians or Coloureds who are South African citizens. ‘Africans’ in this context includes persons from the first nations of South Africa.” No “white” South African — no matter how impoverished — would have the right to apply. Poverty is not a criterion; only race is considered. Even young men and women born years after the end of apartheid are excluded.

A complex system known as “broad-based black economic empowerment” (BBBEE) was introduced. Every South African is racially categorized and a system of incentives is applied across government and the private sector. White men face the greatest discrimination, African women the least.

Here is an example of how it in one sector. The Amended Marketing, Advertising and Communications Sector Code of 1 April 2016 specifies a black ownership “target of 45% (30% is reserved for black women ownership) which should be achieved as of 31 March 2018. The 45% black ownership target is higher than the 25% target of the Generic Code.” To win tenders or contracts, all enterprises must comply with the regulations.

Race Hate

At the same time, South Africa’s ethnic minorities face racial abuse and racial threats unchecked by the state. The radical populist Julius Malema made singing “Kill the Boers” a trademark of his rallies. In this context, the term “Boer,” or farmer, is about as toxic as the n-word is in the American South.

Malema is now on trial. Yet far from the state prosecuting him for stirring up race hate (a crime in South Africa), it was to an Afrikaans trade union to take him to court. Asked whether he would call for whites to be killed, all Malema say was that, “we are not calling for the slaughtering of white people … at least for now.”

The trial has had to be postponed because the prosecutor was so fearful of being ladled a “racist” for bringing the case that she .

Nor are whites Malema’s only target. Malema has South African “Indians” as an ethnic group, accusing them of failing to treat their African employees fairly. “Indians are worse than Afrikaners,” he in 2017. In another context, he to Indians as “coolies” — possibly the most derogatory term he might have used.  Yet the state fails to prosecute him.

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One final example. When President Ramaphosa was asked to pick the country’s next chief justice, the public some 500 names. The final four were Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, President of the Supreme Court of Appeal Mandisa Maya, Gauteng Judge President Dunstan Mlambo, and Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. All are fine legal minds. Not one of them is from among the country’s ethnic minorities.

This, despite the fact that some of the most eminent lawyers South Africa ever produced, who fought racial discrimination for years were not African. Men like George Bizos, Joel Joffe, Sydney Kentridge, Ismail Ayob, Edwin Cameron and Bram Fischer would probably not be selected today. Even Arthur Chaskalson, who defended the ANC at the Rivonia trial of 1963 and was chief justice of South Africa from 2001 to 2005, would probably be excluded.

Fighting Back

Glen Snyman — himself a “colored” or a mixed-race South African — has founded People Against Racial Classification to campaign against discrimination. “T��� government and private sector should deliver to all South Africans equally and not discriminate on identity,” he .

But racial classification has its supporters. Kganki Matabane, who heads the Black Business Council, that even though “democratic rule is nearly 27 years old, it is still too soon to ditch the old categories,” the BBC reports. “We need to ask: Have we managed to correct those imbalances? If we have not, which is the case — if you look at the top 100 Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies, 75% or more of the CEOs are white males — then we have to continue with them.”

The ANC’s most celebrated document was the Freedom Charter of 1955. It was the statement of core principles of the ANC and its allies and memorably promised that: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.” With South Africa’s ethnic minorities continuing to face racial discrimination and exclusion from top jobs in government and even in the private sector, it is a promise more honored in the breach than the observance.

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

The post South Africa’s Enforced Race Classification Mirrors Apartheid appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the context of the Russian invasion, the post-2014 Ukrainian government’s problematic relationship with extreme right-wing parties and neo-Nazi groups has become an incendiary element on both sides of the propaganda war, with Russia exaggerating it as a pretext for war and the West trying to sweep it under the rug. 

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The reality behind the propaganda is that the West and its Ukrainian allies have opportunistically exploited and empowered the extreme right in Ukraine, first to pull off a coup amidst anti-government protests in 2014 and then by redirecting it to fight separatists in eastern Ukraine. And far from “denazifying” Ukraine, the Russian invasion is likely to further empower Ukrainian and international neo-Nazis, as the conflict attracts from around the world and provides them with weapons, military training and the combat experience that many of them are hungry for.

The Extreme Right in Ukraine

Ukraine’s extreme right-wing Svoboda party and its founders, Oleh Tyahnybok and Andriy Parubiy, played leading roles in the US-backed coup in February 2014. During an infamously leaked conversation before the Ukrainian government’s ouster, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt mentioned Tyahnybok as one of the leaders they were working with, even as they tried to exclude him from an official position in the new government. 

At that time, previously peaceful protests in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, gave way to pitched battles with police and armed marches to try to break through barricades and reach parliament. Members of Svoboda and the newly-formed Right Sector militia, led by Dmytro Yarosh, battled officers, marches and raided a police armory for weapons. By mid-February 2014, these men with guns were the de facto leaders of the Maidan protests.

We will never know what kind of political transition peaceful protests alone would have led to in Ukraine or how different the new government would have been if a peaceful process had been allowed to take its course, without interference by the US or violent right-wing extremists. But it was Yarosh who took to the in the Maidan and the February 21 agreement negotiated by European foreign ministers, under which then-President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition political leaders agreed to hold new later that year. Instead, Yarosh and the Right Sector refused to disarm and led the climactic march on parliament that the government.

Ukrainian Leaders

Since 1991, Ukrainian elections had swung back and forth between leaders like Yanukovych, who is from Donetsk and had close ties with Russia, and Western-backed leaders like Viktor Yushchenko, who was elected in 2005 after the Orange Revolution that followed a disputed election. Ukraine’s endemic corruption tainted every government, and public disillusionment with whichever leader and party won power led to a see-saw between Western and Russian-aligned factions.

In 2014, Nuland and the US State Department got their favorite, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, installed as prime minister of the new government. He lasted two years, until he, too, lost his job due to endless corruption . Petro Poroshenko, the new president, lasted a bit longer, until 2019, even after his personal tax evasion schemes were exposed in the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers.

When Yatsenyuk became prime minister, he rewarded Svoboda’s role in the coup with three cabinet , including Oleksander Sych as deputy prime minister, and governorships of three of Ukraine’s 25 provinces. Andriy Parubiy — who founded the fascist that went on to become Svoboda — was appointed chairman of parliament, a post he held for the next five years. Tyahnybok ran for president in 2014, but he only got 1.2% of the votes and was not reelected to parliament.

Ukrainian voters turned their backs on the extreme right in the 2014 elections, reducing Svoboda’s 10.4% share of the national vote in 2012 to 4.7%. Svoboda lost support in areas where it held control of local governments but had failed to live up to its promises, and its support was split now that it was no longer the only party running on explicitly anti-Russian slogans and rhetoric.

Azov Battalion

After Yanukovich was toppled, the Right Sector helped to consolidate the new order by attacking and breaking up anti-coup protests, in what Yarosh to Newsweek as a war to “cleanse the country” of pro-Russian protesters. This campaign climaxed on May 2, 2014, with the massacre of 42 protesters in a fiery , after they took shelter from Right Sector attackers in the Trades Unions House in Odessa.

After protests evolved into declarations of independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas in the east, the extreme right in Ukraine shifted gear to full-scale armed combat. The Ukrainian military had little enthusiasm for fighting its own people, so the government formed new National Guard units to do so. The Right Sector formed a unit, and neo-Nazis also dominated the, which was by Andriy Biletsky, an avowed white supremacist who claimed that Ukraine’s national was to rid the country of Jews and other inferior races. It was the Azov Battalion, which was into the National Guard in 2014, that led the new government’s assault on the self-declared republics in eastern Ukraine and retook the city of Mariupol from separatist forces. 

The Minsk II agreement in 2015 ended the worst fighting and set up a buffer zone around the breakaway republics of Donbas, but a low-intensity civil war continued. An estimated 14,000 have been killed since 2014.

US Representative Ro Khanna and progressive members of Congress for several years to end military aid to the Azov Battalion. In September 2017, the House amended the Defense Appropriations Act to ban military aid to the militia, but it is not how effective it ban has been. Since the Azov Battalion is fully integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces, it would take targeted efforts by US forces in Ukraine to ensure it does not receive the same weapons and support as other units. Today, in the midst of a war and a huge influx of US military aid, that would seem to be almost impossible.

In 2019, the Soufan Center, which tracks terrorist and extremist groups around the world, , “T��� Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist network… [Its] aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov Battalion’s overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.”&�Բ�����;The center described how the Azov Battalion’s “aggressive networking” reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others. 

Violent foreign extremists with links to Azov include Brenton Tarrant, who massacred 51 worshippers at a mosque in Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, and several members of the US Rise Above Movement who were prosecuted for attacking counter-protesters at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. Other Azov veterans have returned to Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the UK and other countries, according to the Soufan Center.   

Despite Svoboda’s declining success in national elections, neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist groups linked to the Azov Battalion have maintained power on the street in Ukraine and in local politics in the nationalist heartland around Lviv, a city in the west of the country. After President Volodymyr Zelensky’s election in 2019, the extreme right allegedly him with removal from office, or even death, if he negotiated with separatist leaders from Donbas and followed through on the Minsk Protocol. Zelensky ran for election as a peace candidate, but under threat from the right, he to even talk to Donbas representatives, whom he dismissed as terrorists.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, the United States reversed Barack Obama’s ban on weapons sales to Ukraine. Zelensky’s aggressive rhetoric raised new fears in Donbas and Russia that he was building up Ukraine’s forces for a new offensive to retake Donetsk and Luhansk from separatists.  

Neoliberalism in Ukraine

The civil war in eastern Ukraine, combined with the government’s neoliberal economic policies, created fertile ground for the extreme right. The new government imposed more of the same neoliberal “shock therapy” that was imposed throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s. In 2015, Ukraine a $40-billion IMF bailout. Part of the deal, Tony Wood in an article for the N+1 website, would include privatizing state-owned enterprises, reducing public sector employment by 20%, cutting health-care benefits and cutting investment in public education.

Coupled with Ukraine’s endemic corruption, these policies led to the profitable looting of state assets by the corrupt ruling class and to falling living standards and austerity measures for everybody else. The post-2014 government upheld Poland as its model, but the reality was closer to Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s. Ukraine’s GDP plummeted between 2012 and 2016, making it the poorest country in Europe.

As elsewhere, the failures of neoliberalism have fueled the rise of right-wing extremism and racism. Now, the war with Russia promises to provide thousands of alienated young from around the world with military training and combat experience, which they can then take home to terrorize their own countries.

The Soufan Center has the Azov Battalion’s international networking strategy to that of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. US and NATO support for the Azov Battalion poses similar risks as their for al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria 10 years ago. Those chickens quickly came home to roost, of course.

Right now, Ukrainians are united in their resistance to ��ܲ�������’s invasion. But we should not be surprised when the Western alliance with extreme right-wing proxy forces in Ukraine, including the infusion of billions of dollars in sophisticated weapons, results in similarly violent and destructive blowback.

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

The post The Presence of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 10: Sacred Obligation

Sometimes official language and even reporting in the media hides more of the truth than it reveals. This is especially true in times of armed conflict. To highlight the gap between the official narrative and other possible interpretations of events, we have crafted an imaginary scene between two entirely fictional characters. 

One of the characters is obviously familiar with a by US President Joe Biden made in 2021: “NATO is Article Five, and you take it as a sacred obligation.”&�Բ�����;

FADE IN:

INT/EXT. Washington Bar — NIGHT

Two men standing at a bar. One is the journalist, Lee Matthews. The other is the State Department spokesman, Ed Costa.

LEE MATTHEWS: Thank you for agreeing to a private conversation outside of any official context.

ED COSTA: Yeah, it’ll do both of us good to have a frank conversation, for once. You know, it’s all about respecting the truth, not always an easy thing to do in our jobs. But just to be clear, none of this is on the record.

LEE MATTHEWS: Trust me. I’m just trying to get a handle on a rather complex situation. After all, I can’t always be sure that what you say officially is always the unvarnished truth.

ED COSTA: Well, we told you Putin would invade Ukraine and even announced the approximate date. We may have been off by a week or so, but it happened exactly as we predicted. This isn’t another case of Saddam’s WMD.

LEE MATTHEWS: I grant you that. And I admit it sounded incredible when you guys started insisting that you knew for sure the Russians would invade. Some of us thought it was just Putin bluffing.

ED COSTA: Come on, you didn’t trust us. Now you know we would never lie to you. And, hey, you have to hand it to our intelligence services. Now that I think of it, you owe me and the intelligence community an apology for doubting our word.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, if you remember correctly, what I openly doubted was when you said there would be a false flag operation to justify the invasion. That never happened.

ED COSTA: Well, it could have happened, but the result is the same. We got the invasion right.

LEE MATTHEWS: But you promised us a false flag. Instead of that, we watched Putin sitting in front of a TV camera and rattling off a litany of historical reasons explaining why he felt compelled to mount an operation of denazification.

ED COSTA: Well, all that history was fake news, wasn’t it? Fake news, false flag, what’s the difference?

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, some of the history he cited made sense, at least to the Russian people, and nobody in DC wants to acknowledge it. We in the media couldn’t follow all the details, but shouldn’t you guys have been aware of both the reasoning and the motivation it represented?

ED COSTA: We were aware. As you saw, we predicted the invasion.

LEE MATTHEWS: Actually, you guys told us that by predicting the invasion and announcing it publicly beforehand, that would prevent Putin from invading. So, you were wrong about that.

ED COSTA: Who can predict what Putin would do?

LEE MATTHEWS: I thought that’s part of the intelligence community’s job, anticipating the enemy’s reaction.

ED COSTA: Well, yeah, we thought that might happen.

LEE MATTHEWS: Given the catastrophe that is now taking place for the Ukrainian people, whose suffering is likely to continue and most likely get worse, don’t you think that strategy of trying to prevent an invasion and failing to do so was a costly mistake?

ED COSTA: It will be costly for the Russians, thanks to the measures we’re taking in the form of sanctions.

LEE MATTHEWS: But it has been very costly for the Ukrainians, on whose behalf you guys are doing all this. And it is beginning to have tragic consequences everywhere, even in the US and obviously in Europe, which is to say, the populations covered by NATO. Couldn’t you have prevented the war by taking seriously �ʳܳپ���’s complaints about NATO and working something out? I mean, like anything? War is a pretty serious business.

ED COSTA: NATO is sacred, as is Ukraine’s sovereignty. So, there’s some suffering. There’s a principle to defend. And how can you negotiate with a madman?

LEE MATTHEWS: If I take you literally when you say NATO is sacred, this sounds like a holy war. A lot of American experts, from the late George Kennan to John Mearsheimer today — guys you’ve read and studied — they took �ʳܳپ���’s reasoning about national security seriously. And they certainly didn’t view NATO as sacred.

ED COSTA: Sorry, when I said NATO was sacred, I meant it is necessary because, thanks to it, things have been pretty peaceful in Europe until Putin made his move. All its members are happy with NATO. So, we see no reason why that happiness shouldn’t be shared. Spread it as far as possible. And, as you know, Ukraine asked to share that happiness.

LEE MATTHEWS: Well, didn’t Bush push that idea before anyone in Ukraine thought of it? In any case, isn’t the whole NATO question the factor that provoked the invasion and started a war that NATO seems helpless to address?

ED COSTA: As all your colleagues in the media have been repeating — and I’ll ask you to do the same — this is an unprovoked war. Repeat after me. This is an unprovoked war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying the Russians are wrong to see the expansion of NATO and the US supplying weapons to nations that border Russia as a provocation?

ED COSTA: Of course, they’re wrong. How could a country that once allowed itself to be dominated by communists be right? NATO exists only for peace. That’s what aircraft, tanks, missiles and nuclear bombs are all about. They’re so frightening, no one would ever dare use them. Everybody knows that. What we’ve been expanding is peace, not war.

LEE MATTHEWS: Are you saying that the war currently raging in Ukraine should be seen as an example of peace?

ED COSTA: Hey, the US isn’t at war with Russia. NATO isn’t at war with Russia. We’re just helping things along, to protect the innocent. When this blows over and Russia sees how we have been able to cripple their economy, we will all be at peace again.

LEE MATTHEWS: Why then is Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy begging the US to join the war?

ED COSTA: You know these Slavic politicians. (LAUGHS) It’s probably a cultural thing. They get overexcited about nothing and hallucinate that we’re up to some devious games. They begin to imagine that we aren’t there for one simple reason: to ensure their safety and future prosperity. That’s the permanent mission of NATO and, of course, the eternal mission of our exceptional nation, the United States.

LEE MATTHEWS: So, tell me, what is the exact date the intelligence community has predicted for Biden’s victory speech on a Black Sea aircraft carrier in full military garb?

ED COSTA: Hey, we can’t predict everything.

LEE MATTHEWS: I’ll say. And I expect there are a few Ukrainians who now agree. 

DISCLAIMER: This dialogue is entirely fictional. Despite some superficial similarity, the names Ed Costa and Lee Matthews are not meant to refer to real people such as Ned Price and Matt Lee.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post A Fictional Debate Between a Biden Administration Spokesman and a Journalist appeared first on 51�Թ�.

25 Years On, The Dayton Peace Agreement Is a Ticking Time Bomb

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The Russian president has already  numerous official consultations with Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the latest one taking place in December 2021. During his  consecutive meeting with Putin in the midst of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, Dodik shared his unequivocal affiliation with Moscow, saying: “Naturally, there is no question that we support Russia. We may be a small and modest community, but our voice is loud.” As ��ܲ�������’s current military intervention progressed in Ukraine, Dodik also  to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the “implementation of agreements” reached during the last meeting with Putin.  

�ʳܳپ���’s Proxy in Bosnia

In the quarter of a century since the signing of the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been the site of occasional political crises but has never come close to military conflict. In recent months, however, Dodik has doubled down on his efforts to tear apart the postwar constitutional order of the country’s two constitutive entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Emboldened by the resurrection of ��ܲ�������’s power, he pressed ahead with his nationalist political agenda aimed at dismantling institutional arrangements that have gradually restored peace and security over the last 25 years. As a result, Dodik was blacklisted by the US government in January this year.

In December 2021, lawmakers loyal to Dodik advanced their secession bid and voted  in favor of starting a procedure for Republika Srpska to withdraw from central government mechanisms such as common defense, judiciary and intelligence, to name a few. They have also decided that within , the government in Banja Luka must recreate its own legislation governing such institutions. 

