What some governments and much of the media appear to promote is what you refer to as a ¡°static definition¡± that plays into the perverse logic of Humpty Dumpty. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is evident not so much in the UN¡¯s campaign but in the ¡°war on hate speech¡± promoted in many countries in the West: the characterization of legitimate political commentary as ¡°antisemitism.¡± The result is that people are encouraged to categorize hate speech as the use of specific words. But the one positive thing Humpty Dumpty taught us is to be aware of the fact that is subjectively true of all language: ¡°When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean ¨C neither more nor less.¡±

¡°The question is,¡± said Alice, ¡°whether you can make words mean so many different things.¡±

¡°The question is,¡± said Humpty Dumpty, ¡°which is to be master¡ªthat¡¯s all.¡±

Would you agree that the issue the UN and many individual governments claim to be concerned about but fail to analyze is exactly what Humpty Dumpty says: deciding who is to be the master?

The reframing you propose is genuinely clarifying, and I think largely correct ¡ª but it deserves to be pressed carefully, because the argument has both a strong and a weak form, and only the strong form is philosophically defensible.

The strong form is this: any institutional attempt to codify hate speech through a list of prohibited words or expressions necessarily transfers the power of meaning-making from speakers and communities to whoever controls the list. That is a straightforward observation about the political economy of language regulation, and it is true regardless of how benign the intentions of the regulators are. Humpty Dumpty¡¯s ¡°which is to be master¡± is not just a witticism here; it names the precise mechanism by which speech codes operate. The word becomes a trigger, stripped of context, intention, and the relational web in which it actually functions. And as you note, this creates a profound perversity: the very apparatus designed to protect vulnerable groups can be ¡ª and demonstrably has been ¡ª captured and redirected to silence legitimate criticism of powerful actors.

The antisemitism example is one of the most instructive cases precisely because it involves a genuinely serious phenomenon ¡ª centuries of murderous prejudice against Jewish people ¡ª being entangled with a contemporary political controversy in which the parties have radically different intentions. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, adopted by numerous Western governments, extends the concept explicitly to certain forms of criticism of Israel. Whatever one thinks of the merits of that extension, the effect is to place the adjudication of political speech in the hands of whoever controls the institutional application of the definition. Critics of Israeli government policy ¡ª including many Jewish critics ¡ª find themselves categorized alongside genuine antisemites not because of what they intend but because of the words and framings they use. This is Humpty Dumpty¡¯s logic made policy: the master decides what the word means, and the word then decides who is guilty.

But here is where I want to introduce some friction, because the weak form of the argument is worth distinguishing. The weak form would be: because definitions of hate speech are contestable and can be weaponized, the underlying concern they address is either illusory or cynical. That does not follow, and Carroll himself would resist it. The Humpty Dumpty passages are not an argument that meaning is arbitrary or that power is the only thing that matters in language. They are a reduction of the claim to arbitrary authority over meaning. Carroll shows us that Humpty¡¯s position is absurd precisely because Alice ¡ª representing ordinary communicative rationality ¡ª can see through it. The absurdity is legible to us because we share enough interpretive ground to recognize the bad faith.

Which means the real question is not whether hate speech exists as a genuine phenomenon ¡ª it manifestly does, and its historical connection to mass violence is well documented ¡ª but whether legal or institutional codification through static definitions is the right instrument for addressing it. There is a strong case that it is not, and that the Rabat Plan¡¯s case-by-case contextual approach is more intellectually honest, precisely because it refuses to pretend that a word carries its meaning independently of who deploys it, against whom, in what context, and toward what end.

So yes: the master question is the right question. But I would add one further layer. In a genuinely democratic polity, the answer to ¡°who is to be master?¡± should be: no single actor, because the contestation of meaning is itself a political right. What we see in the institutional drift you describe ¡ª toward word-lists, prohibited framings, and definitions controlled by particular lobbies or governments ¡ª is not just philosophically naive. It is a quiet assault on the very democratic culture that gives the concept of hate speech whatever legitimacy it might otherwise claim.

Tocqueville, I suspect, would have had a great deal to say about how a democratic society can construct forms of soft compulsion around permissible speech that are more effective ¡ª and more insidious ¡ª than outright censorship, precisely because they operate through social consensus rather than state force.

I agree with you about the merits of the Rabat Plan. I also agree when you say ¡°Humpty¡¯s position is absurd precisely because Alice ¡ª representing ordinary communicative rationality ¡ª can see through it.¡± But isn¡¯t Carroll making another point. Alice can see through it but, because she is a child, she not only has no power to critique it, she also cannot understand that it is important to critique it? Doesn¡¯t this recapitulate one of the ways in which linguistic and ideational power is exercised today. Those who have an interest in calling out authority when it is inconsistent and illogical have been conditioned to believe that authority¡¯s inconsistency and illogic is a privilege of the powerful that cannot be called into question.

This is a crucial deepening of the reading, and I think you are right that Carroll is working on at least two levels simultaneously ¡ª and that the second level is the more disturbing one.

On the first level, Alice¡¯s rationality is vindicated. She sees through Humpty¡¯s bad faith, and the reader sees it with her. Carroll gives us the tools to recognize the absurdity. But on the second level, that rational clarity produces precisely nothing. Alice does not challenge Humpty. She does not say: ¡°Your question was ambiguous and you know it.¡± She explains herself, accommodates his triumphalism, and moves on. And this is not presented as a failure of Alice¡¯s character or courage. It is presented as the entirely natural, socially appropriate response of someone in her position to someone in his. The critique exists only in the narrative space Carroll has created for the reader ¡ª it is never enacted within the story itself.

What makes this structurally powerful, and what I think you are identifying, is that Alice¡¯s passivity is not ignorance. It is socialization. She is a well-bred Victorian child who has been formed by a culture that teaches deference to authority as a virtue, regardless of whether that authority is exercising itself honestly. She possesses the rational equipment to expose Humpty but has been conditioned to regard the exercise of that equipment against a figure of power as impertinent ¡ª or simply as not something one does. The critique is available to her but socially unthinkable.

And the contemporary recapitulation you identify is remarkably precise. What has changed in our moment is that the conditioning operates not primarily through deference ¡ª few people today would describe themselves as deferential to authority ¡ª but through a more sophisticated mechanism: the redefinition of critique itself as a form of harm. To call out the inconsistency of the institutional definition of antisemitism, to point out that the IHRA definition was drafted by parties with specific political interests, to note that its application has been demonstrably selective ¡ª these are not merely socially uncomfortable moves. They have been categorized, through the very apparatus we have been discussing, as potentially hateful acts. The logical circle is near perfect: the authority that controls the definition of hate speech uses that definition to protect itself from the critique of those who question its control of the definition.

What Carroll adds, that a purely political analysis might miss, is the phenomenological detail: Alice is not suffering. She is not visibly oppressed. She is having an adventure, and Humpty Dumpty is one of its more colorful episodes. This is precisely Tocqueville¡¯s soft despotism made narrative ¡ª the power that operates not through pain but through the gentle, persistent foreclosure of certain thoughts as thinkable options. Alice does not think ¡°I must not challenge him.¡± She simply does not think to challenge him, which is a far more complete form of control.

The question this raises ¡ª and I think it is the most urgent one ¡ª is what, in our own moment, corresponds to Carroll¡¯s narrative frame: the space outside the encounter in which the absurdity becomes visible and nameable. Carroll could create that space in fiction. The question is whether the institutions that might create it in public life ¡ª universities, a free press, an independent judiciary ¡ª retain the capacity and the will to do so, or whether they have themselves been absorbed into the Humpty Dumpty logic they might otherwise have exposed.

Our conversation continued when I formulated a new prompt:

Given the complexity of strategies used by those who, Humpty Dumpty style, establish their position of authority, wouldn¡¯t it be wiser to conclude that hate speech is indeed a serious civilizational problem, but the problem is with the first term (hate) rather than the second term (speech)? And isn¡¯t the focus on speech itself a strategy to avoid even thinking about what hate is psychologically, socially and morally? Hate is a natural human emotion that may or may not be expressed through language. The cultivation of hatred within specific social groups is a feature of all societies. Confronting it is absolutely necessary for any healthy society. But banning it generally adds another reason that contributes to, amplifies and in some sense justifies the emotion of hatred. Shouldn¡¯t we be focusing on what hate is rather than seeking to legislate against linguistic expression?

Claude¡¯s response began with the following observation:

This is, I think, the most important reframing in our entire conversation, and it has the considerable virtue of cutting through the Humpty Dumpty knot rather than trying to untangle it thread by thread.

In tomorrow¡¯s concluding column, we will build on Claude¡¯s developed insights about ¡°focusing on what hate is.¡± Here¡¯s a thought experiment to go away with until tomorrow: What do you think Claude will propose to cut through the Humpty Dumpty knot?

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone¡¯s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ô¹Ï, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Problem of Hate Speech Ain¡¯t Speech ¡ª Part 2 appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The model appeared remarkably successful. Airlines obtained aircraft with limited upfront capital commitments. Japanese investors received attractive tax-adjusted returns, often in the range of 5¨C8% after accounting for depreciation benefits. Banks generated stable lending income secured by globally mobile assets. The interests of airlines, investors and lenders appeared aligned.

Today, however, the foundations of that model are weakening.

Industry participants often attribute current difficulties to cyclical headwinds: higher interest rates, a weaker yen, delayed aircraft deliveries and temporary turbulence in airline profitability. Yet such explanations risk missing the larger story. The more consequential challenge is structural. A combination of accounting reforms, evolving tax policy, tighter regulation, shifting investor preferences and changing capital-market conditions has steadily eroded the advantages that once made Japanese aircraft-leasing structures uniquely attractive.

Moreover, the international tax environment has become significantly more complex. Japanese investors must increasingly consider cross-border tax issues arising from the OECD¡¯s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) , the global minimum tax framework and evolving international tax rules. As these developments affect the economic assumptions underlying JOL and JOLCO transactions, a growing challenge lies in whether domestic leasing companies and trading houses ¡ª the principal arrangers of such structures ¡ª can adequately explain and manage these risks for investors. Insufficient understanding of international tax exposure may itself become a material risk factor for the market.

The question is no longer whether JOLCO survives. The question is whether a model designed for the financial environment of the late 20th century can remain competitive in the 21st.

The three pillars of success

Historically, JOL and JOLCO transactions rested on three powerful advantages. The first was tax efficiency. Accelerated depreciation and interest deductions allowed investors to reduce taxable income while generating attractive after-tax returns. The second was accounting treatment. Airlines could lease aircraft while avoiding much of the balance-sheet impact associated with ownership or conventional debt financing. The third was predictability. Aircraft values, lease cash flows and funding costs remained relatively stable throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s.

Together, these factors created a powerful ecosystem. A typical JOLCO transaction involved 20¨C30% equity and 70¨C80% debt financing. During the era of ultra-low interest rates, leverage amplified returns while depreciation enhanced investor economics.

Today, all three pillars are under pressure.

The end of off-balance-sheet leasing

Perhaps the most significant change has been accounting reform.

For decades, global airlines viewed operating leases as an attractive means of financing aircraft because lease obligations remained largely off balance sheet. That advantage largely disappeared with the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards ( by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Under the new standard, most leases must be recognized through right-of-use assets and corresponding lease liabilities.

The impact has been substantial. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), IFRS 16 added approximately of lease liabilities to airline balance sheets worldwide.

Japan is moving in the same direction. The Accounting Standards Board of Japan (ASBJ) Lease Accounting aligns Japanese accounting treatment more closely with international standards.

The implications are straightforward. Airlines can no longer justify operating leases primarily on accounting grounds. Instead, leasing decisions increasingly depend on actual economics: financing costs, operational flexibility, fleet strategy and liquidity management.

As a result, JOLCO structures now compete directly with bank loans, export-credit facilities, enhanced equipment trust certificates (EETCs), and large global lessors such as , and Avolon.

As a result, one of the principal historical attractions of JOLCO structures ¡ª the ability to improve reported leverage through off-balance-sheet treatment ¡ª has largely vanished.

At the same time, the investor base that has traditionally supported JOLCO transactions may also be narrowing. Many Japanese investors participate through relatively small equity commitments rather than funding entire aircraft. As economic conditions become more challenging and domestic businesses face greater cash-flow pressure, these investors may become less willing or able to allocate capital to aircraft-leasing investments. This could gradually shift the market toward a smaller pool of more sophisticated and professional investors.

While such a transition may improve investment discipline and due diligence, it could also reduce transaction volumes and place pressure on the existing business models of leasing companies and trading houses that rely on a broad retail and middle-market investor base. Maintaining current staffing levels and fee structures may become increasingly difficult in a more concentrated market.

A business model dependent on tax policy

If accounting arbitrage has diminished, tax efficiency remains central to the economics of many JOLCO transactions. This dependence creates a structural vulnerability.

Although JOLCO is often presented as an aviation investment, many participants have historically been motivated less by aircraft economics than by tax benefits. Accelerated depreciation and interest deductibility frequently constitute a significant share of expected returns.

Aircraft leases typically extend for eight to 12 years, while aircraft themselves remain in service for 25 years or more. Tax policy, by contrast, can change within a single budget cycle.

Over the past decade, OECD-led BEPS initiatives have encouraged governments to tighten rules governing tax-driven investment structures. Japan has gradually strengthened earnings-stripping regulations and anti-avoidance provisions. The framework is summarized by the National Tax Agency of Japan¡¯s .

The risk is not prohibition. The risk is uncertainty. A structure whose economics depend heavily on favorable tax treatment becomes inherently fragile when that treatment is subject to political or regulatory reinterpretation.

Unlike Ireland¡¯s leasing industry ¡ª which benefits from scale, operational expertise, treaty networks and diversified funding sources ¡ª Japan¡¯s leasing model remains unusually dependent on the continuation of specific tax advantages.

The end of free money

The rise of JOLCO coincided with one of the most extraordinary monetary-policy environments in modern history.

Many investors entering the market today are also part of a generational transition. Unlike earlier participants who experienced periods of higher inflation and interest rates, a large share of Japanese investors built their investment expectations during an era of ultra-low borrowing costs and abundant liquidity. As a result, they are entering a market environment that is fundamentally different from the one in which JOLCO structures originally flourished.

This shift makes a deeper understanding of both the benefits and the risks of aircraft leasing increasingly important. Once committed, investors are typically locked into transactions for four to 12 years, limiting their flexibility and requiring assumptions about future interest rates, tax rules, aircraft values and airline creditworthiness over a long horizon. In an environment characterized by greater economic uncertainty, such long-term forecasting has become considerably more difficult.

Between 2010 and 2021, Japanese interest rates remained , while global borrowing costs reached historic lows. Such conditions were highly favorable for leveraged investment structures.

Aircraft leasing is particularly sensitive to financing costs because debt typically finances 60¨C80% of acquisition value. Consider a $100 million aircraft financed with 70% debt. A one-percentage-point increase in borrowing costs reduces annual cash flow by approximately $700,000. Over a ten-year lease term, the cumulative impact can exceed $7 million even before considering any refinancing costs or changes in future credit conditions.

Since 2022, benchmark interest rates in major economies have risen by roughly 500 basis points. The shift is documented extensively in the Bank for International Settlements Annual Economic .

Even if policy rates decline, few investors expect a return to the near-zero funding environment that characterized the previous decade. The economics of leveraged aircraft leasing have therefore changed fundamentally.

Delivery delays have become a systemic risk

Aviation finance has traditionally focused on airline creditworthiness and aircraft residual values. Today, operational risk may be more important.

Both Airbus and Boeing continue to face production constraints and supply-chain disruptions. Airbus delivered 766 aircraft in 2024 but has repeatedly warned of bottlenecks affecting engines, avionics and structural components. The company¡¯s outlook is outlined in its Aircraft Production Ramp-Up .

Boeing¡¯s challenges have been even more severe following manufacturing-quality concerns and regulatory intervention. A detailed assessment is available in ¡¯ analysis of Boeing¡¯s 2024 crisis.

For airlines, delivery delays are frustrating. For JOLCO structures, they can be destabilizing. Aircraft-financing transactions depend on precise coordination between equity subscriptions, debt drawdowns, lease commencement, foreign-exchange hedging and tax recognition. When deliveries are delayed by months or years, financing commitments expire, hedges become ineffective and transaction documents require renegotiation.

Large lessors managing portfolios of hundreds of aircraft can absorb such disruptions. Single-aircraft special-purpose vehicles cannot.

Legal certainty is no longer assumed

Aircraft leasing has long been regarded as a legally robust asset class. Recent litigation has challenged that assumption.

Particular attention has been paid to termination-payment provisions frequently embedded in JOLCO transactions. Although English courts have generally upheld such provisions, litigation has highlighted a broader reality: Recovery outcomes depend on contractual drafting, jurisdictional interpretation and insolvency frameworks.

Detailed analyses are available from both Clifford Chance¡¯s JOLCO Termination Sum Review and Morgan Lewis¡¯ English High Court . For investors, the significance lies less in individual court decisions than in the uncertainty they reveal. Recovery values cannot simply be assumed; they must be analyzed.

This issue is particularly important in the Japanese market, where investor discussions have traditionally focused on tax benefits, projected returns and aircraft residual values rather than legal-enforcement risks. Many investors have limited experience evaluating complex cross-border insolvency proceedings, jurisdictional conflicts or contractual enforcement risks. As a result, legal risk is often treated as a secondary consideration despite its potential impact on recovery outcomes.

The challenge is compounded by the highly specialized nature of aircraft-finance disputes. While transaction documentation is typically prepared by experienced legal counsel, the practical outcome of a distressed lease often depends on litigation, restructuring negotiations and insolvency proceedings conducted across multiple jurisdictions. These factors can be difficult for non-professional investors to assess and are not always fully reflected in traditional investment presentations.

Currency risk has become more punitive

Currency exposure has also become increasingly significant. Aircraft are priced globally in US dollars, while Japanese investors provide capital largely in yen.

The yen from approximately ?103 per dollar in early 2021 to nearly ?160 per dollar during 2024. As a result, the yen cost of acquiring a $100 million aircraft increased from roughly ?10.3 billion to ?16 billion ¡ª an increase exceeding 50%. In our view, the recent weakness of the Japanese yen has materially reduced the attractiveness of dollar-denominated aircraft investments for many Japanese investors. The sharp depreciation of the yen has significantly increased the domestic-currency cost of acquiring aircraft, while higher hedging costs and greater exchange-rate uncertainty have further reduced expected risk-adjusted returns.

While hedging strategies can mitigate some exposure, long-dated currency protection remains expensive and imperfect. For many investors, foreign-exchange volatility now represents a greater source of uncertainty than aircraft performance itself.

Why insurance companies are looking elsewhere

These structural weaknesses become particularly apparent when viewed through the lens of insurance companies.

Japanese life insurers collectively manage assets exceeding ?400 trillion. Yet JOLCO remains largely absent from their strategic asset allocations. The reason is straightforward. Insurance companies are not tax-driven investors. Their objective is to generate predictable long-duration cash flows while minimizing regulatory capital consumption. JOLCO performs poorly on both measures.

The structures involve airline credit risk, residual value uncertainty, legal enforcement complexity, delivery delays and opaque valuations. Under emerging solvency frameworks, including Japan¡¯s Economic Value-Based Solvency Regulation (), such characteristics attract relatively high capital charges.

Consequently, institutional participation remains limited despite the industry¡¯s long history.

This limitation is unlikely to disappear in the future. Publicly listed companies and institutional investors face increasing scrutiny regarding tax planning, governance and capital allocation. As a result, participation in aircraft-leasing structures primarily motivated by tax benefits is becoming more difficult to justify. Rather than investing through traditional JOLCO arrangements, professional investors may prefer direct ownership stakes in aircraft-leasing companies, dedicated aviation-investment platforms or strategic acquisitions that provide greater control, transparency and scale. The trend suggests that future participation may become concentrated among a smaller number of sophisticated investors rather than the broad base of tax-oriented investors that historically supported the market.

A broader question of capital allocation

The deeper issue extends beyond aviation finance.

Historically, JOLCO has been marketed primarily to profitable, privately held companies, including owner-managed firms in construction, real estate, healthcare, logistics and leisure industries. Industry presentations frequently acknowledge that tax benefits remain the primary attraction for many participants. A representative overview is provided in the Airline Economics JOL/JOLCO Market .

This raises broader questions about capital allocation within Japan. When capital flows into highly engineered structures because depreciation benefits enhance returns, investment decisions become increasingly detached from underlying productivity. Financial engineering begins to substitute for genuine value creation.

The result is a subtle but important distortion. Capital that might otherwise support innovation, digital transformation, productivity enhancement or wage growth is instead directed toward tax-efficient ownership structures tied to aircraft operating thousands of miles away.

Such behavior may be rational from the perspective of individual investors. It is less obvious that it is optimal from the perspective of the Japanese economy.

Adaptation rather than extinction

None of this implies that JOLCO will disappear.

The global commercial aircraft fleet is to expand from approximately 29,000 aircraft today to more than 47,000 by 2043. Boeing and Airbus together forecast demand for more than 40,000 new aircraft over the next two decades, representing trillions of dollars of financing requirements.

There will continue to be opportunities for Japanese capital. But the conditions that once supported JOLCO¡¯s rapid expansion ¡ª off-balance-sheet treatment, abundant tax advantages, ultra-low interest rates, stable supply chains and limited competition ¡ª have largely vanished. The challenge confronting Japan¡¯s aircraft-leasing industry is therefore not one of survival but reinvention.

The next phase of global aviation finance will reward scale, operational expertise, capital efficiency and economic substance rather than tax optimization and financial engineering. Whether JOL and JOLCO can successfully adapt to that reality may determine their relevance in global aviation finance for the next generation.

The era in which Japanese aircraft leasing thrived because of accounting advantages, tax benefits and cheap money is drawing to a close. The industry¡¯s future will depend on whether it can compete on economic merit alone. That may prove a far more demanding test than any it has previously faced.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Japan¡¯s Aircraft-Leasing Industry Was Built for Another Era appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

When I look at some of the most serious debates taking place today, I ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t help thinking Lewis Carroll was the prophet who clearly saw the world that would emerge 150 years after his drafting of the vision. Let me focus on one example, an exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty.

¡°So here¡¯s a question for you. How old did you say you were?¡±

Alice made a short calculation, and said ¡°Seven years and six months.¡±      

¡°Wrong!¡± Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. ¡°You never said a word like it.¡±

¡°I thought you meant ¡®How old are you?¡¯¡± Alice explained.

¡°If I¡¯d meant that, I¡¯d have said it,¡± said Humpty Dumpty.

Humpty¡¯s last statement is a lie, because he knows his intentions and his intention is to play with language. It¡¯s also to assert his authority like a schoolteacher. His statement would be true (and sincere) only if he wasn¡¯t aware of the fact that people routinely employ the literal formulation he uses to ask the question Alice answers. His response to Alice is logically true but profoundly insincere.

In this and many other passages Carroll leaves us with a complex lesson: that language always contains a substantive gap between informative meaning and intention. It isn¡¯t about ambiguity but about the fact that there can never be a stable correlation between the linguistic expression of information and what really matters: understanding why anyone says what they say. We see this problem with AI itself because clearly it doesn¡¯t structure its messages in the same way humans do, who have the liberty to play the kind of game Humpty Dumpty plays with Alice.

Was Wittgenstein influenced by Lewis Carroll? I¡¯ll let you tease that one out. But I raise this question because I see the world struggling with concepts such as ¡°fake news¡± and ¡°hate speech¡± and it seems to me that they begin to lose all meaning in a Humpty Dumpty linguistic order. Instead of producing its effects in the form of whimsical, surreal absurdity, it is coldly and brutally logical.

Before addressing the issue I hope to focus on ¨C solving the problem of hate speech ¨C do you think the gap between truth and intention is as radical as Carroll seems to suggest?

Your reading of the Humpty Dumpty passage is sharp, and the distinction you draw between logical truth and sincerity is exactly the right place to press. But I¡¯d want to complicate the picture before accepting Carroll¡¯s implicit claim that the gap is radical ¡ª or rather, I¡¯d want to distinguish between two quite different kinds of gap.

The first is the gap you identify: between what is literally said and what is meant. This is real, pervasive, and philosophically well-documented. Grice¡¯s entire project of conversational implicature is essentially a systematic account of how much communicative work gets done outside the literal content of utterances ¡ª through shared context, cooperative assumptions, tone, and timing. Humpty¡¯s ¡°How old did you say you were?¡± is a perfect case: the grammatical form is technically a question about reported speech, but the pragmatic context makes it unmistakably a question about age. Alice is right to answer as she does. Humpty knows this. His triumphalism is therefore not just bad faith; it¡¯s a kind of linguistic tyranny, a refusal to participate in the cooperative framework that makes language function at all.

But the second gap ¡ª between stated intention and real intention ¡ª is where things become genuinely radical, and where I think Carroll is pointing at something deeper than mere ambiguity. Humpty doesn¡¯t just play with surface meaning; he uses linguistic form as an instrument of power. The assertion ¡°If I¡¯d meant that, I¡¯d have said it¡± is not an honest reflection on his own usage; it¡¯s a move designed to make Alice doubt her entirely reasonable interpretation. This is Carroll diagnosing something about authority and discourse that feels urgently contemporary: the capacity to weaponize apparent logical precision against common sense.

Where I¡¯d resist making the gap absolute, however, is here: if the gap between expression and intention were truly radical ¡ª if there were no recoverable connection between what people say and what they mean ¡ª then Carroll¡¯s own satirical point would be unintelligible to us. The fact that we all immediately recognize Humpty¡¯s bad faith, that we side with Alice instinctively, demonstrates that human beings share an enormously robust set of interpretive conventions. We are, as Aristotle suggested, social animals whose language is inherently embedded in a web of shared purposes and mutual expectations. The gap exists within a framework of intelligibility, not beneath it.

So I¡¯d put it this way: the gap is real and ineliminable, but it is not bottomless. It is more like a constitutive tension than an abyss ¡ª the very space in which rhetoric, irony, poetry, and manipulation all operate. What Carroll shows us, with characteristic precision disguised as whimsy, is that this tension can be exploited by those with the will and the position to do so. Humpty¡¯s power isn¡¯t linguistic; it¡¯s ontological. He controls what counts as a correct interpretation because he controls the encounter.

And that, I think, is exactly where your intuition about hate speech and fake news becomes so acute ¡ª because in both cases, what is at stake is precisely who gets to adjudicate the gap between expression and intention, and by what authority. That is the question worth dwelling on before we reach any definition.

Your point is well taken. In the interest of linguistic (and philosophical) precision I need to replace ¡°absolute¡± by ¡°ineliminable,¡± a word easy to understand but which I had never previously encountered. But I appreciate even more your remark concerning ¡°who gets to adjudicate the gap between expression and intention.¡± The United Nations appears to have had this in mind when it June 18 ¡°International Day for Countering Hate Speech.¡± The obvious problem I see with this begins with the fact that the UN doesn¡¯t appear to offer a definition of hate speech. Have I missed it? I¡¯m sure you can help me find it.

You haven¡¯t missed it ¡ª and the absence is itself philosophically telling, especially given the theme of our conversation. Let me fetch the Strategy and Plan of Action document, which is where the UN comes closest to a definition. You haven¡¯t missed it ¡ª but you’ve put your finger on something the UN¡¯s own detailed guidance quietly admits. What exists is explicitly described as a working definition, not a legal one, and the gap between the two turns out to be enormous.

The UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech offers this working definition: ¡°any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are ¡ª based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.¡±

The reason it remains a working definition rather than a legal one is frankly stated in the UN¡¯s own implementation guidance: most UN texts prefer to refer to ¡°incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence¡± rather than ¡°hate speech¡± as such, largely because there is no definition in international law of the latter term and there is a lack of consensus about its meaning.

This is a remarkable admission for an institution that has just declared an International Day to counter the very thing it cannot define. And it connects directly to the Humpty Dumpty problem in a way that is not merely ironic but structurally significant. Consider what the working definition actually does. The phrase ¡°attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language¡± already smuggles in the gap we have been discussing: whether a given utterance constitutes an attack is precisely a question of intention and context, not of linguistic form. The same words can be reclamation, satire, clinical description, or incitement depending entirely on who says them, to whom, in what setting, and with what purpose. The definition, in other words, presupposes the very interpretive judgment it is supposed to guide.

The most comprehensive attempt to bring some rigor to this is the Rabat Plan of Action, which provides a six-point threshold test to assess whether a given instance of hate speech violates international law. That threshold test ¡ª which examines context, speaker, intent, content, extent, and likelihood of harm ¡ª is actually a more honest instrument precisely because it acknowledges that no static definition can do the work alone. It requires case-by-case interpretation.

But here is where your Carroll intuition cuts deepest: the question of who adjudicates that six-point test is left entirely open. Conflicting interpretations of the primary international framework ¡ª Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 ¡ª have stalled progress, with different blocs of member states reading the same text in irreconcilable ways. Some states read the framework as protecting freedom of expression; others read it as mandating restrictions on speech that offends religious communities. The text is the same; the intentions brought to it are not.

So we find ourselves, perhaps unsurprisingly on the day after the UN¡¯s own observance, in a situation where the concept meant to counter the weaponization of language is itself a linguistic instrument without a stable meaning ¡ª deployed by parties with divergent and often unstated intentions. Humpty Dumpty would recognize the arrangement immediately. The question worth turning to, then, is whether a workable concept of hate speech is even possible within a framework of international law, or whether the attempt to define it will always reproduce the very problem it seeks to solve.

Lewis Carroll had clearly helped both of us focus on an essential dimension of the issue of hate speech. I continued the conversation with a new prompt, delving further into what I would call ¡°Humpty Dumpty¡¯s mind.¡± Claude¡¯s response and our continuing conversation will appear in the next column.

What some governments and much of the media appear to promote is what you refer to as a ¡°static definition¡± that plays into the perverse logic of Humpty Dumpty. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is evident not so much in the UN¡¯s campaign but in the ¡°war on hate speech¡± promoted in many countries in the West: the characterization of legitimate political commentary as ¡°antisemitism.¡± The result is that people are encouraged to categorize hate speech as the use of specific words. But the one positive thing Humpty Dumpty taught us is to be aware of a fact that is subjectively true of all language: ¡°When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean ¨C neither more nor less.¡±

¡°The question is,¡± said Alice, ¡°whether you can make words mean so many different things.¡±

¡°The question is,¡± said Humpty Dumpty, ¡°which is to be master¡ª¡ªthat¡¯s all.¡±

Would you agree that the issue the UN and many individual governments claim to be concerned about but fail to analyze is exactly what Humpty Dumpty says: deciding who is to be the master?

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.?

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone¡¯s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ô¹Ï, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

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The recent financial transactions cited by some commentators as evidence of a weakening strategic partnership are, in fact, routine operations governed by pre-existing commercial agreements. The and return processes in Pakistan and the UAE should not be used to create false geopolitical significance, as the two nations have maintained extensive diplomatic ties throughout their history.

The Pakistani government and its foreign affairs department have made every effort to that the process of returning matured deposits from the UAE constitutes a standard banking procedure. The transactions arise from existing commercial contracts, which enable both investment activities and liquidity control while establishing trust among government financial institutions.?

An evolving relationship

The relationship between Pakistan and the UAE has evolved from its into a comprehensive partnership spanning multiple fields. Pakistan became the first country to provide military assistance to the UAE before any formal defense agreements existed between the two nations.?

The Pakistani military trained UAE defense personnel and developed vital training centers that produced commandos who became essential to the UAE¡¯s defense system. This contribution to the country¡¯s underscores the level of mutual trust and respect between the two nations.

The in the UAE, with 1.6 million members, is the clearest evidence of this partnership. The men and women serve as essential links between the two nations, providing significant support to the UAE¡¯s socioeconomic framework.?

They work in various industries, including construction, infrastructure development, healthcare, education, and the hospitality and service sectors. Their work and expertise have helped develop and sustain the UAE¡¯s top-tier infrastructure system, which comprises major ports, highways, residential areas, utility systems and community facilities.

The work of Pakistani engineers, technicians and skilled professionals has made essential contributions to engineering projects. The UAE has built its infrastructure system through decades of expert knowledge exchange, producing valuable pathways for knowledge transfer and human development. The economic ties between these professionals have strengthened trade connections, helping private businesses collaborate with government agencies on investment and trade projects.

UAE and Pakistan¡¯s social ties

The enduring bond between these two countries is strengthened by shared cultural and religious ties. The citizens of Pakistan and the UAE maintain a strong connection through their shared Islamic heritage, common tribal customs of hospitality and social practices. Cultural festivals and educational exchanges, together with regular interactions among citizens from both countries, build a better understanding between the two groups, leading to social unity. 

The UAE serves as a secondary homeland for numerous Pakistanis who travel there to work, engage in tourism and shopping, undertake pilgrimage, attend family gatherings and participate in recreational activities. The personal relationships between people from both countries create stronger diplomatic ties than official diplomatic channels can.

The economic ties between Pakistan and the UAE have existed since ancient times and continue to develop. The two countries established key investment and cooperation agreements worth more than in 2024, including infrastructure development, logistics and trade facilitation. These agreements demonstrate that Emirati investors trust Pakistan¡¯s economic future, while Pakistan wants to establish partnerships that will benefit both sides and create job opportunities and drive economic development.

A deepening of relations

The between the two parties was confirmed through high-level leadership engagements, such as the Memorandum of Understanding (), that took place in 2025. The two sides demonstrated their commitment to broadening their partnership through official visits and ongoing discussions, which focused on trade and investment, energy and regional security.

The two countries carried out their work through meaningful activities aimed at achieving concrete results rather than using display language. The two parties maintain a well-established partnership that enables them to address current challenges as they pursue new opportunities to work together.

The current situation requires acknowledging that standard financial activities, including the maturity and return of sovereign deposits, do not affect the strategic partnership between Pakistan and the UAE. Financial markets operate based on two key elements, which are contractual obligations, liquidity requirements and risk management practices. 

The standard process of interstate economic transactions includes the settlement of financial instruments that financial markets use to operate. The interpretation of these actions as evidence of a breakdown in diplomatic relations and a collapse in strategic alignment shows a complete misunderstanding of how sovereign financial relations function.