To show it means business, Republika Srpska paraded paramilitary forces on January 9 in a nationalist celebration declared illegal by the constitutional court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; among the participants were the Night Wolves, a black-uniformed group of Russian nationalist pro-Kremlin bikers. On February 10, Republika Srpska’s national assembly adopted the draft version of a law to create a separate judicial system from the rest of the state. Regarding his future plans, Dodik  he won’t be daunted by opposition from the Western centers of power, suggesting that Moscow and Beijing will help if the West imposes sanctions. 

Notwithstanding ��ܲ�������’s local proxy, fanning existing flames in Bosnia and Herzegovina could be a rational adventure from �ʳܳپ���’s viewpoint for additional reasons. First, Serbian and Turkish reactions could fit the wider Russian agenda if this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state takes a turning point. 

Second, Putin is aware of the EU’s record of conflict management in ex-Yugoslavia, and Bosnia in particular, in the early 1990s. It failed miserably to secure the peace in the heart of Europe, when the EU was a rising star and Russia was at its weakest point. Third, extending the current  peace mission in Bosnia may be vetoed by Russia at the UN Security Council in November. 

It is worth remembering that Bosnia and Herzegovina doesn’t have NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense guarantee to fall back on, and that President Joe Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO is meaningless for Sarajevo. Washington’s official position on protecting the parameters of the Dayton Agreement is as vague as its strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.  

Serbia and Turkey in the Bosnian Theater

President Putin has many good reasons to count on Serbia to exploit Bosnia and Herzegovina‘s internal weakness. Belgrade largely relies on Russian weaponry and strong nationalist sentiments with the secessionist movement in Republika Srpska. Serbia’s national defense , officially promoted in late 2019, transcends national boundaries in its content, marking a shift from defensive sovereignty to a more offensive approach. 

Serbia’s home minister, Aleksandar Vulin, the former defense minister who officially promoted this strategy, often exudes self-congratulatory confidence that the Western Balkans region is there for Serbia’s taking. At the ruling Serbian Progressive Party congress in July last year that took place a few months before the joint Serbian-Russian “Slavic Shield” military exercise, Vulin forcefully  that “Creating the Serbian World, where the Serbs would live and be united, is the task of this generation of politicians.”

Serbia has also accelerated military spending at a faster rate for several years now for no rational reason except regional supremacy. According to , its current defense budget is almost twice that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo combined. Serbia’s reliance on Russian and Chinese military support has also been reinforced. In 2019, it received donations of fighter jets, tanks and armored vehicles from Russia. In 2020, it  CH92-A drones and FK-3 surface-to-air missiles from China and then , at �ʳܳپ���’s suggestion, the Pantsir S-1 air defense system. 

It is critical to understand why Serbia is arming so fast: From a realist perspective, its behavior could only become assertive, and more so if ��ܲ�������’s military intervention in Ukraine succeeds.

Turkey is probably the second regional contender to be caught in the Bosnian fire for both domestic and external factors. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara has been projecting soft power throughout the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relying on historical, cultural and economic ties. Turkey has also actively participated in all three peacebuilding missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina: IFOR (1995-97), SFOR (1997-2004) and is currently among EUFOR’s 20 contributing countries. 

However, in case of conflict, Ankara represents an imraportant geopolitical substitute should EUFOR abandon its commitments or if Russia vetoes its mandate at the Security Council. Western powers have for far too long watched from the sidelines and have practically allowed this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state to take root. Hence, Turkey won’t shy away from using its military clout in the region.

The conventional logic of Turkish enmity with Serbia sets Ankara and Moscow on a collision course because Vladimir Putin perceives Republika Srpska and Serbia as natural, historic and strategic allies. However, Russia would not necessarily oppose a Turkish role in the Balkans as long as Ankara’s move triggers some cracks within the Euro-Atlantic alliance. It also seems plausible for Turkey and Russia — historically perceived as brothers by the two confronting parties in the Bosnian theater — to test their mediating capacity modeled after the Astana format launched after the Russian and Turkish interventions in Syria. 

Given their animosity with Russia or Turkey, some European powers would expectedly oppose their interference in Bosnia and Herzegovina on geopolitical grounds, while the more liberal ones will raise ideological concerns. Speaking on the subject of the priorities of the French presidency of the EU that began on January 1, President Emmanuel Macron  that the Western Balkans “is going through new tensions today. History is coming back. Sometimes tragedy is coming back.”&�Բ�����;

Macron also insisted on the “very special responsibility” toward these countries in terms of fighting external interference. What Macron fears is that extra-regional actors like Russia or Turkey could fill the vacuum, in which case power relations would inevitably become subject to reconfiguration. This scenario is not unfeasible as Russia does not project power in the Balkans for the sake of challenging Turkish interests in the first place. Its prime goal is to replace the existing US-led liberal, institutional and rules-based order with a more anarchic, illiberal and multipolar structure that fits ��ܲ�������’s image. 

A Slippery Slope for the EU and US

At first sight, a local collision in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear a striking resemblance to what transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14. Without full integration into the EU or NATO, Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a vulnerable target, just like Ukraine has proven to be. Bosnia and Herzegovina is also divided along similar geopolitical and domestic lines, between pro-NATO aspirations in Sarajevo and anti-NATO tendencies in Banja Luka. 

However, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s instability is far more complex than the crisis in Ukraine for one structural reason: It is not in ��ܲ�������’s near abroad but in the European underbelly, which presents both an opportunity and a threat for all opposing sides at the local, regional and international level.

The EU has for some time failed to find a unified response to the Bosnian crisis, let alone taking concrete measures, except increasing EUFOR mission by an additional 500 troops. While some founding member states, including Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, urged sanctions against Milorad Dodik during a recent EU foreign ministers’ debate, newer members like Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia oppose them. In fact, some European populist leaders have been staunch supporters of the Russian proxy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic stated recently that he was  the EU imposing sanctions against Dodik, saying that “If someone from Croatia votes for those sanctions, for me they will be a traitor.” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban  €100 million ($110 million) in financial aid to Republika Srpska. Orban also opposed placing EU sanctions on Dodik, signaling an early warning that the EU, as a whole, may be unable to secure a peaceful Bosnia and Herzegovina, which again resonates with the EU’s poor historical record of conflict management in the region.

Hence, one should not exclude a possibility that EUFOR troops could be evacuated from Bosnia and Herzegovina one day altogether, much in the same way the Dutch UNPROFOR battalion was pulled from Srebrenica in July 1995, failing to prevent the Srebrenica genocide from taking place and making a mockery of UN resolutions on safe heavens. Should there be a prospect for this failure being repeated, the EU might decide to pass the buck on to Washington.

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In that case, small-nation turmoil and squabbles among Balkan nations could transform into a great-power rivalry. Will President Biden accept that call given his unreadiness for direct confrontation with Moscow? The US would face a choice between realist logic, which is to revert European security to Europeans, or a more liberal and interventionist approach, which is to prevent ��ܲ�������’s unchecked incursion toward NATO’s eastern border. 

There is still time for the US to deflate Republika Srpska’s rebellion and put it back in the political arena. Former Bosnian presidency member Haris Silajdzic recently placing a small NATO brigade in Brcko, the site of fierce battles during the wars of the 1990s, and a few battalions on the Bosnia and Herzegovina-Serbian border. If the US passes the buck back to the EU — which Russia and Serbia will celebrate — the West needs to fasten its seatbelts and brace for impact. More so than the war in Ukraine, a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has the capacity to trigger a regrettable European history.

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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The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

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The Forbes article, an excerpt from Bourla’s book, “Moonshot,” ends with a moving story about how Pfizer boldly resisted the pressure of the evil Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who had no qualms about depriving the rest of the world — even civilized countries such as Canada and Japan — of access to the COVID-19 vaccine to serve the US in their stead.

“He insisted,” the good doctor explains, “that the U.S. should take its additional 100 doses before we sent doses to anyone else from our Kalamazoo plant. He reminded me that he represented the government, and they could ‘take measures’ to enforce their will.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Take measures:

Go well beyond any measured response in an act of intimidation

Contextual Note

Bourla begins his narrative at the beginning, before the development of the vaccine, by asserting his company’s virtuous intentions and ethical credentials that would later be challenged by bureaucrats and venal politicians. “Vaccine equity was one of our principles from the start,” he writes. “Vaccine diplomacy, the idea of using vaccines as a bargaining chip, was not and never has been.”

Some readers may note that vaccine equity was only “one” of the principles. There were, of course, other more dominant ones, such as maximizing profit. But Bourla never mentions these other principles, instead offering a step-by-step narrative meant to make the reader believe that his focus was on minimizing profit. That, after all, is what a world afflicted by a raging and deadly pandemic might expect. A closer examination of the process Bourla describes as well as the very real statistics about vaccine distribution reveals that, on the contrary, Pfizer would never even consider minimizing profits. It simply is not in their DNA.

Bourla proudly describes the phases of his virtuous thinking. The CEO even self-celebrates his out-of-the-ordinary sense of marketing, serving to burnish the image not only of his company but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. “We had a chance,” he boasts, “to gain back our industry’s reputation, which had been under fire for the last two decades. In the U.S., pharmaceuticals ranked near the bottom of all sectors, right next to the government, in terms of reputation.”

Thanks to his capacity to tone down his company’s instinctive corporate greed, Bourla now feels he has silenced his firm’s if not the entire industry’s critics when he makes this claim, “No one could say that we were using the pandemic as an opportunity to set prices at unusually high levels.” Some might, nevertheless, make the justifiable claim that what they did was set the prices at “usually” high levels. A close look at Bourla’s description of how the pricing decisions were made makes it clear that Pfizer never veered from seeking “high levels,” whether usual or unusual, during a pandemic that required as speedy and universal a response as possible.

Thanks to a subtle fudge on vocabulary, Bourla turns Pfizer’s vice into a virtue. He writes that when considering the calculation of the price Pfizer might charge per dose, he rejected the standard approach that was based on a savant calculation of the costs to patients theoretically saved by the drug. He explains the “different approach” he recommended. “I told the team to bring me the current cost of other cutting-edge vaccines like for measles, shingles, pneumonia, etc.” But it was the price and not the cost he was comparing. When his team reported prices of “between $150 and $200 per dose,” he agreed “to match the low end of the existing vaccine prices.”

If Pfizer was reasoning, as most industries do, in terms of cost and not price, he would be calculating all the costs related to producing the doses required by the marketplace — in this case billions — and would have worked out the price on the basis of fixed costs, production and marketing costs plus margin. That would be the reasonable thing to do in the case of a pandemic, where his business can be compared to a public service and for which there is both a captive marketplace (all of humanity shares the need) and in which sales are based entirely on advanced purchase orders. That theoretically reduces marketing costs to zero.

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But Bourla wrote the book to paint Pfizer as a public benefactor and himself as a modern Gaius Maecenas, the patron saint of patrons. Once his narrative establishes his commitment to the cause of human health and the renunciation of greed, he goes into detail about his encounter with Kushner. After wrangling with the bureaucrats at Operation Warp Speed created to meet the needs of the population during a pandemic, Bourla recounts the moment “when President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called me to resolve the issue.” That is when Kushner, like any good mafia boss, evokes his intent to “take measures,” a threat the brave Bourla resists in the name of the health of humanity and personal honor.

That leads to the heartwarming, honor-saving denouement, the happy ending that Bourla calls a miracle. “Thankfully, our manufacturing team continued to work miracles, and I received an improved manufacturing schedule that would allow us to provide the additional doses to the U.S. from April to July without cutting the supply to the other countries.”

Historical Note

Investopedia up the reasoning of pharmaceuticals when pricing their drugs: “Ultimately, the main objective of pharmaceutical companies when pricing drugs is to generate the most revenue.” In the history of Western pharmacy, that has not always been the case. Until the creation of the pharmaceutical industrial sector in the late 19^th century, apothecaries, chemists and druggists worked in their communities to earn a living and like most artisans calculated their costs and their capacity for profit.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, permitting large-scale investment in research and development that would have been impossible in an earlier age. But it also introduced the profit motive as the main driver of industrial strategy. What that meant is what we can see today. Pharmaceutical companies have become, as Albert Bourla himself notes, “ranked near the bottom of all sectors.” They exist for one reason: to make and accumulate profit. Industrial strategies often seek to prolong or extend a need for drugs rather than facilitate cures. Advising a company, Goldman Sachs famously asked, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The implied answer was “no.” The greatest fear of the commercial health industry is of a cure that “exhaust[s] the available pool of treatable patients.”

In any case, COVID-19 has served Pfizer handsomely and is continuing to do so. In late 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance “that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.” Furthermore, they “have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 “project,” Bourla boasts, “I had made clear that return on investment should not be of any consideration” while patting himself on the back for focusing on the needs of the world. “In my mind, fairness had to come first.” With the results now in, he got his massive return on investment, while the world got two years and counting of a prolonged pandemic that will continue making a profit for Pfizer. At least he had the satisfaction of putting the ignoble Jared Kushner in his place.

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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What England’s Premier League Did for Football

I have no idea whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is familiar with Ferguson’s motivational strategies nor whether he has even heard of him (though I suspect he has). Yet they are improbable kindred spirits. Putin seems to share with Ferguson a defensive or paranoid attitude predicated on the conviction that they are surrounded by enemies. It’s possible to imagine Putin addressing his aides with the kind of blistering, expletive-fueled tirade that used to be known in football circles as the hairdryer treatment. 

Sweeping Russophobia 

The siege mentality that was integral to Ferguson’s success is easy for Putin: The rest of the world actually is against him and his subjects. I’ll exclude Belarus (and, for the time being, China), but pretty much everywhere else has decided that the seemingly obsessive Putin is leading his country maniacally toward self-destruction, probably taking a good portion of the rest of the world along for the ride.

Let me define Russophobia as a strong and irrational dislike of Russia and all things Russian, especially the political system of the former Soviet Union as well as its current leader. In Ukraine, ruling parties have pursued a nationalist Russophobic agenda at least since 2018. The sharp increase in worldwide Russophobia since the invasion — or liberation, depending on your perspective — of Ukraine is unprecedented, at least in my experience. 

The collective punishment of all Russians, whatever their status, affiliation or political outlook for what appears to be �ʳܳپ���’s war, is going to have effects, an unintended one being that it will probably encourage national solidarity in Russia. It’s unlikely to turn people against the man in the Kremlin and is much more likely to encourage the kind of paranoid mentality that would make Sir Alex envious.

Russian oligarchs, like Chelsea Football Club’s owner (for the time being) Roman Abramovich, will no doubt be angry, particularly at having to dispose of his £150 million London home. But they are not going to renounce Putin: A new home like the one , ��ܲ�������’s former oil tycoon, was given at the YaG-14/10 penal colony in Siberia for 10 years might await.

Consumer brands such as  have pulled out of Russia, followed by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. Sales of certain Russian vodkas outside Russia have stopped. The broadcaster RT has been removed from British, American and other platforms, presumably to protect guileless viewers becoming brainwashed by �ʳܳپ���’s propaganda.

Sports Boycott

The Russophobic blizzard has swept into sport too. Football’s governing organization FIFA has  Russia from international games, thus eliminating the country from the forthcoming World Cup (Russia is currently  this). The  (IOC) has recommended to sports organizations that they deny the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes, even as representatives of the Russian Olympic Team or any other spurious denomination. 

Formula 1 has terminated its contract with the Russian Grand Prix. The International Paralympic Committee has banned Russians from the Winter Olympics (again subject to .) A full-scale sports boycott of Russia is in the air, probably affecting all athletes, even professional tennis players like Daniil Medvedev, who currently lives in Monaco. The question is, will the sports boycott and other prohibitions actually hasten a cease to the hostilities in Ukraine or will they instead have a paradoxical effect?

The only comparable precedent we have is in South Africa under apartheid. The IOC withdrew its invitation to South Africa to the 1964 Summer Olympics when the country’s interior minister Jan de Klerk insisted that the national team would not be integrated. It would, he said, reflect the segregation of South African society — in other words, the team would be white. Other sports followed the IOC’s example until, in 1977, the embargo was enshrined formally in the , which effectively turned South Africa into a sports outcast. 

Countries that kept their sporting links with South Africa were themselves ostracized, or blacklisted, as it was known. Individual athletes were forced to compete outside South Africa. Zola Budd and Sydney Maree were notable examples, Budd moving to the UK, Maree to the US. The boycott was eventually removed when apartheid fell in 1990, its total disappearance celebrated in the 1995 Rugby World Cup that which took place in South Africa and was won by an ethnically diverse home team.

We often look back and think the much-publicized sports boycott was a determining factor in ending apartheid, and it’s satisfying to imagine that the fusion of sport and politics produced a joyous and wonderful culmination. Certainly, the sports prohibition was an awareness-raiser and effectively signaled the rest of the world’s abhorrence of constitutional racism. 

But it dragged on over two decades and there is, inconveniently, no conclusive evidence that it had any impact on President F. W. de Klerk’s decision to lift the ban on the African National Congress and other black liberation parties, allowing freedom of the media and releasing political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after 27 years, on February 11, 1990. 

Money And Morals 

The sports boycott embarrassed South Africa as the current cold-shoulder will embarrass Russia. It may also have also have persuaded South Africans, in particular white South Africans, that their prolonged period of misfortune was the result of the antipathy of the outside world. That is probably what will happen in Russia. Citizens will be exasperated when their access to consumables is strangled and they can’t use credit cards to purchase whatever products are left. They’ll probably resent being restricted to Russians-only sport. 

But it won’t make a scrap of difference to the wider conflict and might in fact strengthen the resolve of the Russian people. This is not the narrative we are offered by the media, of course. 

The longer Russia is starved of international sport, the more credible the siege theory will become. In any case, the boycott will be fractured. Money often strains morals, especially in professional sports. For all the proscriptions and threats of blacklisting, South Africa was still able to offer enough filthy lucre to attract world-class cricketers, including , footballers such as , boxers like  and other athletes. Even the African American promoter, Don King, a staunch critic of apartheid, had agreements with South African boxing, by The New York Times in 1984. 

The same will happen in Russia. If it prevails in Ukraine, the probability is that there will be some form of state under the full or partial political control of Moscow, meaning no softening on the various debarments. The sports boycott will expand. This will leave major sports organizations with a new question: Do they recognize Ukraine as an independent sporting nation as it has been since 1991, or as a Russian colony, dependency or protectorate? Ukrainian athletes so far haven’t been excluded from international competitions. If they were, the cruelty would be redoubled. It would be a repugnant collision of injustices. 

Perhaps justice would be better served if the block on Russian sport were lifted. I know this sounds counterintuitive and might appear to reward, or at least accept, an aggressive act. But I take counsel from the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. An action, no matter how heinous, is never a justification for wrongful behavior.

Many readers will not interpret a sports boycott as wrongful behavior, merely a reaction to provocation. Perhaps. But it would be foolish to hyperbolize the importance of sport; obviously it is not as serious as war, or a million other things. So, why hurt people who are not responsible for the original sin? Anyway, in a practical sense, it would serve to show that while the leadership in Moscow may indeed be execrated, the 144 million Russian people are not.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of .]

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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Is Ukraine Likely to Join the EU Any Time Soon?

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The inclination will be to put China in the same basket as Russia, even if China is still being cautious about its next steps. Many other countries will be pushed to choose. One country, Turkey, will soon face difficult choices, since balancing acts may not be enough this time around.

A Tough Balance Between the West and Russia

Turkey has been trying to  and balance its alliances between the West and others for a long time now. Turkey is a NATO member that possesses Russian anti-aircraft missile systems, namely the S-400. This purchase not only led to CAATSA sanctions by the United States — which was a first against a NATO ally — but also the removal of the country from the F-35 program.

These measures did not hinder Turkey’s special relationship with Russia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan always maintained personal relations with his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin. Even when they were at opposite ends of the theater of power — in Syria or Nagorno-Karabakh, for example — they kept talking. This did not change even after Turkey shot down a Russian plane in November 2015. Turkey’s dependence on Russian gas and tourism has also been a reason for their continued dialogue. Turkey also awarded the construction of its nuclear power plant — the  — to Russia.

Today, Turkey is staying out of the sanctions schemes of the European Union and NATO. It has also tried juggling the Ukrainian demand to close the Turkish Straits to Russian warships — even if the Montreux Convention upholds the demand. Turkey that the Russian attack “is a grave violation of international law and poses a serious threat to the security of our region and the world.” It has hesitated, however, to move beyond that declaration. When the pressure mounted — masterfully and publicly by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — and other actors continued to announce historic decisions one after the other, Turkey had to make a  on the Straits.

It is important to remember that Turkey has also sold drones to Ukraine in the recent past and signed a free trade agreement, meaning that it was in a strong position to claim that it has supported Ukraine. Turkey even offered to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, but the offer has not been accepted as of yet.

The longer Russian aggression continues, the more Turkey will be pushed to move more decisively. Even Switzerland declared that it will apply the EU’s sanctions on Russia. Candidate countries are also encouraged to follow the course. Soon, there will be no more room for strategic ambiguity.

And When the Dust Settles?

However, there is even a broader question that requires strategic thinking. When the dust settles, where would Turkey like to stand when the European security architecture of the 21^st century is being discussed? Where it was in the 20^th century — a member of NATO, the Council of Europe, an integral element of the so-called Western order — or with the “others”? Turkey has spent recent years trying not to choose and playing all sides against each other when necessary.

The year 2022 was going to be decisive with regard to the European security architecture, even without a war on the continent. Europeans are already working on the publication of the “strategic compass” in addition to NATO’s strategic concept, which will be discussed in Madrid in June. These thought-provoking exercises have become even more significant in light of recent developments.

The historic steps that both the EU and some of its member states are taking will set the tone when it comes to the European security architecture. In addition to the sanctions package, the EU is  lethal weapons to a third country under the European Peace Facility. Germany is increasing its defense spending to more than 2% of its GDP while facilitating a one-off of €100 billion ($109 billion) for the Bundeswehr.

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One should also underline the exemplary coordination between the EU and NATO. Nothing strengthens the transatlantic bond more than a Russian threat to the continent. Geopolitical challenges that were not expected in the 21^st century are going hand in hand with the necessity for drastic moves. Concepts such as sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, which are protected under international law, have become even more visible. One thing to expect now is that different camps across the world will close ranks.

Will Turkey’s importance increase for the West, as it had during the Cold War? Maybe. It will surely play an important role in the Black Sea, especially when it comes to the Straits. However, once the cleavages between democracies and autocracies deepen, the state of affairs in Turkey will be even more important.

Right now, these changes have caught Turkey off guard. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is tired after 20 years in power. The government it leads is mostly seen as authoritarian by many in Europe. The Turkish economy is in never-ending decline. It is hard to look for long-lasting consensus in a society once it has become extremely polarized. This is not necessarily the best time to set directions for the decades to come. But the country may have no choice.

Last but not least, the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the importance of well-functioning relations with neighbors for European sovereignty. It is important to underline once again that European security is not only about the EU, but also its neighborhood. As an integral piece of European security architecture in the 20^th century, Turkey will need to define where it stands very clearly. It is not only about who wins and who loses, but also about who will adapt to the changes that Europe is going through. It is time for reaffirmations for everyone. It would be beneficial for the European continent as a whole if Turkey also closed ranks with its traditional allies.

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

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

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Is ���ܰ��DZ��’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

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After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed his country’s application for candidate status, the European Parliament adopted a  calling “for the EU institutions to work towards granting EU candidate status to Ukraine.” In this vein, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola  that “we recognize Ukraine’s European ��������𳦳پ�����.” In addition, a group of eight member states expressed for EU institutions to “conduct steps to immediately grant Ukraine [an] EU candidate country status and open the process of negotiations” as they “strongly believe that Ukraine deserves receiving an immediate EU accession ��������𳦳پ�����.”

No Direct Path

Ukraine’s path toward the EU was never a straight line leading up to this point. While former President Leonid Kuchma formulated Ukraine’s wish to join the EU throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the bloc was initially reserved with regard to these aspirations. A Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Ukraine entered into force in March 1998, but a lack of implementation, as well as the upsurge of autocratic tendencies in Ukrainian domestic politics, led former European Commission President Romano Prodi to formulate the “sharing everything with the Union but institutions” paradigm. 

In 2002, Prodi  that we “cannot simply ignore what is happening beyond our borders. Neither can we solve problems with our new neighbours simply by letting them join the Union.” He was referring to endemic corruption, severe impediments to the rule of law or lack of freedom and independence of the media that continue to plague the country. Freedom House still  Ukraine as only “partly free.”

Despite this, EU–Ukraine cooperation intensified throughout the years with the adoption of an EU–Ukraine Action Plan and Kyiv joining the Eastern Partnership within the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) framework. While the ENP  a “special relationship with 16 of its closest neighbours who are currently not considered potential candidates for joining the EU,” Ukraine maintained its rhetoric of a pro-EU membership course. 

The aftermath of the Euromaidan protests, the inauguration of a new Ukrainian government and the signing of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement in June 2014 were accompanied by contradictory statements on the question of Ukrainian membership aspirations on the part of the EU. Stefan Fule, the EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy,  in favor of Ukraine‘s admission in the long term. 

Additionally, from 2014 onward, the European Parliament repeatedly  in its resolutions that UKraine has “a European perspective” and that “pursuant to Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine — like any other European state — have a European perspective and may apply to become members of the Union provided that they adhere to the principles of democracy, respect fundamental freedoms and human and minority rights and ensure the rule of law.”

In contrast, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel  in 2015 that the Eastern Partnership shall not be understood as an “instrument for EU-accession” and that “Ukraine must first meet all the envisaged conditions.” Even more explicitly, former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker  that “Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20 to 25 years, and not of NATO either.”

Drawing Closer

Juncker’s position and the EU’s more cautious reactions regarding Ukraine’s membership aspirations mark a considerable contrast to the current discourse within the bloc. But while von der Leyen’s  to the European Parliament is a positive step forward, it does not mean that the discursive shift on the subject will necessarily lead to Ukraine’s accession. Instead, such rhetoric contributes to rendering this policy option more appropriate and legitimate. 

In order to open this “,” as Lene Hansen, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, put it in 2006, Ukraine’s drawing closer to the bloc must be presented as a course of action that conforms with the EU’s identity.

Following this line of thought, in her speech, von der Leyen highlighted Ukraine’s European character. Not only did she declare that the outbreak of war in Ukraine means that “War has returned to Europe” (even though war has been ongoing in Eastern Ukraine since 2014), she also refers to Kyiv as a “European capital” and argues that “the European Union and Ukraine are already closer than ever before.” Von der Leyen also emphasized that “Nobody in this hemicycle can doubt that a people that stands up so bravely for our European values belongs in our European family.”

References to values do not only function as a means to construct a sense of community with Ukraine. They also establish a clear line of difference to Russia. In this respect, von der Leyen cites a Ukrainian newspaper stating that ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine marks “a clash of two worlds, two polar sets of values.” Von der Leyen builds on this quote and argues that “this is a clash between the rule of law and the rule of the gun; between democracies and autocracies; between a rules-based order and a world of naked aggression.”&�Բ�����;

She draws a clear line not only between the EU itself but also other actors who share these values and Russia on the diametrically opposed side. That Ukraine continues to struggle with corruption, restricted political rights and civil liberties as well as a weak rule of law does not fit into this discourse and so is no longer relevant.

Von der Leyen holds that “If Putin was seeking to divide the European Union, to weaken NATO, and to break the international community, he has achieved exactly the opposite. We are more united than ever.” Indeed, this perfectly reflects what Australian political scientist David Campbell pointed out already in the beginning of the 1990s, namely that foreign policy discourses lend themselves particularly well to the establishment of an understanding of the inside as opposed to the (threatening) outside — that is, to construct identity through difference. 

In that sense, the EU does not only have to “stand up against this cruel aggression” due to the values that it shares with Ukraine and deems attacked by the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also because “T��� destiny of Ukraine is at stake, but our own fate also lies in the balance,” as von der Leyen states. Thus, the EU’s own security and freedom are closely linked to the situation in Ukraine.

Diplomatic Tightrope

While von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament perfectly supports the discursive shift that is currently taking place within the EU regarding closer cooperation with Ukraine, she emphasizes that “T���re is still a long path ahead.” It remains unlikely that the EU will admit Ukraine via an accelerated procedure in the midst of an ongoing war; this would override the Copenhagen Criteria that determine whether a state is eligible to accede to the EU.

Nevertheless, the current discourse lays the foundation for consolidating and popularizing the demand for Ukraine’s accession. Hence, it is now up to the EU to find ways to reconcile this discourse with Russian concerns and to de-escalate the ongoing conflict. 

According to , a professor of International Relations at the University of Tampere, from 2014 onward, the EU has tried to perform a balancing act between showing solidarity with Ukraine and condemning ��ܲ�������’s attempts to deter Kyiv from following a pro-European path while simultaneously trying to allay Moscow’s unease regarding these developments.

Similar to Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, Haukkala foresaw in 2015 “that both EU–Russia relations and the wider European security order will be in for a wider and longer disruption than has currently been witnessed” due to this increasing collision. This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in at the moment.

How can the EU preserve its credibility after stating that Ukraine “belongs to the European family” and that its “own fate also lies in the balance” without adding fuel to the fire of Russia’s security concerns? What the EU needs now is a clear strategy regarding a sustainable postwar European security order that must be, whether we like it or not, coordinated with Moscow. This does not mean that ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine is justified by supposed Russian security concerns. 

Nevertheless, this war must end immediately in order to avert an immense humanitarian crisis and to prevent the war from spilling to neighboring countries. Considering that Georgia and Moldova are  to be waiting to hand in their EU membership application any minute now, the union needs a more robust, diplomatically sensitive strategy toward the eastern countries with which it maintains association agreements. The EU urgently needs to provide answers to the question of how it could strive for further eastern enlargement without it being met with Russian aggression. 

When asked about the earliest possible date for Ukrainian accession, von der Leyen  that “This is hard to say. … Reforms have to be done, processes have to be set up.” This indicates that a clear approach toward ���ܰ��DZ��’s eastern neighborhood and to Russia in particular is still wanting.

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In her speech, Ursula von der Leyen adopted the phrase “Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — used by President Zelenskyy during his address to the European Parliament. The phrase is a greeting that became closely connected to the Euromaidan protests in contemporary Ukrainian . It conveys the vision of an independent and free Ukraine seeking cooperation with the EU. 

While the European Union’s discourse demonstrates that this vision already resonates more strongly than ever before, it seems unlikely that Ukraine will be able to join the EU anytime soon. The European Council has to unanimously approve a country’s application, which will remain unrealistic as long as the core problem of overcoming the dividing line between the West and the EU on the one hand and Russia on the other remains unresolved.

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

The post Is Ukraine Likely to Join the EU Anytime Soon?  appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 7: Unity

Like many voices in the West, The Economist appears delighted by one of the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The title of a current article contains the self-congratulatory : “Russian aggression is prompting rare unity and severe reprisals.” The New York Times made the same point with its own more melodramatic . “In a few frantic days,” a trio of Times reporters wrote, “the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against ��ܲ�������’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.”&�Բ�����;

Unity is stunning, and The Economist’s “severe reprisals” are the icing on the cake that demonstrate the West’s vaunted ability, according to The Times, to respond “on a global scale and with dizzying speed.” So why is beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now  about not getting the support he expected?

Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative

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The suffering of the Ukrainian people and their president’s complaints apparently haven’t dampened the West’s penchant for self-congratulation. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, writing for The Washington Post, goes further in summing up US : “It’s too early to think in these terms, but a NATO that perhaps also has Sweden and Finland as members should be ready to invite both Ukraine and Russia to join.”&�Բ�����;

It’s the dream of every politician inside the Beltway and nearly everyone in Arlington and Langley: the evocation of a new Europe enthusiastically and harmoniously united under the US military leadership. Bildt nevertheless concludes on a note of appropriate humility and even a dose of realism: “But before we get there, much will happen, little of which we can foresee today.”

Harvard University also  the phenomenon, which it describes as “a much-needed wake-up call for Europe.” In the interest of offering some much-needed perspective, Harvard mobilized two serious thinkers for a panel discussion. The noted theorist and professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, argued that “the war in Ukraine has in some respects dispelled a whole series of liberal illusions that misled many people during the post-Cold War period.”

This remark is particularly apt at a time when the entire US establishment, led by a Democratic administration that has been obsessed by the Russian threat since losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, is currently using the power of the media to recreate a dangerously bellicose Cold War atmosphere.

Walt’s analysis dares to call into question the major assumptions inculcated by US media in its presentation of the stakes of the current crisis. He unveils some of the “liberal illusions” that other less charitable analysts might more appropriately call a case of systemic, voluntary blindness. Among the illusions he cites “the idea that a major war could never happen again in Europe, and that the spread of economic interdependence and the expansion of NATO would mean that ‘eventually all of Europe would be a vast zone of peace.’”

These were essentially acts of faith shared by every administration and promoted by the massive security state and military-industrial for the last 30 years. They stemmed from the neoliberal conviction that a stable American economy required a system based on subsidizing an industrial core focused on military technology that was also indirectly coupled with the consumer market. The military side, through the global presence of US armed forces, guaranteed unencumbered access to the resources required to produce the technology. The military also served as the initial outlet for the technology’s use.

This rational system supposedly respectful of free markets that was launched in the aftermath of World War II rapidly turned into a “liberal” version of a new version of state socialism with global reach. It imperceptibly acquired the attributes needed to build a modern hypertechnologized hegemon. 

Alas, its very scope and several of the mistakes it produced along the way made the formerly invisible model of state socialism visible to critics. It became increasingly clear that the institutions of a democratic nation had become dominated by a financial and political elite. They even had a name, “the 1%.” They banded together to fuel, manage and monitor the system they had put in place. Politics was redesigned to meet their needs rather than those of the people.

Liberal Orthodoxy at the Service of State Socialism

The world has seen three contrasting models of state socialism in the past century, as well as a fourth and highly aggressive one — fascism. That one was thankfully eliminated at the end of the Second World War, discredited for providing a model that was too in your face. Fascism’s focus on military technology and the media’s role in disseminating nationalistic propaganda nevertheless provided models that influenced the other versions of state socialism. The three other more solidly built models are those of the Soviet Union, the US and China.

The Soviet model ultimately failed because it was frozen into an ideology crafted in the 19^th century that took no account of an evolving world. The American model gradually took form, initially as a reaction to the particularly aggressive version of laissez-faire capitalism that emerged in the late 19^th century. Its taming began in the 20^th century with the anti-trust movement. 

Eschewing any form of collectivist ideology, the US model subtly and nearly invisibly imposed its collectivist nature through its understanding of the power of media and the birth of the “science” of public relations,  in the early decades of the 20^thcentury by Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. These consultants worked in the darker shadows of the corridors of political and economic power. Unlike Marx and Lenin, they were cleverly prevented by their handlers from being seen on center stage as they honed the powerful ideology that undergirded the new American version of state socialism. They and their ideology remained too invisible to criticize.

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. 

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. The media it criticized predictably ignored it, ensuring the invisibility of the true structure of a system of state socialism. 

In traditional centralized power systems — and this is true in many nations even today — the lack of cultural influence of their media forces them to resort to direct censorship. In an evolved system in which the media has attained a superficial image of autonomy, government censorship serves no purpose because it can count on the media to self-censor. Indeed, any attempt to censor calls attention to what the government prefers people simply to ignore.

China has turned out to be a special case. With the Communist Party running the government, it is archetypically a socialist state. But it has learned some of the lessons provided by the US example, including the admiration of personal wealth stemming from the traditional Chinese celebration of prosperity.

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Because many Westerners have traditionally labeled Chinese culture “inscrutable,” American establishment strategists, attracted by the dynamics of the Chinese economy but repelled by its political culture, appear to be floundering about in their quest to categorize the evil they desperately want to see as the essence of a perceived powerful rival. It was easy for Americans to dismiss the Soviet Union as a relic of a 19^th-century worldview. In contrast, China’s state socialism is oriented toward the future, notably with its emphasis on technology and proactive concern with infrastructure. 

Moreover, in too many ways, China’s state socialism resembles the US version, which means criticizing China might invite self-criticism. Worse, instead of placing all its faith in the ruling class as the US does with its trickle-down economics, China factors into many of its policies the needs of the entire population. That, as Edward Bernays might remark, gives it a certain PR advantage.  

At the Harvard event, the Atlantic Council’s Benjamin Haddad represented a point of view more consistent with the optics of the US security state. But, in contrast with The Post’s editorialist, he noted that “something much deeper is happening in Europe that will have really long-term consequences.” He has dared to express the heterodox view that, instead of perceiving an increased need for NATO, Europe may now be calling into question its traditional acceptance of US leadership.