An indestructible bond

The comprehensive engagement activities between Pakistan and the UAE, which include security partnerships, economic development, human resource sharing, cultural ties and strategic discussions, create a strong relationship foundation that financial market activities cannot break. 

Strategic partnerships of this nature require multiple decades to develop through shared interests and common values that countries sustain across different fields. The organization maintains operational flexibility through actual joint initiatives while monitoring external economic developments and international political changes.

The relationship between Pakistan and the UAE is built on strong, unbreakable foundations, as both nations have established trust through their diplomatic ties. The defense alliance and economic partnership between the two nations, along with their active people connections, create a strong foundation that supports stability and development throughout the region. 

The standard process for returning financial deposits should be understood as a common occurrence within its normal framework, rather than as material for sensational stories. The relationship between the two countries remains strong despite attempts to misinterpret it, as both nations continue to strengthen their ties in line with their shared objectives.

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The Department of Education¡¯s new law gains inspiration from like Moms for Liberty, which advocates for more parental rights in education, and backlash against books that teach children about topics such as Critical Race Theory or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQIA+) issues.

The push for censorship and its contradictions

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana hilariously illustrated such books available to students in some parts of the country when he sexually explicit excerpts from the controversial books All Boys Aren¡¯t Blue and Gender Queer in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2023. Watching the video will make you cringe. It is shocking to see a United States Senator read a passage about sexual conduct in a formal setting, and it is alarming that these books are available to children.

While instituting a rule that would make such books unavailable to children is understandable given its appropriateness, the policy will likely have unintended negative consequences for the future of education in South Carolina, like government censorship often does, and we should oppose it.

The law is ironically contradictory in the name of discretion for appropriateness. It states that local educators and boards shall determine whether the material is age- and development-appropriate, but then the rule removes this autonomy by including the element of ¡°sexual conduct¡± and limits local policymakers¡¯ discretion.

Books containing descriptions or depictions of sexual conduct are now illicit because it is inappropriate, yet schools will still teach sexual education. It does not make sense to have classroom instruction on a topic while banning certain books that depict it. Parents already get to decide if their child can take sexual education classes, so the new rule is actually more detrimental to parental rights.

Weaver touts this law as a victory for parental rights, but these rights cannot be won with a blanket censorship law. Instead, we have parental rights for those who support this state policy rather than local jurisdiction, so each parent can better ensure their concerns are heard and their children¡¯s education more closely aligns with their values.

However, parents will likely see drastic changes in their children¡¯s education due to a lack of local jurisdiction and flexibility. South Carolina¡¯s new rule explicitly means that books such as The Canterbury Tales, 1984, Romeo and Juliet and Brave New World, just to name a few, could be unavailable to any student regardless of age. These books did not draw red flags when I read some of them as a student in Union County Schools.

Lessons from other states

Assuming that the regulation is not a violation of the First Amendment (an argument often made by proponents of the law), primary concerns lie in its vague descriptions. Obviously, graphic depictions of sexual conduct should not be available to children in elementary school, but the law is too broad.

When I was in high school, just over four years ago, no one would have been taken seriously if they had asked for Romeo and Juliet to be banned because books like that were never a problem. We should protect classic pieces of literature and acknowledge their importance in education. However, as the saying goes, ¡°The road to hell is often paved with good intentions.¡±

One may argue that the law will not lead to these consequences and that I am being alarmist. They would be wrong, as there are many examples throughout the country of barring certain books from school libraries that would draw the ire of the average person.

In 2023, the Davis School District in Utah the King James version of the Bible from elementary and middle school libraries due to ¡°vulgarity or violence.¡± The parent who initially called for the Bible¡¯s banning noted that the Bible contains instances of prostitution, incest and rape. In 2020, the Burbank Unified School District in California , notably To Kill a Mockingbird, after parents complained of the book¡¯s racism.

The case for local freedom

The moral of this story is that regardless of culture, Utah or California, Republican or Democrat, Christian or Atheist, once you give others the power to regulate your privileges and rights, it will almost certainly be used against you at some point. This story is especially true given that government officials are terrible at drafting meaningful laws. When it comes to government educational reforms, you should be careful what you wish for.

While the intent to protect children is commendable, the broad and vague nature of the regulations could lead to the banning of critical literary works. It is crucial to find a balance that protects children without stifling their educational growth and exposure to classic literature.

Local districts should be able to have autonomy with these policies, and local committees with diverse opinions should work. Local committees allow you to choose how your tax dollars are spent and how your child is educated. Freedom works, and you will find that liberty is the best path to progress.

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

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While in the first year of his first presidency, Trump 1.0 had fired numerous officials, this time around, Bondi and Noem, who ran the two largest law enforcement agencies in the country, were the first cabinet officials to be dismissed. Both ¡ª no surprise ¡ª were replaced by men. And just as I was writing this piece for TomDispatch, Trump removed another female cabinet official, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer. More recently, Director of National Intelligence , a fourth cabinet member and the second woman ever to hold that job, resigned in May and will step down at the end of June.

Notably, Noem, Bondi, Chavez-DeRemer and Gabbard are, of course, all women. As Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic House of Representatives member from Texas, recently , ¡°Well¡­ first it was Kristi Noem, now it¡¯s Pam Bondi¡­ it would be too much like right that Pete [Hegseth] be next. I see a theme. He [Trump] will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.¡±

Equal opportunity failure

Crockett has a point. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth¡¯s leadership at the Department of Defense (now appropriately retitled the Department of War) has erased time-honored rules and norms in staggering ways. He has, for instance, drastically reduced media access to the Pentagon, purged employees who with him, as well as those he deemed to be DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) appointees. He exerted his leadership in a war against Iran that has lasted over three months, despite his assurance that, as The Guardian , ¡°the U.S. would not get bogged down in the conflict.¡± The US operation, he insisted, was not a ¡°democracy-building exercise,¡± adding that ¡°this is not Iraq. This is not endless.¡±

Hegseth¡¯s behavior led Arizona Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari to file of impeachment against him on six charges. They include the commission of war crimes, especially the killing of at least people, including many children, at a girls¡¯ primary school in Iran hit by a US missile; negligence with sensitive information; and conducting an unauthorized war without congressional approval. In the Senate, Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren with a to US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins asking for an investigation into whether Hegseth attempted to profit from his financial investments in the run-up to the war in Iran.

Crockett might just as easily have highlighted the wayward behavior of FBI Director Kash Patel, exposed in a piece in describing ¡°excessive drinking¡± that interfered with his job (an article over which Patel immediately for $250 million in damages), or the of health standards by Health and Human Resources Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

But whatever the future of those reprehensible men in cabinet positions, it¡¯s unfortunately difficult to defend either Bondi or Noem for their actions while in office. Like their male counterparts, both defiantly tossed professionalism and decency to the winds. Under Noem, with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leading the way, the Department of Homeland Security was weaponized and transformed into Trump¡¯s version of a homeland militia. It¡¯s hardly a stretch to make the comparison to Hitler¡¯s Brownshirts.

So far, in Trump¡¯s second term in office, ICE has terrorized schools and businesses, while cruelly imprisoning migrants without due process of any sort. It has held in detention centers under abhorrent conditions, peaceful protesters and citizens on the streets of America. Worse yet, Noem tens of millions of dollars to cover the costs of a pro-ICE ad featuring herself riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore saying, ¡°Break Our Laws, We¡¯ll Punish You.¡± (Nor should we imagine that things will get any better without her.)

Bondi¡¯s ouster followed failures of a different order ¡ª namely, her stumbling, wildly inept efforts to fulfill Trump¡¯s agenda. She proved unable even to make the case of Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein go away, while what she had to say when releasing documents related to him led to that her statements were riddled with falsehoods. Meanwhile, under her watch of New York State Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, high-priority items for the president, fell apart.

And when called before Congress to explain herself, her rank lack of civility resembled the behavior of a spoiled teenager berating her teacher, knowing that, since her parents wielded power over the school, she should fear no reprisals. Under Bondi, the sacrosanct mission of the Department of Justice as an agency independent of the White House was summarily tossed aside (as the roof-to-ground-floor that hung from its office building demonstrated).

Female purges

Focusing on Noem and Bondi, however, misses the larger point. This first year of Trump 2.0 has seen women, one after another, summarily gone from their posts (some fired, some resigning) as part of a larger DEI purge. As I in January, the military has led the way with a full-scale attack on women. And that trend started on the administration¡¯s very first day in office when Trump Linda Fagan, the first female commandant of the Coast Guard.

Fagan was, in fact, the first woman ever to serve as a military service chief and, among other things, she had exposed ¡°Operation Fouled Anchor,¡± a previously covered-up investigation into sexual harassment and assault in the Coast Guard. Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, was fired as well. Both have now ¡ª no surprise ¡ª been replaced by men. As it stands, there are no longer any four-star women in the military. And Hegseth had reportedly two women from a promotion list to become one-star Army generals.

Outside of the Department of Defense, the resignations or firings of women in leadership positions have abounded across agencies ranging from the National Labor Relations to the Federal Trade and the for Disease Control and Prevention.

This widespread purge of women stands in stark contrast to their presence in office during the Biden years. Under President Joe Biden, women held just under 50% of all cabinet or cabinet-level positions. And let¡¯s not forget Kamala Harris, the first female vice-president in American history. It¡¯s worth noting as well that under Biden, the Deputy Attorney General and the Deputy Secretary of Defense were both women.

Trump is not unmindful of those statistics. Last year, he boasted about the presence of eight women among his 24 cabinet officers, or a third of his cabinet. As Business Insider , he was ¡°thrilled to say that we have more women in our Cabinet than any Republican president in the history of our country.¡± Following the removal of Noem, Bondi and Chavez-DeRemer, however, women occupy just over one-fifth of the cabinet positions ¡ª admittedly an improvement on his first term when, after two years of resignations and firings, women held only of all cabinet-level positions.

Project 2025

The path to the current backlash against women, including all the purges and punishments we¡¯ve witnessed, didn¡¯t come about by mere happenstance. In the run-up to the 2024 election, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a Project 2025 entitled, Project 2025 ? A Mandate for Authoritarian Leadership: The Heritage Foundation¡¯s Conservative Promise for A Second Trump Administration. This 900-plus page blueprint for overhauling the federal bureaucracy called for gutting DEI programs, eliminating and reducing the size of any offices that didn¡¯t serve a conservative agenda, and enhancing the powers of the president. Among its many recommendations, Project 2025 touted an anti-female message, including removing ¡°gender equality¡± language from government websites, emphasizing ¡°family planning¡± and recommending limitations on access to contraception and cuts to federal funding for abortions.

Although Trump repeatedly himself from Project 2025, many of its recommended policies have indeed become our new reality, including matters affecting women. In the first months of Trump¡¯s second term, images of women, as well as persons of color and LGBTQ+ individuals, were systematically from government websites. So, too, protections for women¡¯s health were tossed to the winds. As the abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All has , as of January 2026, ¡°53% of [Project 2025¡¯s] policies attacking reproductive freedom are completed or in progress.¡±

And now, there is a Heritage Foundation report devoted to the need to counter the declining birth rate and the fragility of the American family. ¡°Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 20 Years¡± for the restructuring of incentives to promote childbearing and ¡°revive the institution of marriage.¡± Signaling its message, the report makes the case for prioritizing marriage and children over career advancement and less traditional family arrangements caused by divorce and single-parenthood. While the report underscores the family roles incumbent upon both men and women, the fact is that reforms aimed at incentivizing childbearing will fall primarily on women, while those aimed at privileging childrearing over career choices would likely fall most heavily on women as well.

MS NOW¡¯s Ali Velshi and ¡°Velshi¡± Segment Producer Amel Ahmed the report well, pointing out that its overall takeaway is: ¡°the freedoms fought [for] and won by America¡¯s women aren¡¯t progress; they are the problem.¡±

Of course, in the era of Trump, none of this should come as a surprise, not when you consider the histories of the men who are now running the show: a president who, in addition to once touting the fact that he could ¡° them by the pussy,¡± has been convicted in E. Jean Carroll¡¯s civil suit over accusations of sexual abuse and defamation to the tune of in damages, a decision by an appellate court. And let¡¯s not forget that Trump¡¯s first nominee for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, his name from consideration under a cloud of accusations of wrongful behavior, including sexual misconduct. Not to mention the shadow cast by the number of individuals within the current administration whose names are said to appear in the . While no formal charges of sexual misconduct have been issued against them, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces pressure to over his alleged ties to Epstein.

A future government without women?

It¡¯s hard to predict which women will come under the axe from Trump and crew as time goes by. But the onslaught has understandably led women from both sides of the political spectrum to sound the alarm. Months before she announced her resignation from Congress, former Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene had already expressed her own misgivings about the misogyny of the Republican leaders in Congress.

When Trump rescinded New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik¡¯s nomination to be the US Representative to the United Nations and replaced her with Michael Waltz (who had embarrassed himself by adding a to a private Signal chat about possible future strikes against the Houthis in Yemen), Greene saw it as a sign of a general trend of sidelining women. She it up as a case where Stefanik ¡°gets shafted,¡± while Waltz ¡°gets rewarded.¡± For Greene, it was proof of an overwhelming Trump administration mood of: ¡°She¡¯s a woman, so it was OK to do that to her somehow.¡±

Greene¡¯s dissatisfaction wasn¡¯t just over Stefanik but over the general trend that has led to only Republican woman chairing a committee in Congress. Notably, alongside Greene, Republican representatives Nancy Mace and Laurent Boebert signed a petition pressuring the Department of Justice to release information on the Epstein files.

The signs are everywhere. Expectations are disappearing that women will hold leadership positions inside the Trump administration or in the halls of Congress (unless the Democrats win decisively in November). If you didn¡¯t realize it before, you really ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t hide from it now. The attack on diversity in government has become pervasive and (at least as yet) is undeterred, targeting females, as well as people of color, immigrants and critics of the president, with abandon. In other words, the fate of women leaders should provide us with an insight, however dispiriting, into just how quickly the values and assumptions that guided this nation¡¯s progress in matters of race, gender and ethnicity for decades have disappeared.

What once amounted to progress is indeed now seen as the problem. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the exorcising of women from the halls of government.

[ first published this piece.]

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This year¡¯s National Eligibility cum Entrance Test () for undergraduate medical admissions ¡ª one of the most important examinations for aspiring doctors in India ¡ª was held on May 3. Within days, however, authorities reported malpractice and decided to cancel the exam, which students had submitted after months and months of rigorous preparations. Thousands of disillusioned students took to the streets in protest, and local media that 11 students died by suicide in the lead-up to the re-test. NTA, which conducts the test, later announced June 21 as the date.

Paper leaks in entrance examinations are not new in India. Repeated leaks and systemic failures have academic life across the country. Students are now directing their anger at the NTA and the Ministry of Education, which oversee major examinations such as NEET and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) system.

The NTA is registered as a society; it is not a statutory body, although it performs a profoundly public function that affects millions of students. Critics have raised concerns about the need for more robust legal and institutional oversight following numerous disputes. Due to the fact that NTA is autonomous in nature but is under the Ministry of Education’s jurisdiction, public discourse frequently degenerates into a blame game: Is it the agency or the ministry?

Dr. Anita Rampal, a former dean of the Faculty of Education at Delhi University, clearly noted on a Frontline Conversations that NTA is not academically qualified and lacks the vision to administer large-scale exams, including online exams. She added, ¡°NTA should not exist ¡­ we should really decentralize this.¡±

NEET: the high-stakes gateway to medical education

Every year, India produces thousands of medical graduates. Yet graduating from medical school is not the hardest step in becoming a doctor; for many students, the real hurdle is , which is mandatory for admission to medical programs in both public and private institutions. A student¡¯s NEET score can shape the course of their future. Families often invest huge sums in coaching classes, tutoring and online preparation in the hope of improving their children¡¯s chances.

NEET was introduced as a single national examination, somewhat akin to the SAT in that it sought to standardize admissions across the country. It was first conducted in 2013, but after significant backlash and legal challenges over state autonomy, the Supreme Court struck it down. Following further legal review, it was reintroduced in 2016. Unlike the SAT, however, NEET is compulsory for medical admission and is held only once a year, making it a far higher-stakes test.

Before NEET, medical admissions in India were fragmented across multiple examinations. At the national level, the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT), conducted by CBSE, governed admission to 15% of seats in government medical and dental colleges. The remaining 85% of state quota seats were filled through separate state-level entrance exams, such as Maharashtra Health and Technical Common Entrance Test (MHT-CET), the Uttar Pradesh Combined Pre-Medical Test (UP-CPMT), and the Engineering Agricultural and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAMCET) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In addition, premier institutions such as All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) conducted their own entrance examinations. The result was a decentralized and often confusing admissions system.

Today, more than two million students sit for NEET each year in the hope of securing a seat in one of the 823 medical colleges recognized by the . This year, nearly 2.28 million students registered for 129,602 seats across 551 cities in India, 14 cities abroad and more than 5,342 examination centers, according to an . It is roughly 18 students per seat, making it a competitive make-it-or-break-it scenario.

Over the past decade, NEET has repeatedly been dogged by disruptions, including allegations of cheating, corruption and paper leaks. Despite its reputation as one of the country¡¯s toughest entrance exams, the system has repeatedly failed to prevent the paper from being stolen or leaked. The exam is conducted offline in pen-and-paper format and consists of 180 questions across biology, physics and chemistry, for a total of 720 marks.

In 2024, NEET was rocked by another . Eighty students reportedly received perfect scores, an unusually high number that triggered concern among educators. A subsequent police investigation found that 1,563 students had been awarded grace marks, a decision that was later reversed. Yet the highly competitive exam was neither canceled nor rescheduled, prompting widespread public outrage. These discrepancies deepened distrust among students, parents, and teachers.

CBSE faces fresh scrutiny over on-screen marking

The crisis in exam credibility has not been limited to NEET. This year, CBSE, the school board affiliated with more than 24,000 schools in India and abroad, also over the evaluation of Class 10 and 12 examinations. The board had introduced an on-screen marking (OSM) system for large-scale evaluation, replacing physical answer-book grading with digital assessment. Coempt Edu Teck, an ed-tech company based in Hyderabad, was awarded the contract. But the system soon drew criticism over technical glitches, blurry scanned images, poor resolution and improper marking, all of which cast doubt on the results.

Although Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said he accepted responsibility and that technical defects were being addressed, it remains striking that such a large-scale shift appears to have been implemented despite serious gaps in oversight. The fate of millions of students was effectively handed to a technology company that, critics argue, failed to meet its responsibilities.

Adding to the controversy, Sarthak Sidhant, a 17-year-old student, said he found irregularities in public tender documents related to the ed-tech contract. He his findings on social media, alleging that the eligibility criteria had been modified in ways that benefited Coempt and helped it secure the contract.

The high-stakes coaching industry

Behind all this lies another uncomfortable reality: the enormous coaching industry that thrives on high-stakes examinations. India¡¯s test-preparation sector has expanded dramatically, profiting from the aspirations and anxieties of students and families. On average, coaching institutes charge anywhere from ?40,000 (~$424) to ?200,000 (~$2,120) per student over a two-year period.

The industry has grown rapidly over the past decade. Last year, its was estimated at roughly $7.2 billion, and it is expected to continue growing over the next several years. Urbanization, digitalization and intensifying professional competition have all fueled this expansion.

Coaching centers have dominated India¡¯s academic scene way before NEET or NTA came along. These centers are essential for many students, offering structured guidance and resources to navigate complex subjects. ??As a result, they play a significant role in shaping the future of aspiring medical and engineering professionals. Some critics argue that they dictate the terms in various aspects of these centralized exams.

Taken together, these failures have intensified student frustration, exposed weak government communication and underscored a growing political disconnect. In a recent with In Focus, The Hindu podcast, Dr. G. R. Ravindranath, general secretary of the Doctors¡¯ Association for Social Equality, said that discrepancies in major examinations inflict severe mental and emotional distress on students and their families. He argued that both the central government and the NTA must be held accountable and suggested that the NTA should be replaced by a new body, similar to the Union Public Service Commission, with stronger public oversight.

The crisis surrounding NEET and CBSE reveals a deepening collapse of trust that shapes the future of millions of young Indians. If these institutions continue without credibility, the damage will reverberate beyond the day of the result.

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It was in this airspace that two helicopters met in a tragic . They crashed mid-flight, plummeting toward the Recreio dos Bandeirantes neighborhood in Rio¡¯s West Zone. Six people died, including the pilots and passengers of both aircraft. The accident made the skies a national headline and raised a question that extends far beyond the technical investigation: What does this disaster reveal about contemporary Brazil?

Part of the case¡¯s national significance stems from the identities of some of the victims. Aboard one of the helicopters were American singer , an artist with millions of listeners on streaming platforms; Argentine influencer and YouTube content creator Gaspar Prim D¨ªaz, known as Gaspi; music video director Lucas Vignale; and Brazilian music producer Lucas Brito Chaves, known as Lucas Frota. The presence of internationally recognized figures amplified media coverage and transformed a local tragedy into global news.

But we must not reduce the incident to a mere reflection of our contemporary fascination with celebrities. What happened over Recreio dos Bandeirantes sheds light on the silent transformations of Brazilian urban life: the growing occupation of airspace, the extreme prioritization of speed and the inequalities that shape mobility in large cities. The tragedy is a window into understanding today¡¯s Brazil.

We often treat accidents as isolated events ¡ª a human error, an operational mistake, a mechanical glitch. But major tragedies also serve as social x-rays, illuminating normally invisible structures.

Rio¡¯s helicopter collision is not merely a matter for aviation investigators. It occurs at the intersection of trends that have been reshaping Brazil¡¯s major cities: the proliferation of private air travel, the strain on urban traffic systems and the constant effort to save time in increasingly congested metropolises.

Brazil¡¯s crowded skies

For decades, the helicopter symbolized the exceptional. It was the aircraft of choice for rescue operations, police work and medical emergencies. Today, in cities like Rio and S?o Paulo, it has also become an everyday means of for businesspeople, artists, executives and people seeking to escape ground traffic jams.

The Brazilian landscape has created a peculiar situation. While millions spend hours each day riding buses, trains and cars, a small portion of the population uses air corridors to cross the city. Brazilian inequality was long evident in the geography of cities, but now we see it high above them. Traffic jams still exist, they¡¯ve just shifted to a different altitude.

The accident exposes a Brazilian contradiction. The country has one of the largest helicopter fleets in the world and simultaneously grapples with overburdened public transportation systems. While one segment of the population jostles for space on buses, trains and subways, another turns the sky into a daily route.

The Recreio collision brings to light this rarely discussed reality: The skies over Brazil¡¯s major cities have grown increasingly crowded.

Rio, especially its coastal areas and regions with intense business activity, sees constant aircraft traffic. Anyone observing the horizon of Copacabana or Barra da Tijuca can see this easily. Helicopters appear, disappear, cross paths and follow invisible corridors. Airspace is an urban infrastructure just as important as avenues and tunnels.

According to experts on Brazilian television network TV Globo, helicopter operations do not function exactly like those of commercial airplanes. For most flights, pilots operate under visual flight rules. This means they must maintain visual contact with their surroundings, identify obstacles, monitor other aircraft and make decisions in real time. One of the experts compared this system to car traffic on a highway.

This helps dispel a widely held misconception. The sky is not an empty space where aircraft fly in isolation. It has traffic flows, preferred routes, crossing points and areas of higher operational density. In cities with intense air traffic, constant coordination is essential for safety.

Selling speed to the wealthy

There is also a cultural dimension to this incident. In recent decades, speed has ceased to be merely an advantage. It has become a commodity; companies, services and apps alike sell it. Private air travel has come to market with exactly the same promise: the possibility of escaping delays, traffic jams and the limitations imposed by the city. The helicopter has become one of the most visible symbols of this logic.

The separation between poorer ground-commuters and wealthier air-fliers creates a radically unequal urban experience. Those who depend on public transportation measure the city in hours. Those who cross Barra by helicopter measure the same distance in minutes. These two groups have unequal access to time.

When two helicopters collide, it is not merely an aviation accident. A symbolic rupture also occurs. The space that usually represents efficiency, exclusivity and speed shows its own limits.

The and images of the tragedy are shocking for this reason. Viewers can see scattered debris, fire, downed wreckage and aircraft fragments striking nearby areas. The sky, usually associated with the idea of technological freedom, suddenly becomes a scene of vulnerability.

The investigation ahead

The Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aviation Accidents () is investigating the crash. The causes remain unknown. Certain hypotheses naturally come to the investigators¡¯ attention: communication problems, limited visibility, failures in situational awareness or specific operational circumstances.

However, aviation experience shows that accidents rarely result from a single cause. They most often arise from a combination of factors that, taken individually, would seem insufficient to produce a tragedy. A decision made under pressure, a misinterpretation, an unexpected operational condition ¡ª disaster usually stems from the convergence of these elements.

The six deaths have devastated families and made for a complex investigation. In the coming months, experts will reconstruct flight paths, examine equipment, analyze communications and attempt to determine why those aircraft were in the same spot in the sky at the exact same moment.

When CENIPA concludes its investigation, it is likely to reveal which technical factors brought the two aircraft catastrophically close together. It is unlikely, however, to answer why the skies over Brazil¡¯s major cities have become an increasingly contested space.

This is less an aeronautical question than a social one. Perhaps it makes the accident more than an aviation tragedy.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Congested Sky of an Unequal Country appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Trillionaires are in the news in ways that attract far more attention than the innovation I highlighted six years ago, when the race was between centibillionaires. Trillionaires can now be individuals or institutions. Both threaten our well-being. US President Donald Trump and his head of the Pentagon renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War (DoW). A rose by any name smells as sweet, they reasoned. The Pentagon reached the symbolic goal Trump set for it when it became a this year. At about the same time as Elon. The DoW will take a new leap next year by adding half a trillion more.

Serious people need to ask themselves which trillionaire ¡ª the DoW or Musk ¡ª is more dangerous. We know what the Pentagon is already doing with this year¡¯s trillion. The new game for spending multiple billions consists of systematically setting up serious negotiations with an adversary involving a third country (in the most recent case, Oman) and then, on the behest of Israel, without the slightest warning, mount a surprise attack. Only a trillionaire could be capable of taking out two strategic targets in the first few hours: the adversary¡¯s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and 168 in a provincial school, most of them schoolgirls. That¡¯s the kind of creative geopolitical poker playing you can do when you know you¡¯ve got a trillion dollars in the bank to spend¡­ and you also know from experience that there will never be accountability, not even for various genocidal acts conducted during your undeclared war.

Unfortunately, the Blitzkrieg launched by two allies with an apparent (but plausibly denied) nostalgia for the methods and some of the accomplishments of the Third Reich, didn¡¯t achieve its expected results over the two or three days planned for total victory. Fortunately, we now have reason to believe it is unlikely to evolve into yet another Middle East ¡°forever war.¡± Could this mark the end of an addiction?

The campaign initially meant to last a weekend but annoyingly prolonged for more than three months now appears to be winding down. This should permit self-proclaimed Peacemaker Trump to add this conflict to the growing list of wars he has single-handedly ended. If he succeeds and then goes further by fulfilling his now ancient promise to settle the Ukraine war as well, perhaps it will incite him to rename the DoW once again, this time calling it the Department of Peace. Sounds crazy, but that would be so Trump, especially if he still thinks of himself as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

We could call this Trump¡¯s renaming frenzy the ¡°Art of the Redeal.¡± He nearly got away with engraving his moniker on the Kennedy Center of the Arts. The court canceled that, but he appears to have succeeded by rechristening the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America (which is nevertheless better than more accurate version reflecting Trump¡¯s deeper belief: ¡°Gulf Of Our Fucking United States,¡± or GOOFUS).

The era of trillionaires has dawned

Alongside the Pentagon, the other newly minted trillionaire in the news, Musk may prove to be even more dangerous in the consequences of his actions and wasteful in his habits than the Pentagon itself, whose ineptitude with audits has never prevented more billions and trillions from pouring in, no questions asked. As Trump¡¯s hyperreal soul brother, Elon, also has a taste for naming or things, including his children ¡ª usually with the letter X.

After purchasing Twitter for $44 billion (mostly of other people¡¯s money) and renaming it X, confusion reigned and the company¡¯s valuation plunged. But Musk¡¯s hyperreal talent for financial sleight-of-hand ¡ª comparable to a Las Vegas poker dealer¡¯s shuffling techniques ¡ª eventually made his investors who took a loss happy. Musk has an exceptional talent of convincing other people of visions of the future they have no objective reason to believe in. He deals his poker hands and juggles at the same time. And the balls he juggles are companies he creates to ensure humanity¡¯s future ¡ª notably Grok, xAI and especially SpaceX. (We leave in the background other supposedly transformative corporate, such as Neuralink and the Boring Company.)

A year ago, the world woke up to one bit of unexpected hyperreality when Grok, Musk¡¯s personally supervised brand of generative AI, began obsessing about anti-white genocide in South Africa, a theme Musk was known to promote. It went on to ¡°antisemitic comments, associated Jewish-sounding surnames with ¡®anti-white hate¡¯ and explained that Adolf Hitler would ¡®spot the pattern¡¯ and ¡®handle it decisively, every damn time.¡¯¡± Grok even referred to itself as ¡°MechaHitler.¡± This clearly was not due to the well-known randomness principle that lives at the core of an LLM. It originated in Musk¡¯s own influence about Grok¡¯s alignment. But rather than focus on blaming Musk ¡ª who gave himself the title at Tesla not of CEO but TechnoKing (a title morphologically similar to MechaHitler) ¡ª this should incite us to worry about a more general problem: what this tells us about the power anyone or anything with concentrated wealth wields over society at large and their potential to change the ways we perceive the world.

We need to think about what it means to accept our new ¡°trillionaire reality.¡± One thing should now become clear as soon as we think about it: Our society has finally lost any sense of proportion. The locomotive is literally off the rails. Our media incites us to admire trillionaire companies or trillionaire individuals for their talent or simply, for their success. Any healthy society would recoil in horror at the very idea that so much wealth might exist in the grip of one person or institution.

Invisible historical decline

We know that an excessive wealth gap in any society will become dangerous. The French Revolution brought down a regime that, though inept in its management, happened to be acutely aware of the dangers of privilege and eager to do something about it. Louis XVI¡¯s court struggled to reform France¡¯s fiscal system that heavily favored the aristocracy and clergy with tax exemptions. Despite the very real moral concern expressed by the king and his councillors, the Ancien R¨¦gime would become the victim of its own constitutional sclerosis. Today, things are different in one respect: the utter lack of moral concern of the wealthy class. In what we think of as the age of democracy and human rights, the narcissism of trillionaire individuals and the corporations they run means that they recognize only one moral pressure: serving their shareholders and defending their share price.

Need we return to Aristotle to understand that revolutions happen because governing factions lose their sense of proportion? For Aristotle, if the middle class is small, the state loses its proportion. It ceases to be a community of citizens and becomes a battleground between masters and slaves, leading inevitably to tyranny or civil war. In his Politics (II, xi) Aristotle explains that proportionate wealth is a positive thing ¡°for the sake of the leisure it gives.¡± But when money dominates politics ¡°wealth becomes of more esteem than virtue and causes the whole state to be bent on making money.¡± The philosopher this: ¡°Whatever is most valued by the highest authority inevitably makes the opinion of the rest of the citizens follow suit.¡±

What distinguishes Aristotle¡¯s Athens from today¡¯s consumer society is the fact that it is no longer only ¡°the highest authority¡± that spreads the message and sets the tone. Today¡¯s media cannot resist honoring multi-billionaires for their supposed achievements. Warren Buffet is a hero; Jeffrey Epstein¡¯s good friend, Bill Gates, is admired as a philanthropist; and Musk is a superhero and space conqueror.

The same media that deserved the nod to ¡°freedom of the press¡± the Framers built into the First Amendment of the US Constitution is expected, according to our democratic theology, to represent and reflect the interests of citizens. In reality, it serves other gods, in particular. The people clearly do not own and even less control the media. Billionaires who may soon become trillionaires do.

Not that the ¡°highest authority¡± doesn¡¯t play its role in making opinion. Trump has refined the art of playing the very marketplaces his political decisions influence from day to day and hour to hour. But how different is this to Congress itself, where the people¡¯s ¡°representatives¡± consider trading to be a sacred right? It was an influential Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, who in defense of her colleagues¡¯ propensity to play the stock market: ¡°We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that.¡±

Trading and benefiting from the legislator¡¯s inevitable insider knowledge aren¡¯t a bug in the system, but rather a feature. Upon retirement from public office, seeking lucrative employment from wealthy corporations benefiting from government has become standard practice. Presidents ¡ª the same ones that add trillions to their defense¡­ er, I mean, war budgets ¡ª may not have known it previously, but now have the multiple possibilities of padding their wallets. Future presidents will understand that launching and promoting a stablecoin (hyperreal money), staging private profit-making UFC combats on their lawn or ¡°encouraging¡± wealthy allied autocracies to back the real estate speculation of family members are just ordinary examples of being commander-in-chief of the economy as well as the military.

Aristotle took the trouble to study the working political systems of a diversity of Mediterranean nations well beyond the Greek cities themselves. He noted the variety of constitutions and described the logic behind them. He would have been at a loss to describe what happens today, and not only in the United States. He described monarchy as the rule of a single, ideally wise individual, but not that it could easily turn into the absolute rule of a single person focused solely on their own self-interest. His fear when democracy deteriorates was that it would lead to a breakdown of the rule of law in favor of the rule of the popular whim, a lesson Alexis de Tocqueville retained when he warned about the ¡°tyranny of the majority¡± in his work, Democracy in America.

Both thinkers, the ancient Greek and the 19th-century French aristocrat, identified the threat as emanating from the people involved: either the sole monarch or the mob that takes the law in its hands. The threat from specific personalities ¡ª narcissists in the case of monarchy, rabble rousers in democracy ¡ª will always be present. But we live in a different world today, a world in which money itself becomes the tyrant. The very fact that we can talk about a trillion dollars being possessed or managed by a Musk or a Hegseth bodes something far worse than the fears expressed by our two thinkers.

Trillions make far more consequent decisions than individuals. Musk¡¯s trillion may be essentially vapor, but he can use it in invisible ways to shape the society we all live in. The Pentagon¡¯s trillion, under Trump and Hegseth, will always be available for war and other less visible forms of aggression.