As such debates continue in the US, the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy appear to be losing patience with NATO and the US, who have expressed their undying love for the country while refusing to save it from a situation they created. They may be well placed to appreciate Stephen Walt’s observation that “powerful countries often do pretty horrible things when they feel, rightly or wrongly, that their security is being endangered.” The US and NATO are more worried about their own security than Ukraine’s. On that, they are in total agreement with Vladimir Putin.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post Is ���ܰ��DZ��’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 4: Tragic

Even though he hesitated until the last minute to make it official on Thursday, everyone in France knew that their president, Emmanuel Macron, would be up for reelection in a contest whose first round will take place on April 10, followed by the second-round runoff on April 24.

The strategic delay in his decision-making has been officially explained by the combination of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the much more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dossier for which Macron has been very active in recent months. The race is very difficult to call given the range of opponents, but Macron is favored to win the first round. Though it’s anyone’s guess how the second round may play out or even who the opposing candidate is likely to be.

How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future?

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With the Ukraine crisis dominating the headlines, Macron stepped up this week, almost at the same time as US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, to give a rousing speech with a similar theme, insisting on solidarity with the Ukrainians and the defense of democracy. But unlike his American counterpart, whose speech read like a celebration of his administration’s and his nation’s moral commitment to the Ukrainian cause, Macron went a bit further, invoking the “tragic” dimension of the current situation with these : “To this brutal return of tragedy in history, we owe it to ourselves to respond with historic decisions.” He added the idea that “Europe has entered a new era” and hinted that it would be an era defined in terms of “energy independence” and “European defense.”&�Բ�����; 

Macron’s vision of a different future may be interpreted more as a campaign promise than a realistic forecast of how European identity will evolve in the future. But it is a theme that Macron has heavily invested in, an idea he has been promoting for a long time. Despite past failure to move the needle, he may be onto something this time concerning the future of ���ܰ��DZ��’s security policies, which are as much under attack as Kyiv itself.

The crisis in Ukraine reveals not only the threat Russia potentially represents for some European nations, but also the risk associated with ���ܰ��DZ��’s dependence on ��ܲ�������’s natural gas. Even more significantly — though discussion of this topic must wait for some sort of resolution to the Ukrainian drama — the crisis has revealed the troubling degree to which European countries have become the hostages of the monster known as NATO.

The calling into question of NATO may sound paradoxical at the very moment when every country in the prosperous West has expressed its heartfelt solidarity with Ukraine and its bitter condemnation of ��ܲ�������’s invasion. Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the “unification” of Europe in opposition to Russia and see this as a prelude to the reinforcement of NATO. That is possible, but at this early stage in the conflict, it sounds like a hasty conclusion.

Macron is hinting at a world beyond NATO. He is certainly right to assume that he isn’t the only European leader who, without complaining too loudly, is privately assessing Washington’s responsibility in the conflict. After all, the US is the nation that, despite France and Germany’s resistance, drew the red line defending the iron-clad principle of Ukraine’s inalienable right to join NATO.  

Macron’s position should help his chances in the coming election. He cannot be accused of electoral opportunism as he has proved himself consistent and sincere in his mission to redefine ���ܰ��DZ��’s security in European rather than North Atlantic terms. It hasn’t worked yet despite his and, to some extent, Germany’s previous efforts, but that predictable disappointment occurred before the tragedy that is now engulfing Europe. When the dust settles on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, all Europeans (and maybe even the ����’s Boris Johnson) will begin parsing the complex lessons produced by a terribly mismanaged fiasco that is still ongoing and shows some signs of possibly leading to a nuclear conflagration.

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For the moment, the Americans have presented the Russian assault as a combat between good and evil. Europe and its media have, in their very real but to some extent staged outrage, followed suit. But at some point in the near future, Europeans will sit down and attempt to assess not just the winners and losers as the US tends to do, but the volume of evil that is attributable to both sides. European cultures tend to be far less binary and Manichean than US culture, which has demonstrated in this crisis its inimitable capacity to discard the kind of nuance that can, at least on some occasions, actually prevent or at least forestall tragedy.

The idea of tragedy, understood to be a noble art form, is taken seriously in France, a nation that produced two famous authors of tragedy, Corneille and Racine. Apart from a brief episode in the 18^th century (partly due to jealousy), France has always admired Shakespeare and Schiller. The French know that authentic tragedy is never about the battle between good and evil. The literary genre that exploits that kind of binary logic is called melodrama. Tragedy always contains something corresponding to Aristotle’s intuition of its being built around the notion of a tragic flaw.

In his analysis of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle attributed the flaw to the tragic hero, seen as admirable and good, but affected by something that undermines his good fortune. But the flaw may also exist in the system and its rules, in the government or the culture of the play, in the environment in which tragic heroes and heroines are permitted to act. As one famous tragic hero noted, there may be “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” something that to which the tragedy itself is drawing the audience’s attention.

When he characterizes the Ukraine conflict as a tragedy, Emmanuel Macron, like other Europeans familiar with the history of the past century, is thinking not so much of the literary tradition as the devastating wars that have taken place on the continent’s soil. This is a privilege not equally available to Americans, whose only lasting memory of war on their own soil is that of a civil war that happened over 150 years ago.

The idea of history Americans learn at school and through the media, even in the case of their own civil war, is always about a struggle between good and evil. Slavery defined the South as evil, despite the fact that Southerners were true Americans. Because all conflicts are framed as a combat between good and evil, Americans are encouraged to think of their nation as a “force for good.” America is exceptional and has been called the “indispensable nation.” Many attribute to the French leader Charles de Gaulle the reflection that “the graveyard is full of indispensable people.” History too is full of indispensable nations and even empires.

Today, everyone in Europe perceives the Ukraine situation as a worrying tragedy that is still building toward its most destructive climax. But for Macron, whose reelection is far from assured within the chaotic political environment that currently reigns in France, it may turn out to be a serendipitous tragedy. It may turn out to be the moment of enlightenment in which his dream of a Europe no longer tethered to the United States may define and implement its own security system. As he begins to hone his official reelection campaign, Macron can pursue that goal and, at the same time, hope that it will convince his electors that he’s the one who can carry it out. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Unthinkable: War Returns to Europe

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The immediate answer is there are very few today outside of Russia itself, hence the large rise in gas prices witnessed lately. Over the medium term, however, Libya and Algeria have ample opportunity to increase their supplies to the EU.

Supplies From Libya and Algeria

Libya boasts proven gas reserves of 1,500 billion cubic meters (bcm). Its production is a modest 16 bcm. Algeria has 4,500 bcm of proven reserves and 20-25 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of unconventional gas reserves, the third-largest in the world after the United States and China (and Argentina whose proven reserves tie with Algeria). How much gas that could produce is anyone’s guess, but we are speaking of a figure in the tens of bcm.

Algeria today produces 90 bcm, of which 50 bcm were exported. Another feature of Algeria is the huge storage capacity — 60 bcm — of the Hassi R’Mel gas field, its oldest and largest compared with the EU’s storage capacity of 115 bcm.

Pierre Terzian, the founder of the French energy think-tank Petrostrategies, out that four underwater gas pipelines link these two producers directly to the European mainland: the first links Libyan gas fields with Italy; the second Algerian gas fields to Italy via Tunisia; the third Algerian gas fields to southern Spain; and the fourth the same gas fields to southern Spain via Morocco.

The latter has been closed since November 1, 2021, due to deteriorating relations between Algeria and Morocco, but this has not affected the supply of gas to the Iberian Peninsula. Algeria also has two major liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals, which adds flexibility to its export policy. Its exports to France and the United Kingdom are in LNG ships.

The leading cause of the current crisis is structural as, according to Terzian, EU domestic gas production has declined by 23% over the last 10 years and now covers only 42% of consumption, as compared with 53% in 2010. That decline is the result, in particular, of the closing of the giant Groningen gas field, which is well underway and will be completed by 2030.

Europe has done a lot to expand the gas transmission grid among EU countries, but some major gas peninsulas remain. In 2018, it was suggested that connections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe needed developing. Spain boasts one-third of ���ܰ��DZ��’s LNG import capacity, much of it unused, and is connected to Algeria by two major pipelines that could be extended.

As Alan Riley and I four years ago, the “main barrier to opening up the Iberian energy market’s supply routes to the rest of the EU is the restricted route over the Franco-Spanish border. Only one 7-bcm gas line is available to carry gas northwards … The main blocking factor has been the political power of Electricité de France, which is seeking to protect the interests of the French nuclear industry.” An Iberian solution, we added, would not only “benefit France and Spain, but also Algeria, creating additional incentives to explore for new gas fields and maybe kick start a domestic renewables revolution,” which would encourage a switch in consumption from gas to solar in Algeria.

Germany, the Netherlands and Italy

Germany, for its part, has never put its money where its mouth is with regard to Algeria. In 1978, Ruhrgas (now absorbed in E.ON) signed a major contract to supply LNG to Germany. Germany never built the LNG terminal needed to get that contract off the ground. So far, it is the only major European country to have no LNG import terminals, although it can rely on existing facilities in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 1978, the Netherlands also contracted to buy Algerian gas. Algeria dropped the contract in the early 1980s because of Germany’s refusal to go ahead. Later in the 1980s, Ruhrgas again expressed its interest in buying Algerian gas, but the price offered was too low and because Ruhrgas wanted to root the gas through France, which insisted on very high transit fees. By discarding Algerian gas, Germany has tied itself to Russian goodwill.

Italy, like Germany, a big importer of Russian gas, has positioned itself much more adroitly. In December 2021, Sonatrach, Algeria’s state oil and gas monopoly, increased the amount of gas pumped through the TransMed pipeline, which links Algeria to Italy via Tunisia and the Strait of Sicily at the request of its Italian customers. This followed a very successful state  by Italian President Sergio Mattarella to Algeria in early November. On February 27, Sonatrach  it could pump additional gas to Europe, but contingent on meeting current contractual commitments.

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Relations between the Italian energy company ENI and Sonatrach are historically close because of the important role played by the Italian company’s founder, Enrico Mattei, in advising the provisional government of the Republic of Algeria in its negotiations with France, which resulted in the independence of Algeria in July 1962.

The pursuit of very liberal energy policies since the turn of the century by the European Commission overturned the policies of long-term gas and LNG purchase contracts, which were the norm in internationally traded gas until then. Yet security of supply does not rest on such misguided liberalism. New gas reserves cannot be found, let alone gas fields brought into production if producers and European customers are, as Terzian points out, “at the mercy of prices determined by exchange platforms which have dubious liquidity (and can be influenced by major players).” This is an attitude, he adds, “that borders on the irresponsible.”

German energy policy has mightily contributed to the present crisis. It has blithely continued to shut down the country’s nuclear plants, increased its reliance on coal in the electricity sector and with that a consequent increase in carbon emissions.

Serious Dialogue

When considering Caspian gas as an alternative to Russian gas, I would add another country, Turkey, which has a very aggressive and independent policy as a key transit for gas. However, few observers would argue that such a solution would increase ���ܰ��DZ��’s security.

Engaging in serious long-term strategic dialogue with Algeria would provide Spain and the EU with leverage. This could help to build better relations between Algeria, Morocco and also the troubled area of the Sahel. When trying to understand the politics of different nations, following the money often offers a good guide. One might also follow the gas.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51�Թ�.]

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

The post The Iberian Solution Could Offer Europe More Gas appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 3: “Every Inch”

At his State of the Union on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden repeated a mantra he has been using for at least the past two weeks. “As I have made crystal clear,” he intoned in his address to Congress, “the United States and our Allies will defend every inch of territory of NATO countries with the full force of our collective power.”

Biden was in effect quoting himself, or repeating crowd-pleasing sentences and phrases, as he often does. Political marketing has become a science in which the rules of brand recognition defined by the wizards of Madison Avenue dominate. It is a convenient substitute for other more traditional political practices, such as critical thinking, responding creatively to an evolving situation, reacting and adapting to the shifting parameters of a dynamic context. The basic rule of branding consists of repeating the same message in exactly the same formulation over and over again to create familiarity and brand recognition.

The Troubling Question of What Americans Think They Need to Know

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On February 22, in practically identical terms, Biden had already proclaimed the same : “that the United States, together with our Allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”&�Բ�����; Two days later, on February 24, he : “As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”

Some may find this tirelessly repeated commitment, surprising not for its vehemence but for its banality. One member of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandra Ustinova, on The Today Show, expressed her “total disappointment” in Biden’s speech because she was expecting military engagement rather than vehement rhetoric. 

The sad fact of the matter — for Ukraine but also the rest of the world, including Russia — is that Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO territory is fundamentally meaningless in the context of ��ܲ�������’s war on Ukraine. Not because Biden’s commitment to NATO isn’t real — it definitely is genuine — but because it simply repeats the conditions delineated in the articles of NATO.

The message it sends to Europe is that if your country does not accept to be a vassal state of the US through membership in NATO, we will not only create the conditions that will expose you to war, but will leave you to suffer the consequences. Had the US not insisted on promoting Ukrainian membership in NATO — something France and Germany had rejected more than a decade ago — Russia would have had no reason and certainly no excuse for invading Ukraine. By insisting and refusing even to discuss the question of Ukraine’s candidacy for NATO, the inevitable occurred, as Mikhail Gorbachev, John Mearsheimer and other realists predicted.

Biden’s promise is also slightly odd in its logic because it sends a message to the Russians that they had better do everything they can to crush Ukraine now, in order to prevent Ukraine from ever becoming a territory full of square inches that one day will be occupied and defended by “the full force of American power” to say nothing of the “collective power” of 30 countries — some of whom are endowed with nuclear arsenals — that Biden evoked in his State of the Union address.

As the rhetorical effect of the commitment to defend every inch, Biden undoubtedly sought to create the fragile illusion that Ukraine is already spiritually part of NATO and that the bold sanctions he is capable of mobilizing to punish Russia will be adequate to spare Ukraine the worst. But illusions create confusion. In this case, it has created that particular form of confusion we call war. And it has fallen on the largely defenseless population of an entire nation.

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Politicians, just like advertising wizards, choose repetition to instill a fixed idea in people’s minds without necessarily reflecting on the unintended consequences of that idea, which they generally write off as collateral damage. The marketers focus on what really matters: product awareness and brand recognition. In the world of commerce, it makes some sense because no one is obliged to keep buying the product. 

One of the predictable effects of the confusion created by Biden’s rhetoric has already been revealed in the growing call for actual military engagement, not only by the Ukrainians themselves but also by Americans. Some members of Congress and even a seasoned journalist, Richard Engel, have suggested that the US institute a no-fly zone. The White House has rejected that idea precisely because it would be an act of war, with potential nuclear consequences.

Another dimension of the president’s pet phrase appeared when, at a press conference last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg twice repeated Biden’s exact . He began with this promise: “We will do what it takes to protect and defend every Ally. And every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.” Later in the Q&A with the press, he spoke of the “reason why we so clearly send the message that we are there to protect all Allies and every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.”

Americans will not be surprised by Stoltenberg’s repetition of Biden’s slogan, but Europeans should be. The US is the only nation, along with Liberia and Myanmar, that has not committed to the metric system, not just for science and industry, but as the nation’s cultural norm, making it the basis for informal talk in everyday life about weights and measures. Even the UK made the metric system official in the 1990s, where it is now taught in schools. Europeans think and talk according to the metric system. Americans think and talk — appropriately enough — according to the imperial system.  

Stoltenberg is Norwegian. The population of 29 of NATO’s 30 members uses the metric system in their daily activities. So, what does it tell us when instead of saying every square centimeter, the European head of NATO says “every inch”? The answer should be obvious to Europeans. Stoltenberg is the lead actor in a play written and directed by the United States. NATO is not the collegial entity that some cite, with the intent of proving its legitimacy. It is an instrument of US power and culture. And that happens to be a militaristic and hegemonic culture, in direct contrast with most European nations following World War II.

One of the longer-term consequences of the current crisis is something no one seems willing to talk about at this moment as everyone is concerned with expressing their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Numerous commentators have interpreted ��ܲ�������’s aggression as a signal that the West is for once becoming united and will be stronger than ever when the fighting dies down and Russia is humbled. 

The question no one wants to assess realistically is precisely the evolving image of NATO, particularly for Europeans. The idea that the Russian assault will strengthen ���ܰ��DZ��’s commitment to NATO to avoid future crises is naive at best and the product of the kind of illusion Biden has created with his rhetoric. What is happening today is frightening, and to the extent that the problem itself turns around the existence of NATO, without compromising their empathy for Ukrainians, Europeans have already begun reflecting on the danger NATO represents for their political and economic future.

Europeans have plenty to think about. Depending on how the war itself plays out, two things seem likely in the near future. The first is that, thanks to the unpopularity of Biden at home, it seems inevitable that the Republican Party will control Congress in 2023 and that a Republican will likely defeat the Democrats in the presidential election of 2024. This appears even more likely were either President Biden or Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the party’s standard bearer. The Republican Party is still dominated by Donald Trump, a fact that clearly unsettles most politicians and political thinkers in Europe. The marketers of both parties, over at least the past eight years, have failed to defend their once prestigious brand. 

Depending on ���ܰ��DZ��’s capacity to act independently after decades of accepting to remain in the shadow of the US, welcomed as their protector in the aftermath of World War II, it is highly likely that a movement will emerge to create a European and possibly Eurasian security framework that could replace or, at the very least, marginalize NATO. And even after the fiasco of the Ukraine War (Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s folly), that new framework might even include Russia. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post How Coherent Is NATO Today and in the Future? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

How much is your data worth? Before the era of mobile devices, remote access and distributed offices, companies could base the cost of protecting their data on the size of the IT operations budget. However, today, as almost 100% of operations have moved online, the size of the risk is now based not on the IT budget, but on the overall revenue/profitability, brand loyalty, customer and supplier trust. Attackers are now demanding record amounts of blackmail, and companies have been forced to pay or risk going out of business completely. We have seen record payments ( for an incident, in some cases) and record numbers of attacks (more than in 2020).

Regional Clouds Could Be the Answer

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Ransomware is a severe threat that exists across all enterprises — private or non-private, big or small. Attackers are only concerned with how much money they can extort. Importantly, they do so through ways that are nearly unimaginable and, thus, bring forth the reality that you cannot protect everything all the time.

Yet waiting until you are under attack to deal with it is a big mistake. Both fortunately and unfortunately, COVID-19 has forced all stakeholders in and around an entity to think differently and cooperatively about preparing for, dealing with, adapting to and mitigating the severity of a threat. It is from this reality that experts at the Bace Cybersecurity Institute (BCI) have created the D2R2 Dynamic Framework for Ransomware Threat Mitigation. 

Managing Chaos

D2R2 is about ransomware management: It is a process to turn the “unimaginable” into the specificity of action through D2R2 toolsets, including: 1) big-data analytics; 2) risk tolerance decision matrices and the resulting scenario roadmaps; 3) predefined cross-stakeholder courses-of-action playbooks, resource maps and protocols; 4) threat response reverse-engineering tools; 5) identification and commitment of “the negotiator” and the strict authority process; 6) adaptive risk/response path director; and 7) threat learning adaptor.

Pre-attack phase (R -2): D2R2 ransomware management occurs over three distinct phases. These phases relate to the time of attack. This first phase is where ransomware detection intelligence, communication and defenses are analyzed and turned into actionable items. The objective of this first phase is to detect, manage and block potential ransomware threats. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) is used to make sense out of massive amounts of data.

You might want to think about this step as the “smell” test. After a “smell” is detected, it goes into an attack management system (AIS) that measures the probability of an attack and determines alert levels, which mobilizes and prioritizes the actions of your security team and, importantly, drives the organizations’ alert levels and momentum. The keyword here is communications, executed in a precise manner across all stakeholders. Finally, depending on the tempo and velocity of the threat indicators, senior management may take preemptive protective measures.

R -0 is the attack phase: Chaos is the best definition of what typically goes on during an unexpected attack. The objective of the D2R2 ransomware management process is to turn chaos into an orchestrated network of adaptive actions and communications between stakeholders, all focused on stopping the attack and minimizing the damage. Again, it’s all about communication and the quality of the pre-planning action processes and dynamic protocols. The D2 part of D2R2 is all about the adaptive dynamics of data that drive dynamics of response at any point in time.

The goal of the attack phase is to manage the attack to minimize the total economic impact through the toolsets listed above. The fundamental problem in this phase is time. Everything must be done immediately and in sync as the attack progresses and its dimensions are refined. As such, the organization requires specific plans and detailed resource contingencies for responding immediately and the authority/discipline to do so.

The most important issues in the attack phase are the things not to do. These include responding to executives asking for status or communications outside of the attack response plans, attempting to determine the source of the attacks, contacting the attackers before a proper negotiation team is in place and prepared to start negotiations, and more. The R2D2 toolset defines and prepares for these items in advance.

Planning and preparing for R -0 is a complex and expensive task. Loss containment may be challenging to quantify in advance of an attack, but lack of planning comes at a much higher cost and entity risk.

When It’s Over, It’s Not Over

R +2 is the post-attack phase: Even with the best-advanced detection of “smells” and response event management and recovery, you may be forced into a position to negotiate with the attackers.

The goal of the ransomware minimization phase is to manage and minimize the total economic impact of the attack. This requires contingency plans and what-if plans for negotiations. Negotiating with a ransomware attacker is like any other negotiation. This is a very complex process and why an experienced external ransomware specialist needs to be employed as they would have the best chance to maintain the proper perspective needed to minimize the adverse consequences of an attack. Only the experienced negotiator should be able to time and execute contact with the attackers.

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Negotiations must include making arrangements for payment. This means acquiring a cryptocurrency, which may not be as simple as it seems, especially when under attack. In addition to negotiating payment, it is essential to track restoration and assurance that any data ex-filtrated will not be passed to others. Critically, the adverse consequences of the attack on the entity’s brand require multidisciplinary stakeholder insight analytics, innovative building-block messaging and quick response communication metrics all orchestrated as the attack progresses and once its aftermath is assessed.

When the attack is closed, the ransomware management process should be updated in detail based on what was learned in the attack. This requires input from most all stakeholders and the rethinking of risk tolerance and time-critical decision/resource commitment processes.

For Organizations

Ransomware is a complex and changing threat to organizations today. All organizations need detailed processes and procedures that are constantly maintained. Many organizations may have implemented something similar to those toolsets identified in ransomware management above. But, unfortunately, far too many organizations have poor or incorrect preparation.

What is presented here is a very brief overview of detailed processes and tools. If you want to learn more about D2R2, you may contact BCI for further information and access to its panel of experts.

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

The post Blackmail Is a Crippling Act — Are You Prepared? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

But there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.

The Unthinkable: War Returns to Europe

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US President Joe Biden has called the Russian invasion “,” but that is far from the truth. In the four days leading up to the invasion on February 24, ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) a dangerous increase in ceasefire violations in the east of Ukraine. Most were inside the de facto borders of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, consistent with incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. With nearly OSCE ceasefire monitors on the ground, it is not credible that these were all “false flag” incidents staged by separatist forces, as American and British officials claimed.

Whether the shell-fire was just another escalation in the long-running civil war in eastern Ukraine or the opening salvos of a new government offensive, it was certainly a provocation. But the Russian invasion has far exceeded any proportionate action to defend the DPR and LPR from those attacks, making it disproportionate and illegal. 

The New Cold War

In the larger context, though, Ukraine has become an unwitting victim and proxy in the resurgent Cold War against Russia and China, in which the United States has surrounded both countries with military forces and offensive weapons, withdrawn from a whole series of arms control treaties, and refused to negotiate resolutions to rational security concerns raised by Russia.

In December 2021, after a summit between Biden and his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, Russia submitted a draft for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with nine articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off ��ܲ�������’s entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.

So, why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives — although not a single American life — rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American vs. Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today’s world that permits a US president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice? 

The breakdown in US relations with Russia and the failure of Biden’s inflexible brinkmanship precipitated this war, and yet his policy externalizes all the pain and suffering so that Americans can, as another president once said, “go about their business” and keep shopping. �������������’s European allies, who must now house hundreds of thousands of refugees and face spiraling energy prices, should be wary of falling in line behind this kind of “leadership” before they, too, end up on the front line.

NATO

At the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Eastern European counterpart, was dissolved. NATO should have been too since it had achieved the purpose it was built to serve. Instead, NATO has lived on as a dangerous, out-of-control military alliance dedicated mainly to expanding its sphere of operations and justifying its own existence. It has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today, incorporating most of Eastern Europe, at the same time as it has committed aggression, bombings of civilians and other war crimes. 

In 1999, NATO launched an illegal war to militarily carve out an independent Kosovo from the remnants of Yugoslavia. NATO airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its leading ally in the war, Kosovan President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial at The Hague charged with committing appalling war under the cover of NATO bombing, including murder, torture and enforced disappearances. 

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Far from the North Atlantic, NATO joined the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan and then attacked and destroyed Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed , a continuing refugee crisis and violence and chaos across the region.

In 1991, as part of a Soviet agreement to accept the reunification of East and West Germany, Western leaders assured their Soviet counterparts that they would not expand NATO any closer to Russia than the border of a united Germany. At the time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not advance “one inch” beyond the German border. The West’s broken promises are spelled out for all to see in 30 declassified published on the National Security Archive website.

The INF Treaty

After expanding across Eastern Europe and waging wars in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO has predictably come full circle to once again view Russia as its principal enemy. US nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey, while France and the United Kingdom already have their own nuclear arsenals. US “missile defense” systems, which could be converted to fire offensive nuclear missiles, are based in Poland and Romania, including at a in Poland only 100 miles from the Russian border. 

Another Russian in its December proposal was for the US to join a moratorium on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe. In 2019, both the United States and Russia withdrew from a 1987 treaty, under which both sides agreed not to deploy short- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Donald Trump, the US president at the time, pulled out of the INF treaty on the advice of his national security adviser, John Bolton.

None of this can justify �ʳܳپ���’s invasion of Ukraine, but the world should take Russia seriously when it says that its conditions for ending the war and returning to diplomacy are Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. While no country can be expected to completely disarm in today’s armed-to-the-teeth world, neutrality could be a serious long-term option for Ukraine. 

Neutrality

There are many successful precedents, like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Costa Rica. Or take the case of Vietnam. It has a common border and serious maritime disputes with China, but Vietnam has resisted US efforts to embroil it in its Cold War with Beijing. Vietnam remains committed to its long-standing “” policy: no military alliances, no affiliation with one country against another, no foreign military bases and no threats or uses of force. 

The world must do whatever it takes to obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine and make it stick. Maybe UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres or a special representative could act as a mediator, possibly with a peacekeeping role for the United Nations. This will not be easy. One of the still unlearned lessons of other conflicts is that it is easier to prevent war through serious diplomacy and a genuine commitment to peace than to end war once it has started.

If or when there is a ceasefire, all parties must be prepared to start afresh to negotiate lasting diplomatic solutions that will allow all the people of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other NATO members to live in peace. Security is not a zero-sum game, and no country or group of countries can achieve lasting security by undermining the security of others. 

The United States and Russia must also finally assume the responsibility that comes with stockpiling over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons and agree on a plan to start dismantling them, in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Lastly, as Americans condemn ��ܲ�������’s aggression, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to forget or ignore the many recent wars in which the United States and its allies have been the aggressors: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, , Somalia, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. 

We sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States has committed in its own illegal wars.

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

The post The US Leaves Ukraine to Fight New Cold War With Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In an article published on the day of ��ܲ�������’s invasion of Ukraine, CBS News up journalist Norah O’Donnell’s conversation with the top foreign policy official in the US in these words: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it is obvious Russian President Vladimir Putin has goals beyond Ukraine and may have other countries in his sights.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Obvious:

Possibly true, maybe even unlikely, but what the speaker hopes people will believe is true

Contextual note

With everyone in government and the media speculating about — rather than thinking through — the real reasons behind the Russian assault on Ukraine, CBS News, like most of US legacy media, wants its readers to focus on the most extreme hypothesis. That is the gift any war offers to the media: the possibility of not just imagining but supposing the worst.

An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China

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It works because the idea that Vladimir Putin has designs that go beyond Ukraine is certainly credible. But it has no basis in fact. In wartime, the media, even more than politicians, will always do their damnedest to damn beyond redemption the party designated as the enemy. One crime is never enough. The public must be encouraged to believe that other, more serious crimes are in the offing. That will incite the audience to return for more.

The article is about Antony Blinken’s understanding of the conflict, but he never used the word “obvious.” Instead, he speculated out loud about what an evil dictator might be thinking. “He’s made clear,” Blinken asserted without citing evidence, “that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” He then shifts to a less extreme interpretation. “Short of that,” Blinken continues, “he’d like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.” And he ends with what is a perfectly reasonable assumption: “And short of that, he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.”&�Բ�����;     

Blinken’s contention that �ʳܳپ���’s “made clear” his intention to restore the Soviet empire undoubtedly prompted CBS’ choice of the word “obvious,” which is a bold exaggeration. But Blinken is exaggerating when he claims it’s “clear.” Something is clear if it is visible, with no obstacle that prevents us from seeing it. In this case, clarity would exist if Putin had ever expressed that intention. But that has never happened. So, what Blinken claims to be clear is mere suspicion.

Blinken cleverly evokes “the Soviet empire” that he is convinced Putin wants to restore. The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship, the ideological enemy of the United States. But Putin is an oligarchic capitalist who inherited a Russia whose economy was transformed by American consultants after the fall of the Soviet Union. Blinken knows that Americans are horrified by any association with communism and quasi-religiously “believe in” capitalism, even oligarchic capitalism, since the US has produced its own version of that. Blinken’s statement can therefore be read as clever State Department propaganda. He designed it to evoke emotions that are inappropriate to the actual context.

Things become linguistically more interesting when Blinken goes on to offer a softer reading of �ʳܳپ���’s intention, introduced by “short of that.” He descends the ladder of horror by moving from “empire” to “sphere of influence.” It is far less fear-inspiring, but he continues to evoke the communist threat by alluding to “countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.”&�Բ�����;

The next step down the ladder, again introduced by “short of that,” reads like a puzzling anti-climax. “And short of that,” Blinken says, “he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.” Is he suggesting that the neutrality of surrounding nations is the equivalent of reconstituting the Soviet Union? If they are truly neutral, like Switzerland or Finland, they belong to no bloc. Blinken apparently wants the undiscerning listener to assume that being neutral is just a lighter, perhaps less constraining version of being part of a new Soviet empire.

This kind of speculation based on mental reflexes acquired during the Cold War may seem odd for another reason. Blinken was speaking at the very moment when actual hostilities were breaking out. In the previous weeks, discussions between the two sides had taken place, which meant they could continue. Things changed, of course, at the beginning of last week when Putin , “I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago — to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.”

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That statement on February 21 should have created a new sense of urgency in Washington to prevent the worst from happening by precipitating new negotiations. The opposite happened. ��ܲ�������’s overtures calling for a summit were refused and Blinken’s planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was canceled.

The West and indeed the world were legitimately shocked by �ʳܳپ���’s move. It violated a basic principle of international law and contradicted the terms of the Minsk agreement that looked forward to defining the future autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk. On that score, Putin was not wrong when he noted that the definition and application of that autonomy should have taken place much earlier, indeed, “a long time ago.”

What Blinken described corresponds to an imaginary negotiation with Putin, who may have adopted a strategy of beginning with an extreme position by demanding a return to a post-Yalta order in Eastern Europe. Negotiators typically exaggerate at the beginning, proposing what they never expect to achieve, to arrive at something that will be deemed acceptable. It’s called giving ground. Blinken’s first “short of that” anticipates what Putin might do once the extreme position is rejected. His second “short of that” tells us what Blinken imagines �ʳܳپ���’s next concession might be. That takes him to the neutrality hypothesis, which in fact, as everyone knows, was �ʳܳپ���’s red line. 

If Blinken can imagine that kind of negotiating process, why didn’t he choose to engage in it? The answer lies in his implicit assessment of the idea of neutrality. Neutrality is not an option. It confirms what many suspect: the US adheres to a confrontational model of international relations. It is the George W. Bush doctrine: if you are not with us, you are against us. That applies even to neutral countries.

The CBS article contains some other interesting curiosities. After explaining exactly what Putin is secretly thinking, at one point, Blinken objects: “I can’t begin to get into his head.” When queried about what the intelligence community has provided to Blinken to justify what he says he thinks is in �ʳܳپ���’s head, he replies, “You don’t need intelligence to tell you that that’s exactly what President Putin wants.” Blinken wants us to believe that he understands everything but knows nothing.

Historical Note

Could it be that in this age of social media, where everyone lives comfortably in their silo, we have heard the death knell of even the idea of negotiation, a practice that has been respected in international relations throughout human history? Or is it an effect of historically informed cynicism due to the fact that, in many cases, negotiations have failed to prevent the unthinkable? Everyone remembers Neville Chamberlain’s negotiation with Adolf Hitler in 1938 that seemed to succeed until it became clear that it had failed.

Or is it just a US phenomenon? Emmanuel Macron of France and Olaf Scholz of Germany made last-minute attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, but they lacked the authority of the US. 

In recent decades, US culture appears to have created a kind of reflex that consists of refusing to enter into dialogue whenever one has the feeling that the other party doesn’t share the same ideas or opinions. This aversion to sitting down and sorting out major problems may be an indirect consequence of the wokeness wars, which inevitably lead to the conclusion that the other side will always be unenlightened and incorrigible. Discussion serves no purpose, especially since those committed to a fixed position live in fear of hearing something that might modulate their enthusiasm.

Today’s confrontational culture in the US reveals that Americans are now more interested in making a display of their moral indignation at people who look, think or act differently than they are in trying to understand, let alone iron out their differences. In the past, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev solved major problems through dialogue. Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev talked , as did Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. And then there was the extraordinary case of Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.

We are now in the age of . Even our political leaders have identified with that culture.

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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��ܲ�������’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a Wake-Up Call for Germany

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Superficially, one might look at the start date of this war as February 24, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine. In fact, President Putin declared his war on the West 15 years ago, when he  the Munich Security Conference, lambasting the US and its allies for overstepping boundaries, unsettling global order and threatening Russia itself. He was especially sharp in his criticism of the US invasion of Iraq and NATO expansion to include the countries of the former Soviet bloc.

�ʳܳپ���’s Long-Declared War Against the West

One year later, in the summer of 2008, Putin launched his first military campaign. Russian forces  Georgia, another aspiring democracy, following its (and Ukraine’s) application to NATO. He had drawn his line and made clear he was prepared to resist. In 2014, following the ouster of the pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych during the  (aka Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity), Russian forces — disguised by the absence of uniform — invaded and captured the Crimea region in southern Ukraine, subsequently annexing it. 

Shortly afterward, Putin threw his support behind Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, on the border with Russia. That conflict continued to fester through last week’s invasion.

As he rationalized in Munich, NATO was advancing east, encircling and threatening Russia. In fact, it was the nations of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus moving West, adopting the Western model of democracy and free economy, and electing to formally associate with them. Their rationale has been made ever clearer now: They feared Russian aggression and sought the security of NATO and the prosperity of the EU. Russia and �ʳܳپ���’s model of one-man rule, fear and intimidation, repression and stymied economic opportunity held no attraction, and even less under some misguided, fever-dream version of a resurrected Russian empire.

It may have been easy to compartmentalize �ʳܳپ���’s antagonism as directed solely at former eastern bloc states on ��ܲ�������’s periphery. But Ukraine and Georgia have always been merely the staging grounds of �ʳܳپ���’s assault on the West. His calculation was that a seemingly enfeebled US, weakened abroad and divided at home, and a fractious and divisive NATO would not respond. They would acquiesce to his vision of a neo-Russian empire and the recently resurgent notion — also supported by China — of the spheres of influence of great powers. He also calculated that Ukraine, after its failure to defend Crimea or defeat the Russian-backed separatists in Donbas, would fold in the face of ��ܲ�������’s superior military might.

Putin doubtlessly also realized that Russia is a declining power. The base for its economy, oil and natural gas, while still much in demand, is facing a declining shelf life as advanced countries turn rapidly to renewable energy technologies. Enormously rich in natural resources and even richer in human ingenuity, it is a one-dimensional economy, making it dependent on the vagaries of commodity markets to keep its budget in balance. Its population has been  over the last decades and is aging. ��ܲ�������’s status in the global power alignment is fading, and Putin knows it. Now was the time to strike.

�ʳܳپ���’s whining aside, the invasion of Ukraine was never about the West’s threat to Russia. Democracies go to war only when threatened. In fact, Putin was crystal clear in his purpose when he belittled Ukraine and  its independence in a speech on February 21, a nakedly transparent declaration of Russian expansionism. Holding up NATO as the aggressive villain and Ukraine as an inherent and natural part of greater Russia was a red herring that earned no perch outside his most ardent apologists.