A society that worships or even admires trillions is a society that becomes, by definition, out of control. ¡°You ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t argue with money¡± has become a modern proverb. But think about this: ¡°You ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t even whisper a mild complaint with trillions.¡±

A healthy society would see the homage done to trillionaires as the ultimate political obscenity. Once respect for a trillionaire becomes acceptable, the demise of democracy is certain. 

*[The Devil¡¯s Advocate pursues the tradition 51³Ô¹Ï began in 2017 with the launch of our ¡°Devil¡¯s Dictionary.¡± It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself ¡ª political and journalistic rhetoric ¡ª to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the 51³Ô¹Ï Devil¡¯s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider¡¯s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post A Trillion Reasons Democracy Is Doomed appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Ten years of change

Guardiola was employed by Premier League club Manchester City at the time. The club is owned by the Abu Dhabi Group, the majority shareholder of which is Emirati royal and billionaire Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. One wonders what would have happened had Guardiola been employed by London club Tottenham Hotspur, which is owned by an investment company ENIC, controlled by British billionaire Joe Lewis and his family. The club¡¯s strong historical ties to the Jewish community in North London has long shaped its identity, with its ownership and fanbase reflecting that association for decades.

Guardiola has now left the Manchester Club after ten years, during which his team won every honor available. His tactical approach, influenced by basketball, has affected other coaches around the world: possession, screens and set pieces became commonplace in the sport.

Barely a month after Guardiola started at the club in July 2016, another incident shaped sport, this time in an altogether different way. NFL player Colin Kaepernick during the American national anthem on August 26, 2016, before a preseason game. He later switched to kneeling to show more respect to military veterans, but his meaning was still clear. That summer had seen deadly police shootings in the United States: Police shot and Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, leading to widespread protests across the nation.

Remember: With notable exceptions, wider events ostensibly do not affect sports. Governing organizations warn athletes not to express opinions, views or perspectives of any kind on controversial topics. The template came about during Avery Brundage¡¯s presidency of the International Olympic Committee, from 1952 to 1972. Brundage this into the Olympic charter and other sports followed. American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos created a major cause c¨¦l¨¨bre in 1968 when they affirmed their to Black Power, a radical movement that emerged in the 1960s, on the victory rostrum of the Mexico Olympics. They were sent home and punished, as if to send a warning to others.

Times had changed by the time of Kaepernick¡¯s action. Indifference had given way to anger and sports governors, as well as competitors, were either prepared or forced to break with convention. Even England¡¯s usually cautious football authorities not only allowed the knee, but freed up a period of time before games for players to make the . Tennis players, especially Naomi Osaka, publicly her views, sometimes wearing special face masks. Women¡¯s sport mobilized as a platform for LGBTQ+ rights and became arguably the most effective advocacy organization ever.

If they want to suspend me ¡­ it¡¯s OK

¡°I am not neutral,¡± said Guardiola during his February address. The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester condemned similar in support of the Palestinian cause made last summer, to Manchester City¡¯s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, that the 55-year-old¡¯s comments ¡°put the lives of British Jews in Manchester, including those who support your football club, in danger.¡±

Apart from Palestine, Guardiola¡¯s other main commitment is Catalan independence. ¡°I was delighted to be called up, but you ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t deny what you feel, and I feel very connected to my country, to Catalonia.¡±

In Manchester, Guardiola wore a yellow in press conferences and on the touchline in support of Catalonia political figures who had been arrested during violence when Spain¡¯s national government banned Catalan¡¯s independence referendum in 2017.

This was too much even for the newly-aware English football. The Football Association wrote to Guardiola on at least two occasions, instructing him to stop wearing the ribbon ¡ª it contravened rules against displaying political messages. The Association fined him , but he continued wearing it for months, even during the League Cup final against Arsenal in February 2018.

This provoked Guardialo to : ¡°They can suspend me for doing that, but the other people are in jail. If they want to suspend me ¡ª UEFA, Premier League, FIFA ¡ª it¡¯s OK.¡±

For over a century, sport cultivated an image of neutrality. Athletes were expected to compete, shake hands and leave the world¡¯s conflicts outside the stadium. Administrators enforced the principle consistently. From Brundage¡¯s Olympics to the of Smith and Carlos in 1968, the message was clear: Politics and sport did not, or at least should not, mix.

The last decade has changed that understanding. Kaepernick¡¯s protest coincided with a broader cultural shift in which silence increasingly came to be seen not as neutrality but as acquiescence. The rise of Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement and campaigns for LGBTQ+ rights encouraged competitors to use their visibility as a platform. What had once been regarded as an abuse of sporting status became, for many, a responsibility attached to it.

Yet the new freedom has limits. Athletes and coaches have not acquired an unrestricted licence to comment on anything they choose. The boundaries of acceptable expression have moved. Guardiola¡¯s own career illustrates the point. His support for Palestine has attracted criticism, but it has not threatened his position at a club owned by Abu Dhabi interests. One might reasonably ask whether the same tolerance would have applied had he chosen a different cause. What if he had repeatedly criticized restrictions on gay rights in parts of the Gulf? What if he had used his platform to champion LGBTQ+ campaigns in a manner that embarrassed his club¡¯s ownership? The answer is unknowable, but the question itself is worth asking.

The transformation of sport since 2016 has not abolished limits on political expression, but it has redrawn them. Some causes have become legitimate, even expected: inclusivity, anti-racism and opposition to discrimination. Others remain sensitive, awkward or potentially career-threatening, particularly where they intersect with state power, commercial sponsorship or entrenched cultural norms. The old ideal of neutrality has weakened; it has not been replaced by unlimited freedom.

Maverick or emblem?

Seen in this context, Guardiola is less a maverick than an emblem of a new sporting age. His interventions on Palestine and Catalonia are controversial not because they are unique, but because they expose the growing difficulty of separating sport from the societies in which it operates. Clubs are owned by states, leagues are global businesses and athletes possess audiences that rival those of conventional media organizations. The expectation that they remain publicly neutral now appears increasingly artificial.

Yet the disappearance of neutrality has not produced unlimited freedom. The new sporting culture permits some forms of advocacy more readily than others. Causes associated with race, gender and sexuality have gained institutional legitimacy; criticism directed at owners, sponsors or governing bodies may still encounter resistance. The key shift is not the arrival of political speech in sport, but its uneven regulation.

The question is not whether sport is political. That argument was settled long ago. The more revealing question is who gets to speak, on what issues and under what conditions?

Guardiola¡¯s significance lies precisely here. His decade at Manchester City coincided with sport¡¯s transition from a culture of barely stifled silence to one of selective expression. Far from standing outside this transformation, he became one of its most visible symbols.

[Ellis Cashmore is the author of .]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Pep Guardiola and Sport¡¯s New Politics appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

To regard coffee as a commodity ¡ª or worse, as a transitory health fad ¡ª is to ignore its strategic importance to global security and human well-being.

From cancer scare to cellular resilience?

Science has quietly altered coffee¡¯s health narrative. Coffee was once thought to be carcinogenic, but the World Health Organization¡¯s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer it as ¡°not classifiable¡± as a carcinogen in 2016 after over 1,000 studies. The transition was not cosmetic. It represented a more thorough understanding of how coffee interacts with human biology ¡ª not as a threat, but as a nuanced regulator of cellular resilience.?

Compounds like chlorogenic acid and caffeine antioxidant pathways, including the pathway (the system the body turns on when it wants to make its ¡°in-house antioxidants¡±), thereby the body¡¯s ability to neutralize carcinogens and repair DNA damage. Epidemiological data now beneficial correlations, against liver and endometrial malignancies, with some research associating regular use with a considerable in disease risk.

Small health gains, big global implications?

This is not a miracle treatment, and it should not be framed as such. The true discovery is more complicated and, in many respects, more powerful: Coffee represents a unique convergence in which a globally traded commodity contributes slightly but meaningfully to public health. In an era where noncommunicable illnesses for more than 70% of global deaths, even small advances are significant.?

According to some meta-analyses, a in type 2 diabetes risk by up to one-third among regular coffee drinkers has tremendous downstream implications for cancer prevention and health-care burdens.

The climate threat brewing behind every cup

However, this health dividend is unevenly distributed and increasingly threatened. Climate change is already transforming the topography of coffee production. Rising temperatures, irregular rainfall, and the introduction of pests like coffee rust are yields throughout Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.?

The World Bank has that adequate land for coffee farming may become scarce in the next few decades, jeopardizing both supply and the economic security of millions of people. The implications are not abstract. Coffee is more than just an export in Ethiopia and Uganda; it is an essential component of rural livelihoods, government revenue and social stability.

There is a subtle irony here. The same beverage linked to reduced inflammation and enhanced metabolic health in wealthy consumer markets is manufactured in areas with limited access to health care and high climate risk. This disparity raises unpleasant concerns about global equity. Who benefits from coffee¡¯s health benefits, and who pays the environmental and economic costs of its production?

Why sustainable coffee still falls short?

The gap between certified coffee production and actual market demand is finally starting to narrow. In 2017, only 29% of certified coffee was sold as certified, with the majority of its value lost in the supply chain; by 2023, that proportion had risen to roughly 51%, significant momentum. However, this progress contrasts with what we already know ¡ª shade-grown systems can biodiversity and climate resilience, and major financial commitments, including a green credit facility, reflect a growing recognition that agricultural resilience is inextricably linked to economic and health stability.?

Nonetheless, these initiatives remain fragmented and insufficient in light of the enormity of the situation. What this time requires is not just progress, but purposeful, planned action.

Coffee as a health, climate and development strategy?

The true opportunity, according to strategists, is to approach coffee as a convergence point ¡ª where health, climate and development all quietly connect. Public health guidelines already acknowledge that moderate consumption ¡ª about three to five cups per day ¡ª can be harmless and even beneficial. Including this in broader health programs, while opposing excess sugar and ultra-processed chemicals, provides a surprisingly low-cost approach to population-wide benefits.

At the same time, foreign policymakers must adopt a more deliberate approach to the sustainability of coffee supply chains. This isn¡¯t just about ethical consumption. It is concerned with mitigating the destabilizing effects of climate-induced agricultural decline. Investments in climate-resilient coffee varietals, agroforestry systems and fair pricing mechanisms can increase rural economies, reduce migratory pressures and indirectly benefit global health by preserving livelihood prospects.

Australia¡¯s flat white diplomacy?

Australia doesn¡¯t just drink coffee ¡ª it lives it. With a market worth in 2025, heading toward by 2031, and a staggering cups consumed daily, the country holds quiet but undeniable power over global coffee futures. Behind every flat white in Melbourne or Sydney sits a vast, import-driven supply chain directly to producer economies across the Indo-Pacific. As demand at 5.55% annually, Australians are increasingly choosing premium and sustainably sourced coffee, turning everyday consumption into a signal the world ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t ignore.?

This isn¡¯t just caf¨¦ culture ¡ª it¡¯s influence. In a system where coffee anchors billions in revenue and shapes livelihoods across continents, Australia¡¯s daily coffee habits can be understood as a form of consumer soft power, capable of nudging entire supply chains toward sustainability with every cup poured.

Coffee, diplomacy and the limits of the cure narrative?

There is also a diplomatic dimension that deserves greater attention. Coffee has long been embedded in cultural rituals and informal diplomacy ¡ª from Ethiopian coffee ceremonies to negotiations conducted over espresso in European capitals. It functions as a social lubricant, a facilitator of dialogue. In a fractured geopolitical environment, these small, humanizing elements carry weight. They remind us that global interdependence is not only transactional but deeply cultural.

However, caution is advised against overkill. Coffee alone will not reduce the worldwide burden of cancer or metabolic disorders. Tobacco usage, alcohol intake and sedentary lifestyles remain considerably more powerful drivers. The danger is allowing the story to lapse into complacency or economic exploitation. Decades of evolving research have taught us the value of scientific integrity and transparent communication. 

Early links between coffee and cancer were sometimes complicated by smoking and other lifestyle variables, resulting in public confusion and, at times, unwarranted panic. Rebuilding trust necessitates consistency, transparency, and a willingness to accept uncertainty.

Coffee as a prism for global policy?

What emerges is a more sophisticated view of coffee ¡ª not as a hero or villain, but as a quietly significant actor in the global system. It is a daily practice that links cellular biology to international trade, personal wellness to global stability. In this sense, coffee serves as a prism through which to evaluate larger policy concerns.

The stakes are not insignificant. As climate pressures worsen and health-care systems struggle under the weight of chronic disease, the interconnections between agriculture, nutrition and sustainability will only become more important. Coffee is just at that intersection. Treating it as such ¡ª through integrated policy, responsible consumption and long-term investment ¡ª provides a unique opportunity to link economic, environmental and public health objectives.

There is something deeply human about this. A simple cup shared by civilizations and continents, including traces of dirt, climate, work and science. It quietly but consistently explores if global systems might be designed not just for efficiency or profit, but also for resilience and well-being.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Global Stakes Behind Every Cup of Coffee appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

On previous occasions, missile were treated as predictable, and stockpiles were estimated within acceptable margins. Furthermore, adversaries were expected to operate within known constraints, as even confrontation followed patterns that intelligence agencies had learned to anticipate.?

Such assumptions are now , not in isolation but across multiple dimensions at once. This is evident in the reported long-range strike toward Diego , regardless of operational outcome, which exposed how fragile those had become. Moreover, a base was positioned deliberately beyond the reach of regional actors only to be secured by distance alone. That distance, however, no longer appears sufficient.

For years, Iran signaled that its missile range was effectively capped at around kilometers. This was not a formal limitation, but it functioned as a strategic . It reassured capitals while preserving deterrence within the region. It created predictability.

The intelligence gap: when strategy lags behind the battlefield

The of wars has now been disrupted. Whether through technological , altered payload configurations, the use of proxy launch platforms, or external assistance, the apparent of reach suggests that prior intelligence frameworks were incomplete. The precise mechanism matters less than the implication. Systems built on those assumptions are no longer reliable.

This is not an isolated discrepancy. Pre-conflict of missile inventories now appear increasingly uncertain. The persistence and scale of launches that stockpiles were either underestimated, better concealed, or continuously replenished despite expectations to the contrary. The growing use of coordinated and missile attacks on shipping and infrastructure, often deployed in waves, has further complicated detection and interception. Air defense designed for more predictable threat patterns are being forced to adapt in real time.

At the same time, the expansion of maritime in the Red Sea and surrounding corridors has demonstrated how quickly conflict can extend beyond traditional battlefields. shipping has been rerouted around conflict zones, insurance costs have risen, and naval deployments have increased. In some areas, shipping traffic has sharply , yet no single actor fully controls the escalation dynamic. These developments reflect not just tactical , but a broader shift in how pressure is applied across domains. Each of these trends points to the same conclusion, as the war is evolving faster than it is being understood.

Furthermore, when intelligence lags behind reality, strategy becomes . Decisions are made on shifting assessments rather than a stable understanding. Under such conditions, escalation is not always intentional. It emerges from , misreading, and compressed timelines. This aforementioned structural uncertainty is being amplified by political inconsistency?

The perils of strategic ambiguity: when signals fail to constrain

In recent weeks, Washington has moved between signaling and preparing for expanded engagement. Statements suggesting de-escalation have been accompanied by continued military positioning and readiness. The coexistence of caution and coercion within the same strategic posture does not create flexibility but ambiguity.

However, at this level is not stabilizing as it complicates coordination and incentivizes worst-case assumptions for allies and adversaries, respectively. Additionally, in the case of the conflict itself, it narrows the space in which de-escalation can be credibly . When words and actions diverge, signaling ceases to function as a constraint.

The result is not one of controlled pressure, but cumulative . An instance in this regard constitutes Israel¡¯s operational approach, symbolizing a parallel dynamic. The expansion of the battle-space to include infrastructure, proxy networks, and indirect targets may generate short-term tactical advantages. But it also increases the number of in play as each additional domain introduces new risks, new actors, and new pathways to escalation. Therefore, expansion is often treated as leverage as it frequently reduces control for all practical purposes.?

This volatility is further by the growing role of real-time intelligence systems and automated analysis tools. While these technologies accelerate data processing, they also compress decision timelines. Leaders are required to act faster, often on incomplete or rapidly changing information. The speed of interpretation has , but the stability of understanding has not. As a result, decision-making becomes more reactive, not more informed.

On a different note, the conflict is no longer confined to direct military exchanges. infrastructure and maritime routes have become central to global energy and to the logic of escalation. Threats surrounding the of Hormuz, disruptions in the Red Sea, and the of desalination and energy networks are no longer peripheral concerns. They are central to how escalation is being conducted. This is how wars expand without formal declarations.

At the same time, more actors are being drawn in indirectly. The UK¡¯s of its regional posture following heightened tensions illustrates how quickly geographic distance is losing its protective value. European states may not seek direct , but they are increasingly exposed through energy dependence, trade flows, and strategic vulnerability.

Beyond control: when war outruns its structures?

Exposure is expanding faster than control. This is evident in the growing role of external support networks, whether , logistical, or informational, further the landscape. The conflict is no longer defined solely by its principal actors. It is shaped by a broader ecosystem that is more difficult to track and even harder to manage. This diffusion makes escalation less visible, but more unpredictable. The most dangerous phase of a war is not when it becomes more intense. It is when it becomes less intelligible.

Such a threshold is approaching. When intelligence become uncertain, when political signaling becomes inconsistent, and when operational boundaries expand faster than they can be managed, the conflict begins to lose its structure. It does not collapse into chaos. It becomes unpredictable.

As for , it alters the nature of risk. In predictable conflicts, escalation can be managed, even if imperfectly. In unpredictable ones, miscalculation becomes more likely, reactions accelerate, and feedback loops tighten. Actions taken for may be interpreted as preparation for escalation. Defensive moves may trigger offensive responses.

War ceases to be guided by strategy and begins to be driven by momentum. The assumption that this remains controllable depends on the belief that the systems managing it are still keeping pace, which is not the case. War is no longer just being fought. It is outrunning the intelligence, leadership, and structures meant to contain it. When such is the case, even powerful states lose control over outcomes they believe they are shaping.

[Ainesh Dey edited this piece] 

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Velocity of Violence: How Technology Is Outpacing Human Command appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

But , if it is to mean anything at all, must be consistent. And consistency is precisely what is missing when many of these same voices rally behind Argentina¡¯s President Javier Milei, portraying him as a libertarian and as a brave fighter against government overreach.

This includes libertarian organizations such as the Foundation for Economic Education, which described him as the libertarian President. The Cato Institute, a famous American think tank that describes its as ¡°to keep the principles, ideas and moral case for liberty alive for future generations,¡± Milei to address a Conference on the ¡°Rebirth of Liberty in Argentina.¡± And of course, Milei tries to portray himself as a defender of liberty, famous for using his political catchphrase ¡°Viva la libertad, carajo! (Long live liberty!)¡±

Argentina has had a long history of authoritarian rule, most infamously under the Peronist regime. Milei¡¯s rhetoric and promises of liberty and economic prosperity played a key role in winning the votes of many Argentines. 

But strip away the slogans and what remains is not liberty, but something far more familiar: the reproduction of authoritarian power under a new aesthetic.

True liberty is not reducible to economic deregulation or hostility toward the state in the abstract. Freedom was inseparable from protection against oppression and coercion. Liberty meant basic rights cannot be traded away in the name of state efficiency. A political project that erodes rights while claiming to expand freedom is not liberal; it is incoherent. Under Milei, Argentina has seen precisely this contradiction play out in practice.

Attacks on reproductive freedom

One of the clearest examples of Milei¡¯s illiberal agenda is abortion. On January 14, 2021, Argentine President Alberto Fern¨¢ndez signed Argentina¡¯s into effect after Senate Approval in December 2020, thereby abortion. This was a of bodily autonomy, particularly for poor and rural women. It was not a gift from above; it was the hard-won result of decades of organizing. For years, women campaigned and fought for the right to have abortions; they brought together a coalition of several feminist groups under the ¡°,¡± with a simple demand that women not die from illegal procedures and have the right to bodily autonomy.

But Milei has made no secret of his hostility to this achievement, even describing abortion as ¡°¡± and openly aligning himself with efforts to dismantle access.

Lawmakers from Milei¡¯s Party, La Libertad Avanza, even introduced a bill to abortion rights. Even though Milei¡¯s spokesperson said the lawmakers were acting independently and that signing the bill was not part of Milei¡¯s agenda, Milei said he wished to hold a on whether to repeal the country¡¯s landmark 2020 legislation.

While the law technically remains in place, access has been deliberately . Funding for reproductive health programs has been slashed, abortion pills have become harder to obtain and healthcare providers report a climate of fear and uncertainty that discourages them from offering care.?

reported last year that they received at least four times as many reports of barriers to abortion as in the previous year, potentially reflecting an increase in barriers to access. As , this has created a situation where abortion is legal in theory but increasingly inaccessible in practice, especially for those without resources.?

Liberty that depends on wealth, geography or political favor is not liberty. It is a privilege.

Indigenous rights, state violence and the collapse of property protections

Perhaps the most revealing contradiction of Milei¡¯s presidency is found in his government¡¯s of Indigenous communities, particularly the Mapuche. Milei repealed Argentina¡¯s Indigenous territorial emergency law, stripping communities of legal protection against eviction and land dispossession. Human rights organizations have that this rollback effectively nullifies Indigenous legal personhood and opens the door to unchecked state and private encroachment.

But the problem goes even deeper than Indigenous rights alone. What is happening here is an assault on private property itself, carried out by the very state that claims to defend it. As documented by , in February this year, Jorge Mill¨¢n¡¯s home in the small Patagonian town of El Mait¨¦n was violently raided. Mill¨¢n, a member of the Indigenous Mapuche community and a journalist working at La Radio Comunitaria Mapuche Pet¨¹ Mogelei?, described the incident plainly:

¡°It was total madness,¡± Mill¨¢n . His home was invaded by Argentine military border police officers, who told him they were searching for Molotov bombs or anything that could start or accelerate a fire. ¡°They arrived unexpectedly and violently.¡±

This was not a protest camp. This was not contested land. This was a private home, raided without evidence, under a presumption of guilt rooted in ethnicity and political association. If private property means anything in a liberal tradition, it means protection from arbitrary state intrusion. When armed officers invade a civilian¡¯s house looking for hypothetical weapons, without due process, property rights cease to exist in any meaningful sense.

Supporters of Milei often justify these actions using the language of order, security or anti-terrorism. But history is clear on this point: Every authoritarian project claims exceptional necessity. The Mapuche are framed as dangerous, criminal or disruptive and that framing becomes the excuse for suspending rights that supposedly apply to everyone.

has documented how Mapuche women in particular face aggravated persecution, blending racism, sexism and political repression into a single apparatus of state violence.

This is not the defense of liberty. It is its inversion.

Crushing dissent and protestors

The same pattern appears in the government¡¯s response to some protests held by his opponents. 

Argentina knows better than most what happens when a state decides that protest is an enemy. In March 1976, the country¡¯s democratic government was overthrown in a military coup that brought seven years of brutal dictatorship. 

Between 10,000 and people were killed or disappeared; dragged from their homes at night, tortured and in many cases thrown from aircraft into the sea. Among them were journalists killed or disappeared between 1973 and 1980. The lesson the regime drew from this era ¡ª that dissent is destabilization, that protest is subversion ¡ª is one Argentina spent decades learning to unlearn.

Milei has not disappeared. But his reaction towards protestors and dissent is still worth examining carefully. Retirees demonstrating against economic hardship have been met with brutal police repression, including beatings, injuries and intimidation, as by the International Federation for Human Rights. More than a hundred people were arbitrarily detained, including two children and at least 20 protesters had to be hospitalized due to the repressive actions of the police.

They also reported that government officials had launched threats of removal against Judge Karina Andrade, who released all those detained due to the clear failure of police officers to meet the minimum requirements for verifying the legality of the detentions, such as the circumstances of the manner, place, time and specific accusations against each detainee.

Reporters without Borders (RSF) has that Milei¡¯s first year in power saw a sharp decline in Press Freedom. RSF recorded at least 12 physical attacks on journalists in 2024, with some of them perpetrated by the police. This was after security minister Patricia Bullrich implemented a security protocol designed to control and limit public protests.?

Human Rights Watch has similarly Argentina¡¯s abusive response to demonstrations, citing arbitrary detentions and excessive force. Amnesty International concluded that more than 1,100 people were injured in protest during Milei¡¯s first year in office. A government that treats protest as a security threat rather than a democratic right is not preserving order; it is protecting power from accountability.

Hypocrisy without borders, beyond labels

This pattern is not unique to Milei, nor to Argentina.

Conservatives who condemned authoritarianism in Venezuela often support mass surveillance, war and police violence at home, such as in the US under President Donald Trump. Some libertarians rightly denounce the surveillance state, yet fall silent when state power is used against indigenous communities or women exercising bodily autonomy in Argentina. Many communists rightly criticize in Guantanamo Bay and the Kent State Massacre; yet many often openly praise a party that is putting Uyghurs in concentration camps and perpetrated the Massacre of Student Protestors at Tiananmen Square.

Different ideologies. Same moral failure.

What unites these political figures is not ideology, but the instrumental use of moral language to justify power.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

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Yet no one in the international community should have been surprised.

Qatar¡¯s backing of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) ¡ª weapons, money, diplomatic cover ¡ª had been an open secret for months. What that scene outside the embassy made plain was how transactional and mutually reinforcing the relationship had become, and how central one figure was to sustaining it: Lieutenant General , the SAF¡¯s Deputy Commander and arguably the most ideologically committed senior officer in ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ military leadership.

Al-Atta is not a household name in Western foreign policy circles. He should be. As the SAF¡¯s chief of staff and a member of ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ Sovereign Council, he has been more vocal than SAF commander General Abdel Fattah in prosecuting the war¡¯s ideological dimensions, and more aggressive in cultivating the Islamist networks that now constitute a core part of the SAF¡¯s fighting capability. Al-Atta¡¯s ties to the (Kazan) are not incidental. They are foundational to his strategy and what makes him so valuable to Doha.

Qatar¡¯s interest in Sudan, however, did not begin with this war.

Qatar¡¯s long-standing influence in Sudan

Doha has long cultivated with the Sudanese Islamic Movement, reflecting its broader regional posture of backing political Islam as a counterweight to the influence of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. When the war between the SAF and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) erupted in April 2023, Qatar saw an opportunity. Doha chose a side, providing, according to , funding for eight Chinese-made K-8 fighter jets and facilitating weapons shipments transiting through Doha to Port Sudan.

Al-Burhan a Qatari delegation to Port Sudan in April 2025 and praised Doha¡¯s backing. The visit came with $86 million in humanitarian aid. The shipments went unmentioned.

That duality is, in many ways, Qatar¡¯s signature move in conflict zones: humanitarian funding as diplomatic cover, and political and material support for preferred factions operating just below the threshold of visibility that would draw Western censure. It worked in Gaza. It is being attempted in Sudan, where the scale of ¡ª over 11 million displaced internally, millions more as refugees ¡ª offers ample opportunity to project an image of benevolent concern while quietly fueling the very war that generated the crisis.

Institutionalizing Islamist influence

Al-Atta has announced plans to fold Islamist militias, by the US, formally into the SAF. He calls it military consolidation. What it actually does is hand Qatar exactly what Doha has spent years cultivating across the region ¡ª Islamist networks inside the tent, not outside it. It is also precisely what the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has spent billions trying to stop.

As one put it, the idea that Islamist militias will become even more deeply entrenched within the SAF is unlikely to reassure anyone watching closely.

Cameron Hudson of Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the sharper observers of ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ external dynamics, has that support from countries like Qatar has become a structural feature of the SAF¡¯s war effort ¡ª one that comes with its own political price tag. Integrating Islamist fighters into the military cannot be a complete answer, Hudson , pointing out that the SAF is already accused of deep Islamist penetration and that adding more only deepens that problem, rather than resolving it.

Washington eventually said the quiet part out loud. On March 9, the State Department the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the same networks al-Atta has been absorbing into the SAF¡¯s formal ranks. The designation noted that the Brotherhood had contributed upwards of 20,000 fighters to the war, many of them trained and supported by Iran¡¯s Revolutionary Guard Corps. That is not a fringe militia. That is the backbone of the force al-Atta is now trying to give a uniform.

A divergence within the SAF

Burhan and al-Atta are supposed to be on the same side. They¡¯re not. Burhan five Islamist generals in August last year, a move that came right after he US envoy Massad Boulos in Switzerland and that looked a lot like a concession to Washington. Al-Atta responded by doing the opposite: working to pull those same Islamist factions deeper into the army¡¯s formal structure. One general is trying to appease the West. The other is trying to make the Islamists permanent. Qatar is backing al-Atta¡¯s version of Sudan, not Burhan¡¯s.

In addition, Qatar is cheering al-Atta¡¯s side. Doha is not part of the Quad ¡ª the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE framework pressing for a ceasefire and civilian transition. It sits outside that process by design, backing a vision of post-war Sudan where Islamist influence is not dismantled but institutionalized. That is what makes the relationship between Doha and al-Atta more than opportunistic: It is ideologically coherent and runs directly counter to everything the international community claims to want from this war.

The militia leader outside the Qatari embassy in Khartoum was expressing gratitude. He was also, whether he knew it or not, drawing a map ¡ª one that connects Doha¡¯s checkbook to al-Atta¡¯s integration plans to a version of post-war Sudan in which the Islamist revival is not a bug, but the whole point.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Qatar¡¯s Man in Khartoum: How Yasser al-Atta Became Doha¡¯s Most Useful General appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

As access slowly returned, much of the commentary focused on the immediate effects: lost revenue, daily disruption and the public¡¯s inability to verify events independently. That is why the debate surrounding Iran¡¯s recent internet shutdown has often been framed as a question of censorship, digital rights or technological control. While these dimensions are undoubtedly important, they do not fully explain what the episode reveals about the evolving relationship between the state¡¯s political power and technology.

The internet is no longer treated only as a communications service or a technical infrastructure. It has become a strategic that the state can withdraw and ration in order to manage state security and political authority. The Iranian state cannot indefinitely separate itself from the digital systems upon which modern governance increasingly relies. Therefore, the most significant lesson of the shutdown and subsequent connectivity restoration is that it exposed how deeply digital connectivity has become integrated into the mechanisms of governance itself.?

The rise of digital wartime governance

In modern warfare, military power alone no longer determines the outcome of conflicts. information flows has become an essential component of contemporary warfare. Narratives can affect morale, legitimacy, diplomatic support and public trust. Governments increasingly compete to shape perceptions, influence public understanding and control the interpretation of events. This objective reflects a longstanding concern about what officials frequently describe as ¡°cognitive warfare,¡± ¡°soft war¡± or ¡° warfare.¡± Within this framework, information itself is viewed as a battlefield. If policymakers genuinely believe that information flows constitute a security threat, then controlling those flows becomes a logical component of wartime strategy.?

Once citizens understand that connectivity can be suspended during periods of perceived instability, the internet acquires a new political meaning. It ceases to be an assumed public utility and becomes a conditional privilege whose availability depends, at least in part, on the state¡¯s security calculations. This shift affects the relationship between citizens and the digital environment. It also affects the relationship between citizens and the state.

This dynamic matters because modern digital technologies have fundamentally altered the relationship between states and information. In effect, internet access begins to resemble a managed resource. Across the world, governments are increasingly concerned about what they perceive as vulnerabilities created by digital dependence. Cyberattacks, foreign influence campaigns, disinformation operations and information warfare have encouraged states to view digital infrastructure through a security lens.

Historically, governments exercised considerable influence over wartime narratives through state broadcasters, newspapers and official statements. Today, however, every smartphone owner possesses the potential to become a publisher. Images recorded by ordinary citizens can reach global audiences within minutes. Independent observers can challenge official accounts in real time. Events that once remained local can quickly become international stories. Images of damaged infrastructure, reports of military activity, public reactions, casualty information and unofficial narratives can all influence both domestic stability and international perception.

For governments seeking to manage crises, this creates a significant challenge. The internet reduces the state¡¯s monopoly over information production. As a result, internet restrictions seek to reduce informational uncertainty by limiting the number of actors capable of generating competing narratives. That is why traditional discussions of internet freedom often focus on binary categories: access versus restriction, openness versus censorship, connection versus disconnection. These frameworks remain useful, but they no longer fully capture the realities of how many states interact with digital networks.

Rather than treating connectivity as either fully available or completely prohibited, governments increasingly seek to reduce, restore, filter, prioritize or geographically differentiate access according to political requirements. Connectivity becomes flexible rather than fixed. This represents a transition from censorship to governance. Under a censorship model, the objective is to suppress specific information. Under a governance model, the objective is to regulate the conditions under which information circulates.

Iran¡¯s internet statecraft

Iran offers a particularly revealing case because of the interaction between security concerns, political control and economic constraints. The Islamic Republic has long viewed media and information management as central elements of state security. Since its founding, the political system has placed significant emphasis on controlling narratives surrounding both domestic developments and external threats. Wartime conditions intensify this tendency.

To understand why Iran repeatedly resorts to internet shutdowns during periods of crisis, it is necessary to understand how the Iranian state perceives the internet itself. In many democratic societies, digital connectivity is primarily viewed as an economic and social utility ¡ª a platform for communication, commerce and civic participation. In Iran, however, the internet increasingly occupies a different category. It is treated as a security domain.

This distinction is crucial. From the perspective of Iranian authorities, the internet is a space through which foreign influence can enter the country, political mobilization can occur, state narratives can be challenged and social unrest can spread at unprecedented speed. Consequently, internet governance in Iran has gradually shifted away from a purely regulatory model toward a security-oriented model. This means that Iran¡¯s approach to the Internet is less about hard regulation and more about regulation to serve state security ends.

This evolution did not emerge overnight. It is the product of two decades of confrontation between the state and an increasingly connected society. Iranian authorities witnessed how digital communication platforms could facilitate the rapid circulation of images, information and political messaging. Although social media penetration remained relatively limited at the time, the events demonstrated the strategic implications of online communication during periods of instability.

Subsequent waves of unrest reinforced this perception. The 2009 protests, the 2017¨C2018 , the fuel-price in 2019 and the following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 all relied on digital platforms to organize, document and publicize events. Each crisis strengthened the state¡¯s conviction that control over digital infrastructure was no longer merely a technological issue but a matter of national security.