Calculating Putin Miscalculates

The reputedly calculating Putin underestimated his immediate enemy, the Ukrainian people, and his ultimate enemy, the West. Nor did he grasp the dimensions of the new kind of war that would result when great powers enter the fray in an overwhelmingly interdependent world. His war has all the signs not only of a hot war but also the Cold War, an economic war, an exponentially more expansive information war than he could have imagined, and a cyberwar.

All will claim causalities across the map, most especially in his own country and Ukraine. Importantly, ��ܲ�������’s vaunted propaganda engine may prove no match for the millions of Ukrainians with cell phones and the hundreds of millions cell phone users around the world supporting them.

But the economic disruption of the unprecedented sanctions imposed by the rest of the world’s economic powers, save China, suggests that people everywhere will suffer to some degree. Financial flows are massively displaced, most seriously for a Russia that has been effectively cut out of global financial markets. Note the  in Russian financial markets and the Russian ruble, the clearest signs of an economy in freefall as investors and consumers rush to cash out and then run for the exits.

Even the massive $630 billion in reserves Putin had thought he was so clever in amassing to blunt the anticipated sanctions have become a dead asset. No one will take his dollars, euros, yen or Swiss francs, not even his gold; they’re all toxic now.

Oil and grain markets have been colossally disrupted. Import-dependent nations, both developed as well as poor, will pay much higher prices, leading to increased inflation and hardship. We should also expect other secondary effects from the war and sanctions.

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Ukraine has become the proving ground for democracy. Can the immense financial and economic powers amassed by the world’s democracies counter the brute force military power of one country? Nine of the 10 largest economies in the world are democracies, China the lone exception; Russia ranks 12^th.

Democracies run the world’s financial systems from SWIFT to the global financial institutions that fall under the UN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. The US dollar dominates global financial transactions and national reserves. Money has often determined wars’ winners in the past, but never one on the scale of this one, especially when the antagonists wield nuclear weapons.

It may all fall to the courage and resilience of the valiant Ukrainians. The longer they can hold out against ��ܲ�������’s onslaught, already fraught with unanticipated planning, logistical and tactical problems and questionable troop morale, the more unbearable the economic costs will become for Russia. 

Ukraine possesses some of the world’s largest areas of super-rich and fertile black earth. The world is hoping it may also prove to be the perfect soil for democracy to flourish.

*[An earlier version of this article stated that for “the first time since 1945,” war had returned to Europe. Updated March 2, 2022, at 15:00 GMT.]

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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March 1: Knowledge

In a 2015 article for The Atlantic, Eric Liu attempts to answer the intriguing that appears in the title of the piece: “What Every American Should Know.” The question itself is troubling, if only because the United States is a nation that struggles with the very idea of knowledge. Partly because the First Amendment has elevated the right to freedom of expression to the status of a moral ideal, it has never managed to put knowledge at a level permitting it to compete with belief. 

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In US culture, people are defined professionally by what they know and socially or existentially by what they believe. The frontier between knowledge and belief has always been porous. Whenever there’s a doubt, the advantage goes to belief, if only because everyone has a right to their beliefs. This is not just about religious belief, but any kind of belief, especially political and social beliefs that take the form of shared ideas such as American exceptionalism, trickle-down economics or racial behavioral traits (stereotypes).

The culture wars — that have now evolved into the wokeness wars — are contests between people who have acquired just enough “knowledge” (reinforced opinion) to establish what for them has become an unshakable belief. Once the belief is in place, dialogue becomes impossible. If you believe, for example, that wealth is the natural reward for hard work, you also tend to believe that people who aren’t wealthy haven’t worked hard enough. Just as logically, those who are wealthy automatically deserve our respect for their commitment to working hard (even if it is to defend their inherited wealth). If you believe that marriage as a cultural concept is simply a contract between any two beings that want to share their intimacy, you dismiss any argument that appeals to traditions related to the role of families in social construction.

The very idea that there is something that can seriously be called “what everyone should know” is itself a belief. The fragility of its premise resides in the assumed meaning of the last three words in the phrase. Who is “everyone”? Invoking the entire population implies a quest for conformity, if not uniformity. Some might see that as an example of authoritarian thinking. “Should” contains a moral concept, even though linguistically “should” is an ambiguous word that can, in its soft connotation, indicate an act or a state that is desirable for the good of the person. In that sense, it designates a friendly recommendation. But it can also convey the idea of a requirement and implicitly points to a moral failing, its authoritarian sense. It thus becomes the pretext for other people — society itself or its institutions — to enforce it. In extreme cases, which are not so rare, it becomes the foundation of every form of propaganda. It says: This is what we want you to think you know.

Then there is the most problematic term in the phrase: “know.” What is knowledge? In the age of fake news, when everyone, including lawmakers, believes they have a mission to condemn and punish disinformation, the temptation exists to reduce the idea of knowledge to its lowest common denominator: the citing of verifiable facts. But the value of knowledge — whether it is scientific, historical or experiential — never resides in the facts that compose knowledge, but rather in the potential of an individual’s or a group’s state of knowing that produces understanding. Human understanding is constructed like a neural network. It emerges — and is constantly transformed — not through the accumulation of facts, but through the complex linking and association of the diverse elements of understanding that enter into interaction. Understanding is an organic process that includes (and then combines, often in unpredictable ways) facts, perceptions, memory and another element of social experience that is even more difficult to situate: values.

Liu borrowed the idea of “what everyone should know” from a book that was first published in 1987: “Cultural Literacy” by E.D. Hirsch Jr., a professor of English. The book became a bestseller and provoked some serious controversy, not about knowledge, but — predictably enough — about belief or political opinion. Hirsch’s argument turned around the question of “why nations need a common cultural vocabulary and why public schools should teach it.” The book stirred the emotions of cultural thinkers and educators, not because they objected to the idea that a common cultural vocabulary would be desirable, but because Hirsch and two of his colleagues took upon themselves the task of establishing a list of “about 5,000 names, phrases, dates, and concepts that ‘every American needs to know.’”

In the article, Liu critiques the book and then proposes a crowd-sourcing campaign to establish a new list of the thousands of things Americans need to know, presumably to allow a much-divided nation to feel whole again. He formulates the challenge in these terms: “What ten things do you feel are both required knowledge and illuminating gateways to those unenlightened about American life?” He hopes hundreds or thousands of his readers, in their diversity (as readers of The Atlantic?) will respond by submitting their list of words. (When it comes to beliefs, it is important to point out that Americans have a strong belief in lists.) If readers respond, Liu will be in a position to reframe the 5,000 or more “things” (facts? ideas? memes? names? references?) Americans need to know.

Here are the 10 items Liu himself proposes: whiteness, the Federalist Papers, the almighty dollar, organized labor, reconstruction, nativism, the American dream, the Reagan revolution, DARPA, and a sucker born every minute.

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This may remind some people of Jorge Luis Borges’ list of of animals purportedly derived from a Chinese source, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. If readers do respond to Liu’s invitation, it could turn out to be an interesting and revealing cultural and sociological experiment. It will tell us something about the nature of US culture, but much more about the psychology of readers of The Atlantic. It might even turn out to be a valuable resource for innovative teachers who could use the random list not as something to be studied and learned, but as the basis of an exercise in creative thinking. (That, in any case, is what I would recommend.) What it definitely will not be is a list of things everyone should know.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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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Learning Lessons in Ukraine and Beyond

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In case the Melians refused, the Athenians threatened with complete destruction. The Melians did refuse, pointing out that justice was on their side. In response, the Athenians laid siege on the island, took its main city and, after its surrender, killed every surviving male and sold the women and children into slavery.

Exigencies of Defense

One of the central points of the Melian dialogue is the notion that might makes right, or, as the Athenians , “you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”&�Բ�����;It is a prime example of what in international relations theory is known as realism. Over the past few decades, realism has gone out of fashion, especially in Western Europe — and for good reason. Nobody is eager to live in a Hobbesian world where life is “nasty, brutish and short” — in Western Europe, nobody more so than the Germans.

This, of course, has had a lot to do with Berlin’s position during the Cold War, when Germany was, as the prominent German-American political scientist Peter Katzenstein put it, a semi-sovereign state. During the Cold War period, the Federal Republic of Germany pursued a number of strategies that marked a fundamental break with realism: toward its neighbors to the west, a process of economic integration; toward its neighbors to the east (particularly Poland) a policy of détente and reconciliation, which came to be known as Ostpolitik.

The idea behind Ostpolitik was that rapprochement would ultimately lead to change — Wandel durch Annäherung.  When, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, it appeared that the policy had worked. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall was soon followed by the crumbling of the Soviet Union and German unification, which meant that Germany had finally regained its sovereignty — somewhat of a troubling reality, and not only among Germany’s neighbors. In Germany, too, not a few people were worried. They shouldn’t have been. Germany was perfectly adapted to the new times where the “” appeared to have disappeared and where, as the then German minister of defense would , Germany, for the first time in its history, was “only surrounded by friends.”&�Բ�����;

The end of the Cold War appeared to have ushered in a fundamentally now global reality, informed by interdependence, globalization and the end of history. Here, Germany was poised to play a prominent role as the epitome of a “” and a “.”  

Civilian powers such as Germany rely on what the American international relations theorist Joseph Nye famously called . Soft power comes from the appeal of consumer products (all those sleek BMWs and Mercedes Benzes) and popular culture (TV series like “Derrick” and Bundesliga clubs Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund with their millions of fans all over the world), rather than from the barrel of the gun. 

Civilian powers scale down their military. After all, a country surrounded by friends has little use for a military that is up to the task of defending the country. Instead, they are tempted to follow the lead of the Danish Progress party whose late leader  in the early 1970s to replace the country’s ministry of defense with an answering machine with the recorded message of “We surrender” in Russian.

Mugged by Reality

On February 24, Germany got mugged by reality and was caught flat-footed. In the face of a Melian scenario, Germany is like the emperor with his new clothes. Over the recent days, a growing number of articles have appeared exposing the sorry state of the German military and lamenting its lack of preparedness. Some of the stories would make for great slapstick comedy were they not describing a pathetic reality. 

The German soldiers stationed in Lithuania, for instance, not only lack warm jackets but even underwear, or so Germany’s defense ombudsperson has . At the same time, the commander of Germany’s army went public,  that the military “stands more or less naked.” His remarks led France’s center-left daily Liberation to  that “the generals of the Bundeswehr were ready to lay down the arms at the first Russian attack.” Another French newspaper  that the German military, because of “deficient gear and the lack of flexibility of its soldiers,” was not in a position to efficiently support its allies in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

None of this is new. It has all been known for years. In late 2018, for instance, Germany’s weekly Die Zeit  noting that only a third of the new tanks, fighter jets and helicopters the military had received were ready to use. Four years later, one of Germany’s major dailies, the Süddeutsche Zeitung,  that the military continued to suffer from massive problems. The German navy, for instance, could count on less than 30% of its ships to be completely ready for action. 

A few days before the Russian invasion on February 24, the Ukrainian government asked the Germans for anti-tank missile systems. Berlin declined. The reason is simple: Even if it had wanted to, Germany would not be in a position to supply the weapons — they were .

No matter the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Germany will be collateral damage. For too long, the Germans have believed that interdependence and constructive engagement would fundamentally change international relations. This view, however, is based on theoretical constructs that ignore some of the fundamentals informing international relations: the legacy of history and, closely linked to it, emotions. ���ܰ��DZ��’s history abounds with grievances and resentment, more often than not triggering intense passions. The Balkan wars of the 1990s should have served as a reminder. Instead, they were dismissed as a remnant of a bygone era. 

There is another lesson to be drawn from this disaster. A few years ago, two American political scientists  the phrase “weaponizing interdependence.” The authors used network theory to  how “coercing actors could exploit interdependence and why targeted actors would find it difficult to evade coercion attempts.” Germany is a textbook case. For decades now, it has increased its dependence on Russian inputs, particularly natural gas and oil.

The controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline is only the latest example of this. Dependence on Russian commodities was once again informed by the same belief in the power of interdependence to engage the other side in a way beneficial to both. But, once again, the whole thing is in shambles, and Germany is caught in the trap largely of its own making.

Time for a Change

But the times there are changing, and rapidly so. Over the weekend, Germany agreed to cut Russian banks off from the SWIFT payment system, announced it would deliver anti-tank missiles to Ukraine (leaving some observers wondering how they suddenly materialized) and sent a military contingent to be stationed in Slovakia. 

What is much more significant, however, is the fundamental change in tone with regard to Russia, its assault on Ukraine and Germany’s response. The two parties that in the past have been most indulgent toward Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s regime, the Social Democrats and the Left, have made a complete volte-face, condemning Moscow’s aggression. 

At the same time, there has been growing recognition on the side of Germany’s left-wing intellectuals that the “times of illusion” are over, that the notion of “wehrhafte Demokratie” — a democracy that can defend itself — only has meaning if it is backed by real forces, and that this will require not only resources but a fundamental change of mindset. The reality is that Germany’s allies will no longer allow Germans to evoke the horrors of the Nazi regime as an explanation for their neglecting its defensive capabilities. 

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Given the new geostrategic realities, what Western Europe needs, and desperately so, is a strong German military. It must be relieved that on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz  an allocation of €100 billion ($112 billion) toward the 2022 military budget, aiming to raise defense spending to over 2% of GDP set out in NATO guidelines going forward; last year, it stood at 1.53%.

Finally, it seems to dawn in Germany that �ʳܳپ���’s aggression is driven as much by historical revisionism and revanchism as by the boundless  to snuff out and eradicate Ukraine’s civil society and democratic spirit, turning it into a second Belarus, a Russia en miniature. It is hardly a coincidence that the invasion of Ukraine started almost to the day of the anniversary of the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Moscow regime in February 2014.

The only one who has remained steadfast in his Putinophilism is former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has always prided himself in his close relationship with the Russian autocrat. Whereas Austria’s ex-chancellor, Christian Kern, and the former French premier, François Fillon,  from lucrative posts on the boards of Russian enterprises, Schröder refused to follow suit, much to the embarrassment of the German Social Democrats. 

But then, Schröder belongs to the same generation as the Putins, Trumps and Xis of this world, old men living in an alternative reality who would like nothing more than to turn back the clock. In Germany, at least, dreams and illusions have given way to a new realism, one that is likely to have profound repercussions not only for Germany but for Europe in general.

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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International Law

A first lesson is that failure to firmly stand up to violations of international law as they occur convinces trespassers that they can get away with them. It emboldens violators to commit ever more flagrant infringements. Kicking the can down the road by failing to immediately and firmly respond to violations amounts to allowing an open wound to fester. The longer the wound festers, the more difficult, costly and risky it is to cure.

The last 14 years of Putin’s rule are a case in point. Putin began the recreation of his Russian world in 2008 when he recognized the two Georgian breakaway republics of Abkhazia and North Ossetia. The recognition constituted the first step in Putin’s defining of Russia’s borders in civilizational rather than international legal terms.

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Putin has made no bones about the fact that he sees territories populated by Russian speakers and adherents of Russian culture as the determinants of Russia’s borders, not international law. Ever since 2008, he has demonstrated his willingness to enforce his definition of Russia’s border with military might.

Back then, the international community effectively looked the other way. The failure to stand up to Putin emboldened him six years later to annex Crimea, which is legally part of Ukraine, and foster insurgencies in the Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The United States and Europe responded by slapping Putin’s wrists. The sanctions imposed at the time did little to stop the Russian leader from increasing his war chest or making the cost of continued pursuit of his strongman tactics too costly and risky.

This month’s Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from the international community’s failure to draw a line in the sand back in 2008 or at the latest in 2014. “T��� Russian aggression is the result of years of appeasement of Russia by many countries,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Human Rights Abuse

Russia is the most dramatic, most recent example of the cost of not responding firmly and unequivocally to infringements of international law as they occur. Other examples are numerous. They include the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and the subsequent military coup in Myanmar, the 2013 toppling of ��������’s first and only democratically elected president in a takeover by the armed forces, the meek response to the brutal repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, the increasingly blatant discrimination and disenfranchisement of Muslims in India, and missed opportunities to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to name a few.

All of these examples, like Ukraine, contain lessons the international community asserted that it had learned from World War II. They all contain a lesson that should have been learned long before Ukraine but is undeniably evident in the Eastern European crisis: Abetting violations of human rights encourages and emboldens violations of sovereign, national, ethnic, religious, cultural and gender rights.

Back in 1989, Genocide Watch Director Greg Stanton then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana that “if you don’t do something to prevent genocide in your country, there is going to be a genocide within five years.” Five years later, there was genocide in Rwanda. It is a word of warning that echoes in predictions by Indian journalist Rana Ayyub that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies could lead to large-scale violence against the country’s 200-million Muslims, the world’s largest Muslim minority.

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It is a warning that reverberates in the contrast between the reception and welcome that European states are justifiably according to refugees from Ukraine compared to the rejection of earlier waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. A Moroccan journalist posted a on Twitter of students from the Arab world and Africa watching buses on the Ukrainian-Polish border pick up Ukrainians every 15 minutes but transporting people from countries beyond Europe only every four hours. The journalist, Anas Daif, reported some students have been stranded for four days on the border trying to escape the war.

Freedom of Expression

In a similar vein, prominent BBC journalist Lyse Doucet, reporting from Kyiv, highlighted the fact that humans in distress are humans in distress irrespective of their ethnicity or religion. In a video , she explained that her reporting on the current crisis in Ukraine prevented her from personally accepting in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Irbil the 2022 Shifa Gardi Award named after a journalist killed in 2017 in Iraq by a roadside bomb.

“If anyone knows about the pain and hardship of living with war, it’s the people of Iraq, of Kurdistan. And if anyone knows what it’s like to live in a war that never seems to end, of living with powerful neighbors, and the importance of independent journalism, it is the Kurdish people,” Doucet said.

Doucet’s message brought it all together: the linkages between failing to stand up early and firmly to flagrant violations of international law, abuse of human rights and suppression of freedom of expression. Kurds formed the bulk of thousands of desperate refugees in Belarus who were trying to cross the border into Poland just four months ago. In contrast to Ukrainians being welcomed with blankets, cots, clothing and hot meals, the Kurds were brutally beaten back as they sought to storm the borders.

Iraq, Syria and Turkey may have been different places if Kurdish national and/or cultural rights, which Kurds have asserted for more than a century, had been honored. Instead, the international community abetted repressive policies of both autocratic and democratic governments. Similarly, Ukraine would have been a different place if the international community had stood up to Putin from day one.

War in Europe Is Nothing New

It would also be a different place if Europeans had less of a sense of superiority. Many have expressed shock that “this could happen in 21^st-century Europe.” Europeans would be better served to recognize that their continent is as prone to conflict as are other parts of the world.

Ukraine is not the first such incident in Europe. It was preceded by the brutal conflicts in Chechnya, Georgia and the wars of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s that, three decades later, could erupt again. That realization may be seeping in. “War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone,”  Telegraph journalist Peter Hannan.

It’s never too late to learn lessons. The world is finally standing up to Vladimir Putin. Yet there is little indication that the broader lessons Ukraine offers are finally being learned.

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

The post Learning Lessons in Ukraine and Beyond appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 25: Appetite

Is it justified to think that nations have personalities, along with tastes, fears and desires? People do. But can we assume there is an equivalence between the demonstrable inclinations of a national government and the needs, ambitions and predilections of the people in a democracy? It appears ever more obvious that the political class — increasingly perceived as an isolated elite in modern societies — is less representative of and responsive to the people who elect its leaders and officials than to the economic and cultural elite those politicians tend to associate and identify with.

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In a Los Angeles Times article on the Kremlin’s view of international sanctions, David Pierson and Sam Dean seek to how the West has been elaborating an effective strategy designed to counter ��ܲ�������’s militarily assault on Ukraine. “With no appetite for military confrontation,” they write, “the U.S. and its allies are relying on sweeping economic sanctions to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull out of Ukraine.”

Most people would find this sentence a reasonable description of the American reaction to events in Eastern Europe. The comforting message is that the West has no interest in war. The damage and suffering caused by this war can be blamed on one government and indeed one man, Vladimir Putin. 

But does it make any sense to talk of an “appetite” when speaking of the foreign policy of a nation? If the metaphor of a nation’s appetite has any factual foundation in the realm of foreign policy, the history of the United States over at least the past three-quarters of a century reveals an aptitude of American leaders for war in all its forms, which may or may not reflect an appetite or even a craving of its leaders.

Recent decades have revealed a proclivity of the American political class to toggle between physical warfare itself — which traditionally pitted trained and equipped armies against each other — and economic warfare directed against entire civilian populations. The latter has recently been deemed by political leaders to be more humane, even though it spreads suffering wider and disproportionately affects uncounted masses of people not remotely involved in wartime aggression or any of the practices cited to justify going to war.

In 1996, when Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN at the time, was asked about the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US sanctions, she said “the price is worth it.” This reflects the kind of political calculus that counts half a million lives not as a tragedy, but as a “price,” something to be evaluated in purely monetary terms. In moral terms, Albright was counting on a form of specious reasoning that says if we haven’t directly sought to kill those children, we bear no responsibility. Their sacrifice is thus of no concern.

A similar form of reasoning led to the policy privileged at least since Barack Obama’s presidency of seeing drone warfare as humane because it is “clean,” to the extent that it precludes any risk to the “good guys” (ourselves) doing the killing. If only bad people are being killed, war appears to be humane and possibly as fun as playing a video game.

So now The Los Angeles Times wants us to accept the idea that American leaders have “no appetite for military confrontation” in the current Ukraine drama. Apart from the irrelevance of the question of appetite, that idea is contestable for another reason. In this case, it isn’t a question of desire, aptitude, proclivity or even ingrained habit. The unwillingness to mount a military operation is due to the simple fact that the United States has no legal justification for engaging in physical war with Russia, which has not threatened US security or the security of any NATO nation. 

Invoking the idea of appetite is disingenuous. Had Ukraine achieved its goal of joining NATO, no one doubts that there would have been plenty of appetite, even a devouring hunger, at least on the part of the military-industrial complex in the US, who are nevertheless actively supplying weapons. Any war is good for business, even a war the US is not allowed to engage in directly. This one, which holds the promise of reinforcing NATO thanks to the magnified fear of Russia, already makes good economic sense for the defense industry at home. That stimulates a lot of appetites. And for the past five years, mainstream Democrats have plenty to munch on after doing everything in their power to enforce the belief that Vladimir Putin is Satan incarnate.

The complementary question The Times authors raise of “relying on sweeping economic sanctions” to wage war is more ambiguous. Sanctions can be, and in this case are very likely to be, a two-edged sword, even if it’s the only sword left in the armory due to the rules surrounding NATO defense. Disturbing the flow of global commerce entails a raft of unintended and often unanalyzed consequences for all parties concerned. 

What is clear, however, is that US administrations have in recent decades developed not so much an appetite as a craving for applying sanctions in every direction whenever anything displeases them in the behavior of any country in the world. Sanctions have become the essential pheromone of the world’s unique hegemon, intent on leaving its odor in every nook, cranny, crevice or just bare wall of the global economy.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

Make Sense of the World

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In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post Sanctions as �������������’s Universal Response to Evil (and Anything Else) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

India Disappoints Its Friends and Admirers

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The ruling dispensation in the Indian state of Karnataka has invoked Section 133(2) of the . This section says that the “State Government may give such directions to any educational institution or tutorial institution as in its opinion are necessary or expedient for carrying out the purposes of this Act … [and] such institution shall comply with every such direction.”

Claims

On February 5, the ruling dispensation in Karnataka led to a being issued by Padmini S.N., under-secretary of the Education Department of Karnataka, requiring institutions to enforce particular provisions.

First, as per the letter, students must wear a uniform that has been selected by an authority, such as college committees or administrative boards. Second, if the administrative committee has not issued a mandatory dress code, then “clothes which disturb equality, integrity and public law and order should not be worn.” Third, the letter the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors in 2017. It claims that the Supreme Court “accepted the balance test where competing interests are involved and has taken a view that individual interest must yield to the larger public interest.” Fourth, the letter says that the ban on wearing a hijab inside educational institutions is not in violation of Article 25 of the onstitution.

Contesting the Claims

Yet these claims are contestable. First, school management could introduce a uniform for students that is guided by the needs of education and the constitution. Education is concerned with the teaching-learning process. The sartorial choices of students or even teachers do not have any relevance to this process. In fact, preventing students from choosing what they want to wear may impede the fundamental right to education. Further, it cannot be logically argued that the sartorial choice of students impedes the integrity of the teaching-learning process.

Second, it is absurd to claim that clothes can impact equality, integrity and public order. Education is concerned with enhancing the ability of students to participate in social life after they graduate. This includes joining the labor force, participating in the political process, and building and sustaining communities. Inclusive development does not require all people to be part of sartorial (or any other type of) homogeneity, but it does need their participation in socially productive activities. Homogeneity is antithetical to equality with diversity. After all, the of India is “unity in diversity,” not unity before diversity.

Furthermore, claiming that sartorial choices such as wearing a hijab will disrupt public law and order effectively serves as a dog whistle for vigilantes. When these vigilantes engage in actions that undermine public law and order, the original claim is thereby validated.

Third, the Supreme Court, in the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors, argued that there could be conflict between the legal rights of two individuals. In such an event, the interest of the wider community would be used to determine whose rights are prioritized. Yet the individual sartorial choices of students or teachers neither undermine the rights of others nor affect the public. Thus, in this case, the balance test is not applicable since there are no conflicts between individuals with regard to their rights as guaranteed by Article 21 of the constitution.

Fourth, seeking to relate the ban on wearing a hijab (or the clothing choices of students or teachers) solely with Article 25 is legally untenable. In fact, if this standalone appeal to Article 25 of the constitution is made, then it leaves the door open to define religious or cultural practices as being more or less essential to the definition of a religion or culture. Doing so in this current case would directly impact the right to education of some Muslim female students.

The key issue is whether the sartorial choices of students undermine the integrity of the teaching-learning process. The only logical answer is no. The choices of students and teachers are connected to the right to seek education under Article 21-A and the right to dignity under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The right to practice religion or culture, as guaranteed by Article 25 in the present case regarding sartorial choice, does not subvert the teaching-learning process. Therefore, Article 25, when read with Articles 21 and 21-A, demonstrates the legal untenability of the ruling dispensation in Karnataka.

Why Now?

But there is a fundamental question that arises from the ban on wearing a hijab. Why are such issues being raised in the first place? On the one hand, it is undeniable that the ruling dispensation in Karnataka seeks to trigger political debate over social issues, since it may deflect public attention from evaluating the state government’s record over other matters.

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On the other hand, we believe there is a broader background to such moves. Policy initiatives that favor elites and put others at a disadvantage require the latter to provide at least implicit “consent.” This may be problematic if the interests of elites are equated with “national interests” through the deployment of ultra-nationalism. This process of “consent” may be reinforced if divisions emerge among non-elites by stigmatizing and labeling a section of non-elites as the “other.” In India, this process of stigmatization involves the furthering of communalism, which is the political manufacturing of social divides along religious lines.

This manufactured rise in social divides, coupled with other factors such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to an crisis. Rising unemployment, inequality and inflation cannot be overcome with the “toolkit” available to the government. This policy toolkit involves the use of ultra-nationalism and communalism where the pot is always set to boil, causing social tension. The repeated use of such measures has started yielding diminishing results for the government, but it appears to have no alternative policy available.

The way out of this impasse requires a different framework. This needs to involve public , fiscal policy undergirded by progressive taxation, and industry policy backed by mobilization and allocation of resources by the government. Such policies of inclusive development must be part of a process of recentering the constitutional imperatives of secularism, gender and social justice, and democracy.

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

The post The Politics Behind the Hijab Ban appeared first on 51�Թ�.

An OSINT agency would create a uniform system to procure, develop, build and operate the systems utilized to exploit, analyze and disseminate intelligence. This solution would give OSINT the credence it deserves and create an effective method of acquiring and procuring equipment while improving the quality and quantity of OSINT products.

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OSINT uses open-source tools to collect information from publicly available sources and analyze it for decision-making. The sources it uses to create intelligence products range from academia to traditional  such as television and radio, social media and even . As a result, OSINT provides actionable intelligence and includes support and . Despite the presence of OSINT in the US security apparatus for the last 80 years, it is currently the only intelligence discipline that does not have a .

No Standard

There is no singular standard or platform for OSINT to be processed and no standard acquisition or purchasing process for OSINT equipment. This  is especially troubling, as the technological edge in the United States shifted from defense and security structures during the Cold War to the academic and business sectors today. Moreover, as new technical fields such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, robot process automation and blockchain technologies, among others, become utilized by the intelligence community, it makes sense that one agency is responsible for their acquisition and procurement.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) can serve as an example of what a new OSINT agency can accomplish. According to its , “The NRO is the U.S. Government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites.” Created in 1961, the NRO developed US reconnaissance satellite programs but was never in charge of exploiting the images it produced. 

Instead, the NRO handles the maintenance and steering of the satellites so that they can meet all of the collection requests given to the NRO by other intelligence agencies. Since the NRO is the only agency handling  (GEOINT) collection, it can insist on high standards for every satellite’s design and procurement.

OSINT’s current challenges mirror those faced by GEOINT from the 1960s. Today, there is too much open source information to  much like there was too much satellite imagery to be processed effectively after the creation of the NRO. Decades later, the Journal of Defense Resources , “At this point, the challenges posed by OSINT consisted in the ability to convert into actionable intelligence the large volumes of data, which in most cases were unorganized, came from multiple sources, were available in different forms and collected through several categories of channels and to subsequently convert them into validated intelligence.” 

To resolve the gap, the Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation () was created as a central point to manage “imagery collection, analysis, exploitation, production, and dissemination.” An independent OSINT agency could effectively collect, analyze, exploit, produce and disseminate open source information to the various intelligence agencies in a similar manner.

Technological Shifts

Technological shifts are another area in which OSINT today mirrors GEOINT from decades ago. Satellite technology  throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting the rapid pace at which OSINT sources are changing due to the  of the internet and social media. By creating the NRO, the US government set the  of the satellite equipment it was procuring. 

A  by the Center for Strategic & International Studies states that “the U.S. I.C. cannot compete in the global intelligence arena and fulfill its vital missions without a reinvention of how it procures, adopts, and assimilates emerging technologies and delivers them to mission users — at speed and at scale.” The NRO’s model would be a perfect role for an OSINT agency to take the lead on procuring all OSINT technology rather than relying on different agencies.

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Using the NRO as a model for an OSINT agency will help the intelligence community in several ways. First, it will not take away from any agency’s existing mission set. That will avoid any large-scale reshuffling of the intelligence structure as a whole and prevent any mission overlap between existing agencies and the new one. 

Second, it will stop the stove-piping of OSINT within the intelligence community and permit a greater flow of finished intelligence products to senior officials and political leaders. Finally, an OSINT agency will guide and direct new research for other intelligence offices with similar missions. That office will allow the intelligence community to access the latest technological breakthroughs and decrease the costs of procuring and maintaining equipment.

With more people gaining access to the internet, smartphones and social media every day, open source intelligence will only become more relevant to shaping the future of the intelligence community. By creating a dedicated OSINT agency, the US intelligence community can maintain a strategic advantage over both adversarial state and non-state actors.

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

The post It’s Time to Give OSINT Its Own Agency appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 25: Dead Empires

Perhaps the most lucid on the Ukraine crisis came from the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Kenya joined the chorus of nations categorically condemning ��ܲ�������’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a prelude to a military assault. But unlike other nations, which have been framing their judgment only in terms of international law, Kimani proposed a measured reflection drawing on a much wider historical perspective than that of disputed territories in Eastern Europe. The experience of African nation-states, “birthed” as he reminds us in the past century, helps to clarify the crisis in Eastern Europe as just one more symptom of a pathology spawned by the Western colonial tradition.

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The New York Times didn’t bother to mention Kimani’s speech. After all, who cares about Kenya or the historical insight of Africans? The Washington Post offered two minutes of excerpted from the ambassador’s six-minute speech. It was accompanied by a single sentence of commentary that gives no hint of the substance of his remarks: “Kenyan Ambassador to the U.N. Martin Kimani evoked Kenyan‘s colonial history while rebuking Russia’s move into eastern Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 21.”

Carlos Mureithi at Quartz Africa penned a fuller that doesn’t quite get Kimani’s real point. He begins by describing the speech as “a scathing condemnation of the Russia–Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.” But it was much more than that.

Kimani invited the Security Council to consider how the nation-states we have today were crafted by European colonial masters focused on perpetuating their own interests and indifferent to the needs and even identities of the peoples who lived in those lands and who woke up one morning to find themselves contained within newly drawn national borders. Kimani makes the surprising case for respecting those borders. However arbitrary in their design, they may serve to reign in the ethnic rivalries and tribal tendencies that exist in all regions of the globe, inevitably spawning local conflicts. But even while arguing in favor of the integrity of modern nation-states, he showed little respect for those who drew the borders and even less for the self-interested logic that guided them.

“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires,” Kimani urges, “in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.” The populations on the receiving end of colonial logic know that even dead empires, chopped down to size, can be sources of contamination. They have left a lot of dead wood on the path of their colonial conquests. Not only does dead wood tend to rot, but, if the vestiges of the past are not cleared away, those who must continue to tread on the path frequently risk tripping over it.

Kimani evokes the specter of “nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia.” He sees a bright side in the fact that an incoherently drawn map may have helped Africa avoid the worst effects of nostalgia. The real paradox, however, is that his description of dead empires applies to the two still breathing opponents who are facing off in the current struggle: Russia and the United States.

In an article on the Russia–Ukraine crisis published on 51�Թ� in December, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle highlighted Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s obsession with a form of nostalgic traditionalism. They described it as “a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism.” Though �ʳܳپ���’s wealth is as legendary as it is secret and the Russian president appears to be as greedy as a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he seems possessed by a pathological nostalgia for the enforced order of the Soviet Union and perhaps even for the Tsarist Russia the Bolsheviks overturned a century ago. At the same time, Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” reveals a similar pathology affecting the population of the US. It’s equally a part of President Joe Biden’s political culture. The “back” that appears in Biden’s slogan “America is back” and even in “Build Back Better” confirms that orientation.

In declining empires, the mindset of a former conqueror remains present even when conquest is no longer possible. Kimani alludes to this when he affirms that Kenya “strongly condemn[s] the trend in the last decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.” He accuses those states of betraying the ideals of the United Nations. “Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight,” Kimani intones. “It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.” In other words, Putin is not an isolated case.

Kimani politely names no names. But the message is clear: There is blame to go all around and it is endemic. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of the current crisis. Sad because in wartime situations, the participating actors will always claim to act virtuously and build their propaganda around the idea of pursuing a noble cause. Putin has provocatively — and almost comically — dared to call his military operations a campaign of “demilitarization,” which most people would agree to be a virtuous act. We have already seen Biden the various severe measures intended to cripple ��ܲ�������’s economy “totally defensive.”

Empires assumed to be dead are often still able to breathe and, even with reduced liberty of movement, follow their worst habitual instincts. The two empires that squared off against each other during the Cold War to different degrees are shadows of what they once were. But their embers are still capable of producing a lot of destructive heat.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is the European Super League Such a Terrible Idea?

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Violence, racism, decaying stadiums, an indifferent population and two full-scale tragedies had contributed to football’s degeneration. In 1989, when yet another calamity visited the sport in the form of the Hillsborough disaster, football’s crisis deepened. The sport seemed in terminal decline. (Hillsborough was the name of the stadium in Sheffield where 94 football fans died — three more passed away later — after too many spectators were admitted.)

Revolution

Thirty years ago this week — February 20, 1992, to be precise — English football changed dramatically. When the clubs in the First Division announced they were leaving the Football League, they could have had no conception they were starting a revolution that would turn the debilitated game into the most popular, marketable, glamorous, culturally diverse and arguably most valuable sports competition the world has ever seen.

The inaugural season started on August 15, 1992, with 22 clubs making up the newly branded Premier League. The original plan was for ITV to screen the games of England’s leading clubs — Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton (Manchester City and Chelsea were not among them) — but this was revised to a more equitable arrangement.

Earlier, in 1990, Greg Dyke, then a senior executive at London Weekend Television (an affiliate of the ITV network), pledged financial support for a breakaway from England’s Football League — this being an assembly of clubs split into four divisions — with revenue distributed among all member clubs.

The proposal was for a different structure in which the leading teams formed a self-contained alliance — independent of the Football League — and which would generate its own revenues, especially from the media, without any responsibility for sharing with the 87 clubs outside of the new entity. The Premier League was designed to operate under the auspices of the Football Association and would preserve the system in which the teams that finished the season at the bottom of the top tier would be relegated to the division below, while those at the top of the second tier would be promoted into the new league. But the key difference was that the elite would not share income with lesser clubs.