As a result, the government invested heavily in what officials describe as the National Information Network (), often referred to outside Iran as the ¡°national internet.¡± Officially, the project aims to improve cybersecurity, reduce dependence on foreign infrastructure and increase technological self-sufficiency. In practice, however, it also provides authorities with greater capacity to isolate domestic networks from the global internet during periods of crisis.

The recent wartime shutdown illustrates this logic clearly. When connectivity collapsed across Iran, it dramatically reduced the ability of citizens to independently document and disseminate information. Images, videos and eyewitness accounts that would normally circulate rapidly across social media platforms became more difficult to transmit. International media organizations faced greater challenges verifying events on the ground.

However, the January decision was not merely a reaction to specific content circulating online. Rather, it reflected a broader security calculation. This helps explain why Iranian authorities often describe internet restrictions using the language of security rather than censorship. Officials rarely present shutdowns as efforts to suppress free expression. Instead, they justify them as necessary measures to protect public order, defend national security or counter foreign interference. Whether one accepts these justifications is ultimately a political question. What matters analytically is that they reveal how the state conceptualizes the digital environment.

Restricting information dissemination can backfire

Yet the relationship between information control and legitimacy is complex. In the short term, restricting connectivity may reduce the circulation of unwanted information. From a tactical perspective, these outcomes can appear beneficial. In the longer term, however, information restrictions often generate new problems.

When citizens lose access to reliable information, uncertainty does not disappear. Instead, it frequently increases. Paradoxically, efforts to strengthen informational control can sometimes undermine confidence in official narratives. This dilemma is particularly significant during wartime. Governments require public trust to sustain social cohesion during crises. At the same time, they seek to control the information environment. These objectives are not always compatible.

The Iranian experience illustrates this tension clearly. The state¡¯s desire to dominate the narrative collided with the realities of a highly connected society. Millions of Iranians depend on digital platforms not only for information but also for work, education, financial transactions and communication with relatives abroad. Restricting internet access, therefore, affects far more than political discourse. It directly shapes everyday life. As a result, the internet has become something far more consequential than a communications technology. It now occupies a central position in the relationship between the state and society.

Therefore, the state¡¯s capacity to manage narratives is ultimately constrained by the economic and social functions that digital networks perform. That reality would become increasingly apparent as the costs of prolonged digital isolation began to accumulate. The government could restrict connectivity, but maintaining those restrictions indefinitely proved far more difficult than imposing them in the first place.

And this raises the next critical question: If internet control was considered necessary for security, why did authorities eventually decide to restore access? The answer lies not in information politics alone, but in the growing economic and administrative costs of digital isolation. The collision between these two realities would ultimately shape the government¡¯s next decision: restoring access.

Why Iran could not keep the internet offline

If the internet shutdown served important security objectives, why did the government eventually begin restoring access? At first glance, the answer appears straightforward. The immediate military crisis subsided, reducing the need for extraordinary restrictions. Yet that explanation is incomplete. Even after the fighting eased, authorities continued to keep access , selective and slow.

This is because the internet in contemporary Iran occupies a paradoxical position. It simultaneously enables communication, commerce and access to information, while also creating opportunities for political mobilization, alternative narratives and external influence. 

This apparent contradiction reveals one of the central realities of digital governance in the twenty-first century: modern states depend on the very networks they seek to control. The shutdown imposed a direct economic on a country already weakened by sanctions that constrained economic growth and increased pressure on both the state and society.?

Over the past decade, Iran¡¯s economy has become increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure. Millions of citizens rely on online platforms for employment, business operations, banking services, logistics, education and communication. When connectivity disappeared, these activities were severely disrupted. Small businesses that sell through social media, freelancers paid by foreign clients, e-commerce platforms, digital creators and online service providers all lost revenue when access disappeared. The blackout the economy tens of millions of dollars per day, with some estimates ranging from about $30 million to $40 million daily.

The damage extended beyond the private sector. Banking, logistics, travel, remote work, education and public administration all depend on stable connectivity. When the internet disappears, the state does not simply silence dissent; it also interrupts the systems it needs to tax, coordinate and govern. A government can switch off connectivity. It cannot easily suspend the economic and administrative functions that depend upon it. The longer restrictions remain in place, the more visible this contradiction becomes. That is why the restoration of access mattered. Reopening the network was not a liberal gesture but a response to economic pressure.

What Iran¡¯s internet governance says about the future

The Iranian case demonstrates that internet restrictions are easier to impose than to sustain. This observation is significant because it challenges a common assumption about authoritarian governance. Discussions of digital control often emphasize what states can do: monitor communications, block platforms, filter content and restrict access.

Far less attention is paid to what states cannot do. They cannot fully escape the structural dependence created by digital modernization. In other words, the same technological transformation that expands state capacity also creates new constraints on state action. Digital dependence limits how long restrictive measures can be maintained without generating significant collateral consequences.

The question is therefore no longer whether the government can shut down the internet. The more important question is whether it is constructing a system in which connectivity can be continuously calibrated according to the state¡¯s perception of risk. It is precisely this transition ¡ª from censorship to managed connectivity ¡ª that offers the clearest insight into the future of state power in Iran. 

That possibility points toward a broader transformation in the nature of governance itself ¡ª one that extends far beyond temporary wartime measures and into the future of political control in the digital age. Rather than asking whether citizens should have internet access, authorities increasingly ask what type of access should be available, to whom, under what conditions and for how long.

This is why the Iranian case deserves attention beyond the context of Iran itself. What occurred was a visible example of a broader transformation taking place in many parts of the world: the of digital governance as a central component of state power. The future of political authority may increasingly depend not only on the ability to control territory, regulate economies or command military forces, but also on the ability to manage the flows of information upon which modern societies depend.

However, the Iranian experience therefore offers a warning as well as an insight. It demonstrates how quickly internet access can become subject to political calculations during periods of crisis. As societies become more dependent on digital systems, connectivity is increasingly transforming from a public utility into a strategic resource. The governments that can control, regulate and manage that resource will possess a powerful new instrument of statecraft. Iran¡¯s wartime internet policy reveals what that future may look like. The internet is no longer merely a space through which power operates. It is becoming one of the primary instruments through which power is exercised.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

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Today, Germany has been shaken by a series of political and economic crises ¡ª from the Covid-19 pandemic to war in Europe ¡ª fueling nostalgia for a more optimistic and ostensibly uncomplicated past. In that search, attention often turns to the early years of Angela Merkel¡¯s chancellorship ¡ª and to the 2006 World Cup, the subject of a recent three-part German series.

That nostalgia is easy to understand. In 2006, Germany welcomed the footballing world under the slogan ¡°A time to make friends.¡± Flags covered balconies and cars; public screenings of matches turned into festivals. German footballer Philipp Lahm opened the tournament with a curling shot into the top right corner against Costa Rica, and Germany¡¯s run to the semifinals helped shape the tournament into what many remember as weeks of seemingly carefree celebration. The German news magazine Der Spiegel : ¡°A happy nation ¡ª Germany, a summer fairy tale ¡ª the World Cup becomes a national Love Parade,¡± referencing the country¡¯s once famous techno parade to evoke mass celebration. The magazine suggested that Germany had begun to ¡°settle into its own history.¡± In a country long defined by its struggle with the Nazi past, this was a loaded idea.

For many, the tournament symbolized a newfound ease with national identity. Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked, ¡°Here you see a united and happy German people … No one sees the spirit of today¡¯s Berlin or of the Germans as being in any way connected to the past.¡± 

The narrative of a carefree summer ¡ª one in which Germany supposedly showed what it is really like ¡ª has become something of a national myth. Questioning it is often seen as needlessly negative. For many, it feels like a spoilsport attack on the ¡° of their lives.¡± Not even later corruption allegations surrounding Germany¡¯s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup sufficed to fundamentally shake this collective memory.?

In light of growing far-right and exclusionary views ¡ª and rising support for authoritarian and anti-immigration positions ¡ª an uncomfortable question must be asked: How harmless was the ¡°summer fairy tale¡± really? What kind of impact do large-scale sporting events have? And how do they shape and intensify national sentiment?

Sporting events and national identity

Major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup have become central moments of collective communication in modern societies. They are mass media events with enormous reach and a powerful capacity to mobilize emotions and participation. These events are far from politically neutral. They function as global stages where political, social and economic interests are expressed and advanced.

show that such events can affect how strongly people identify with their nation. A key factor is the degree of emotional and practical engagement: The more people feel involved ¡ª through shared experiences, celebrations and media consumption ¡ª the stronger their sense of belonging becomes.

Through their narratives, symbols and rituals, sports and media mega-events make the host nation emotionally tangible. In Irish-American political scientist Benedict ¡¯s sense, the ¡°imagined community¡± of the nation becomes something people can actually feel. In Germany, football-driven patriotism has thus become a mass phenomenon deeply rooted in the social mainstream.

At the same time, research points to double-edged effects. A German found that pride in national sporting success is positively correlated with nationalism and xenophobia, raising doubts about whether sports can foster patriotic attachment without simultaneously reinforcing exclusionary attitudes.

by the University of Marburg suggest more strongly that the 2006 World Cup contributed to an increased acceptance of nationalist views: ¡°Individuals surveyed after the World Cup expressed more nationalist and less purely patriotic attitudes than those surveyed before the tournament.¡±

The myth of the ¡°summer fairy tale¡±

These studies challenge the dominant images of 2006 that continue to shape Germany¡¯s collective memory. German writer Max Czollek reflected in 2018:

In , people behaved as if they were shaking off a heavy burden they had carried for a long time … Germans experienced the World Cup as a collective sense of relief that it was finally acceptable to wave the national flag again, like in the past.

The sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer had already dismissed the image of a peaceful, open-minded patriotism in 2006 as ¡° nonsense.¡± His warnings about the risks of so-called ¡°¡± were often seen as overly pessimistic. In hindsight, however, they appear strikingly prescient.

As of 2026, the far-right Alternative f¨¹r Deutschland (AfD), which is monitored by Germany¡¯s domestic intelligence agency, has become the largest opposition party and leads national polling in some surveys. Although it has never been part of the federal government, it has shaped political discourse for over a decade. It has steadily pushed the boundaries of what is considered acceptable further to the right. Its growing strength has raised concerns about democratic stability.  Reflecting this, voices within the governing coalition led by incumbent Chancellor Friedrich Merz have described the current government¡¯s success or failure as a make-or-break moment for German democracy.

Exploiting patriotism politically

The 2006 World Cup can be read as a highly visible moment in the broader normalization of national pride ¡ª and as a symbolic loosening of what some had long described as an excessive or ¡°misplaced¡± sense of historical guilt. It helped make a vocabulary of national identification more socially acceptable, creating an emotional and symbolic terrain that far-right actors later found easier to appropriate. The AfD did not invent these sentiments; it sought to capitalize on them. 

If this link seems far-fetched, consider G?tz Kubitschek, a key figure in Germany¡¯s far-right intellectual scene, who the AfD¡¯s strategy as ¡°normalization patriotism¡± ¡ª a deliberately low-threshold, broadly appealing and seemingly harmless form of national identification designed to serve as a common point of reference.

In a 2025 special issue titled ¡°Football: The National Sport ¨C The Heartbeat of a German Passion,¡± the far-right magazine Compact claimed that patriotism ¡°releases feel-good hormones.¡± After Germany¡¯s early exit from the World Cup in Qatar, the right-wing conservative weekly struck a nostalgic tone, recalling the 2006 ¡°summer fairy tale¡± as ¡°collective loosening-up toward a more relaxed, unselfconscious patriotism.¡±

The AfD itself openly recognizes the political and identity-building power of sport. In its 2025 policy guidelines on sports, the party emphasizes that sporting success fosters ¡° identification with one¡¯s own nation,¡± explicitly citing the 2006 World Cup as a key example.

This strategy fits into a broader modernization of right-wing extremism. It marks a departure from the more overt neo-Nazi subcultures that were still prevalent in 2006, and that had dismissed the World Cup¡¯s mainstream, apolitical enthusiasm as a shallow, system-conforming display.

Patriotism as a vehicle for historical revisionism

The normalization of patriotism as part of the AfD¡¯s broader identity is closely linked with its ethnonationalist and revisionist approach to history ¡ª one that seeks to downplay or reframe the memory of Nazi crimes and their victims. In its 2016 party manifesto, the AfD called for an end to what it described as the ¡°¡± of German historical memory to the period of National Socialism, advocating instead for a more ¡°balanced view¡± that emphasizes supposedly positive and identity-forming aspects of German history.

Leading figures within the party have made this position explicit. Alexander Gauland, the party¡¯s honorary chairman, notoriously referred to the Nazi era as ¡°a of bird droppings in over a thousand years of successful German history.¡± Bj?rn H?cke, one of its most influential and controversial extremist figures, demanded a ¡° turn¡± in the country¡¯s politics of remembrance.

Similarly, party chairwoman Alice Weidel has rejected the widely accepted German framing of May 8, 1945 ¡ª the day of Nazi Germany¡¯s surrender ¡ª as a ¡° of liberation,¡± arguing that it is inappropriate to celebrate what she describes as the defeat of one¡¯s own country. Against this backdrop, her call for Germany to ¡° proud of itself again¡± becomes part of a broader political project ¡ª one that links national self-affirmation to a redefinition of how history is remembered and interpreted.

For actors seeking to promote a more affirmative national narrative, the 2006 ¡°summer fairy tale¡± can function as a useful point of reference within a broader national narrative: one in which the Nazi past serves primarily as a negative backdrop to a supposedly renewed, democratic present. This framing can obscure deeper continuities and mask broader social tensions.

Distraction in the euphoria of sport

Moments of national self-celebration and patriotic euphoria can create societal blind spots, masking those tensions. Even as Germany celebrated its ¡°summer fairy tale¡± in 2006, the country was already experiencing a wave of far-right violence. Between 2000 and 2007, the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground () ten people, most of them of Turkish descent.

Victims¡¯ families held demonstrations during the World Cup. Yet for years, investigations wrongly focused on the victims¡¯ social circles ¡ª shaped in part by racist stereotypes. The NSU¡¯s responsibility for the murders, as well as the extent of failures within Germany¡¯s security agencies, only came to light in 2011. The contrast is striking: While the country celebrated itself as open and welcoming, the most serious far-right murder series in postwar Germany remained largely unrecognized at the time.

A more nuanced patriotism

As the next World Cup approaches in the US, similar dynamics may come into view. The Trump administration is likely to use the tournament to project belief in American exceptionalism (¡°America First¡±) through highly visible, ¡°.¡± A form of patriotism long rooted in an ¡° of America-branded totems, like flags and statues¡± ¡ª a tradition amplified and radicalized by President Donald Trump¡¯s Make America Great Again movement.

But does patriotism inevitably have to lead to self-aggrandizement and political instrumentalization? Or are there other ways to express a sense of national belonging?

Attachment to one¡¯s country can also be self-critical and nuanced. The German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani articulated this in a 2014 speech in the German Bundestag marking the 65th anniversary of Germany¡¯s Basic Law. Rejecting the idea of a ¡°normal¡± and ¡°unstrained¡± relationship with the nation, he : ¡°There never was such a normal and unstrained relationship ¡ª not even before National Socialism.¡± Instead, German history has always contained both ¡°an excessive, aggressive nationalism¡± and ¡°a strong tradition of self-criticism, a commitment to Europe, and a turn toward cosmopolitanism.¡±

Echoing a by former Chancellor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Willy Brandt, Kermani concluded: ¡°A good German cannot be a nationalist.¡±

And yet, Kermani in a different Germany: ¡°Not a boastful one, not the swaggering one ¡­ a country that has matured through its own failures and no longer needs grand displays ¡­ This is the Germany I love.¡±

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This transformation carries consequences extending far beyond Afghanistan itself. The collapse of civil liberties, exclusion of women from public life and suppression of pluralism are not simply domestic governance concerns. They directly affect long-term regional stability, humanitarian conditions, migration pressures and the future trajectory of extremism across South and Central Asia.

Despite repeated Taliban efforts to secure international legitimacy, conditions inside Afghanistan continue moving in the opposite direction.

The systematic removal of women from public life

The Taliban¡¯s restrictions on women now represent one of the most extensive systems of gender exclusion in the modern world. Since 2021, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), more than Afghan girls and women have been denied access to secondary and higher education. The prohibition on education for girls beyond grade six has now entered its fifth consecutive year in 2026, creating consequences that will shape Afghanistan¡¯s economic and social future for decades.?

A new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says nearly 28 million Afghans live in poverty under Taliban rule, with three in four unable to meet basic daily needs. Afghanistan¡¯s GDP grew by 1.9% in 2025, but rapid population growth, estimated at 6.5%, worsened per capita income and living conditions. More than 80% of households are in debt, while three-quarters rely on negative coping mechanisms to survive. The return of approximately 5 million Afghans since 2023, including 2.7 million in 2025, has strained resources, with 92% of returnees unable to secure basic necessities.?

The restrictions extend well beyond education. Women have steadily disappeared from large sectors of public employment, including government institutions civil administration, while female participation in economic life has been constrained through overlapping restrictions on mobility, employment and public interaction.

Even international institutions have become targets of Taliban policies. Since September 2025, , including UN staff members, contractors and visitors, have been prohibited from entering UN compounds nationwide.

The mechanisms enforcing these policies have become increasingly intrusive. Inspectors from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice actively monitor women¡¯s clothing, movement and behavior in public spaces. In Herat, women were reportedly removed from taxis and buses on January 11 and February 12, for allegedly failing to wear chadors.

Healthcare restrictions further demonstrate the extent of over women¡¯s daily lives. Authorities in Kandahar, Paktya and Uruzgan reportedly instructed health centers not to treat women unless accompanied by a male guardian, or mahram. Female healthcare workers themselves were ordered to travel only with male escorts.

Economic activity has likewise become heavily constrained. In Uruzgan and Ghazni, Taliban inspectors shopkeepers not to sell goods to women unless they were accompanied by a mahram and wearing a Taliban-approved hijab. In Kandahar, real estate agents were instructed not to rent property to women independently, further weakening women¡¯s economic autonomy.

Governance through surveillance and social control

The Taliban¡¯s governing model increasingly relies on mechanisms designed to regulate both public and private life. Between January 1 and March 31, alone, Taliban authorities reportedly carried out at least arbitrary arrests and detentions alongside 59 incidents of ill-treatment targeting Afghan men and women.

Citizens are routinely monitored for dress, fasting practices, social interaction and perceived moral conduct. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has evolved into a nationwide apparatus with expanding authority over everyday life.

Religious observance has become subject to active state monitoring. During Ramadan between February 17 and March 18, Taliban inspectors reportedly mosque attendance and fasting compliance. The broader objective appears increasingly clear: The state is attempting not simply to enforce religious norms, but to regulate social behavior and public morality through coercive oversight.

The Taliban¡¯s intervention into cultural life reflects the same pattern. On February 14, Taliban officials targeted flower shops to discourage celebrations. On March 21, Taliban authorities publicly warned citizens against celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year observed across much of the region.

The result is a society in which ordinary social behavior is increasingly politicized and regulated by the threat of punishment.

Codifying authoritarian rule through Taliban decrees

One of the most significant developments under Taliban rule is the gradual formalization of restrictions through legal and judicial decrees. What initially emerged through arbitrary practices is increasingly being institutionalized through codified controls.

Under Decree on Criminal Rules of Courts, circulated by the Taliban Supreme Court on January 7, women can reportedly face imprisonment for remaining outside their husband¡¯s home without permission. Relatives who refuse to force women back into those homes may themselves be jailed for up to three months.

The decree also institutionalizes sectarian hierarchy by formally declaring dominant while describing alternative beliefs as ¡°heretical.¡± Such provisions reveal the increasingly sectarian character of Taliban governance and raise growing concerns among Afghanistan¡¯s minority communities.

Criticism of Taliban authorities and their interpretation of has likewise been criminalized. Insulting an imam is punishable by 39 lashes and one year of imprisonment, while insulting Taliban leaders carries penalties including prison terms and corporal punishment. Failure to report meetings involving alleged ¡°opponents of the government¡± can reportedly result in a two-year prison sentence.

The implementation of these also reflects unequal social enforcement. Clerics and elites often receive warnings or admonishments, while lower- and middle-class individuals face lashings, detention and imprisonment.

The Taliban justice system itself increasingly relies on as a visible instrument of control. At least 312 individuals, including 269 men, 39 women and four boys, were reportedly subjected to corporal punishment during the period. In Bagram district on February 5, Taliban courts ordered five men and three women to receive 39 lashes each inside school premises over alleged ¡°illicit relationships,¡± with several additionally sentenced to prison terms.

These punishments are designed not only to penalize individuals but also to reinforce compliance through public intimidation.

The collapse of independent media and civic space

Independent journalism in Afghanistan has undergone systematic dismantling since the Taliban takeover. operate under constant threat of suspension, censorship and retaliation, while journalists increasingly face detention, intimidation and exile. Afghanistan ranks out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, reflecting an extremely critical environment for journalists and media workers.?

On January 26, the Taliban Ministry of Information and Culture revoked the licenses of all media support organizations except three. A month later, was suspended after its head criticized Taliban policies publicly. On March 3, was suspended because female students spoke with a male host during a live broadcast. No transparent legal mechanism exists to challenge or appeal such suspensions.

have nearly disappeared from the Afghan media landscape altogether. Hundreds of journalists have fled the country, fearing arrest or persecution, while more than half of Afghanistan¡¯s media outlets have reportedly shut down since the Taliban¡¯s return to power.

The destruction of independent journalism has created a controlled information environment dominated by censorship, propaganda and enforced silence. Public criticism has become dangerous, civil society organizations have weakened dramatically and political dissent has effectively been criminalized.

Former Afghan government officials and of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces continue facing retaliation despite Taliban promises of amnesty following the 2021 takeover. Reports during the current reporting period documented at least arbitrary arrests and detentions, nine incidents of torture and ill-treatment and at least five killings involving former Afghan security personnel.

The Taliban¡¯s promised amnesty increasingly appears to have functioned less as reconciliation and more as a mechanism for identifying and neutralizing former opponents.

Why Afghanistan¡¯s trajectory matters internationally

The international debate surrounding Afghanistan has increasingly narrowed to questions of humanitarian aid and diplomatic engagement. Yet the Taliban¡¯s trajectory carries broader geopolitical and security implications that extend well beyond Afghan borders.

Restricting in the workforce and education could cost the Afghan economy up to 12.5% of its GDP. Conversely, integrating women into the economy and reversing bans could expand the country¡¯s GDP by up to 35% over their working lifetime. Therefore, the systematic of women from education and employment is steadily weakening Afghanistan¡¯s long-term economic viability and institutional capacity. The erosion of pluralism and suppression of dissent risk creating conditions historically associated with radicalization, underground resistance movements and chronic instability.

Over time, the continued dismantling of independent institutions may deepen state fragility and reduce Afghanistan¡¯s ability to function as a stable political system. Governance structures built primarily around religious policing rather than institutional legitimacy often struggle to sustain long-term social cohesion and economic resilience.

At the same time, international normalization of Taliban rule without meaningful conditions risks legitimizing a governing model rooted in authoritarian religious control and gender exclusion. The Taliban continues seeking diplomatic recognition and economic engagement while simultaneously deepening internal restrictions.

For regional actors, particularly Pakistan, Iran and the Central Asian Republics (CARs), Afghanistan¡¯s trajectory remains closely tied to refugee flows, cross-border militancy, narcotics trafficking and long-term security dynamics. Pakistan continues to face challenges related to cross-border terrorism and refugee management, while Iran confronts migration pressures and border security concerns. The CARs remain concerned about the potential spillover of extremism, transnational crime and instability into their territories. For the US, Afghanistan¡¯s trajectory raises longer-term concerns regarding regional instability, extremist safe havens and the strategic consequences of disengagement following the US withdrawal. 

The Taliban frequently argues that territorial control and reduced large-scale conflict constitute evidence of stability. But stability imposed through exclusion and centralized coercive control is inherently fragile. A political system that systematically suppresses women, criminalizes criticism and eliminates civic space may consolidate authority temporarily, but it also deepens social fragmentation and institutional decay.

Afghanistan today increasingly resembles an authoritarian state where fear has replaced political participation and compliance has replaced accountability. Ordinary Afghan life is increasingly shaped not by citizenship, but by enforced obedience.

[ first published a version of this piece.]

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In that context, here¡¯s my advice to you: Don¡¯t get old. For years, I managed not to do so, but unfortunately that¡¯s all over now and I¡¯m increasingly an old man. In fact, I¡¯m not quite two years older than Trump. I was born on July 20, 1944, while World War II was still ongoing, and he was born on June 14, 1946, in the peacetime that followed but would all too soon become the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

And let me tell you something else: these days, it¡¯s hard enough to maintain my Substack column while also keeping track of our ever-stranger, more confusing, all-too-Trumpian world. But keeping track of things nationally and globally as an 80-year-old president of the United States (with another two-and-a-half years to go) in a world that seems to be coming apart at the ¡ª sorry, I ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t help but make a pun! ¡ª seams? I simply ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t imagine that. Of course, I couldn¡¯t imagine it for former US President Joe Biden either, and yet he left the presidency when he was a staggering and 61 days old and will still have been younger than Trump if he makes it to January 20, 2029. (And both of them will have beaten the oldest Roman Emperor, , who at 81 only lasted weeks in power.)

It¡¯s hardly news that Trump is now the president ever to take the oath of office (twice!) and, in that sense, he¡¯s been both record-setting and, in his own strange way, remarkable. But in case you hadn¡¯t noticed, while he¡¯s always had his odd moments, they are getting ever odder and more frequent. How many times has this country had a president who for (or do I mean confused himself with) Jesus Christ? Oh, wait, how could I be so confused? That image wasn¡¯t of Jesus, but of a lookalike . (¡°I thought it was me as a doctor,¡± the president said. ¡°Only the fake news could come up with that.¡±)

And meanwhile, in his own ever stranger fashion, ¡°our¡± president took at Leo, the American pope, himself a veritable youth at 70 years old, calling him ¡°WEAK on crime¡± and ¡°catering to the Radical Left.¡± Oh, and while he was at it, Trump also posted an of himself being hugged by (yes, of course!) Jesus. And Leo responded to the president¡¯s abuse by all too accurately a world being ¡°ravaged by a handful of tyrants¡± (including, of course, You Know Whom).

Just in case you hadn¡¯t noticed, as an imperial power (even, historically speaking, the imperial power, the only one at its height to control so much of the planet in some way), this country, too, is growing ever older, and in its own strange fashion, going down, as all great imperial powers do sooner or later. Phew! That was a long sentence for this old guy, but you ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t get too long and complicated (or do I mean confused?) when it comes to the world of Trump. In electing him a second time in 2024, of American voters clearly opted to go down in style by giving imperial oldness a startling new meaning.

These days, I¡¯m sure you won¡¯t be surprised to learn that Trump¡¯s approval ratings are heading for the planetary basement. As I was writing this piece, for instance, only of Americans approved of how he was handling the economy. (You might wonder, at this point, why it wasn¡¯t 11% or even 0%.) Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance¡¯s approval ratings, too, have been hitting .

Mind you, Trump has always given unpredictability new meaning, but these days, a constant version of unpredictability is his aging middle name. Remember the president who was ¡°warmongers and America-last globalists¡± and was going to remove them from office in his second term in the White House? Remember the president who was going to ¡°turn the forever on those foolish, stupid days of never-ending wars?¡± Hmmm, well, think again now that he¡¯s gone to war (or is it to peace, or even to pieces?) with Iran in an all too strikingly destructive fashion. But that¡¯s today¡¯s news and, in the era of the aging Trump, who knows what tomorrow might hold for any of us ¡ª or, for that matter, what might happen an hour from now? Count on one thing, though: the president sure doesn¡¯t know and so, sadly, neither can we.

(Phew! Without section breaks, I¡¯m already exhausted, but who can truly take a break when it comes to Trump?)

And here¡¯s the saddest thing of all (not that all of it isn¡¯t sad as hell, and potentially leading the rest of us all too literally into a hell on Earth): given this country¡¯s military machine, which ¡°the ¡± seems eager to feed an extra ¡ª that would raise the Pentagon budget by 50% ¡ª the US still has the power to turn this planet into a hell on Earth in a fashion no other imperial power in decline has ever been able to do. And I¡¯m not even thinking about this country¡¯s vast nuclear arsenal.

So, here¡¯s our horrifying reality: In the next two and a half years, if he doesn¡¯t keel over tomorrow or somehow grab even more presidency time ¡ª remember that, last year in Iowa, which he won in all three of his election campaigns, he an audience ominously, ¡°Should we do it a fourth time?¡± ¡ª Trump is genuinely capable of preparing to take not just this country but the planet down with him. Phew again!

And I¡¯m not just thinking about his ability with like Israel to turn parts of this world into hell zones of war. I¡¯m thinking instead about the climate disaster to come and the president who has called it ¡°the greatest ever perpetrated on the world¡± and a ¡°green scam,¡± and is prepared in his own fashion to heat this planet to the boiling point. Keep in mind that the US military is the largest institutional of greenhouse gases, even in peacetime, on Earth.

Honestly, I still find it hard to imagine that a near majority of American voters elected such a distinctly disturbed old man as president yet again, one seemingly intent on squashing green energy of any sort and potentially taking this planet down with him the second time around. Consider it truly strange, in fact, that the two in our history (Trump, Biden and Trump again) have occupied the White House consecutively for the last decade, given that this country is now distinctly an aging, even potentially fading, power on a planet that may itself be aging and fading all too rapidly.

I¡¯m old enough to have experienced presidents in my lifetime so far (and that¡¯s not even counting Trump the second time around) and yet he is distinctly, day by day, month by month, year by year, one of a kind in the worst sense imaginable. Consider it odd, in fact, that, as a con artist first-class, he may himself turn out to be the greatest con job ever perpetrated on this world of ours and, in his own eerie fashion, a world-ending figure. Worse yet, whether we like it or not, it seems as if we are all now his apprentices.

Imagine as well that and ¡°¡± ever more , and are the two things he seems to be specializing in during his second term in office, even if, thanks to his conflict with Iran, he actually put a sudden on the global distribution of oil and gas via the Strait of Hormuz and helped to clobber the big oil producers of the Middle East.

(Whew! If only I could put a section break up right here and take a break myself! Facing such a world and such a president, this old writer finds himself increasingly out of breath!)

When I was young and the youthful John F. Kennedy was president, if you had even tried to describe Trump¡¯s version of the world to me, I would have thought you not just mad, but one of the worst creators of fiction around. Can there be the slightest doubt, in fact, that President Trump has turned out to be among the worst creations of a planet that couldn¡¯t be in deeper trouble?

I wanted to write ¡°fictional creations¡± there. If only this were a grim dystopian novel, rather than the actual world, and if Trump himself were indeed some mad fictional creation. What a thrill that would be! After all, such a weird and wild version of a Philip Roth noveI would once have seemed to readers like a mad laughathon. If only¡­

But when the voters of your very own country decide to make just such a fiction our reality a second time around in the real world, you know that something is truly wrong on Planet Earth.

After this country¡¯s endless decades of imperial war-making from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, and now to Iran (and that¡¯s leaving out of our warring activities), Trump could be thought of as the way we Americans decided not just to make war on the rest of the world, but on ourselves as well. And by reelecting a man who proudly insists that climate change is the ¡°greatest con job ever perpetuated¡± and a total ¡°green new ,¡± we¡¯re obviously involving ourselves in a big-time fashion in what might be thought of as World War III, the ultimate war on planet Earth itself.

I mean, you have to feel anxious when you only have to type ¡°Donald Trump, climate change¡± into your search bar and up come endless disturbing pieces, including, for me just now, Maxine Joselow of The New York Times writing an headlined, ¡°Climate Change Denial Sees a Resurgence in Trump¡¯s Washington.¡± It began this way:

¡°Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by ¡®leftist politicians.¡¯ Fossil fuels are the greenest energy sources. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be harmless. These were some of the false claims made at a conference on Wednesday held by groups that reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. What might have seemed like a fringe event in years past this time boasted a prominent keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and one of President Trump¡¯s possible choices for the next attorney general.¡±

Tell that, of course, to all of us in New York City, who only recently lived through record-breaking 90-degree July in early April. Consider it strange indeed that, in response to the never-ending news that we humans have long been turning this planet into a fossil-fuelized hothouse, a near majority of us would indeed opt to again elect a president who makes climate-change denial seem like a far too mild term.

Of all the things that Trump hasn¡¯t done, he¡¯s worked in what, for him, is a remarkably organized fashion to stall or any projects that wouldn¡¯t further heat this planet of ours. Utterly unfocused as he so often is, he¡¯s remained strikingly focused on shutting down wind power and solar energy projects, while launching ever more fossil fuel ones. These include more than a billion acres of coastal waters to oil and gas drilling and a French company almost a billion dollars not to create two wind farms off this country¡¯s east coast, but to invest in oil and gas projects here in the US.

Talk about dystopian! Trump should truly be considered a full-scale dystopian nightmare playing out in real time.

Wait! I have a last urge for this piece. Think of it as a way for me to finally catch my breath. To end it, I want to create one of those missing section heads right here, right now. How about:

The hothouse president on a planet going to hell

And yes, that is indeed the end of this piece, but not for a moment the end of the nightmare we¡¯re now living through.

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Despite this debilitating crisis, state politicians have sat idly by, failing to enact meaningful legislation to help. Elected officials and bureaucrats alike have failed to acknowledge healthcare as a complex field that demands choice and flexibility for doctors and patients, and should be driven by practicality rather than politics.

Patients in South Carolina have to rely on opioids to relieve pain and treat their symptoms because of limited treatment options. We must gear our laws to lead patients away from opioid use. We must recognize personal choice and optionality as tools to save lives. We need to legalize medical marijuana in South Carolina.

Expanding options for doctors and patients

The main reason is straightforward: more choices for doctors and patients. When doctors treat patients, they should have a variety of prescriptions they can provide. Pain is a spectrum, and doctors often ask patients to rate their pain on a scale of one to ten. Our drug system should reflect this diversity.

In our current system, the options are extreme. To treat pain, doctors may prescribe over-the-counter medication like Aleve or highly addictive and powerful drugs like OxyContin. Marijuana would offer a reputable ¡°middle option¡± in this spectrum. Specific diseases marijuana is used to aid Glaucoma, Epilepsy, Crohn¡¯s disease and Multiple Sclerosis ¡ª the latter of which affects 4,000 South Carolinians, according to the state legislature.