Sky’s Bid

ITV had presumably not expected a rival bid from Sky television, which, having launched its telecommunications satellite in 1989 and started transmission, had endured punishing losses.  So, when Rupert Murdoch’s TV station bid an unheard of £304 million ($407 million today) for the rights to screen the new competition, it seemed not so much audacious as suicidal. It sounds absurd now, but there was a suspicion that non-terrestrial television might have been a flash in the pan.

Murdoch’s calculation was simple: Football fans would pay a monthly subscription in exchange for live games. Back then, live games were a rarity. Football clubs were historically opposed to screening games live for fear that their attendances would slump. That didn’t happen. In fact, football became an exemplar for market-oriented sport: it fashioned a commodity, created a new demand for it and offered it for sale.

Sky’s fortunes turned. Subscriptions rose so sharply that it soon became the ����’s leading digital platform with revenues of over £1 billion. In 2018, it was acquired by the American company Comcast in a deal valued at £30 billion. At the time, Sky had 27 million subscribers.

Today, Sky no longer has exclusive rights to Premier League games. The European Union obliged it to share with other broadcasters. The present also includes BT Sport and Amazon Prime, expires in 2024-25 and is worth £5.1 billion. Retro-indexed to inflation, this would have been about £2.3 billion in 1992. The boards of directors of the clubs (they didn’t have outright owners) were probably astonished at Murdoch’s seemingly over-generous bid. None of them would have imagined how the value of English football would spiral upward as a result of Sky’s initiative.

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Buoyed by their new largess, the clubs refurbished their grounds (or stadiums, as most prefer to call them today), rendering them safe and family-friendly. To this end, the traditional standing areas, known as terraces, were removed and replaced with seats. Now, ironically, standing sections — or “safe standing sections,” as they are known — have been reintroduced.  

The lavish endowment also bankrolled the arrival of new players, often from overseas leagues that couldn’t match the salaries available in England. Eric Cantona was an early beneficiary, joining Manchester United in early 1992. Others included Tony Yeboah, Patrick Vieira and Ruud Gullit, black players who silenced any residual racist chants and comments leftover from the 1980s. In the mid-1990s, David Beckham personified the league moving seamlessly between sports and entertainment, acquiring a then-unique status as an all-purpose celebrity who could endorse practically any consumer product and guarantee increased sales.

Roman Abramovich

But the most influential figure in the Premier League was not a player, but a Russian oligarch, who, in 2003, decided he wanted to buy a football club in what was then emerging as the most fashionable sports competition in the world. Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club, then about £80 million in debt. He made good on the debt and, over the next 18 years, splurged £2 billion on transfers, that is, the amount paid to clubs to release players from contracts.

Following Abramovich’s example, moneyed business leaders from outside the UK began buying Premier League clubs, usually without any hope of breaking even. Despite the media and sponsorship income, clubs managed to hemorrhage money, mainly because of extravagant player salaries.

After the 2021 takeover of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, there were 14 (of 20) top-flight clubs in overseas owners’ hands. Chelsea lost last year, Manchester City , mainly because both teams spent so much on transfers and paid high salaries; COVID-19 contributed, of course — the clubs lost income from spectators. Having benevolent owners means the clubs now operate less as businesses, more as foundations (like endowed colleges or charities).

Proponents of grassroots sports despair at the manner in which what was once a working-class game played by factory teams and supported by industrial workers has been hijacked by international plutocrats. Their intention has never been to cultivate local talent, but to attract the world’s most glittering names. Last year, Chelsea paid £97.5 million to Inter Milan for Romelu Lukaku. In 2016, Manchester United forked over £89 million for the services of Paul Pogba. Both players’ salaries are £12-15 million per year. Some argue this squeezes out aspiring young local players. Others suggest it inspires them.

Losers

What of the clubs that remained in the Football League, now rebranded as EFL? They were cast adrift and left to face the full brunt of market forces. Practically every club in the three divisions that make up the EFL struggles financially and many have declared themselves insolvent. There is little chance they can prosper outside the Premier League. Hence, their aim is to secure promotion. Ironically, these clubs might have benefited if the ill-fated European Super League, which attracted interest from several leading Premier League clubs, had taken off.

At the start of the 20^th century, money was, for many, a pestilence that would destroy the core value of fair play. Today, it could be argued that it was English football’s savior. Like every other professional sport — and all major sports are now professional — football has been embroiled in corruption, doping, violence and other activities that have despoiled sport’s central precept. All had their sources in money. Yet money is arguably the prime mover behind every single development in contemporary sport, and that is especially true in English football.

The Premier League is emblematic of recent developments in sports. It thrums with avarice, ruthlessness, triumphalism and an indifference to the collectivist principles that originally brought football into being.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of .]

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

The post What England’s Premier League Did for Football appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

February 24: Unmistakable

Our regular examination of language in the news cycle has been bringing us back to the major international story thus far of 2022. The Russia–Ukraine crisis keeps generating examples of the deliberately twisted and sometimes directly inverted semantics, a trend that will probably continue and perhaps become amplified in the coming weeks and months.

As a general rule, when politicians claim to be “clear,” the observer can be certain that what they are clear about is at best half the story. Clarity imperceptibly fades into obscurity. It gets worse when the speaker claims that the message is “unmistakable.” Quoted by the New York Times, US President Joe Biden offered a wonderful example of such while explaining the measures he is taking to counter ��ܲ�������’s incursion into Ukraine.

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“Let me be clear: These are totally defensive moves on our part,” Biden proclaimed. “We have no intention of fighting Russia. We want to send an unmistakable message, though, that the United States, together with our allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”

This is the standard mantra in Washington. Economic sanctions are always intended to punish civilian populations in the hope that they will revolt against their government. They should never be thought of as aggressive or offensive, not even partially. Perish the thought. Biden makes that “clear” when he claims they are “totally” defensive, like a soldier in the field raising a shield before his face to deflect an enemy’s arrow. 

As for the “unmistakable message,” it may simply mean that the White House has made so many mistaken guesses in recent weeks about the date of a Russian invasion, it is now necessary to inform people that the latest message, for a change, is not just one more in an endless series of mistakes.

Biden also called Vladimir �ʳܳپ���’s move “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” For the moment, it is an aggressive incursion into contested Ukrainian territory, but it isn’t an invasion. It can only be deemed the beginning of an invasion if there actually is an invasion that follows from it. There is no question that President �ʳܳپ���’s initiative violates international law, but that alone doesn’t make it a military invasion.

Biden should know something about what invasions look like. He was, after all, the key Democrat, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to champion US President George W. Bush’s tragically planned and utterly unjustified of Iraq in 2003, a well-documented episode Biden persistently denied during his election campaign.

�ʳܳپ���’s move may be a prelude to an invasion, but preludes only become real when the event they are preparing becomes real. The real reason Biden calls it “the beginning of an invasion” is to save face in an attempt to maintain a modicum of credibility regarding his administration’s warnings in recent weeks. He may well be hoping it turns into a Russian invasion just to prove his repeated predictions were somewhat correct.

Then there’s Biden’s promise to defend “every inch of NATO �ٱ�������ٴǰ���.” Everyone knows Ukraine is not NATO territory. So why offer such a justification? Perhaps Biden’s reason for saying this on record is that, when Republicans and the more bellicose Democrats begin castigating him for failing to support Ukraine militarily, he will be able to use Ukraine’s non-NATO status to defend his policy. At the same time, he is getting the best of both worlds. He may thus safely stand back and watch a bloody proxy war proceed, much as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden have done for the past seven years with Yemen.

Finally, Biden made the important decision to call off the proposed summit meeting with Putin. At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken a planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that should have taken place on February 24. “Now that we see the invasion is beginning,” Blinken explained, “and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time.” 

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That statement on Blinken’s part is literally a “wholesale rejection.” He even used the expression “pretense of diplomacy,” disparaging the very idea of trying to solve the problem rather than let it get worse. Lavrov had made no attempt to scotch the meeting. In its coverage, Reuters added that “Blinken said he was still committed to diplomacy.” Except, apparently, when he’s committed to preventing it from happening. In former times, diplomacy consisted of getting a conversation going whenever a serious problem arose. It certainly did not consist of explaining why there was no need for a dialogue.

In the light of this new style of diplomacy, historians may now find it an interesting counterfactual exercise to wonder what might have happened during the Cuban missile crisis had either John F. Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev objected that diplomacy was a waste of time. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, 51�Թ�’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

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

The post From Repeated Mistakes to an Unmistakable Message appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Cities Under Water (Interactive)

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“To cover the gap and manage catastrophic risk accumulation,” he adds, “the role of insurance and reinsurance pools is key, often drawn by traumatic events themselves.” This being said, the gap of uninsured damages is huge, which means not only a growing burden on public budgets but also on the most exposed and those directly hit. These situations will impact access and credit conditions for these populations.

Insurer concerns are no longer individual catastrophic events, but their global and systemic effects on human societies. Andrew Cornford, a counselor at the Observatoire de la Finance in Switzerland, explains: “T��� problems posed to insurers … will be due to the increased … scale of the actual occurrence of events associated with these risks, to their sometimes geographically uncertain incidence, and to increased correlations between them.”

In Cornford’s view, the problems can, to some extent, “be handled through better designed and increased capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements suggested by stress testing — for which recent experience with COVID-19 may be helpful.” However, the underlying hypothesis is that the level of premiums will remain affordable to those seeking cover.

Nevertheless, increased property claims as a result of extreme weather events are forcing insurers to reevaluate underwriting strategies, including rebalancing their premiums and pricing strategies. Against this background, regulators have expressed concern that climate change could make it difficult for insurance companies to provide affordable financial protection. Rising premiums could make cover unaffordable, especially for disadvantaged communities that are more likely to live in regions prone to disaster.

Instead of burdening local populations with costs of damages that occur due to the impact of climate change — caused largely by the wealthy Global North — there is an urgent need to devise underwriting strategies to transfer a substantial portion of climate-related insurance costs from the South to the North. This would allow the international community to share the burden. Otherwise, the most exposed regions of the world may well become impossible to insure by market mechanisms, which would leave only the public guarantee option open, as stressed by the economist Etienne Perrot.

By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Can private insurance alone mitigate climate change damages?

“…pass the cost to policyholders through increased insurance premiums… ”

Unlike randomness, which allows a probability calculation on a statistical basis, uncertainty arises from facts that are emerging — unique or too few to give rise to a stochastic calculation. Randomness is the basis of prevention and insurance systems. On the other hand, uncertainty can only be covered by contingency reserves — it’s a precaution. (The IPCC forecast [that] insurance’s prevention and precaution are the three forms of the virtue of prudence, which is the intelligence of concrete situations.)

Henri de Castries, therefore, hypothesizes that the damaging meteorological phenomena induced by a global warming of 4 degrees are phenomena, if not unique, at least too few to enter into an insurance system. This involves the states, either directly when they compensate for the damage by compulsory levies (in France, we have known ‘the drought tax’ in the 1980s) or by obliging the insurance companies to compensate the damage, which will pass the cost on to policyholders through increased insurance premiums.

Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

“…public-private partnerships can be developed…”

According to Munich Re, global losses from natural disasters in 2020 came to $210 billion, of which $82 billion was insured. To cover the gap and manage catastrophic risk accumulation, the role of insurance and reinsurance pools is key, often drawn by traumatic events themselves. Public-private partnerships are nothing new (e.g., US National Flood Insurance or the Spanish Consorcio) and can be developed.

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Insurance plays an essential role toward mitigating damage from climate change through underwriting, prevention, disseminating knowledge and as investors. Large players have recently committed to the UN-convened net-zero insurance alliance. Artificial intelligence and big data analysis research, also supported by insurance, will increase natural disaster predictability. Insurance and reinsurance markets are efficient, though unpretentious.

Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

“…capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements… ”

Individually, most of the risks associated with a substantial rise in temperature due to climate change can be quantified, owing to past experience. The problems posed to insurers, other private financial institutions and the public sector will be due to the increased — and sometimes unpredictably increased — scale of the actual occurrence of events associated with these risks, to their sometimes geographically uncertain incidence and to increased correlations between them.

To some extent, the resulting problems can be handled through better designed and increased capital requirements, public-sector reserves and precautionary arrangements suggested by stress testing — for which recent experience with COVID-19 may be helpful. These arrangements will entail institutional innovations, training of people to handle the consequences of the new risks and enhanced multilateral cooperation — the absence of any of which will reduce the effectiveness of the potential contribution of finance to control of damages and mitigation of their effects.

Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

*[An earlier version of this article was published by .]

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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In a new for Foreign Affairs bearing the title, “Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order,” Beckley makes the case that having and sharing an easily identified enemy is the key to effective world government. The Cold War taught him that “the liberal order” has nothing to do with good intentions and being a force for good. Instead, it thrives on a strong dose of irrational fear that can be spread among friends.

Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe (Language and the News)

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As the Republican presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush produced these immortal : “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” Probably unwittingly, Beckley echoes Bush’s wisdom. “Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons,” Beckley writes, “but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago.”&�Բ�����; Unlike the clueless Bush, Beckley now knows who the “they” is. It’s China.

History has moved on. China can now replace the Soviet Union as the star performer. Bush proposed Islamist terrorism as his coveted “them,” but that ultimately failed. The terrorists are still lurking in numerous shadows, but when President Biden withdrew the last American troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, he definitively delegitimized it as a threat worthy of spawning a new Cold War. And now, even while Russia is being touted as the best supporting actor, the stage is finally clear to push China into the limelight.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Shared enemy:

A powerful nation whose negative image can be modeled by another powerful nation in such a way that its name alone inspires fear, to the point that it may be generously offered to governments of weaker nations on the pretext of forming a profitable alliance

Contextual Note

For Beckley, US hegemony needs China’s help. Now that the Middle Kingdom has now achieved the status of a high-profile enemy to be generously shared with obedient allies, the liberal order may thrive again, as it did during the Cold War. For Beckley, it is China, not Donald Trump, that will “make America great again.”

Some may find Beckley’s historical logic slightly skewed. He explains that the modern liberal order was “designed to defeat … Soviet communism.” If it was “designed,” what does he have to say about the designer? Who indeed could that have been, and what were their real motives? Could it have been the Dulles brothers, whose combined clout in the Dwight Eisenhower years allowed them to dictate US foreign policy? More alarmingly, Beckley seems to be suggesting that without a pretext for paranoia, the liberal order would not or could not exist.  

Beckley is probably right but for reasons he might not appreciate. The idea of needing an identifiable enemy stands as a purely negative justification of the liberal order. But Beckley has already dismissed the idea that it is all about bettering the world. He seems to underestimate the need ordinary Americans have to think of their country as a shining city on a hill, endowed with the most powerful military in the history of the world whose mission is not to maraud, destroy, displace populations and kill, but to intervene as a “force for good.”

It’s not as if social harmony was the norm in the United States. The one thing that prevents the country from descending into a chaos of consumer individualism, or from becoming a nation populated by angry Hobbesian egos intolerant of the behavior of other egos, is the ideology that Beckley denigrates but which politicians continue to celebrate: the “enlightened call to make the world a better place.” Americans would fall into a state of despair if they no longer believed that their exceptional and indispensable nation exists as an ideal for humanity.

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But recent events have begun to shake their faith in what now appears to be a manifestly not very egalitarian democracy. Increasingly oligarchic, if not plutocratic, American society remains “liberal” (i.e., free) for those who control the growing mountains of cash that visibly circulate among the elite but rarely trickle down to meet any real human needs.

As the defender of an idealized liberal order, Beckley is right to assume that, with so many factors undermining the American consensus, the cultivation of a shared enemy may be the necessary key to maintaining that order. Fear has always had the unique virtue of diverting attention from serious and worsening problems. Between income inequality, climate change and an enduring pandemic punctuated by contestable government mandates, people’s attention definitely needs to be diverted.

Historical Note

Michael Beckley is certainly very knowledgeable about China. He admires Chinese civilization and many of its accomplishments. He also believes a war between the United States and China is far from inevitable. Moreover, he is a realist. He admits that, as many people across the globe affirm, the US represents the biggest threat to world peace. At the same time, he “that the United States has the most potential to be the biggest contributor to peace.” He lucidly notes that “when the United States puts its weight behind something the world gets remade, for better or for worse.” But, having said this, he eludes the implicit moral question. If both the better and worse are possible, the rest of the world should be the ones to decide every time its reality is “remade” whether that remaking was for the better or the worse.

As Pew show, most people outside the US appear to believe that American initiatives across the globe over at least the past half-century have been predominantly for the worse. Beckley himself cites Iraq and Vietnam as egregious examples. But, ever the optimist, he sees in what he calls the ability of the “system of US alliances” to create “zones of peace” the proof that the worse isn’t as bad as some might think.

Beckley recognizes that alliances are not created out of generosity and goodwill alone. In his influential book, “Super-Imperialism,” the economist Michael Hudson describes the workings of what is known as the “Washington Consensus,” a system of economic and military control that, in the decades after World War II, managed, somewhat perversely, to miraculously transfer the immense burden of its own debt, generated by its military adventurism, to the rest of the world. The “Treasury-bill Standard,” an innovation President Richard Nixon called into being to replace the gold standard in 1971, played a major role. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Hudson notes that “foreign governments were obliged to invest their surplus dollars in U.S. Treasury securities.” It was part of a complex financial, diplomatic and military system that forced US allies to finance American debt.

Beckley’s  “zones of peace” are zones of dependence. Every country that participated in the system found itself forced to hold US Treasury bonds, including China. They thus had an interest in maintaining the stability of a system that dictated the flow of money across the globe. To a large extent, that is still the case. It explains why attempts to dethrone the dollar are systemically countered, sometimes violently through military action (as in Libya, to scotch Muammar Gaddafi’s for a pan-African currency).

None of that worries the eternal optimist Beckley, clearly a disciple of Voltaire’s Pangloss. He believes that — even while admitting the US has “wrecked the world in various ways” — its “potential” for peace trumps the reality of persistent war and that its “capability to make the world much more peaceful and prosperous” absolves it from the wreckage it has already produced. 

From a cultural point of view, Beckley is right. Americans always believe that what is “potential” trumps what is real and that “capability” effaces past examples of incapable behavior. That describes a central feature of American hyperreality.

*[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 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

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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