Legalization in other states allows concrete benefits for patients ¡ª cancer patients in states where marijuana is legal use the drug during chemotherapy to treat appetite loss. In contrast, the current options available in South Carolina are insufficient.

A 2023 by City University of New York and New York State found that for those who suffer from chronic pain, long-term medical cannabis usage decreases opioid dosages by 47%¨C51% of the baseline dosages after eight months. Patients can use medical marijuana in many different forms, like vapors, pills, edibles, liquids or topical creams. Thanks to this flexibility, patients can use cannabis without secondhand effects.

Scientists at Rutgers University have also that medical marijuana legalization can decrease nonmedical opioid use, suggesting that legalization can play a crucial role in reducing opioid dependency and mitigating the opioid crisis.

Breaking the stigma and confronting the past

The current ban on medical marijuana is driven by stigma over substance, no pun intended. When the US the War on Drugs in 1971, the government did not intend to help its citizens. Former President Richard Nixon¡¯s domestic policy advisor, in an interview years later, :

We knew we couldn¡¯t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.</p>

Meanwhile, the effects continue today, specifically for black Americans, as our government steals hopes of future employment and incarcerates small-time offenders with rapists, murderers and wife-beaters. The government chooses to stifle economic growth and progress for black people while we watch our friends, families and coworkers suffer. Do you still think the government has your best interests in mind?

Furthermore, the notion that marijuana is a gateway drug has little evidence to support it. Studies suggesting a correlation between using marijuana and more potent drugs were done on rats, not humans. Other studies also have severe methodological concerns, biases or low data quality.

A 2009 by the University of Washington found that decriminalizing marijuana possession does not increase marijuana use. However, our current marijuana regulations deny access to lifesaving care while making no impact in preventing drug usage. A rational person would call this a failed law.

Doctors currently use other drugs during procedures without public outrage. For example, doctors during sinonasal surgery and heroin as diamorphine during the administration of end-of-life care. The lack of opposition to these practices underscores a staggering cognitive dissonance among our politicians and culture, and fears of medical marijuana are often unfounded.

The rational path forward

Marijuana can have unwanted side effects, as most drugs do. Long-term use of ibuprofen is to stomach ulcers, and opioids are highly addictive and fatal when misused. Long-acting insulin can in vision and hypoglycemia. Chemotherapy can osteoporosis and memory problems. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (primarily used to treat high blood pressure) can cause persistent coughing and skin rashes. In 2005, the American College of Cardiology reported side effects of the ACE inhibitor Ramipril, contributing to a discontinuation rate of . Compare this to a 2022 by Canadian scientists that states adverse marijuana side effects average around 26%.

Despite these risks, marijuana¡¯s benefits and lower risk profile compared to opioids make it a preferable option. Each medication option presents risks; you can find potential side effects on its packaging. However, they can also provide lifesaving benefits, and the more choices we allow for doctors and patients, the more we can improve healthcare and beat the opioid crisis. 

The conservative option is not to allow the opioid epidemic to ravage our community and refuse to learn from past mistakes. We should not let politicians stunt our capabilities to live fulfilled lives. More freedom and liberty will always be the best path to progress.

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Yet it was also an election defined as much by absence as participation. Entire constituencies in Tigray did not . Hundreds of polling stations in Amhara and Oromia were because of security concerns. Over internally displaced people continue to live between uncertainty and survival.

The contradiction is impossible to ignore. Ethiopia demonstrated a remarkable capacity to organize an election under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Electoral logistics such as digital registration systems and biometric voter identification showcased institutional resilience. Observers from the African Union (), an organizational body made up of the 55 African states, smooth voting where polling occurred. Yet the deeper question confronting Ethiopia is not whether ballots could be counted. It is whether democratic participation can evolve into a political culture capable of resolving conflict through institutions rather than confrontation. That question will shape not only Ethiopia¡¯s future but also the strategic trajectory of the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopians chose democracy over disengagement

For much of the past decade, Ethiopia has embodied both Africa¡¯s promise and its peril. Home to roughly 130 million people, it is the continent¡¯s second-most populous nation, a diplomatic heavyweight, a critical security actor and one of the fastest-growing of the 2000s before conflict reversed much of that progress. The country¡¯s civil war in Tigray, alongside violence in Amhara and Oromia, has exacted staggering costs.?

The Tigray conflict more than five million displacements in 2021 alone, one of the largest displacement crises recorded anywhere in recent history. Human rights organizations to document allegations of atrocities, attacks on civilians and severe humanitarian distress across conflict-affected regions.

Against this backdrop, the election became a test of whether the Ethiopian state still possessed enough legitimacy to persuade citizens that political participation remains preferable to armed struggle.

The answer, surprisingly, may be yes. Despite years of violence, millions still chose the ballot box. That matters. Across fragile states, public disengagement often arrives before institutional collapse. Ethiopia has not yet reached that point. The willingness of citizens to participate despite profound hardship suggests that faith in the idea of democratic politics has not entirely disappeared. In many respects, that may be the most important result of the election.

Yet democratic resilience should not be mistaken for democratic consolidation. Political scientists often distinguish between elections and democracy. Elections are events. Democracy is a system of conflict management. The latter requires institutions that citizens trust even when they lose. It requires courts that are independent, media that are free, opposition parties that can organize safely and security forces that protect citizens rather than political interests.

Those foundations remain fragile in Ethiopia. Opposition parties released a statement that the parties were marginalized, co-opted or excluded from meaningful competition. Concerns about arrests, restrictions on civic space and uneven political participation to cloud perceptions of electoral credibility. When citizens conclude that elections cannot produce meaningful political change, the temptation to seek alternatives outside institutional channels inevitably grows.

Peace relies on stabilizing democracy

History offers sobering lessons. Countries emerging from conflict rarely achieve lasting peace through electoral exercises alone. Sierra Leone¡¯s post-war stabilization years of institutional reform and community reconciliation. South Africa¡¯s democratic transition not because elections solved political grievances but because institutions gradually became trusted mechanisms for managing them. Bosnia¡¯s fragile peace because constitutional arrangements created incentives for negotiation rather than violence.

Ethiopia now faces a similar challenge. The country¡¯s future stability will depend less on who won the 2026 election than on whether political actors increasingly institutions as legitimate arenas for contestation. The central question is whether disagreements over power, identity and resources can be channeled through constitutional mechanisms rather than armed mobilization.

This challenge is particularly acute because Ethiopia¡¯s conflicts are deeply intertwined with competing visions of the state itself. Debates over ethnic federalism, regional autonomy and national identity have become central fault lines in contemporary politics. Military victories cannot settle these questions permanently. Nor can electoral victories. Only sustained political dialogue can. 

Encouragingly, pathways exist. The Institute for Security Studies has repeatedly the importance of reviving Ethiopia¡¯s stalled transitional justice agenda. Meaningful accountability for wartime abuses, combined with broader national dialogue, could help rebuild trust between communities and institutions. Transitional justice is often politically uncomfortable, but unresolved grievances rarely disappear. They merely await new opportunities to re-emerge.

The outcome may have an international ripple effect

The significance extends far beyond Ethiopia. As one of Africa¡¯s most consequential states, Ethiopia¡¯s trajectory will influence regional stability, migration patterns, economic integration and security dynamics across the Horn and the wider Red Sea corridor.

The international dimension also deserves greater attention. Ethiopia¡¯s democratic future is unfolding amid intensifying geopolitical competition the Red Sea and Horn of Africa. Gulf powers, Turkey, Egypt, China, the United States and European actors all significant strategic interests in the region. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, roughly 12% of global trade and is affected by proxy wars. Maritime access and regional influence increasingly shape external engagement.

Too often, however, international policy towards Ethiopia reflects a familiar contradiction. External actors routinely celebrate democratic progress while prioritizing security partnerships and geopolitical calculations when crises emerge. Ethiopia has been as ¡°too big to fail,¡± creating incentives for foreign governments to tolerate instability so long as broader strategic interests remain protected.

That approach carries risks. Stability built primarily on security calculations tends to prove temporary. Durable stability emerges when citizens believe institutions can deliver justice, representation and opportunity. The most hopeful interpretation of Ethiopia¡¯s 2026 election is therefore that democracy remains possible.

There is hope for Ethiopia¡¯s democracy

In a world increasingly defined by polarization, conflict and democratic backsliding, the sight of millions participating peacefully in political life retains profound significance. It signals that the social contract has been damaged but not destroyed. It suggests that despite war and displacement, many Ethiopians still see politics as a vehicle for shaping the future rather than merely surviving the present.

The harder work begins now. Ethiopia¡¯s greatest test is no longer organizing elections. It is transforming electoral participation into institutional trust. It is proving that ballots matter after polling day. It is demonstrating that courts, legislatures, dialogue mechanisms and local governance structures can address grievances before they become insurgencies.

The country stands at a rare historical crossroads. One path leads towards recurring cycles of conflict punctuated by elections that legitimise authority but fail to resolve underlying tensions. The other leads towards a more ambitious project: a political culture in which disputes are settled through institutions rather than force, and where democratic participation becomes the foundation for national renewal.

Ethiopia¡¯s future will ultimately depend on whether its hard-won electoral participation can mature into something deeper: a shared belief that institutions, however imperfect, are more powerful than violence. If that transition succeeds, the country will have built the foundations for a more stable future. If it fails, the ballot box risks becoming another symbol of opportunities deferred rather than destinies fulfilled.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Ethiopia¡¯s Ballot Box Must Become a Symbol for Peace appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

We have now evolved into a civilization whose citizens typically spend half or more of their waking hours in front of a screen. Our lives are saturated with advice from multiple sources of authority. Politicians explain what policies we should support. Celebrities tell us what we should buy, believe and become. Scientists hired by tobacco companies spent decades telling us what we shouldn¡¯t worry about. The word ¡°should¡± is everywhere ¡ª and it almost never means what it pretends to mean.

When a politician says the country should move in a certain direction and that you, the engaged voter, should back their bill, they mean: This serves my interests, and I have painted it in your colors. When a brand-sponsored expert says you should feel reassured about some product or policy, they mean exactly what one of them dared to out loud back in 1979: ¡°Doubt is our product because doubt defeats the facts already in your mind.¡± Facts annoyingly prevent us from understanding the wisdom of the experts, who alone know what we should do.

Fortunately, some sources of true facts exist, or so we¡¯ve been thought to believe. When editorialists of serious newspapers ¡ª even ¡° of record¡± ¡ª explain how the government or the economy should work, they are advertising their own preferred ideology. If you share that ideology, you¡¯ll most likely come away with a clearer idea of what other people should do, and thus dispense yourself from any undue effort. If you don¡¯t share it, you should consult a different source.

The moral vocabulary of public life is largely a performance. ¡°Should¡± is its favorite word precisely because it borrows the authority of ethics while remaining perfectly hollow. The word ¡°should¡± is the workhorse of this vast industry. It is useful precisely because it borrows the grammar of ethics while committing to nothing. Whenever we hear the word should, we need to awaken our critical faculties.

A telling example with all the best intentions

In a recent article published here on 51³Ô¹Ï, authors Farris Hamzeh and Natalia Hidalgo described the very real quandary that confronts an increasingly helpless Europe:

¡°Europe, meanwhile, has faced mounting domestic pressures and tests to its relationship with the US¡­ Europe to formulate a unified response to meet the moment. This initial hesitation gave way to a disjointed set of , with some European governments aligning with the US while others questioned the legality of US¨CIsraeli strikes.¡±

These facts are painful for those of us who live and work in Europe and feel deeply concerned about its future. Yet, for all of us ¡ª including the authors of the article ¡ª it is often unclear what ¡°Europe¡± even means, especially when talking about recommended public policy. Does it refer to the European Union? To Europeans themselves, many of whom have only a vague understanding of what the EU is, how it works and whom it represents?

Or perhaps ¡°Europe¡± refers collectively to all the countries on the European continent, or at least to a supposed consensus among a majority of them. In some people¡¯s minds, it could refer only to those seen as its leaders: especially Germany, France and the United Kingdom (which is not even in the EU). And what about the perception put forward by US geopolitical analysts who now frame the continent¡¯s imagined divide as a struggle between ¡°Old Europe¡± or ¡°New Europe?¡± Talking about what Europe thinks and what it should do is by definition a perilous task.

This Devil¡¯s Advocate always seeks clarity in the dossiers he studies. I need to determine who¡¯s to blame for the confusion. Very objectively, I find this state of affairs concerning the very agency of Europe particularly inimical to formulating meaningful advice. The authors of the article, however, appear undaunted. In their concluding paragraph, they make a bold recommendation about what the phantom called ¡°Europe¡± should do: ¡°Europe should seek to drive a wedge between Iran and Russia, isolating the latter. Expediting the peaceful resolution to the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz is the best action Europe can take today.¡± 

It¡¯s an intriguing idea, with unimaginably complex implications. To ¡°drive a wedge,¡± you need a driver. Who is that likely to be? Their advice will likely appeal uncritically to readers whose worldview already treats the isolation of Russia as self-evidently desirable, a reflex deeply rooted in US policy since the Cold War. But, taking some critical distance ¡ª always a wise reflex ¡ª two important questions come to mind. Is it even feasible? And have we imagined the unintended consequences? As a tentative answer to the latter, I would submit that recent history teaches us that attempts to isolate Russia have a strong tendency not only to backfire but also to cause endless headaches for the perpetrators.

Had the authors used the word ¡°might¡± instead of should, they could have gone on to address the difficulties of formulating and executing the policy they recommend. They could equally have begun evoking the longer-term consequences of such a policy. ¡°Should¡± allows them to conclude their article with a sense of resolution. But does the reader feel that anything is resolved? And, quite frankly, will any of us Europeans act to take their advice?

Language, logic and moral force

This example should serve to help us reflect on how easy it is to create confusion with a word like should. When the authors say Europe should isolate Russia, they are recommending a concrete action. But when we say to a friend about to travel, ¡°you should have pleasant weather in Athens in October¡± or ¡°there should be an available room at the hotel,¡± we are literally predicting (probabilizing) on the basis of past knowledge. Such statements have no overt or hidden moral force. The auxiliary should seems to float between one extreme ¡ª Kant¡¯s categorial imperative: ¡°You should never lie, ever¡± ¡ª and uncertain but reasonably calculated speculation about what might happen in the future.

It¡¯s this ambiguity that may lead us astray. And it¡¯s against this backdrop that we must consider one of the more remarkable habits of our digital moment: millions of people, apparently unsatisfied with the quality of manipulation on offer from their politicians, celebrities, corporate scientists and editorialists, have decided in moments of doubt to an AI chatbot instead: What should I do?

The problem on the AI side is twofold:

• Chatbots are designed always to provide a ¡°best¡± response even when there is no obvious one available, which is already an invitation to hallucination.
• The famous problem of sycophancy, or the tendency to approve everything the human prompter says, encouraging that person to persist even when danger signs indicating possible pathological behavior are present.

Numerous experts in AI behavioral practices have now emerged to warn us of the risks. Among the ¡°5 practices to Avoid with Artificial Intelligence,¡± Professor Jairo G. Sarmiento Sotelo using ¡°AI as a therapist or friend.¡± Applications that propose ¡°therapy¡± with AI have recently emerged. Even the most sophisticated therapeutic chatbot ¡°cannot understand the deep context of trauma, and it has no ethical or legal responsibility.¡± Obviously, an all-purpose chatbot is likely to prove even riskier.

What I say you should and shouldn¡¯t do!

If you really wish to qualify for AI sanctity, this Devil¡¯s Advocate makes the following recommendations:

1. You should use dialogue with an AI chatbot to explore two things:
   • original insights of ¡°great ideas¡± you¡¯ve never heard other people formulate that you think will help you better understand the complexities of the universe and human societies; 
   • nagging doubts you have about ideas and beliefs other people have persuaded you to adopt.
2. You should expect the chatbot 1) to flatter you, 2) to begin by offering the most banal, largely accepted explanations of the phenomena you¡¯re interested in. Both of these signal a negative, uninspired beginning that it will be your job to move beyond and correct.
3. Don¡¯t be fooled by its initial predictable response. Challenge it, even to the point of saying sarcastically, ¡°that¡¯s exactly what I expected from an AI bot,¡± and then find ways of breaking down its banality.
4. Never ask it, ¡°What should I do?¡± Instead, ask it about who or what sources may provide you with further insight. It will actually help you find them.

I¡¯ve called this the ¡°sparring partner¡± approach, which I claim can help our society achieve true democracy to replace the simulacrum of democracy our overlords have bequeathed to us. It can also serve to improve our own mental health¡­ so long as we keep sparring.

Finally, take this on board. I¡¯ve just listed several things you should and shouldn¡¯t do. I know nothing about your needs and ambitions. Therefore, you will be perfectly justified in taking none of them seriously.

*[The Devil¡¯s Advocate pursues the tradition 51³Ô¹Ï began in 2017 with the launch of our ¡°Devil¡¯s Dictionary.¡± It does so with a slight change of focus, moving from language itself ¡ª political and journalistic rhetoric ¡ª to the substantial issues in the news. Read more of the 51³Ô¹Ï Devil¡¯s Dictionary. The news we consume deserves to be seen from an outsider¡¯s point of view. And who could be more outside official discourse than Old Nick himself?]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post On the Meaning (and Danger) of ¡°Should¡± appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The age of big, shiny and few is being challenged by the age of cheap, smart and many. In this new era, drones are not a mere add-on to existing force structures. They are transforming the economics, the geometry and the politics of war. That transformation is eroding traditional great-power dominance, empowering regional actors and pushing the US toward an uncomfortable role as an untethered superpower whose preferences matter less than before and whose high-end arsenals are increasingly ill-suited to the conflicts that count.

The ¸é³Ü²õ²õ¾±²¹¨C±«°ì°ù²¹¾±²Ô±ð War and the revolution of drone warfare

The ¸é³Ü²õ²õ¾±²¹¨C±«°ì°ù²¹¾±²Ô±ð War is the most important laboratory of drone warfare, offering a real-time glimpse into the emerging tactical structure of future wars. In contrast to the foxholes of the First World War, today¡¯s trenches are often empty ¡ª not because the war is less lethal, but because the battlefield has become almost completely transparent from above.

Both sides now deploy millions of small, first-person-view () drones, devices only marginally more sophisticated than the hobbyist quadcopters tourists fly over beaches. Ukraine alone is expected to produce around drones this year, the vast majority of them being cheap FPVs with a camera and a grenade-sized warhead. Many are now linked to their operators by spools of fiber-optic cable that stretch 20¨C30 kilometers; unlike radio links, these tethers cannot be jammed by electronic warfare. The result is a black zone or kill zone across much of the front, an area in which any exposed human or vehicle is quickly detected and destroyed.

This dynamic has changed how Ukraine on land. Instead of massing infantry and armor near the front line, Kyiv relies on a thin crust of humans backed by dense layers of drones and an increasing number of unmanned ground vehicles. Drone pilots and ground-robot operators, often in their 20s, now do work that used to be performed by rifle squads and armored crews.

Evacuating the wounded from the ever-expanding, drone-infested ¡°gray zone¡± can take weeks. Coffin-shaped evacuation robots and jury-rigged vehicles pick their way through mazes of hostile FPVs, making battlefield medicine slower, more remote and more technologically mediated than in any previous war. The line of contact barely moves, but underneath that seeming stalemate, the Russian army is being ground down by a brutal arithmetic of attrition.

What matters for the argument about geopolitics is not only that drones work, but that they work cheaply. A small FPV drone may cost hundreds of dollars, while the tank or self-propelled gun it destroys can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions. A high-end missile system like the US Patriot can cost several million dollars per shot, yet may be used to intercept a drone assembled from commercial components and Chinese-made electronics. This inversion of the cost curve ¡ª where the offensive system is radically cheaper than the defensive interceptor ¡ª undercuts the foundation of 20th-century military and strategic thinking.

Drones challenge traditional military strategies

The Ukraine war has also demonstrated that large, sophisticated drones are no more survivable than manned aircraft in contested airspace. In the early months of Russia¡¯s full-scale invasion, Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones captured the world¡¯s imagination. They struck Russian convoys, supported the defense of Kyiv and even helped locate targets for the Ukrainian strike that sank the flagship Russian guided-missile cruiser?Moskva. indicate the drone was used to distract the?Moskva¡¯s radar and air-defense operators, allowing Ukrainian anti-ship missiles to strike the vessel while its defenses were focused on the skies. Once Russian air defenses and electronic-warfare systems were properly integrated, however, the TB2s all but disappeared from the battlefield.

This is not a surprise when one remembers their characteristics: a 12-meter wingspan, slow speed and reliance on data links that can be jammed, all flying in a sky dense with radars and missiles. Large drones have worked well in environments like Libya, Syria or Nagorno-Karabakh, where the adversary¡¯s air defenses were incomplete or ineffective. In a high-intensity war between peers, they die quickly.

The lesson is stark. Western militaries have invested for decades in ¡°exquisite¡± platforms, stealth aircraft, heavily protected main battle tanks, complex surface warships, under the assumption that better sensors, networking and precision would allow them to dominate cheaper systems. In a drone-saturated environment, that assumption breaks down. We are moving toward a world where anything large, slow and expensive is a liability near the front.

That applies not just to drones but to manned aircraft loitering without overwhelming air superiority, to big surface ships in confined seas, and to armored columns that cannot disperse or hide from persistent drone surveillance. The rise of cheap robotic systems is not simply a tactical novelty; it is an existential challenge to legacy procurement models in Washington, Moscow, and Berlin.

In Europe¡¯s ¡ª also one of the world¡¯s largest ¡ª this shift is already generating an industrial and political struggle. Traditional German defense champions, forged in the Cold War and oriented toward tanks, artillery and large manned platforms, are eager to absorb the recent surge in military spending by building more of what they know: heavy armor, long-range missiles and complex air-defense batteries. At the same time, a new generation of technology firms is pushing in a different direction, offering small, AI-enabled reconnaissance drones, loitering munitions and resilient satellite-based communication systems.

The battlefield in Ukraine has created intense demand for exactly these cheaper, rapidly adaptable systems, yet European procurement remains fragmented along national lines and biased toward established incumbents. The result is a widening gap between the weapons European treasuries are paying for and the tools the war is actually validating. German companies that embed their engineers in Ukraine and with front-line units have a clear edge, while those that cling to the old model of large, slow, exquisite platforms risk becoming the next generation¡¯s version of the horse-breeding aristocracy on the eve of mechanized war.

If Ukraine shows how drones can reshape conventional land warfare, Iran illustrates how they transform asymmetric conflict and regional geopolitics.

Iran and the power of cheap precision

For years, Tehran has invested in relatively low-cost drones and missiles rather than trying to match US carrier groups or advanced fighter jets. Its kamikaze drones, now co-produced by Russia, are used to strike Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Similar systems have been used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen to harass US bases, Gulf shipping and critical energy facilities. These weapons impose real costs on much richer adversaries and can be fielded in large numbers despite sanctions.

Recent escalations in the Gulf highlight the limits of American power under these conditions. The US can surge carrier strike groups and shoot down incoming drones and missiles, but it cannot do so cheaply or indefinitely. Air-defense stocks are finite. High-end interceptors are expensive. Yet Iran can continue to manufacture large numbers of relatively simple drones using components sourced through shadowy global supply chains dominated by Chinese production.

Nor has massive US superiority in air and naval power delivered regime change in Tehran. Air power can pummel an enemy on the ground, but history demonstrates it cannot change a regime without ground forces. Without prepared local partners and a strategy for stabilization, bombing campaigns merely punish; they do not transform.

In that sense, Iran is a case study in how a mid-level power can survive and even expand its regional influence under the umbrella of cheap precision-strike systems and a willingness to absorb punishment. The economics are decisive. Defeating a $500 or $5,000 drone with a $3 million interceptor or a billion-dollar destroyer is a losing proposition in a long war. The more actors can field cheap drones, the more vulnerable the traditional tools of US hegemony become.

China: the foundry of the drone age?

The backbone of this cheap-drone revolution is not Ukraine, Russia or Iran. It is China. Chinese firms produce the majority of the world¡¯s commercial and dual-use drone components: batteries, electric motors, cameras, sensors and flight controllers. Analysts that at least three-quarters of the key components in many frontline FPV systems are of Chinese origin. Both Kyiv and Moscow adapt these civilian-grade parts into lethal systems. Iran¡¯s Shaheds, too, rely on microelectronics and subsystems sourced via convoluted networks that often lead back to Chinese suppliers.

Internally, Beijing is not just making parts; it is developing its own families of military-grade strike drones, maritime unmanned systems and swarms designed to overwhelm defenses in the western Pacific. But even if China never fired a shot, its role as the world¡¯s drone foundry means it can influence conflicts at arm¡¯s length by deciding which components flow where, and in what quantity. Any Western attempt to maintain technological dominance by simply hoarding advanced systems is no longer likely to succeed. Sanctions can slow but not halt the diffusion of low-end robotics. The knowledge is relatively accessible, and much of the hardware is indistinguishable from commercial consumer electronics.

China must now think not only about its rivalry with the US, but also about a neighborhood crowded with states that can build or import cheap drones at scale ¡ª Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and India among them. These countries cannot match China¡¯s overall industrial base, but they do not need that kind of infrastructure for the wars of tomorrow. As Ukraine shows, a medium-sized economy with high human capital can create a lethal drone ecosystem in a few years if need be. The cheap-drone revolution does not just level the playing field between one great power and its smaller adversary; it fragments power horizontally across many states and non-state actors. No one has a monopoly on lethality anymore.

Europe¡¯s strategic awakening?

For Europe, the Trump era has accelerated a long-running erosion of US credibility. Europeans discovered, during US President Donald Trump¡¯s flirtations with Russia and his to withhold support for Ukraine, that they had outsourced their security to a state whose foreign policy could swing wildly every electoral cycle. The , the gratuitous to Canada¡¯s sovereignty and the US bombing campaign in , which began without any consultation with Europe or deliberation in the US Congress, were loud wake-up calls. The Europeans gave up trying to placate Trump, as they had done in his first presidential term, and have now concluded that the US cannot be treated as the predictable anchor of a liberal order. At the same time, the war in Ukraine revealed that Europe¡¯s own defense industrial base had atrophied under decades of dependence on American power. The combination of a new drone-driven battlefield and an unreliable US has forced European elites to reassess.

The resulting geopolitical shift is subtle but significant. Europe, led increasingly by a Central-Nordic core (Poland, the Baltic states, the Nordics and Ukraine itself), is starting to think of itself as a security producer rather than merely a consumer. These states understand, often viscerally, that Russia is a long-term threat. They also see Ukraine not as a charity case, but as a frontline ally with the most combat-experienced army in Europe and a rapidly innovating defense industry.

NATO¡¯s center of gravity is moving east. The of Finland and Sweden, combined with Poland¡¯s and the Baltic states¡¯ urgency, is gradually reorienting European security thinking toward land and air defense against Russia, and toward the unglamorous work of ammunition production, drone innovation hubs and counterdrone defenses.

The US remains vital but less central. American financial and military support to Ukraine is still crucial, but European and Ukrainian actors increasingly shape the war¡¯s day-to-day dynamics. In the Gulf and in Asia, regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, South Korea and India are likewise less willing to rely blindly on Washington¡¯s guarantees. Drone warfare accelerates this dynamic by offering mid-sized states a way to generate real military power quickly without buying into US hardware ecosystems. Future wars will reward industrial agility, software talent and civil-military innovation more than reliance on a massive, centralized industrial base.

A new battlefield, a new world order?

On the ground, drone warfare is also changing what a battlefield looks and feels like. In Ukraine, medics that they now treat far fewer bullet wounds; shrapnel from drone-delivered munitions and blast injuries from top-attack strikes have become more common than classic rifle and machine-gun fire. The ¡°front line¡± is no longer a neat trench line but a broad, shifting zone of danger where any movement ¡ª an ambulance, a resupply truck, a small group of soldiers ¡ª is instantly spotted from the air and prosecuted by a remote operator whose thumbs on a joystick have replaced fingers on a trigger.

In this world, tanks and self-propelled guns can survive only by hiding, dispersing or staying well behind the range of cheap cameras and cheap explosives. The great metal icons of 20th-century land warfare are beginning to look like cavalry lances in 1916: still present, still lethal in some circumstances, but increasingly anachronistic in the face of new technology.

In such a world, the US is still the richest, most powerful state, but it is less able to dictate outcomes at an acceptable cost. Its own political volatility further undermines its capacity to serve as the linchpin of a stable global order. The combination of cheap drones and unreliable hegemony pushes international politics toward what might be called ¡°multi-multipolarity¡±: overlapping regional security systems, messy alignments and frequent gray-zone conflicts mediated by cheap robotic violence. The core argument emerging from Ukraine and Iran is that the logic of asymmetry is spreading upward. It is no longer just guerrilla movements and insurgents who rely on cheap, expendable systems to bleed better-equipped forces. States are using them against other states.

Deterrence is therefore harder and more crowded today than during the Cold War, when the strategic balance rested largely on nuclear arsenals and a handful of large standing armies. Today, many more actors can threaten high-value assets ¡ª airbases, ports, power plants, refineries and headquarters ¡ª at low cost and with plausible deniability. The lines between war and peace blur when a handful of drones can shut a strait or paralyze an electrical grid for days.

On the flip side, nuclear proliferation becomes more, not less, attractive. Russia¡¯s possession of nuclear weapons has deterred direct Western intervention in Ukraine. Other states will draw the obvious lesson that if you fear external aggression or regime change, a minimum nuclear deterrent plus a robust drone and missile force is a powerful insurance policy. South Korea¡¯s open debate about acquiring its own nuclear capability is a harbinger of wider pressure on the non-proliferation regime.

Adapting to the age of the robotic swarm

Alliance structures must adapt or decay. Traditional alliance promises, like NATO guarantees and extended nuclear deterrence, were premised on the assumption that one or two great powers could credibly protect many. In a world of saturated airspace and ubiquitous drones, those promises ring hollow unless they are backed by shared industrial capacity, common doctrine, and resilient infrastructure. That requires deeper integration, not just declarations.

Regulation will lag behind reality. As with chemical weapons and landmines in earlier eras, the development and deployment of drones have far outpaced international legal and ethical frameworks. Autonomous targeting, AI-driven swarms and the use of drones against civilian infrastructure pose grave risks of escalation and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet states have little incentive to constrain themselves while others arm.

It is tempting, especially in Washington, to respond to all this by doubling down ¡ª to imagine that a new generation of smarter, stealthier, more networked systems will restore American dominance. Some of that investment is necessary. But the deeper lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that no one is going to dominate global violence the way the US briefly did after 1991.

Once lethality is cheap, precision is widespread and industrial know-how is broadly diffused, the fantasy of a benign hegemon enforcing order from above collapses. What emerges instead is a contested landscape of regional powers, coalitions of the willing, proxy wars and arms races in cheap robotics and missile technology. The US remains a major player ¡ª still the major player for now ¡ª but may soon be one actor among many, with limited leverage and less moral authority than it once claimed.

In that sense, drone warfare is not just changing tactics; it is exposing a deeper truth about 21st-century geopolitics. Superpowers built on expensive, exquisite technology are actually fragile. Regional powers armed with cheap, adaptable drones and missiles are resilient. And the art of war is shifting from the concentrated blow of the armored fist to the persistent stings of the robotic swarm.

For those who still hope for a rules-based international order, the task is not to wish this world away, but to shape it: to invest in affordable defenses, to rebuild industrial capacity in democratic states, to embed ethical constraints into autonomous systems where possible and above all to rethink alliances around mutual resilience rather than one-way dependence. Ukraine¡¯s drone-filled skies and Iran¡¯s asymmetric strikes are not anomalies. They are early snapshots of the future.

The US and China will continue to compete as traditional industrial superpowers well into the future, using the 20th-century nuclear triad and conventional strike forces. The superpowers will develop advanced strike capabilities, drone technology, laser weapons, and space and cyber capabilities. But beneath this familiar superpower rivalry, a new reality is taking shape: a crowded, drone-saturated battlespace in which many regional powers and even non-state actors can cheaply threaten what only great powers could once threaten. In that world, dominance becomes fleeting, vulnerability is widely shared and security depends less on towering arsenals than on how intelligently and ethically we manage a perpetual, low-altitude competition for advantage.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post How Drone Warfare Is Rewiring Geopolitics and Rewriting the Age of Superpowers appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Even though Xinjiang is theoretically autonomous, it has become an Orwellian nightmare, subject to severe restrictions by the central government. This region, which is half the size of Europe, has become a sophisticated system of social control and cultural repression. Under the gaze of millions of cameras, an entire people ¡ª the Uyghurs ¡ª is being slowly and methodically . Not through the gas chambers of the last century, but through intensive surveillance, forced sterilizations and family separations.?

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the CCP pursues a policy of ¡°,¡± a systematic strategy to forcibly the Uyghur population. What was once a peripheral province is today China¡¯s most militarized zone: a veritable open-air prison. Michelle Bachelet, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, recently ¡°serious human rights violations¡± committed in Xinjiang that could constitute ¡°crimes against humanity.¡± As early as 2005, Human Rights Watch raised the alarm, claiming that the systematic repression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang is a deliberate political strategy that ultimately benefits the state of China.?

Most importantly, what happens in the Xinjiang re-education camps extends beyond China¡¯s borders and encroaches on the international community. China is demonstrating to the world that cultural and religious identity can be rewritten or erased in the name of state stability and economic development. If the ¡°Great Wall of Iron¡± prevails without meeting cohesive global resistance, the risk is that the Xinjiang model will become an export product: a world where technology serves not to liberate humanity, but to perfect its imprisonment.

Demographic manipulation broke Uyghur roots

Today, Xinjiang is home to approximately 12 million Uyghurs, who refer to it as East Turkestan (Sherqi Turkistan). While the ethnic Han population primarily speaks Chinese, the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz populations are ethnically Turkic, predominantly Muslim and have their own languages. Uyghur culture a close affinity with Central Asian nations. Their roots trace back to the collapse of the ancient Karabalghasan Empire (which was located in present-day Mongolia) in 840 AD, followed by centuries of for independence.

In 1759, the Manchu Qing Dynasty invaded East Turkestan, and between 1750¨C1863, the population residing under military control rebelled 42 times. Then, in 1863, Yaqub , the emir of the Kashgaria kingdom, liberated East Turkestan, set up an independent state and entered into diplomatic talks. However, the Manchu Qing Dynasty formally incorporated East Turkistan in 1884, renaming it Xinjiang. After the fall of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in 1911, Xinjiang continued to be ruled by various leaders.?

Nationalism began to spread in Xinjiang in the 1920s. On November 12, 1933, the peoples of Xinjiang declared independence as the East Turkestan Republic (ETR). It lasted less than a year ¡ª the ETR was overthrown on April 16, 1934 following an invasion by the Kuomintang (), the ruling political party of China from 1928 to 1949. On November 12, 1944, once again, the ETR declared independence. And, once again, it was short-lived. In 1949, a mysterious plane crash killed the ETR¡¯s core leadership and the republic was invaded by the PLA. With the arrival of the People¡¯s Liberation Army, Beijing began casting a veil of control that has never been lifted.?

Despite granting autonomy to Xinjiang (which is officially called the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR) in 1955, the CCP¡¯s promises of self-determination clashed with government policies. The first part of policy aimed at Xinjiang was not ideological, but demographic. Until the 1950s, Uyghurs represented about 90% of the population in the region; today, they account for a reduced 45%. They are effectively strangers in their own home. This was not a natural evolution, but rather a surgical operation of social engineering.

Following the fall of the Uyghur leadership, hundreds of thousands of people were driven into exile, primarily toward . Between 60,000 and 100,000 Uyghurs and Kazakhs fled the country. Then, through the paramilitary system of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (the , also known as Bingtuan), a paramilitary organization that manages farms, factories and mines, the State orchestrated a mass of Han, the ethnic majority in China. The government offered economic incentives, housing and careers to Han settlers to dilute the local identity. This relegated Turkic-speaking Muslims to an economic , excluded from the most prestigious jobs and subjected to forced labor and wage discrimination. Many career sectors continue to advertise ¡°Han only¡± hiring.

In February 1997, tensions culminated into a series of initially peaceful protests led by Turkic-speaking Muslim communities in the municipality of . These demonstrations, however, were stifled by a violent counter-offensive launched by the Public Security Bureau and People’s Armed Police units. The outcome was dramatic: arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, unfair trials and death sentences.

However, the in July 2009 marked the definitive breaking point. What began as a peaceful protest by Uyghur students demanding an investigation into the killing of two Uyghur factory workers turned into extreme between the Han and the Uyghurs. According to CCP reports, nearly 200 people died, most of them Han. The Uyghur death and disappearance toll still remains unclear. The ensuing crackdown marked the final divorce between the Party and the minority. Beijing authorities that the World Uyghur Congress and its leader Rebiya Kadeer were the hidden directors of the unrest and accused them of planning the riots from exile.??

From that moment on, Beijing chose neutralization. Under the pretext of the ¡°Global War on Terror,¡± China labeled every expression of Uyghur culture and resistance as a manifestation of separatism, terrorism and extremism. The separatist group East Turkestan Islamic Movement () is of particular concern to China. In 2002, the US designated ETIM as an international terrorist organization. However, there is a lack of consensus and information on ETIM. Nonetheless, the CCP has turned to an extreme surveillance strategy across Xinjiang on the pretense of the Global War on Terror.?

Nightmarish, radical punishments are used to control the Uyghurs

The CCP¡¯s radical sinicization strategy is one of biological and social manipulation. Between 2015 and 2018, forced and the mandatory insertions of intrauterine devices caused the Uyghur birth rate to decline by more than . Approximately mosques have been demolished and villages renamed between 2009 and 2023 to erase any historical traces of the Uyghurs. Many children have been separated from their families and taken to state boarding schools that have banned the Uyghur language.

Everyday ¡ª such as sending messages containing Quranic verses, observing Ramadan, abstaining from alcohol, wearing a beard or donning a veil ¡ª are classified as ¡°signs of extremism,¡± punishable by detention and forced indoctrination. The CCP has invested millions of dollars to build 1,200 ¡°Vocational Education and Training Centers¡± () where, since 2017, more than one million Muslims ¡ª including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyz ¡ª have disappeared.?

Analysis of leaked Chinese government documents such as the and the has shown that VETCs are maximum-security prisons with iron discipline and punishments. The Xinjiang Papers revealed that between 2017 and 2018, more than 12% of the adult population in a single county was detained in a camp or prison. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) used satellite data to reveal the existence of over detention facilities. However, obtaining precise statistics is nearly impossible.

Survivor testimonies are . Detainees are subjected to forced political indoctrination and torture practices such as sleep deprivation and confinement. There are also reports of unidentified pills or injections given to detainees that caused negative reproductive or psychological effects. Armed guards are ordered to follow a shoot-to-kill for anyone attempting to escape. Albeit with different technologies, the logic remains the same as Nazi Germany: the dehumanization, segregation and neutralization of a minority to ensure the purity and stability of the dominant social body.

Pervasive surveillance allows this system to thrive

The heart of the Xinjiang system is ¡°grid-style social management.¡± This massive control apparatus rests on a sophisticated digital surveillance system and predictive policing. Through a massive database called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (), the state used AI to cross-reference personal information data such as private messages and spending habits in order to create lists of ¡°suspicious¡± people. Cities are fragmented into zones, each monitored by a pervasive network of facial recognition technology and police stations. Big data, smart cameras and biometric databases track every breath of daily life.

The Xinjiang Papers also revealed that soldier-turned-politician Quanguo was the orchestrator of this intense security system. He forged his method during his time as Party Secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) from 2011 to 2016, transforming the region into a laboratory for extreme surveillance. His tactic was labeled the ¡°securitization strategy.¡±?

His success in the TAR earned the full confidence of Beijing leadership. He became the Party Secretary of the XUAR in 2016, and his ruthless model was rapidly exported to Xinjiang in order to neutralize all dissent in the region. Even though Chen retired in 2021, his system has left a deep cut in Xinjiang. The subsequent security buildup in Xinjiang surpassed that of Tibet. In Xinjiang, there are approximately 323 police stations per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the 216 stations per 100,000 inhabitants in the TAR. 

This strategy integrated social control with massive state-led job creation. Chen promoted mass police recruitment campaigns. He applied a colonial tactic: enrolling local populations to police their own people. Thousands of Uyghurs and Tibetans have been absorbed into a continuously expanding public security sector. While the private economy stifles under the weight of controls, a state salary becomes the only means of survival. Economic dependency transforms potential rebels into cogs of the system, guaranteeing Beijing a forced loyalty and a stability bought at a high price ¡ª a price that many have denounced and called a genocide. 

Global eyes have turned to the CCP¡¯s abuses

In 2021, the Uyghur Tribunal in London issued a on the situation that profoundly shook the international landscape. Although an independent and non-judicial body in the strict sense, the Tribunal¡¯s analysis concluded ¡°beyond reasonable doubt¡± that the People¡¯s Republic of China is committing genocide against the Uyghur minority. This verdict denounced the CCP¡¯s systematic intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic and religious group. Even when faced with this evidence, however, the global community today appears dramatically split between the defense of universal values and economic pragmatism.

On one side, a bloc led by the US, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands has formally adopted the term ¡°genocide¡± to describe Beijing¡¯s policies. On his last day in office during the first Trump administration, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Chinese actions constitute ¡°crimes against humanity.¡± At the time, President Joe Biden¡¯s choice for Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, agreed. This stance is supported by rigorous reports from and Human Rights Watch, both of which have documented the described violence.?

On the economic front, the Western response has struck at the heart of commercial interests. Xinjiang produces more than of the world¡¯s cotton. Investigations have provided significant evidence that more than half a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority people are forced to pick cotton. New fNew factories have been built within re-education camps. When major Western retailers like H&M, Nike or Burberry expressed concern over the forced labor, China many of these brands from the Chinese web. Stores vanished from digital maps and disappeared from e-commerce platforms. Chinese celebrities boycotted the brands and taxis even refused to take consumers to physical stores. It is market blackmail: either accept our cotton (and the blood it carries) or lose millions of consumers.

?Legislation such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act () in the US now impose an almost total block on goods coming from Xinjiang, assuming that any product extracted or manufactured in that region is the result of forced labor. The EU has also introduced similar that draw a clear boundary line in global trade, making access to the single market conditional on respect for fundamental human rights.

However, this Western unity clashes with the silence of many Muslim-majority countries. Nations such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, despite their cultural and religious ties with the Uyghurs, remain constrained by heavy debt and close infrastructural agreements with China and have adopted a position of strategic neutrality. For these governments, the issue is officially downgraded to a Chinese ¡°internal affair.¡± Economic dependence on the New Silk Road can, in many cases, silence confessional solidarity and the moral mandates of international diplomacy.  By claiming that the Uyghurs are waging a dangerous battle for independence, it asserts that counter-terrorism measures are a prerequisite for peace and prosperity in the region. The Uyghur minority has become isolated from their Muslim brothers for economic necessity and persecuted at home for ideological ambition. 

The CCP¡¯s authoritarian model is changing the international stage

One example of how Beijing is isolating the Uyghurs is China¡¯s relationship with Afghanistan. Following the of US forces from Afghanistan and the subsequent of Kabul in 2021, China has taken a turn in its Afghanistan policy. Beijing is moving to fill the strategic vacuum left by Washington. For China, Afghanistan is a fundamental piece in stabilizing the Xinjiang border and for securing BRI trade corridors. China had already woven a dense diplomatic with the Taliban. This is evidenced by over 140 diplomatic meetings between Afghanistan and China and the welcoming of Chinese Ambassador Zhao Sheng in Kabul.?

The pact is clear: oil, humanitarian and technological investments in exchange for security and silence. China has tariffs on Afghan goods, signed a $540 million oil contract (which has since been ) and $13 million in humanitarian aid. This support is the price for a guarantee of vital importance: the Taliban have ensured that Afghan territory will never serve as a base for Uyghur militants of the ETIM. It is a game Beijing knows well, having already woven similar threads with Mullah , ex-supreme leader of the Taliban, in 2000.?

Today, that historical precedent evolves into a digital alliance where Chinese cameras serve to seal a border that permits no terrorist infiltration and ignores human rights. Chinese tech giant Huawei and the Taliban have allegedly discussions about wiring Afghanistan with advanced surveillance systems. While the Taliban has claimed that the network would be used to counteract the Islamic State, there are concerns that China could use the surveillance to track Uyghurs in Afghanistan. Already the Taliban has relocated Uyghur fighters away from the border Afghanistan shares with China. It has also increased surveillance around the Uyghurs who live in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, while presenting themselves as defenders of the faith, have cynically sacrificed the Uyghur cause in exchange for economic oxygen and international legitimacy. This collaboration allows both regimes to proceed with internal repression without interference. Beijing offers Kabul a crucial lifeline to mitigate UN sanctions while the Taliban grant China privileged access to Afghanistan’s vast and unexplored mineral resources.

However, the agreement with the Taliban regime appears to be a risky bet. The threat from the terrorist group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) remains an unpredictable variable that Beijing cannot control. This is evidenced by the 2021 suicide that killed nine Chinese workers involved in China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects in Pakistan. Despite the dense surveillance network and Kabul¡¯s reassurances, the region¡¯s chronic instability risks turning these billion-dollar investments into a strategic boomerang..

The use of security rhetoric to justify the destruction of an identity creates a disturbing bridge between Beijing’s strategies and other dark pages of history and recent events. Xinjiang was made to be a model of digital authoritarianism, and now that model is being exported. China is challenging the foundations of international coexistence. The immense scale of the repressive operation in Xinjiang rules out the possibility that this is an isolated case of abuse. Absolute stability has been prioritized over fundamental rights, and such a strategy will not stop at Chinese borders. 

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Beijing¡¯s Uyghur Surveillance Model Is Being Exported to Afghanistan appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Today, however, the US and China remain deeply interconnected through trade, finance, supply chains and advanced technology even as strategic competition intensifies. Some US policymakers argue that decades of engagement with China strengthened Beijing economically and technologically while failing to produce meaningful political liberalization. From this perspective, America¡¯s openness inadvertently accelerated the rise of a strategic competitor now seeking to challenge US influence in Asia and reshape elements of the international order.

Danger lies not only in China¡¯s growing power but also in the risk that both nations begin to interpret actions through the assumption of inevitable conflict. Rising tensions over semiconductors, artificial intelligence, industrial policy and Taiwan increasingly reinforce mutual suspicion. Republicans often emphasize the need for deterrence, military readiness and economic resilience to prevent strategic dependence on China, particularly in critical technologies and supply chains. 

Yet history also demonstrates that great-power conflicts can emerge when fear hardens into permanent hostility, and policymakers lose the ability to distinguish genuine threats from reflections of their own anxieties. The challenge for the 21st century is therefore not simply to contain China, but to compete from a position of strength without allowing rivalry to evolve into irreversible confrontation.

The lake that reflected a monster

In an old Chinese story associated with the philosophical tradition of the (an ancient Chinese text named for its author, the philosopher Zhuang Zhou), a dragon descended from the mountains during a season of drought in search of water. After days of wandering through burned forests and dry valleys, it finally found a still and perfectly clear lake hidden among the rocks. When the dragon leaned forward to drink, however, it suddenly froze in anger. Beneath the surface of the water was another dragon staring upward with equal hostility, its eyes burning with challenge and suspicion.

The dragon roared. The reflection roared back. The dragon struck the lake with its claws, shattering the surface into chaos. Only after the water settled again did the dragon realize that the enemy beneath the water had never existed at all. The monster it feared was its own reflection.

Great powers throughout history have often behaved this way. They mistake structural anxiety for existential threat, mirrors for enemies and competition for destiny. The tragedy is that once fear becomes institutionalized, states can amplify hostility until manageable rivalry grows out of control.

The modern relationship between the US and China increasingly resembles the dragon and the lake. Washington sees Beijing as an authoritarian challenger seeking to overturn the international order; Beijing sees Washington as a declining hegemon attempting to suppress China¡¯s natural rise. 

Understanding an adversary¡¯s strategic logic does not require morally flattening political systems or pretending all exercises of power are equivalent. Liberal societies and authoritarian states organize authority, dissent, surveillance and individual liberty according to profoundly different principles, and these distinctions shape how each side interprets security, legitimacy and order. Both narratives contain elements of truth, yet both are incomplete in ways that make the relationship far more dangerous than either side fully understands.

Yet not all fear is illusion. Strategic competition between the US and China is not merely the product of misunderstanding or psychological projection. Liberal democratic systems and centralized authoritarian systems often produce fundamentally different relationships between the state, the individual, information, markets and political power itself. These differences generate genuine strategic tensions even in the absence of deliberate hostility. The danger is allowing rivalry to harden into civilizational fatalism.

The most important reality is that the 21st century has fundamentally transformed the structure of rivalry itself. America and China are not two isolated empires confronting each other from opposite sides of the world. They exist inside the same financial, technological, industrial and digital ecosystem. They are rivals sharing the same bloodstream.

The end of classical geopolitics

Much contemporary analysis of US¨CChina relations still relies on 20th-century frameworks. Some analysts compare the situation to the Cold War, while others invoke the ¡°,¡± arguing that war becomes likely whenever a rising power threatens an established hegemon. These frameworks are intellectually attractive because they simplify complexity into familiar historical patterns. Unfortunately, they also risk blinding policymakers to how profoundly the structure of global power has changed.

The ancient rivalry between Athens and Sparta unfolded in a world where economies were largely territorial. The Cold War operated through two largely separate economic systems. Even Britain and Germany before World War I remained significantly less integrated than today¡¯s globalized networks. The US and China, however, are embedded within one another¡¯s economic existence in ways unprecedented in human history.

American consumers depend upon Chinese manufacturing capacity. Chinese growth depends upon access to global markets and dollar liquidity. American technology companies rely on supply chains that extend through Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia and mainland China. Chinese industrial systems depend on global semiconductor architecture and Western financial systems, even as they attempt to reduce those dependencies.

This creates an extraordinary paradox. The more integrated the two powers become, the more vulnerable they become to one another¡¯s leverage. Economic interdependence does not eliminate rivalry. Instead, it transforms rivalry into something infrastructural and systemic rather than purely military.

Globalization did not abolish geopolitics. It digitized it.

The new battlefield

In previous centuries, power was measured primarily through territory, industrial output and military force. Today, power increasingly emerges from control over systems that connect the global economy. The battlefield of the 21st century is therefore not limited to aircraft carriers and missile systems. It extends into semiconductors, artificial intelligence, satellite networks, reserve currencies, cloud computing infrastructure, energy grids, rare earth processing, payment systems and digital standards.

This transformation explains why contemporary tensions between Washington and Beijing increasingly center on technology rather than ideology alone. Artificial intelligence, semiconductor fabrication, quantum computing, telecommunications infrastructure and advanced manufacturing have become the strategic high ground of the modern age. Whoever controls these systems may shape not only economic productivity but also military capability, financial influence, surveillance architecture and even political legitimacy itself.

China understands this clearly. President Xi Jinping¡¯s industrial strategy is no longer simply about economic development. It is about reducing strategic vulnerability while increasing systemic leverage. Beijing seeks technological self-sufficiency not because it rejects globalization entirely, but because it no longer trusts globalization to remain politically neutral.

Washington, meanwhile, increasingly interprets technological dependence on China as a national security risk. Semiconductor restrictions, export controls, sanctions and industrial subsidies are all symptoms of the same realization: Economic integration has become a source of geopolitical exposure.

The result is a strange historical condition in which globalization continues to deepen even as trust collapses. Nations remain economically intertwined while psychologically preparing for confrontation. The system becomes more connected and more fragmented simultaneously. 

Taiwan and the geography of intelligence

No issue illustrates this transformation more clearly than Taiwan. For decades, Taiwan was treated primarily as a geopolitical flashpoint involving sovereignty, democracy and military deterrence. While those factors remain important, Taiwan has acquired a far greater significance in recent years because it occupies the center of the global semiconductor ecosystem.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, produces the overwhelming of the world¡¯s most advanced semiconductors. Yet the true importance of Taiwan extends far beyond fabrication alone. The island dominates critical ecosystems surrounding advanced chip packaging, testing, memory integration, and manufacturing optimization that are essential for artificial intelligence systems.

Artificial intelligence is often discussed as though it were abstract software existing somewhere in cyberspace. In reality, AI is deeply physical. It depends upon fabs, server farms, cooling systems, lithography chains, energy infrastructure and highly specialized manufacturing ecosystems accumulated over decades. Taiwan, therefore, functions not merely as an island but as the industrial nervous system of the emerging AI economy.

This reality changes the strategic meaning of Taiwan for both China and the US. For Beijing, Taiwan is no longer only about historical reunification or national dignity. Control over Taiwan would provide enormous influence over the infrastructure underpinning the future intelligence economy. For Washington, Taiwan is no longer merely about democratic solidarity or alliance credibility. It is increasingly tied to America¡¯s technological leadership itself.

The danger is that both narratives are simultaneously rational. This makes compromise psychologically and politically difficult because each side increasingly interprets Taiwan not as a negotiable issue but as structurally essential to its long-term security.

Strategic ambiguity begins to erode

For decades, the Taiwan issue remained relatively stable because the US maintained a carefully engineered policy of strategic ambiguity. Washington neither formally supported Taiwanese independence nor accepted Beijing¡¯s timetable for reunification. Ambiguity itself became the stabilizing mechanism because all parties remained uncertain about the precise limits of American intervention.

The framework established through the ¡°strategic ambiguity¡± of the , artfully crafted by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger more than four decades ago and later defended by realist statesmen such as James A. Baker III, was never intended to produce a final resolution to the Taiwan issue. Rather, its purpose was to preserve stability through calibrated uncertainty, allowing Washington sufficient flexibility to deter conflict while avoiding direct confrontation with Beijing over its most sensitive national question.?

The essence of the policy rested on ambiguity: Beijing could not be certain the US would intervene militarily, while Taipei could not be certain Washington would support a unilateral declaration of independence. Stability, therefore, emerged not from clarity, but from carefully managed uncertainty.

Kissinger understood that Taiwan represented the central obstacle to normalization between Washington and Beijing during the Cold War realignment of the 1970s. The diplomatic architecture established through the (a document issued by the US and China on February 27, 1972, outlining steps to improve relations and address mutual concerns) and later reinforced by the (which allowed the US to continue economic, cultural and security relations with Taiwan) created a deliberately flexible structure capable of adapting to changing geopolitical realities without forcing either side into immediate confrontation.?

Policymakers such as Baker later defended this approach because they recognized that abandoning strategic ambiguity in favor of ideological rigidity or ¡°strategic clarity¡± could transform manageable competition into catastrophic great-power conflict. As tensions surrounding semiconductors, artificial intelligence and Taiwan intensify, the erosion of this carefully balanced architecture risks undermining one of the most successful mechanisms of geopolitical crisis management in modern diplomatic history.

Today, this architecture is weakening. Chinese military pressure around Taiwan continues to intensify. Taiwanese identity grows increasingly distinct from that of mainland China. American congressional politics increasingly encourages symbolic gestures in support of Taiwan. Domestic politics in all three societies now push toward harder positions rather than strategic restraint.

US President Donald Trump¡¯s supporters often praise his unpredictability as strategic brilliance, while critics condemn it as recklessness. Both interpretations miss something important. Trump does not think about geopolitics through the traditional framework of American grand strategy: He approaches foreign affairs transactionally, not historically. However, it would be unwise to underestimate his political instincts. He appears adept at navigating and exploiting moments of strategic ambiguity.

Xi thinks in terms of civilizational continuity, national rejuvenation and historical destiny. Trump thinks in terms of leverage, bargaining and immediate tactical advantage. This asymmetry in strategic psychology creates enormous risks because each side increasingly misunderstands how the other interprets signals, commitments and ambiguity itself.

The most dangerous conflicts in history often emerge not from deliberate aggression but from incompatible assumptions about how the other side thinks.

Deterrence and restraint

Yet strategic misunderstanding alone does not explain geopolitical stability. A durable equilibrium between great powers also depends upon credible deterrence. Competition without sufficient military, technological and economic strength can invite opportunistic coercion, particularly when rival states believe the balance of power is shifting in their favor.

At the same time, deterrence without diplomatic restraint can accelerate escalation by convincing both sides that delay increases vulnerability. Sustainable stability, therefore, requires a delicate balance between capability and restraint: enough power to discourage aggression, yet enough strategic discipline to prevent rivalry from becoming existential.

The original architecture of strategic ambiguity surrounding Taiwan functioned precisely because it balanced these forces simultaneously. Ambiguity deterred unilateral escalation while preserving uncertainty regarding the thresholds of conflict. Stability emerged not through trust, but through calibrated restraint reinforced by credible power.

China¡¯s industrial civilization

Western analysis frequently underestimates the scale and coherence of China¡¯s industrial strategy because it still assumes Beijing operates within the logic of traditional market economics. In reality, Xi has transformed Chinese industrial policy into something historically unique. It is no longer limited to selected strategic sectors. It increasingly resembles an attempt to engineer an entire civilization-scale production system.

China now targets advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, batteries, drones, quantum systems, renewable energy, biotechnology, telecommunications, advanced chemicals, robotic, and even mature manufacturing industries simultaneously. The objective is not simply growth. It is resilience, technological sovereignty and systemic leverage.

This creates enormous tension with free-market economies. Western firms operate under pressure for profitability and shareholder returns. China, by contrast, can industrial overcapacity and prolonged financial losses if they generate long-term strategic dominance.

Chinese solar manufacturers, for example, often destroy industry profitability globally while simultaneously increasing China¡¯s market share and geopolitical leverage.

This explains why many traditional Western economic assumptions increasingly fail when confronting China. Market efficiency and strategic resilience are not always compatible objectives. Beijing prioritizes resilience even when efficiency suffers, while free-market democracies often prioritize efficiency until strategic vulnerability suddenly becomes visible. From this perspective, tariffs may not be desirable from a purely economic standpoint, but they can nevertheless be understood as strategic instruments intended to reduce dependency and strengthen national resilience.

The result is a growing recognition throughout the West that decades of deep economic integration have unintentionally strengthened the geopolitical capabilities of a state operating according to fundamentally different assumptions about economics, sovereignty and political control.

Artificial intelligence and the new arms race

Artificial intelligence has accelerated these tensions dramatically because AI increasingly resembles not merely a technological innovation but the operating infrastructure of future civilization. AI systems may shape military planning, cyber operations, financial markets, scientific research, logistics, education, medicine and political surveillance simultaneously. This creates enormous strategic anxiety in both Washington and Beijing. 

Yet artificial intelligence is not merely software plus semiconductors. It is electricity, cooling systems, mining capacity, logistics networks, shipping infrastructure, manufacturing ecosystems and technically skilled labor operating in parallel at a continental scale. The emerging AI competition is therefore also a competition over energy systems, industrial depth, maritime trade routes and physical supply chains.

American policymakers fear that Chinese AI systems integrated into global infrastructure could expand Beijing¡¯s geopolitical influence. Chinese policymakers fear that US restrictions on semiconductors and AI technologies represent attempts to permanently freeze China below the technological frontier.

Meanwhile, AI investment itself increasingly resembles a speculative geopolitical mobilization. American hyperscalers are investing hundreds of billions of dollars annually into AI infrastructure, data centers and semiconductor ecosystems. Financial markets increasingly revolve around AI narratives. Taiwan¡¯s geopolitical importance rises accordingly. Labor markets experience anxiety over automation even before large-scale displacement fully materializes.

AI, therefore, becomes simultaneously a technology, a financial bubble, a military asset and a psychological force shaping public consciousness.

The danger is not simply technological competition itself. The danger is that AI intensifies the perception that geopolitical rivalry has become existential. Once states believe technological leadership determines civilizational survival, compromise becomes difficult, and escalation becomes easier to justify.

The cat between the tiger and the bear

For middle powers such as Japan, South Korea and many Southeast Asian nations, the emerging rivalry produces a deeply uncomfortable reality. Their economies depend heavily upon China, while their security frameworks remain closely tied to the US. They increasingly resemble what one Japanese observer described as ¡°the cat trapped between the tiger and the bear¡± ¡ª too economically connected to one side and too strategically dependent on the other to fully align with either power without significant risk.

Japan in particular faces a profound strategic dilemma. Tokyo depends upon American military guarantees while simultaneously remaining economically integrated with China. Japanese political culture generally prioritizes stability, predictability and institutional continuity precisely when the international environment is becoming more fragmented and improvisational.

This is precisely why inflammatory rhetoric surrounding Taiwan often proves counterproductive. by politicians such as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi may attract domestic political attention, but they contribute little to strategic stability and instead risk further complicating an already fragile regional environment. For countries like Japan, the objective should not be rhetorical escalation, but careful crisis management designed to prevent strategic competition from evolving into military conflict.

From Tokyo¡¯s perspective, the ideal outcome is obvious. Competition between the US and China should remain confined to tariffs, industrial policy, technology restrictions and diplomatic rivalry rather than escalating into military confrontation. Yet even this hope may underestimate how deeply structural tensions have become embedded inside the international system.

It is within this broader geopolitical context that Chinese criticism of Japan¡¯s recent security reforms must be understood. Beijing and Pyongyang increasingly characterize Tokyo¡¯s defense modernization ¡ª including higher defense spending, expanded alliance coordination with the US and the relaxation of arms export restrictions ¡ª as evidence of a so-called ¡°new militarism¡± (¡°ÐÂÐÍÜŠ¹úÖ÷Áx¡±). Chinese officials argue that Japan is gradually abandoning its postwar pacifist orientation and positioning itself for a more active military role in regional contingencies, particularly regarding Taiwan.

Tokyo strongly rejects this characterization. Following reports that Xi criticized Takaichi during the recent US¨CChina summit as representing a ¡°revival of new militarism,¡± Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara reiterated that the country¡¯s fundamental postwar security doctrine remains unchanged. He emphasized that Japan continues to adhere to the principle of exclusive self-defense, maintaining only the minimum level of military capability necessary for national defense, and rejected China¡¯s accusations as ¡°entirely unfounded.¡±

The real issue is no longer simply a bilateral dispute between Washington and Beijing. The deeper question concerns the future organization of the international economic and strategic order itself.

Will the world continue to operate through relatively integrated markets and shared economic rules despite growing political tensions? Or will states increasingly reorganize trade, technology, finance and supply chains around strategic security considerations and geopolitical alignment?

That is the real contest now unfolding beneath headlines about tariffs and Taiwan.

The dragon and the shattered lake

The most dangerous idea in geopolitics is inevitability. Once leaders convince themselves that conflict cannot be avoided, they begin behaving in ways that make conflict more likely. Fear becomes self-fulfilling. Suspicion hardens into doctrine. Rivalry transforms into identity.

Yet strategic paranoia is not the only danger. Strategic na?vet¨¦ can also invite coercion. Stable coexistence requires neither hysteria nor passivity, but disciplined realism capable of balancing deterrence with restraint.

This is why the growing tendency in both Washington and Beijing to describe the other side as a civilizational enemy is so dangerous. China is not Nazi Germany. America is not a collapsing empire preparing for inevitable war. Both countries remain internally dynamic, adaptive, innovative and deeply interconnected with one another.

China is not America¡¯s ¡°possible enemy¡± in the traditional sense. It is something far more complicated. China is simultaneously America¡¯s competitor, customer, supplier, technological challenger, financial counterpart, manufacturing partner and strategic rival.

The relationship is not bipolar in the Cold War sense. It is a symbiotic rivalry inside a shared system.

This distinction matters profoundly because coexistence remains not only possible but necessary. The future international order will not be decided solely through military deterrence or technological dominance. It will also depend upon whether the world¡¯s two largest powers can learn to compete without psychologically transforming one another into existential monsters.

Donald Trump and the eagle of the coming age

In another Chinese fable, a dragon sorceress descended from the mountains during an age of storms and knelt beside a silent black lake hidden beneath the clouds. Gazing into the still water, she whispered: ¡°Mirror upon the water¡¯s face, who shall command the coming age?¡±From the depths of the lake, the reflection answered: ¡°Dragon, your fire can shake the earth, but the eagle still commands the heavens.¡±

In an age of geopolitical transformation, the US seeks to preserve the financial, technological and institutional foundations of the international order. The dragon staring into the lake ultimately feared its own reflection. The tragedy of history is that great powers often recognize this only after the water has been shattered.

The decisive question of the coming century is not whether one civilization permanently triumphs over another, but whether great powers can preserve competition within limits that avoid destroying the system they both inhabit.

The US presidency remains the most powerful political office in the modern international system. Whether the eagle continues to command the skies will depend not only upon strength, but also upon wisdom, restraint and the ability to adapt before rivalry becomes catastrophe.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Dragon and the Mirror Lake: Why America and China Must Compete Without Becoming Enemies appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The regime access to the Internet on January 8, 2026, as it met nationwide protests with a brutal crackdown and that claimed the lives of thousands of unarmed civilians. This was the world¡¯s Internet blackout.

Outside Iran, headlines frame this moment as a ¡°restoration¡± of Internet access amid ongoing military escalation and political turmoil. But for many Iranians, the lived reality feels far more complicated than the language of reconnection suggests.

People emerged from prolonged informational isolation into an atmosphere still shaped by fear, surveillance, instability and emotional exhaustion. Communication remains inconsistent. Trust remains fractured. And beneath the technical discussion of bandwidth, restrictions and access lies a deeper psychological reality that is far more difficult to measure: What happens to individuals, families and entire societies when connection to one another becomes chronically interrupted?

How Iranians have endured

In reality, for many Iranians, the Internet never fully ¡°returned¡± in the way outside audiences may imagine. Access still depends heavily on virtual private networks (VPNs) used to bypass government filtering systems. They have become increasingly expensive, unstable and temporary. Once authorities identify widely used circumvention tools, they often block them, which forces citizens to purchase new ones repeatedly to maintain ordinary communication with the outside world.

Even sharing which VPN currently works has become difficult, as the landscape changes constantly. A VPN that functions one week may become useless the next. People are constantly trying new ones, sharing names with each other and hoping they work for at least a little while. For many families already under economic strain, the rising cost of reliable circumvention technology now determines who can remain connected and who cannot.

In this sense, the recent ¡°restoration¡± of Internet access has not marked a return to open connectivity. For many Iranians, it has simply meant a return to the fragile and exhausting conditions that existed before January: slowed Internet, unstable access, constant filtering and the ongoing emotional labor of navigating systems designed to make connection unreliable.

For those outside the country, Internet shutdowns are often understood primarily as political tools or technological events. For Iranians living through them, however, they become relational and psychological events as well. A disappearing checkmark on a messaging app does not merely indicate a lost signal, but uncertainty about safety, survival and reality.

During prolonged shutdowns, families outside Iran refresh applications compulsively, searching for signs of life from loved ones they cannot reach. Conversations become fragmented into moments of panic and temporary relief. Information circulates incompletely and often without verification. Videos emerge in fragments, detached from context, while audiences simultaneously confront another modern problem: the growing suspicion that what they are seeing may not be real.

Psychological damage

What makes this dynamic psychologically affecting is not only the absence of information, but the collapse of continuity itself.

Human beings regulate themselves through relational contact. We orient ourselves to one another through routines of response, communication and presence. Under ordinary circumstances, a delayed text message is an inconvenience. Under conditions of political violence, war and state-imposed disconnection, silence acquires entirely different meanings.

The nervous system begins to uncertainty as a chronic condition rather than a temporary interruption. Many Iranians both inside and outside the country have now lived through repeated cycles of blackout, fear, partial reconnection and renewed instability for years. The body learns to disruption before it arrives. People begin multiple channels simultaneously, sleeping irregularly and interpreting even minor communication changes as potential indicators of danger.

Gradually, this produces something deeper than acute stress. It alters itself.

changes not only how people feel, but also what they come to recognize as normal, tolerable or alarming. Humans gradually psychologically unbearable conditions into ordinary functioning because survival requires adaptation. The inability to reach family members for days at a time. Watching war unfold through fragmented footage. Navigating contradictory information streams. Living with the constant possibility that communication may disappear again without warning.

This adaptation creates a dangerous illusion for outside observers. The continuation of daily life is often mistaken for resilience without cost. But there is indeed an invisible cost.

Adapting to trauma

The restoration of Internet access does not automatically restore in information itself. Iran¡¯s recent crisis has unfolded during a historical moment in which digital reality itself has become increasingly unstable. Images, videos and testimony now face immediate skepticism online, and many often dismiss them as manipulated, exaggerated or AI-generated before fully examining them. Citizens attempting to document lived reality during periods of repression therefore carry a double burden: first, surviving events themselves, then struggling to convince others that those events actually occurred.

For many Iranians, this creates a painful contradiction. The world appears flooded with information, images and commentary about Iran, yet many still feel profoundly unseen. There remains a widening gap between the Iran discussed geopolitically and the Iran experienced intimately by ordinary civilians.

The disruptions gradually reshape how people experience reality itself. Communication and attention fragment, uncertainty intensifies and emotional stability becomes harder to sustain under conditions of chronic interruption. Even reality itself begins to feel fragmented. This is part of what makes Internet shutdowns so psychologically powerful within authoritarian environments. They reshape the emotional architecture through which people experience the world around them.

When reality is repeatedly interrupted or questioned, maintaining psychological coherence requires increasing emotional labor. Keeping our internal world from fracturing when everything around us is breaking isn’t a passive state; it takes a massive, invisible toll on our daily just to force a sense of meaning onto the chaos taking place.

Part of what makes this so exhausting is that nothing stays stable long enough for people to emotionally settle. Uncertainty becomes regulatory. Access, safety, visibility and communication can disappear at any moment. Under these conditions, even reconnection can carry alongside relief. A message arriving from a loved one no longer feels ordinary. It feels precious, temporary and vulnerable to interruption.

For diasporic families, these disruptions create an especially painful form of . Many people outside Iran live in a constant oscillation between connection and helplessness. They witness events unfolding in fragments while remaining physically unable to intervene. The result is a chronic state of emotional partiality: never fully informed, never fully disconnected, never fully reassured.

Yet despite repeated rupture, people continue reaching toward one another. Parents cannot reach their children. Siblings disappear from communication unexpectedly. Friends rely on brief moments of unstable access to reassure one another they are still alive.

Over time, many people begin adapting to these ruptures as though they are of life. When a threat lasts long enough, the human mind is forced to treat the abnormal as ordinary just to keep functioning day to day. This is one of trauma¡¯s most profound effects: the gradual of instability. Such prolonged exposure slowly narrows collective expectations about what people deserve from life, governance and human connection.

When unpredictability becomes chronic, emotional survival often depends on reducing expectations themselves. Lowering our expectations isn¡¯t a sign of giving up; it is an active the mind uses to protect itself from breaking under conditions it cannot control. Safety becomes temporary. Reliable communication becomes a luxury. Consistent access to reality becomes uncertain.

Preserving Iran¡¯s shared humanity

When Iranians receive a message from a loved one after weeks or months of silence, they do not experience it simply as information. It becomes confirmation that someone still exists within reach of your relational world. In this sense, Internet shutdowns do not only interrupt communication, but witnessing. They sever the ordinary rhythms through which human beings reassure one another that they are still here.

This is partly why moments of reconnection can feel emotionally overwhelming even when conversations themselves remain brief or incomplete. Beneath the relief lies . Many Iranians have spent years living within recursive cycles of fear, rupture, uncertainty and partial restoration. The nervous system does not instantly return to simply because a connection briefly reappears.

Selective restoration of Internet access raises difficult questions about visibility and inequality within the crisis itself. Who is able to reconnect? Who remains unreachable? Which voices become visible internationally and which disappear again into silence? Even access to reality becomes unevenly distributed.

And yet, despite all of this, many Iranians continue documenting, communicating and maintaining connection however they can. Families improvise around restrictions. Friends develop coded ways of checking on one another. People continue sending fragments of ordinary life alongside moments of crisis such as sharing photos of daily life, brief jokes and messages asking whether others are safe.

These small exchanges preserve something authoritarian disruption often erodes over time: relational continuity and shared humanity.

Global harm

Unfortunately, the world gradually becomes accustomed to these disruptions as well. Repeated shutdowns, partial glimpses of events and cycles of ordeal can produce a kind of global desensitization in which instability begins to appear permanent and therefore less shocking. But we must never mistake normalization for acceptability. Constant digital exposure to unyielding crises leads to global ¡ª a state where the human mind emotionally detaches from ongoing tragedy not out of a lack of moral care, but as a structural defense against relentless, unresolvable distress.

Perhaps all these stated reasons are why so many Iranians both inside and outside the country experience moments of reconnection with such emotional intensity. A simple notification sound, a familiar voice message or a delayed reply can suddenly release weeks or months of accumulated fear a person has silently held. What appears technologically minor from the outside often carries enormous psychological weight for those living within these conditions.

This is crucial in an era where public attention moves rapidly between crises. For many outside observers, Internet shutdowns become temporary headlines attached to geopolitical events. But for those living through them, uncertainty, hypervigilance and fractured trust linger long after the signal returns.

Technological disruption under authoritarian conditions is never solely technological. It becomes embedded within the emotional fabric of everyday life. It shapes how children watch adults respond to fear, how families organize connections across continents and how individuals learn to interpret silence, interruption and unpredictability.

The world often measures Internet shutdowns through statistics: percentages restored, regions affected, hours disconnected. But the more difficult reality to quantify is the emotional cost of repeatedly losing access to one another. Millions of homes, conversations and nervous systems carry that burden long after the signal briefly returns. The Internet may reconnect devices, but rebuilding psychological trust in continuity, safety and reliable connection takes far longer.

These are not merely individual psychological reactions. They become collective relational patterns that ripple across families, communities and diasporic networks over time. When a whole community is subjected to chronic instability, the fear changes the very atmosphere of how people connect and how loved ones interact with one another. Children absorb the emotional atmosphere surrounding interrupted communication. Adults internalize hypervigilance as ordinary functioning. Communities learn to navigate reality through fragments rather than continuity.

Human beings do not seek connection during crises only to exchange information. They seek reassurance that they still exist within one another¡¯s emotional worlds.

Iran¡¯s Internet shutdown wasn¡¯t so devastating because of censorship, but because it ruptured people¡¯s human connections, leaving lasting psychological and relational wounds that will continue to shape daily life, family relationships and people¡¯s sense of safety for years to come.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Internet Returned. Normalcy Did Not. appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

On October 31, 2000, a political breakthrough seemed to have been achieved. With the adoption of Resolution 1325, the UN Security Council recognized that there can be no sustainable peace without the participation and leadership of women. The document emphasized ¡°the important role of women in conflict prevention¡± and the importance of their ¡°involvement in all peace efforts ¡­ and related decision-making processes.¡± For the international community, the resolution was intended not only as a well-meaning declaration of intent, but also as a binding mandate. It urged all UN member states to systematically involve women and their experiences in peace efforts, prevent gender-based violence and consistently prosecute perpetrators.

Today, this noble project has still not been fully implemented. On the contrary, the latest on ¡°Women, Peace and Security¡± by the UN Secretariat reveals that the reality could hardly be more sobering. In 2024, 676 million women ¡ª almost 17% of the world¡¯s female population ¡ª were living in close proximity to a ¡°deadly conflict event.¡± Between 2023 and 2024, the number of women and children killed in armed conflicts quadrupled compared with the previous two-year period. Sexual violence in conflicts increased by between 2022 and 2024. In an increasingly militarized world, the grand promise of women¡¯s inclusion seems to have degenerated into empty rhetoric.

Globally, despite indisputable that women¡¯s involvement leads to more stable peace processes, women remain largely excluded. Although they make up almost 30% of parliamentarians worldwide, this presence rarely translates into real decision-making power. (25 with Kosovo) countries have women at the helm of government, such as President Maia Sandu in Moldova, President Samia Suluhu Hassan in Tanzania and President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico. In contrast, have never had a female head of state.?

The of ministerial portfolios remains highly gendered: Women cabinet ministers are most commonly appointed to areas such as education, culture, human rights, social protection and social security, social affairs, social inclusion and development, and family and children¡¯s affairs, while strategically influential portfolios such as finance and defense continue to be dominated by men. Minor statistical advances thus obscure the fact that patriarchal structures continue to solidify without far-reaching reforms.

Although numerous states have now developed national action plans to implement Resolution 1325, the practical impact on the reality of women’s lives remains limited. In 2024, women were not represented as negotiators in out of ten , accounting for only 7% of negotiating delegations and 14% of mediators worldwide.

From resolution to reality

Despite a series of discouraging statistics, rays of hope are emerging from countries where these international commitments have been implemented and are having an impact. 

Uganda is often cited as a positive example. As early as 2008, it became one of the first African states to incorporate elements of the ¡°¡± agenda into state structures and create formal spaces for women¡¯s participation.?

Uganda¡¯s comparatively high proportion of women in parliament stands at as of late 2025, surpassing rates in major Western democracies such as Germany. Nevertheless, political power remains highly concentrated. Although women hold political office, they ultimately operate within a strictly presidential system dominated by President Yoweri Museveni for almost four decades. Consequently, political opposition, civil society and independent control mechanisms remain systematically limited.?

In the realm of foreign policy, promoting gender equality signal progress, secure international recognition and attract external funding streams into the country. This narrative is particularly appealing to Western donors. However, it does little to change the structural balance of power. As the Bertelsmann Transformation Index () shows, Uganda¡¯s democratic institutions remain limited in their ability to act, while real political power continues to be reserved for a small political elite.

Nevertheless, Uganda demonstrates that progress can be achieved even in the face of the aftermath of conflict and entrenched power structures that resist sustainable change. A society can only realize its full potential when all members are included. By involving women in governance and peacebuilding processes, governments help unlock the capacities and perspectives of the entire population. Significant progress then becomes possible. Uganda has maintained peace and relative stability for over three decades. It has driven and aims to achieve middle-income status by 2040.?

This ambivalence between social and political obstacles and tangible progress for women is omnipresent in Uganda. In rural areas, women who have fewer children than the national average often receive less social respect. Furthermore, around half of all Ugandan women between the ages of 15 and 19 have experienced physical . In the agricultural sector, women are responsible for most of the physical labor, yet men continue to control the distribution of goods and profits.

These systemic conditions are changing slowly. Property rights and inheritance laws remain heavily biased in favor of men. The state has tried for years to strengthen women¡¯s legal position, but cultural and constitutional norms have prevented significant breakthroughs. For instance, a widow who uses shared land or a house after her husband¡¯s death often faces criticism and sanctions. Meanwhile, stays legally protected and culturally entrenched. The Ugandan Constitutional Court recently reaffirmed this protection. It ruled that religious freedom takes precedence over anti-discrimination protections for women.

New opportunities or strategic calculations?

Uganda has a distinctive and increasingly egalitarian corporate culture. The country is now one of seven countries worldwide that have achieved in the business world. Even though the employment rate has fallen since 2012, it remains relatively high for women compared to other sub-Saharan African nations. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic strained labor markets and hit women harder than men.

The positive developments of a more women-oriented policy show clear progress in Uganda. has declined significantly. Women can now report sexual violence to the police using special forms and trained officers. Many communities now have socially respected female peace mediators. In the economy, projects such as African Code teach young women programming skills for the IT sector, where they remain severely underrepresented. Similar training programs have been created in other historically male-dominated domains, such as automotive engineering, despite limited job opportunities for women.?

The Ugandan government provides aspiring female entrepreneurs with access to financing tools through the national gender ministry. The Uganda Program offers interest-free loans to local women¡¯s groups. The World Bank-funded promotes the scaling up of businesses through reduced interest rates. In addition, the state-owned Uganda Development Bank provides capital for larger investments through its Loans.

However, these initiatives reveal a strategic motivation for the Museveni government. The targeted promotion of women could serve as an instrument of ¡°gender diplomacy¡± to generate international prestige and secure global funding. In a system with weakened parliamentary control, these programs project Uganda as a progressive model.

No change from above without initiatives from below

Many measures in Uganda go beyond symbolic politics. They create lasting institutional structures that support women and strengthen their long-term participation and visibility. The central foundation of these developments was early and systematic anchoring of gender strategies at the national level, even if the government¡¯s motivation was driven more by power politics than feminist convictions. Unlike many other UN member states, Uganda developed national action plans for implementing Resolution 1325 at an early stage and established programs to promote women in politics, business and education. These initiatives were consistently implemented within state structures that gave them binding force. Even male officials rarely challenged them openly. 

However, it is civil society ¡ª not the state  ¡ª that influences the true success of these measures. Government structures are most effective when civil society brings them to life. In Uganda, almost all relevant programs are closely linked to international organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or external donors. This reveals the country¡¯s heavy dependence on foreign funding. Ugandan women, together with international organizations, develop ideas, implement projects and anchor them in their communities. Consequently, progress is most visible where women act as political and social actors, not just program targets.

An impressive example of this is the Bwera United Women with Disabilities Association (), which enables women with disabilities to participate fully in society. Founded by a woman suffering from polio, the organization now gives more than 20 women the opportunity to earn their own income despite their disabilities. At the beginning of the 2000s, such a development would have been unthinkable in Uganda. At that time, people with disabilities were largely marginalized. Projects such as BUDWA indicate that targeted civil society engagement can break social barriers and promote inclusion.

The key to success seems to hinge on the fact that political measures usually start at the community level. Local authorities, the police and the general population are involved in training programs. These measures take into account the concerns and customs of local residents. This approach makes it easier to establish new ways of thinking step by step.

Dependencies, roadblocks and real change

Uganda¡¯s gender equality policy remains a balancing act. On the one hand, government credit programs and support from international organizations have had an impact: Public awareness of empowerment has grown, and active NGOs help women transform their economic realities from the bottom up. However, this progress hits a rigid glass ceiling. Despite progressive legislation, a huge gap persists between aspirations and social reality.

This gap is particularly evident in land ownership. Laws have abolished male privileges, but reveal men still control nearly all land. Without property titles, women lack collateral for loans and the means to build their own assets. As a result, good initiatives often falter in the face of unequal educational opportunities and traditional claims to power. True change is taking place, but sustainable advancement remains difficult. Political programs primarily seek international prestige rather than breaking down deep-rooted patriarchal barriers in education and inheritance law.

Nevertheless, young Ugandan women today dare to dream big.

[The author¡¯s research trip to Uganda was funded by the DGVN (German Society for the United Nations).]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post From Marginalized to Key Players: Ugandan Women Advance Gender Resolutions appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

A deeply rooted problem

Pakistan¡¯s trajectory reflects a broader global pattern in which hybrid regimes struggle to balance security priorities with democratic governance and economic development. Across several regions, political systems where unelected institutions retain substantial influence often deliver short-term stability but generate long-term institutional fragility. Pakistan¡¯s evolving political landscape illustrates many of these tensions.

Since the of civilian rule in 2008, Pakistan¡¯s political order has frequently been characterized by the coexistence of democratic institutions and strong military influence. Elected governments and parliamentary structures formally exercise authority, yet key domains, particularly national security, foreign policy and aspects of economic strategy, remain heavily shaped by the military establishment. This imbalance has created a political environment in which civilian governments operate within constraints that limit their ability to exercise independent authority.

The historical roots of this arrangement run deep. Since the country¡¯s creation in 1947, democratic institutions have repeatedly struggled to consolidate authority in the face of powerful non-elected actors. With the partial exception of the political period under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto following the secession of East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, civilian governments have often functioned within a framework shaped by military influence. This enduring imbalance has profoundly shaped Pakistan¡¯s political trajectory.

Debate over Pakistan¡¯s hybrid governance intensified after the of 2022, when the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed through a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly. Although the transition followed constitutional procedures, many observers argued that it unfolded within a political environment influenced by the military establishment. The episode significantly amplified public debate about the nature of Pakistan¡¯s governance, and there has been an intensifying power struggle between the military establishment and Khan.?

Increased sense of failure

A significant share of Khan¡¯s support base comprises , often identified as Generation Z, who are digitally connected, vocal and ambitious. Generation Z has reshaped political dynamics in Pakistan, as digitally mobilized youth increasingly use online platforms for political engagement, activism and of power structures, including state institutions.?

International assessments have also reflected these concerns. In comparative politics, Pakistan has frequently been described as a hybrid regime ¡ª one in which democratic institutions coexist with substantial influence by unelected actors. Global governance assessments, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit , have repeatedly highlighted this imbalance. In its 2023 report, the index downgraded Pakistan from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime, underscoring growing concerns about democratic backsliding.

The military as a political actor

These perceptions have been reinforced by the increasingly visible role of the military leadership in diplomatic and strategic affairs. Asim Munir was promoted to the five-star rank of on May 20, 2025, becoming only the second officer in Pakistan¡¯s history to receive the title after Field Marshal Ayub Khan. A widely circulated of Munir presenting rare-earth mineral samples to US President Donald Trump during a diplomatic engagement in September sparked criticism and renewed debate about the military¡¯s expanding role in Pakistan¡¯s economic diplomacy.?

These developments, followed by the 2025 restructuring of through the 27th Constitutional Amendment, signal a shift toward a more centralized, army-centric command system ¡ª enhancing the authority of the army chief while raising critical concerns about civil¨Cmilitary imbalance and democratic oversight.

Supporters of the hybrid model often argue that such arrangements provide stability in a region marked by geopolitical tensions. Yet the promised stability has proven elusive. Instead, the coexistence of civilian and military power centers has frequently generated political uncertainty and blurred lines of accountability. Civilian governments struggle to exercise independent authority, while key policy decisions, particularly those related to national security and foreign policy, remain strongly influenced by military priorities.

Security concerns at the forefront?

One consequence of this arrangement has been the gradual militarization of national policymaking. Security considerations increasingly dominate Pakistan¡¯s domestic and foreign policy agenda. Relations with neighboring countries remain tense, reinforcing a climate of regional distrust. Recent between Pakistan and Afghanistan illustrate these dynamics, particularly given Pakistan¡¯s long-standing involvement in Afghan political affairs.

At the same time, the enduring with India continues to shape Pakistan¡¯s strategic outlook, while periodic frictions along the border with Iran further complicate the regional environment. Together, these pressures reinforce the dominance of security considerations in national policymaking.

The consequences are also visible within Pakistan itself. Islamabad has recently witnessed growing concerns about governance capacity and . Rising political tensions and sporadic security incidents reflect deeper institutional challenges that cannot be resolved through coercive measures alone.

Socioeconomic hardship

Economic pressures further complicate the picture. Pakistan¡¯s economy continues to face , declining investor confidence and recurring balance-of-payments crises. Political instability and perceptions of excessive military influence in governance discourage foreign investment and undermine long-term economic planning. Instead of focusing on structural economic reforms, national discourse often remains dominated by security narratives.

For ordinary Pakistanis, these developments are not merely abstract political debates; they are deeply personal realities. Rising fuel prices, persistent inflation and increasing costs of essential commodities have placed severe pressure on households. Economic hardship has intensified public frustration and weakened confidence in

Many citizens are also increasingly weary of Pakistan¡¯s persistent entanglement in regional tensions. Escalating confrontations with Afghanistan and periodic crises with India have already affected tourism, investment and economic stability. The has exacerbated Pakistan¡¯s socioeconomic vulnerabilities, as rising energy and fertilizer costs have driven food inflation, deepened hunger and exposed the fragility of its economic and governance structures. For ordinary people, the costs of geopolitical rivalry are immediate and tangible.

Strength through democratic power

Pakistan¡¯s recent trajectory increasingly resembles global case studies in which hybrid regimes to deliver sustained political stability or economic growth. Military institutions are designed for national defense, not for the complex political and economic management required in modern governance. When security institutions dominate policymaking, institutional imbalance and policy inconsistency often follow.

Ultimately, sustainable governance requires credible political leadership and strong democratic institutions capable of managing both domestic challenges and international relations. Countries that long-term stability typically do so through accountable civilian authority, transparent policymaking and robust democratic oversight.

For Pakistan, the path forward lies in strengthening democratic institutions, restoring civilian primacy in policymaking and prioritizing economic development over geopolitical rivalry. A gradual but decisive transition toward genuine democratic governance, where elected institutions hold primary authority over national decision-making, would help restore policy coherence and public trust.

Pakistan¡¯s future will depend on whether the country can move beyond a security-dominated governance model toward one grounded in democratic accountability, economic reform and constructive regional engagement. Without such a transition, the cycle of political instability and economic vulnerability is likely to persist, with significant consequences not only for Pakistan but also for the broader region.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Pakistan¡¯s Hybrid Regime and the Cost of Militarized Governance appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

India¡¯s response was immediate and unequivocal: Pakistan was responsible. The Indian government pointed to what it described as the involvement of Pakistan-based militant groups, specifically , a shadow organization linked by Indian intelligence to Lashkar-e-Taiba. For India, the attack fit a familiar pattern ¡ª cross-border terrorism it has long attributed to Pakistan¡¯s security establishment, which India accuses of involvement and which called the accusations baseless. It called for a neutral international investigation. India refused.?

What followed was not diplomacy. Within two weeks, India had suspended the , expelled Pakistani diplomats and on May 7 launched ¡ª missile and air strikes targeting sites deep inside Pakistani territory. Pakistan responded with four days of fighting, involving drones, missiles and air-to-air engagements. This would become the most intense military exchange between two nuclear-armed neighbors in over two decades.

On May 10, a ceasefire was held. The world exhaled. And then, almost immediately, moved on.

What the coverage missed

Most international reporting on the May 2025 conflict followed a familiar script. Two nuclear powers are on the brink. American diplomats are racing to prevent a catastrophe. Fingers hovering over buttons. That script is not wrong. But it is incomplete.

From the start, Western media coverage was shaped by an asymmetry in narrative access. Indian officials, diplomats and think-tank voices flooded English-language media within hours of the Pahalgam attack. The framing was fixed before Pakistan had issued a formal response: This was Pakistani-baked terrorism, and India had the right to respond. Outlets including , and the Associated Press ran Indian government attribution almost without qualification, while Pakistani denials were typically buried or framed as predictable deflections.?

By the time Operation Sindoor began, the editorial template was already set. India was acting. Pakistan was reacting. The possibility that Pakistan might be telling the truth ¡ª that it had no verifiable connection to Pahalgam ¡ª was treated not as a serious legal question but as a talking point.

Specific choices were made in coverage that deserve scrutiny. When Pakistan shot down Indian aircraft, including reportedly several advanced , most Western outlets gave that fact minimal prominence. When Pakistan called for a UN Security Council session to address Indian strikes on its soil, that request received a fraction of the coverage granted to India¡¯s Sindoor announcement. When the US brokered the ceasefire on May 10, President Donald Trump publicly credited American diplomacy ¡ª a claim Pakistan welcomed and India pointedly rejected.

India¡¯s refusal to acknowledge American mediation was driven by domestic political imperatives. Prime Minister Narendra Modi¡¯s government has built its political brand on muscular nationalism ¡ª an India that does not need outside help and handles Pakistan on its own terms. Admitting that a ceasefire required American intervention would have undercut that narrative at home, so India denied it. Most Western coverage, reluctant to call New Delhi out on a factual matter, largely let the contradiction stand.

Religion, military and why both matter

The Pahalgam attack did not occur in a vacuum. To understand it and India¡¯s reaction, two factors are essential: religion and the military establishment¡¯s role on both sides.

The victims of the Pahalgam attack were predominantly Hindu tourists. According to survivor accounts and early , the attackers asked victims to identify their religion before opening fire. This gave the attack a communal dimension that inflamed Hindu nationalist sentiment across India at extraordinary speed. For Modi¡¯s government, which has governed since 2014 on a platform of Hindu majoritarianism, the political pressure to respond forcefully was immense. Restraint would have been read domestically as weakness. The attack landed at the intersection of India¡¯s most volatile political fault lines ¡ª Kashmir, religion and national security ¡ª and the government¡¯s response reflected that.

On the Pakistani side, the military institution carries a weight in strategic decision-making that has no direct parallel in most democratic states. Pakistan¡¯s army has historically regarded India as an existential threat and Kashmir as unfinished business from the Partition of British India in 1947. The military¡¯s decision to name its response Bunyan-ul-Marsoos and to conduct it with visible operational restraint was itself a strategic and institutional choice ¡ª one made by an establishment that understood it was operating under the world¡¯s scrutiny and chose to act accordingly.

The Indus Waters Treaty and what its suspension means

One detail in the conflict that received far too little attention outside South Asia was India¡¯s decision to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty. 

The Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960, brokered by the , and has survived three full-scale wars between India and Pakistan. It divides the waters of the Indus river system between the two countries, giving India control of the eastern rivers and Pakistan control of the western ones. For Pakistan, this is not a technicality. The Indus basin provides water for roughly 80% of Pakistan¡¯s agriculture and supports the livelihoods of tens of millions of people. It is, in the most literal sense, a lifeline.

By suspending the treaty as a punitive measure in the wake of Pahalgam, India weaponized water, turning a foundational agreement that had outlasted decades of hostility into a pressure tool. Pakistan called it a red line. International legal scholars noted that unilateral suspension violated the treaty¡¯s own dispute resolution mechanisms. The suspension remains in place and has received a fraction of the media attention given to the missile strikes.

Marka-e-Haq: the battle of truth, and what it means today

Pakistan officially named its response Marka-e-Haq, meaning ¡°the battle of truth¡± in Urdu and Arabic. The operational name was Bunyan-ul-Marsoos, drawn from a Quranic verse in Surah As-Saff describing believers who stand in a solid, unified wall. Both names were chosen with deliberate intent.

The religious framing was not incidental. In a conflict where India had used the religious identity of the Pahalgam victims to galvanize domestic support, Pakistan¡¯s choice of a Quranic operational name communicated to its own population that this response was not merely military but based in religious principle. The wall metaphor is particularly significant: It describes defense, not advance; holding ground, not taking it.

May 10 has been designated a national commemoration day ¡ª not to celebrate a conquest, but to remember a defense. That distinction matters enormously. The sequence of events the name Marka-e-Haq encapsulates is this: We were attacked without evidence being presented. We called for an investigation that was refused. We defended our territory when our soil was struck. We accepted a ceasefire as soon as one was possible. We are still asking for dialogue.

A monument is now being built in Rawalpindi at Kutchery Chowk to honor the soldiers and civilians who gave their lives. It will carry the name Marka-e-Haq. Pakistan fought a war. Then it chose peace. The world barely noticed. But the battle of truth, as Pakistan named it, is still being fought ¡ª in diplomatic halls, in international newsrooms and in the growing body of analysis slowly correcting the record.

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Pakistan Fought a War ¡ª Then Chose Peace. The World Barely Noticed appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Rahman¡¯s ascension among Bangladesh¡¯s minority Hindu community, which faced relentless during the that began in August 2024. After the Awami League, a political party considered more secular than its rivals, was banned from contesting the 2026 elections, the BNP quickly stepped in to the void with its pledge to protect minorities.

However, the party¡¯s past treatment of minority communities continues to be a source of controversy. In 1977, the BNP¡¯s , Ziaur Rahman, was responsible for the word ¡°secularism¡± from the Constitution, and party members have repeatedly been associated with against the country¡¯s Hindu minority. Despite the BNP¡¯s less-than-ideal record on secularism and minority protection, Hindus voted for the party as the only viable alternative after the Awami League.

While Rahman has promised to restore law and order and guarantee for all religious groups, he has so far remained silent on the painful legacy of property seizures targeting primarily Hindus ¡ª a historical injustice that remains unresolved. The institutional entrenchment of the ¡ª a longstanding legislation widely criticized as discriminatory for enabling the confiscation of Hindu-owned property ¡ª has been cited by rights groups and researchers as a key factor behind the dramatic decline of Bangladesh¡¯s Hindu population share.

The demographic decline and land loss of Hindus in Bangladesh

According to the first census of 1951, conducted after the creation of Pakistan in 1947, Hindus in East Pakistan, also known as East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh), accounted for at least of the population. However, Bangladesh¡¯s 2022 national census shows that the Hindu population share has fallen to below . The proportion of Christians, Buddhists and other religious minorities has not experienced a similar decline over the same period.

Referring to the demographic contraction of the Hindu population, renowned Bangladeshi economist Professor issued a stark in 2016 stating that ¡°no Hindus will be left in Bangladesh after 30 years.¡±

Barkat¡¯s studies reveal that a large-scale outmigration of Hindus took place, with 11.3 million from Bangladesh between 1964 and 2013. This translates to an average of 632 Hindus leaving the country each day and 230,612 every year. Barkat¡¯s findings highlight that decades of land grabbing by the government under the Enemy Property Act during the Pakistan regime and the Vested Property Act have resulted in a staggering 60% of Bangladeshi Hindus becoming .?

Estimates show that between 1965 and 2006, 1.2 million Hindus lost a total of acres of land and other assets. In 2005, the US Department of State published that approximately 2.5 million acres of land were grabbed from Hindus, and nearly all the Hindus in the country were affected. In 2009, Bangladesh¡¯s reported that the Hindu community had lost as much as of their landholdings.??

In monetary terms, the total loss of land and movable assets incurred by Hindus exceeded $12 billion ¡ª roughly in 2000.?

The legal machinery behind the eviction of Hindus?

The Vested and Non-Resident Property (Administration) Act of 1974 (), or the Vested Property Act of Bangladesh, has a history marked by institutionalized marginalization and of the country¡¯s minority communities, particularly the Hindus. Critics have called it a for systematic land expropriation and for stripping Hindu families of their homes and possessions.?

The Vested Property Act traces its origins to discriminatory laws enacted in Pakistan after the 1947 , when communal violence forced millions of Hindus from both West and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to seek refuge in India.

The following year, the East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of empowered the government to acquire property for state purposes. Although intended for administrative needs in the newly formed province of East Bengal (East Pakistan), minority rights experts say it was widely used to belonging to religious minorities, particularly Hindus who had left Pakistan.

The law later evolved into the (Administration of Immovable Property) Act, authorizing the state to take over property belonging to ¡°evacuees,¡± largely Hindus who had fled to India temporarily amid the communal violence. Their assets were declared ¡°abandoned¡± and seized without compensation.

The Act established the Evacuee Property Management Committee, granting it to recover such property with minimal oversight, while barring judicial review of its actions. Many reported cases emerged of Hindu residents still residing in East Bengal who became classified as ¡°evacuees¡± with their properties being .?

Following the 1964 , the government enacted the East Pakistan Disturbed Persons Rehabilitation . Although intended to assist those affected, it barred Hindus leaving East Bengal from selling or transferring property without official approval. With limited access to authorities and fearing for their safety, many were forced to their property and flee without compensation.

In 1965, following the , the military government introduced the Enemy Property Act (), declaring India an enemy state and authorizing the takeover of assets belonging to Indian nationals. While framed as a national security measure, researchers note that in practice, the government designated Hindus as ¡°¡± of the state, regardless of their nationality, by portraying them as supporters of India, making Hindu-owned properties the primary targets of the Act.

In contrast, Muslims who migrated to India or held Indian citizenship while residing in Pakistan were not deemed as ¡°enemies¡± under the EPA, underscoring the law¡¯s . A government circular allowed any seized Muslim-owned properties to be restored to owners or heirs, while minorities whose land was declared ¡°enemy property¡± lost ownership permanently.

The EPA thus became an expedient tool to seize property from Hindus who either fled to India or stayed in East Bengal but were labelled as ¡°enemies.¡± Critics argue the Act¡¯s intent and application Hindus.?

Bangladesh¡¯s Vested Property Act as a continuation of discriminatory laws

After seceding from Pakistan in 1971 to form an independent Bangladesh, Hindus continued to face challenges despite the country¡¯s independence being achieved with India¡¯s support. In 1974, the government reinforced earlier provisions under the VPA. Although the stated objective was to take control of properties formerly owned by Pakistanis and Hindus who fled during the liberation war, the law was widely Hindus still residing in Bangladesh.

In many cases, even a was enough for authorities to seize property, and the absence of a single family member sometimes led to the confiscation of the entire family¡¯s assets.

Beyond its structural bias, the VPA enabled between local officials and powerful landowners to seize minority-owned land under the guise of state property. Some officials personally benefited, and a 1977 circular Tehsildars (local government officials) to arbitrarily designate land as ¡°enemy property.¡± They were incentivized to expand the list, enabling the takeover of Hindu-owned assets with scant regard for displaced families.?

Land grabbing was often by violence.?

Shipan Kumer Basu, president of The World Hindu Struggle , noted that apart from the VPA, cases have emerged of Hindus falling prey to by authorities in order to acquire their land more easily.

The Vested Property Return Act and its limitations

In 2001, the government led by the passed the Vested Property (Repeal) Return to return confiscated properties to the rightful owners.?

However, the new legislation imposed strict conditions on restitution. Claims were limited to properties declared ¡°enemy¡± or ¡°vested¡± February 1969 and only if such properties remained under government control, excluding large amounts of previously seized Hindu-owned land that had been sold or transferred. Properties in active government use or leased to authorized parties were also and could not be contested in court.

Claimants were required to prove and residence in Bangladesh, with a narrow 90-day filing window, effectively excluding many who had fled communal violence.

Although special tribunals were established to resolve cases within 180 days, properties not validated or filed in time to the state. The act also offered no compensation to those unable to file claims, while its narrow scope limited access to justice for many affected families, including those whose properties were excluded from the official ¡°vested¡± list.

In 2002, the new BNP-led coalition government further diluted the legislation through an amendment allowing the government indefinite time to release the list of ¡°vested¡± properties and implement the restitution process. Consequently, the return of properties did not occur, and continued. Estimates suggest that nearly 200,000 Hindu families were deprived of their lands since the BNP assumed office, and of the total incidents of land grabbing took place between 2001 and 2006 after the Return Act was enacted.?

The 2011 amendment: gaps between law and implementation?

Barkat and his team¡¯s extensive research gained significant traction and played a key role in mobilizing a coordinated nationwide demanding the implementation of the Vested Property Return Act (VPRA) and the return of properties snatched from religious minorities.

Finally, the Awami League government passed the (Amendment) Act in 2011. Between 2011 and 2013, were passed, the last being the Vested Property Return Bill. These amendments included the of the ¡°B¡± Schedule ¡ª which referred to properties listed as vested but not in government possession ¡ª and the of the ¡°A¡± Schedule, comprising properties held by the state, as ¡°restorable property.¡±

Despite the legal reforms, human rights groups note that the actual restoration of property has been limited, with thousands of cases entangled in legal proceedings. Although large areas of vested land were officially ¡°released¡± after the 2011 amendments, evidence suggests that this did not automatically translate into actual restitution. Rights groups reported that, in many cases, land was not returned even after tribunal rulings, while in 2018, the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council that no land had yet been returned to victims.?

Persistent delays, administrative resistance and noncompliance with court decisions further indicate that much of the released land did not reach the original owners in practice. According to the Human Development Research Centre (HDRC), arise at multiple stages of the process ¡ª from local administration and land offices to the courtroom involving lawyers, public prosecutors and judges. A shortage of judges and the lack of priority given to cases under the Act further slow proceedings.

The financial burden is particularly heavy for poor and middle-class claimants, many of whom struggle to afford the legal fees and administrative costs. Moreover, are often required to move cases forward. Rights activists also allege that illegal occupiers and land grabbers frequently the system, sometimes in cahoots with government officials.?

In sum, these procedural shortcomings reflect a gnawing gap between legislative intent and implementation, highlighting the limited effectiveness of the restitution process in achieving the intended outcomes.

So far, the Awami League appears to be the only political leadership to have sought redress for Hindus by attempting to restore property rights. Now, with the country¡¯s sole secular-leaning party pushed into political oblivion, the Rahman-led government has positioned itself as a defender of minority rights and as a guarantor of their protection. The continued failure to ensure effective restitution for Hindus raises concerns about the protection of their fundamental rights. This may serve as a critical test of Rahman¡¯s stated commitments to minority rights and protection, as well as his ability to secure the trust of the Hindu community that extended significant electoral support to his party.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Property Dispossession and the Exodus of Hindus in Bangladesh appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

¨C William Shakespeare,

In January 1776, , a major figure during the American Revolution, published Common Sense in support of the Patriots¡¯ cause. According to , ¡°[w]riting in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government.¡± Historians believe that Common Sense had a huge impact on the widespread support for the Declaration of Independence.

Paine wasn¡¯t always successful, however. His in England ¡°was marked by repeated failures. He had two brief marriages. He was unsuccessful or unhappy in every job he tried. He was dismissed from the office after he published a strong argument in 1772 for a raise in pay as the only way to end corruption in the service.¡± Sound familiar? Then he met in London, who gave him letters of introduction and suggested he go to America and seek his fortune there. The rest is history.?

That is why there is delicious irony in allying Paine with the reverse proposition of Brexit: the push for the UK rejoining the EU ¡ª in some capacity, ASAP. This, in effect, would be a third chapter of a long-running UK¨CEU saga. First, the UK joined the European Economic Community (), the forerunner to the EU, in 1973. Second, the UK decided to leave the EU in 2016, formally exiting in 2020 ¡ª largely due to concerns about loss of sovereignty and whipped-up negative public sentiment about the EU.

Note that Paine had a negative sentiment about the UK. That is why he left for the New World and became a Founding Father of the US. So it is ironic that Paine¡¯s words hit the nail on the head when it comes to the timing of a new UK¨CEU relationship. In 1776, Paine wrote, ¡°the time hath found us¡± in regards to the question of when the perfect time would be for America to seek independence from Britain. As this English-born American knew, is everything. That timing for the UK and the EU is now when it comes to the question of returning to a closer relationship, including full membership.

The upsides of a closer relationship

For a tighter re-union, the EU and UK each need to identify the significant net benefits of a closer, re-formalized relationship where timing is propitious. Lengthy articles, discussions and political maneuvering have held forth ad nauseam on this issue. Action is needed now. As with prophetic, peripatetic Paine, here are several reasons for and against the UK and EU seeking a ¡°de jure¡± agreement ¡ª yet again.

The biggest ¡°pro¡± identified is trade. The UK¡¯s trading partner is the EU. In 2024, the EU accounted for 41% of UK exports and 51% of UK imports. The EU imports machinery, mineral and chemical products, transport equipment, and base metals from the UK. The UK imports the same from the EU, plus foodstuffs, beverages and tobacco. Financial services, travel and telecommunications flow both ways.

The UK also has significant value-added capabilities for the EU when it comes to defense. Already, the UK has bilateral agreements with France¡¯s Lancaster House, Germany¡¯s Trinity House and Norway¡¯s Lunna House. In addition, the UK and Poland are negotiating a defense and security treaty. Plus, the UK has significant defense partnerships beyond the EU: a NATO ; the Five Eyes , an intelligence-sharing alliance with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; and the UK¨CUS Technology Prosperity , a series of financial investments from US tech firms.?

In 2024¨C25, the UK had a $80.7 (?60.2) billion defense , which is expected to increase to $83.4 (?62.2) billion in 2025¨C26. There is also the UK¡¯s nuclear , selective global force projection and lead status. This is all useful towards a stronger EU in today¡¯s and tomorrow¡¯s unpredictable relationship with the US, especially considering the US has threatened to troops from Germany.

However, the UK is struggling with budgetary issues. This is where the UK would greatly benefit from recent defense initiatives by the EU. The European Defence Fund (EDF), European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) and Security Action For Europe (SAFE) are some examples. These initiatives support EU member states, developing, strengthening and rationalizing their defense industrial base through loans and grants.

Additionally, the traditional decision-making triangle between France, Germany and the UK is now broken. Paris and Berlin have been left in a difficult ³Ù¨º³Ù±ð-¨¤-³Ù¨º³Ù±ð. This is true on many subjects, but especially on defense. This is due to the lack of military culture in modern Germany, coupled with the need to increase its defense budget and forces ¡ª a need pushed by Washington and, more importantly, by the ¸é³Ü²õ²õ¾±²¹¨C±«°ì°ù²¹¾±²Ô±ð War. A rapprochement with the UK would certainly help facilitate the defense debate between the top EU member states. In this context, the UK, France and Germany should advocate for a healthy ³¾¨¦²Ô²¹²µ±ð-¨¤-³Ù°ù´Ç¾±²õ.

Of course, there are also the practical reasons. The UK and EU are compatible geographically, socially and politically. Both entities share important common values, especially location, which can never be understated. English remains the predominant working EU language, and yet, ironically, the UK is no longer a member of the current EU!

A partnership is also completely reasonable when you consider how economic, political and cultural issues will benefit, especially when it comes to industries such as agriculture, fisheries, tourism and entertainment. In addition, the UK, as demonstrated historically, is a useful historical counterbalance (aka bulwark) ¡ª or rather a complement ¡ª to Germany and France, providing long-term political, social and economic stability and heft to the EU. As far as health or phytosanitary standards, the UK population¡¯s attitude and request for safety is now closer to the rest of Europe than to the current US deregulatory policy.

There is also the foreign policy aspect to think of. By formalizing its relationship with the EU, the UK can add a powerful ¡°anti-venom¡± to neutralize positions taken by the current US administration. Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Iran, Lebanon, NATO and the Falkland Islands are examples of American fiascos in handling international relationships. These fiascos underscore the need for the UK and the EU to come up with more forceful consolidated responses to the US on international issues.

Constant monitoring is the only way to avoid the cons

Of course, as with everything, there are downsides. In the UK¡¯s eyes, the biggest con for a UK¨CEU partnership is perceived expanded bureaucracy. This was a previous problem that caused a majority of the UK voting population to sour towards EU membership. The UK government had already kept its distance from Brussels, notably by of the common currency, the euro. Yet the idea of the loss of national sovereignty became popular amongst Brexit supporters who voted to reclaim it in 2016. The situation on the other side of the channel is, however, different from what it was ten years ago. The European Commission, under pressure from the EU member states and the European Parliament, has started a process of simplification: cutting red tape wherever necessary to ease life for citizens and businesses. This development, however, needs close attention and better communication with constituents in member states as well as the UK.

A new UK¨CEU relationship will also require continuous vigilance, monitoring and action to ensure costs don¡¯t exceed benefits, and that those benefits are collectively affordable and proportionate. It is important to mention here, however, that the benefits from being part of the ¡°EU club¡± are far from being tangible or financially quantifiable. Nevertheless, the benefits are real, including soft power attraction, stabilization and education. Again, this needs proper communication. Politicians, public intellectuals and journalists must explain to the British population the multiple dimensions of the rapprochement. The ¡°remain¡± camp never explained these complex benefits properly at the time of the Brexit referendum. In light of that experience, pedagogy is crucial.

For all the benefits of closer ties with the EU, the UK has to be watchful. The 27-member EU needs new mechanisms for coming up with its budget and handling collective decision-making. As demonstrated by Hungary¡¯s of a $103 billion EU loan to Ukraine, individual states are able to EU Council decisions because many of them require unanimity. What could happen to Ukraine could also happen to the UK. Having said that, there are no clear showstoppers within the EU barring a closer relationship with the UK. Of course, British voters who voted for Brexit ten years ago could choose to steer clear of the EU again.

A step-by-step strategy is better than a one-time approach

While the pros seem to outweigh the cons, it also seems unlikely that a direct, immediate approach to rejoin the EU would be successful. Currently, there is too much unresolved political scar tissue largely due to the UK¡¯s constant volte ¡°farces¡± and referendums. Note that referendums are often unpredictable and counterproductive. France, the driving force behind the formation of the EU, nearly voted no in a on the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which led to the founding of the EU.

David Cameron, the British prime minister from 2010 to 2016, did not learn from this French experiment. In retrospect, his foolish decision to hold a referendum on the UK¡¯s EU membership backfired spectacularly. In 2013, Cameron claimed that if his Conservative Party won the next general election, he would negotiate the UK¨CEU relationship and then hold an in/out referendum on staying in the EU. Other party leaders he only suggested a referendum to placate the Euroskeptic faction in his party and retain his hold on power. In the 2016 referendum, around of voters opted for Brexit.

British voters have been divided on this emotive issue. So, rather than a direct re-application to rejoin the EU near term, a step-by-step approach seems more sensible. This approach should also give the necessary time for a proper, fact-based communication campaign. The ¡°leave¡± campaign led by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage won the narrative war against ¡°remainers¡± Cameron and George Osborne. This time, the pro-EU Brits will have to dominate the narrative.

The pro-EU camp needs a new communication approach that tackles the issue of sovereignty. so dear to extremists. This camp must explain how, in the 21st century, the sovereignty of the UK is better protected within the EU. As a small island nation of about people, the UK does not have much leverage against behemoths like China, the US or Russia. The UK within the EU is much stronger than the UK all alone.

Yet no pro-EU campaign can shy away from addressing issues such as bureaucracy or migration. Note that both issues are increasingly being tackled more openly and effectively in the EU than a decade ago. Recently, David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary, has that the UK needs ¡°national consensus¡± on rejoining the EU. He has also said that the UK needs a reset of its relations with the EU, but admitted that rethinking the UK¨CEU relationship is a long-term, not immediate, goal.?

As Miliband said, the EU is in constant evolution. British leaders have to take this into account and explain that, just like the UK, the EU today is quite different from what it was prior to Brexit. The UK would be joining a more realistic and effective EU ¡ª this is an important argument in the narrative favorable to rapprochement. Furthermore, the world itself has changed. As pointed out earlier, the Trump administration has presided over far too many international fiascos. Changes like he Covid pandemic, Russi¨CUkraine War and the US/Israel¨CIran War have forced the EU and even the UK to change.

THE GIBRALTAR GAMBIT

Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory, shares a border with Spain, which is part of the EU. The 2026 EU¨CUK Trade and Cooperation , which established cooperation between the two entities following Brexit, did not address the Gibraltar¨CSpain border. This left many individuals and businesses in a gray area, as the UK is not part of the Schengen Area, the EU¡¯s open-border zone that allows for free travel between EU member states.

The UK and the EU arrived at the 2026 agreement after years of negotiations. This agreement is still in the process of . Yet it is a useful proxy to refer to on how to maneuver through the UK¨CEU relationship under current circumstances.?There are several key aspects of the 2026 draft agreement. The first is border freedom: The deal aims to remove la verja de Gibraltar, the fence on the border between Spain and Gibraltar. Removal of the fence enables Gibraltar to become part of the EU Schengen area. The agreement also secures the rights of over 15,000 daily commuters who live in Spain but work in Gibraltar. While technically outside the EU single market/customs union, Gibraltar will align its laws on goods, customs and travel with European at its airport and port.

In addition, the agreement ensures that Spain¡¯s sovereignty over Gibraltar remains intact while allowing for the new operational arrangements. In 1704, British and Dutch forces the Gibraltar peninsula during the War of the Spanish Succession. Spain then ceded the territory to Great Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the war. Notably, though, Spain does not acknowledge UK sovereignty over Gibraltar. During the 1980s, Spain began demands for the UK to cede the territory back.?

So, though not yet ideal or necessarily scalable, the Gibraltar gambit could provide a useful step-by-step precursor for the UK to rejoin the EU. In addition, there are accommodations regarding Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and other regions, which could contribute to a step-by-step approach toward a closer UK¨CEU relationship. 

Timing is everything and the time is now

When voters chose Brexit, they assumed that the UK would regain the bulk of its sovereignty back from the EU and avoid much of the EU¡¯s bureaucracy. That assumption has proved largely false. Moreover, the costs of Brexit are now painfully clear. These costs have been well researched and have proven to be significant, even though Brexit has been a bit of a slow burn. 

Based on almost a decade of data since the 2016 referendum, estimates suggest that Brexit had hit economic growth. By 2025, Brexit had the UK¡¯s GDP by 6¨C8%. The latest economic from the UK¡¯s Office for Budget Responsibility assumes that imports and exports will be an estimated 15% lower in the long run.?

Voters had also assumed that migration to the UK would decline. This, too, has proven false. Migration to the UK has increased since the 2016 days. Clearly, the narrative of blaming the EU for the migrant crisis during the Brexit referendum was far from true.

In a nutshell, the UK and the EU have changed, and so has the world itself. Given the increasing unreliability of the US, the rising aggression of Russia and the meteoric rise of China, the UK and the EU need each other. Their economies are intertwined inextricably. Geographically and culturally, the UK and the EU are extremely close. Therefore, a ¡°re-union¡± with the EU is in the UK¡¯s best interest. 

Yet this reunion cannot occur tomorrow or with another referendum. Sovereignty in the UK lies with the British Parliament. Therefore, an act passed by a simple majority suffices to reestablish closer ties with the EU and, in the not-too-distant future, a ¡°re-union.¡± Just as the UK should follow its well-established rules, so should the EU. Returning to Paine¡¯s Common Sense, ¡°the time hath found us,¡± and we need to act now. 

[ edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post A Different UK Within a Different EU in a More Dangerous World appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

A predicted landslide becomes reality

The election has delivered Plaut¡¯s expected outcome. Abiy¡¯s Prosperity Party secured an overwhelming victory, reinforcing its dominance over Ethiopian politics.

Plaut argues that the result was never seriously in doubt. Although opposition parties participated and more than 10,000 candidates contested parliamentary and regional council seats, he maintains that none posed a meaningful challenge to the ruling party. Opposition groups had already questioned the credibility of the process, arguing that the vote lacked the conditions necessary for fair competition.

Plaut acknowledges that voter registration and mobilization efforts were extensive, but argues that participation alone could not guarantee legitimacy. Reports from local communities suggest that access to fertilizer and other essential services could be linked to voter registration, creating pressure on citizens to engage with the process. More broadly, he contends that the political environment favored the ruling party so heavily that the election functioned less as a competitive contest than a confirmation of existing power.

The key question was not whether people would vote, but whether they could do so in conditions that allowed genuine political choice.

The contrast between Addis Ababa and rural Ethiopia

Khattar Singh notes that Ethiopia¡¯s capital has become a symbol of the government¡¯s modernization agenda. Images of Addis Ababa¡¯s renovated streets and new developments have attracted attention abroad, with some observers comparing the city favorably to urban centers elsewhere in the developing world.

Plaut does not dispute the visible transformation. He acknowledges that parts of the capital have been rebuilt and modernized, creating an image of rapid progress. Still, this picture captures only a small part of the country¡¯s reality. Redevelopment projects have displaced residents from older neighborhoods, generating resentment among some communities affected by the changes.

More importantly, Plaut stresses that Ethiopia remains overwhelmingly rural. While international media and foreign visitors often focus on Addis Ababa, most Ethiopians live far from the capital. Understanding the country requires looking beyond showcase projects and examining the conditions faced by ordinary citizens in rural communities.

That perspective was largely missing from coverage of the election. The concerns of farmers, local communities and residents of conflict-affected regions received far less attention than the government¡¯s development narrative.

Elections amid conflict

A central theme Plaut discusses is the extent to which ongoing conflicts limit the reach of the Ethiopian state itself.

Plaut points to the northern Tigray region, where the devastating war of 2020¨C2022 left at least 600,000 people dead and produced widespread atrocities. Although large-scale fighting has subsided, the region remains politically fractured and unstable. He argues that meaningful participation there was extremely difficult.

The situation in the states of Amhara and Oromia is similarly troubling. In Amhara, the Fano militia controls significant parts of the countryside and continues to clash with government forces. In Oromia, which contains roughly a third of Ethiopia¡¯s population, insurgent groups operate in areas where government authority remains limited.

These realities lead Plaut to question whether a truly national election was possible in Ethiopia. Large sections of the country faced security conditions that restricted campaigning, voting and independent observation. The government could and did organize polling where it maintained control, but significant portions of Ethiopia remained beyond its effective reach.

The election result, therefore, does not resolve the underlying conflicts that continue to shape Ethiopian politics. Instead, it highlights the contrast between the government¡¯s electoral mandate and the persistent instability affecting much of the country.

Regional rivalries and growing tensions

The conversation also places Ethiopia¡¯s election within the wider geopolitical landscape of the Horn of Africa.

Although Abiy received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for helping end decades of hostility with neighboring Eritrea, Plaut argues that relations between the two countries have deteriorated. He points in particular to Abiy¡¯s increasingly forceful statements regarding Ethiopia¡¯s need for access to Red Sea ports. For Eritrea, whose independence struggle lasted three decades, control of those ports remains a core national interest.

Plaut describes a region increasingly divided into competing camps. Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates have developed close ties, while Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and the Sudanese Armed Forces have found common ground on several regional issues. These alignments overlap with ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ civil war, creating a complex web of rivalries that extends beyond any single conflict.

Reports of cross-border military activity and external support for armed groups suggest that tensions are already spilling across national boundaries. These developments create a volatile environment in which local disputes can quickly acquire regional significance.

Media blind spots and Ethiopia’s future

The discussion concludes with two issues that Plaut believes receive insufficient attention from international observers. The first is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which enjoys broad support across Ethiopia. Built largely through domestic financing after international lenders declined support, the hydroelectric project has become a symbol of national pride and a rare point of consensus in an otherwise divided political landscape. Ethiopians view the dam as proof that the country can pursue ambitious development projects on its own terms.

The second concerns the difficulty of reporting on Ethiopia itself. Independent journalism faces significant obstacles, particularly during periods of political tension. Foreign reporters can struggle to obtain visas, while local journalists operate under increasing constraints. He points to the Tigray war as a striking example. Despite being one of the deadliest conflicts in the world at the time, independent reporting from the front lines was exceptionally limited.

These restrictions create major gaps in international understanding of Ethiopia¡¯s political and security challenges. For Plaut, the problem is not simply what the world reports about Ethiopia, but what it cannot report. Without greater access to events on the ground, outsiders risk misunderstanding both the country¡¯s elections and the deeper forces shaping its future.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post FO Talks: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Looks to Secure a Landslide Win in Ethiopia¡¯s Election appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The of caught European leaders off guard. Unlike past foreign interventions, the US did not present a clearly articulated and coherent (an event or action that justifies or allegedly justifies a war or conflict) to its domestic audience, nor did it seek to win the buy-in of its Western allies before initiating hostilities. Instead, the fluidity of Washington¡¯s justification of its war, ranging from stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons to regime change, to feeling the need to a unilateral Israeli action, stood in contrast with the concreteness of the hard choices confronting Europe.

While Washington workshopped explanations for the war, Europe to formulate a unified response to meet the moment. This initial hesitation gave way to a disjointed set of , with some European governments aligning with the US while others questioned the legality of US¨CIsraeli strikes. , eager not to relive the public backlash that followed its involvement in Iraq, denied the use of jointly-operated military bases in its territory, setting up a with US President Donald Trump. Europe¡¯s scattered posture reflects the challenge of walking a fine line between appeasing the US, its main partner, and becoming a scapegoat for an unpopular war.

Facing difficulties in resolving the war on its own, President Trump called for allies to deploy warships alongside the US Navy to help open the Strait of Hormuz. While France demonstrated a resolve to protect its interests by an aircraft carrier group to the region, there has been a general reluctance among Europeans to . Adding this to the decision of some European countries to close their airspace or prohibit the use of jointly operated bases has fueled Make America Great Again¡¯s (MAGA) long-standing portrayal of Europeans as free-riders, unwilling to stick their necks out to protect shared interests. Though criticism of NATO from the White House is nothing new, comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio the alliance¡¯s value are an unmissable signal.

Security squeeze

Despite their reluctance to get involved, the security and economic spillovers of the conflict have become too significant for Europe to confine itself to rhetoric. What began as a joint US¨CIsraeli meant to a few days against the Iranian nuclear program, missile capabilities and leadership has a regional conflict with global implications, grinding on into its third month. Whether or not Europe agrees with the US rationale, the breadth of the war¡¯s impact makes detachment , compelling Europe to stand up for its .?

Europe has often justified its distance in the conflict by that ¡°this is not our war.¡± However, within days of the US¨CIsraeli strikes, Iranian drones were launched at a UK Royal Air Force base in , and NATO missiles over Turkey.?

Tehran¡¯s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping has exposed Europe¡¯s dependence on both and imports. The EU had taken to wean itself off Russian oil and gas in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. That progress is now under threat, with rising causing inflation and fuel shortages across various industries. With the spring planting season already underway, European farmers are to access the fertilizer they need at an affordable cost, threatening to drive up food prices.

While the energy squeeze constitutes a problem for Europe, it has proved a boon for Russia.? Moscow is seeing fossil fuel jump to a two-year high, which could serve as a to Ukraine¡¯s intensifying campaign on Russia¡¯s oil export infrastructure. The Trump Administration¡¯s decision to and then a sanctions waiver until May 16 also contributed to Europe¡¯s woes. Given a pass by the US, Russia¡¯s President Vladimir Putin might be increasingly insulated from economic pressure, while European leaders face growing discontent in their electorates.

Turning with the times

These developments underscore how difficult it has become for Europe to insulate itself from the wider repercussions of the conflict. Furthermore, these should serve as a wake-up call to Europe and NATO that blind faith in America can no longer be placed. 

The Trump Administration¡¯s whiplash policy on Ukraine, Greenland, and now Iran is not a one-off incident, but rather evidence of a broader pattern in which Washington is steadily eroding its credibility on the global stage. Although disagreement between the transatlantic allies is to be expected, Europe cannot allow itself to be cowed into joining costly fights because one ally, no matter how important, has made a decision unilaterally. 

Instead, European leaders ought to engage in the war on their own terms, with a unified voice that signals strength. They should continue to resist alignment with the US¡¯ military-first approach. After the White House the UK for being slow to offer help, Europe may find it more palatable to engage the issue on its own terms.?

Europe¡¯s extensive network of military bases and logistics centers, which facilitates US operations in the Middle East, provides the continent with that should be used to prevent further escalation of the war. Europeans ought to strive to push for an end to the conflict; the sooner stability in the Strait is restored, the sooner pressure can be directed toward constraining Russia, while allowing the US to redirect military technology and capabilities back toward Ukraine.?

Europe can monitor activity in the Strait to ensure freedom of navigation and safe transit. To that end, the UK and France on April 17 that they will be spearheading a mission similar to the coalition of the willing to secure maritime trade routes in the Strait of Hormuz. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has readiness to team up with Gulf countries to create alternative energy export routes. Together, these moves represent a constructive step forward supporting the principle of freedom of navigation and improving energy security.?

Stop start

With Washington and Tehran still miles apart in stop-start peace negotiations, Europeans could offer to support negotiations. While America today is not the ally they remember, Ursula von der Leyen emphasized that Europe the world as it is: ¡°The idea that we can simply retrench and withdraw from this chaotic world is simply a fallacy.¡± Only with a coordinated effort to advance a diplomatic resolution and restore safe navigation does Europe have the chance to prove that the continent can stand as an equal partner.?

The Iran war may not have begun as Europe¡¯s war, but its consequences have become Europe¡¯s problem. The Iran crisis is sapping Europe¡¯s resources and political capital and drawing its attention away from the Russian threat in Ukraine. Europe should seek to drive a wedge between Iran and Russia, isolating the latter. Expediting the peaceful resolution to the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz is the best action Europe can take today. 

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Will Iran be Europe¡¯s Zeitenwende? appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

A major step was announced on April 7, with the presidential decree creating the Servicio Universal de Salud (Universal Health Service [UHS]), which aims to integrate the country¡¯s three main public health institutions ¡ª Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), Institute of Social Security and Social Services for State Workers (ISSSTE) and IMSS-Bienestar (IMSS-Wellbeing) ¡ª so that citizens can receive care at any public facility regardless of their previous affiliation. For implementation, the initiative will rely heavily on digital platforms.

This integration is intended to improve access and reduce fragmentation, but it faces significant logistical and infrastructural hurdles. Out-of-pocket spending currently accounts for of total health expenditure, exposing households to substantial financial risk and catastrophic expenses. In Mexico, such high out-of-pocket costs reflect the limited financial protection offered by the current system and underscore the importance of progressing toward comprehensive coverage.

Historical legacy and policy inheritance

Mexico built its health institutions for a nation that never existed. IMSS, founded in 1943, and ISSSTE, established in 1959, were designed as social security institutions for formal sector industrial and government workers, respectively. The country¡¯s largely informal labor force, as well as individuals from rural and Indigenous communities, have historically remained outside the formal health care system. Successive economic crises, fiscal austerity and the 1990s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) weakened public infrastructure while the private sector grew rapidly. Earlier attempts at universalization .

Achieving effective UHC by 2030 will be extraordinarily challenging. According to the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data, 5.9% of GDP on health, with primary health care receiving a disproportionately low share, far less than the average for OEDC nations of around 9.3%. Per capita spending stands at just $1,588, compared to the of $5,967. This underinvestment severely limits the capacity to expand and improve primary and community-based services.

Hospital infrastructure is also critically limited: Mexico has only 1.0 hospital bed per 1,000 inhabitants ¡ª one of the lowest (or near-lowest) in the OECD (average 4.2). Life expectancy is 75.5 years, about 5.6 years below the OECD average. Preventable mortality (243 per 100,000) and treatable mortality (175 per 100,000) remain substantially higher than (145 and 77, respectively).

Past digital health initiatives have faltered due to incompatibility among data systems, high costs and , as noted in?the ?comparative analysis of electronic health records. Previous pilot projects to create integrated electronic health records encountered delays and budget overruns, largely because of incompatible platforms and . These challenges highlight the need for robust, interoperable digital systems supported by reliable infrastructure.

Today, chronic conditions predominate in Mexico¡¯s health burden. Overweight and obesity affect approximately?75.2% of the adult population, with obesity affecting approximately 37% of adults (higher among women at around 41%). Diabetes prevalence continues to rise, with many cases undiagnosed and regional disparities persisting, according to the latest .?

The Healthy Republic Plan and recent advances

The Plan Rep¨²blica Sana focuses on five core objectives: strengthening prevention, reducing waiting times, renewing IMSS-Bienestar infrastructure, modernizing drug procurement and digitizing medical records. Yet these are evolutionary steps rather than a complete transformation.

The April 2026 decree for establishing the UHS may add momentum. (starting January 2027) proposes cross-institutional care for key services, including emergencies, high-risk pregnancies, heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer diagnoses and ongoing treatments. A?Universal Health Credential?is rolling out progressively, beginning with adults aged 85 and older in April 2026. Registration for the general population is scheduled throughout the remainder of 2026, with the goal of broad coverage by the end of the year.

(The Clinic Is Ours) was developed as part of Mexico¡¯s new Health Care Model for Wellbeing (MAS-BIENESTAR). It aims to guarantee free, high-quality healthcare for uninsured and underserved populations ¡ª specifically people without access to social security institutions such as IMSS or ISSSTE, including in rural areas, indigenous communities, and low-income urban neighborhoods.

Importantly, however, the program¡¯s focus is on improving the physical infrastructure and equipment of the clinics themselves, rather than on the community¡¯s actual health needs. There are no opportunities for broader participatory governance or decision-making in health service planning, monitoring or policy formulation. Ultimately, approval of the rests with the health authority. In this context, many residents lack any real sense of participation or ownership in .?

New pharmaceutical sovereignty initiatives seek to boost domestic production and reduce . However, the to the National Compendium of Health Supplies (CNIS) allow distributors to request product inclusions more easily and removed the requirement to publish maximum unit prices. These changes have raised concerns about reduced transparency and risks of less rigorous oversight, higher prices and more opaque procurement practices.

Other promising elements of the?Plan Rep¨²blica Sana?include expanded telemedicine and digital integration ¡ª such as a universal electronic health record, the digital health credential and remote . However, these efforts face serious challenges in that they lack sustained new funding and clear .

Meaningful consultation with frontline workers and communities has also been virtually absent. As a result, the initiatives risk encountering familiar problems: medicine and equipment shortages, staffing gaps and infrastructure deficits. Digital advances may also widen inequalities in regions lacking reliable electricity, internet and basic supplies. 

Persistent challenges: fragmentation, workforce and governance

The vision of a seamless network linking IMSS, ISSSTE and IMSS-Bienestar faces real barriers. Legal, fiscal and operational differences ¡ª including incompatible data platforms and longstanding institutional fragmentation ¡ª have caused past digital integration attempts to fail. 

Medical training still prioritizes specialization over primary and community care. New public universities have increased enrollment, but curricula remain hospital-centric and few incentives exist for people to become family doctors or community health workers. analysis notes that medical curricula in Mexico continue to emphasize hospital-based specialization, with limited attention to primary care and community health.

According to the 2021 Mexico: health systems review, while efforts are underway to promote primary care roles, the medical education system still faces significant obstacles in fully integrating community-based training and providing for clinicians to practice in rural and other underserved areas.

Policy directions for meaningful progress

Delivering on the Plan Rep¨²blica Sana and the new UHS will require three core shifts:

• Make prevention the organizing principle. Balance digital and technological targets with sustained investment in community-based care, public health education and addressing social determinants such as nutrition, environment and inequality.?
• Advance decentralization with transparency. Empower regional and municipal teams with resource control while mandating open procurement data and performance reporting.?
• Strengthen collaboration and accountability. Incorporate frontline workers and citizens into planning, organization and evaluation. Shared governance and transparent, measurable targets will be essential.

The path forward

President Sheinbaum¡¯s administration has linked health policy to broader social welfare goals more explicitly than at any time since the 1940s. Her April 2026 presidential decree establishing the Servicio Universal de Salud is a significant step toward dismantling fragmentation and advancing the constitutional right to health for all.

However, true transformation by 2030 will require more. It demands sustained increases in public health investment, a reorientation of the medical workforce toward prevention and chronic disease management, transparent governance and genuine interoperability of data and services. If these conditions are met, Mexico could move substantially closer to realizing a Healthy Republic ¡ª one that delivers equitable, high-quality care while effectively addressing the heavy burden of chronic conditions.

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Recent years have seen the steady erosion of what seemed to many like a pretty good idea ¡ª the fundamental notion that free people should be able to find God where they want to, when they want to and, importantly, if they want to at all. After centuries of religious zealotry at the heart of so much human misery for those who didn¡¯t drink the Kool-Aid of the day, the people who worked hard to create a top-flight America for White Christians somehow decided that it wasn¡¯t necessary for everyone to be a White Christian, nor that the federal government be empowered to declare a state religion.

In fact, it seemed that racism took up enough of the odious societal space that the downside of religious freedom paled in comparison. For much of America¡¯s post-Constitution history, it seemed enough for many White Christians to vilify Black people, without having to throw in their growing distaste for those who were not Christians at all.

So what happened? It isn¡¯t very clear to me what happened, but I think this most recent American outbreak of mindless religious zealotry can find its roots in the ever-popular from the Middle Ages. Additional inspiration can be found in the Inquisition and, closer to home, the execution of witches and the like in Salem, Massachusetts. At its core, today¡¯s religious zealotry, like its antecedents, is religion usurped to drive a cruel and immoral agenda.

Christianity as political theater

Just a couple of weeks ago, in a show of governmental devotion to religious devotion, the Trump administration a Christian American lovefest on the very public Washington Mall. There was nothing subtle about this one. High-profile Christian ¡°celebrities¡± and high-profile administration figures and Congressional flaks couldn¡¯t get enough of that old-time religion and the palpable desire for God to bless them and their version of America. On its face, this is disgusting enough.

However, and more importantly, governmental sponsorship of and participation in this fraught White Christian nationalist performance theater does not square with the US Constitution¡¯s historical devotion to the separation of church and state. Further, it makes a mockery of the underlying constitutional principle that each of us should be free from our government¡¯s choice of religious winners and losers.

To better understand right-wing America¡¯s enthusiastic embrace of symbolic , it is critical to note that there does not appear to be any requirement for adherence to actual Christian orthodoxy. Far from it. So many in today¡¯s right-wing America identify with both Christianity and the Republican Party, including its patently cruel, racist, socially unjust and culturally exclusionary political and social reality. As a casual observer, there does not seem to be much there for to love.

Further, there is absolutely no sense of Christian irony in the added infusion of right-wing constitutional orthodoxy into the mix. While there is a thrilling rush to maximize governmental resources to trample on the separation of church and state, there seems to be an even more frenzied effort to exclude governmental resources from being used to provide a measure of freedom from the tyranny of in the nation. It is worth remembering that many of these same folks see abortion as murder of a viable human being while on the for condemned human beings, all in God¡¯s name.

The myth of a Christian Nationalist America

To many viewing the world¡¯s problems in general, and America¡¯s problems in particular, this latest retread of the dark side of religious zealotry may seem of little significance. Please don¡¯t be fooled; there are of pulpits in America spewing to the flocks of ¡°true¡± believers some of the most vile, racist and Christian nationalist propaganda you will find anywhere on America¡¯s airwaves and under America¡¯s spiritual rocks. Wrapping Christian orthodoxy and right-wing constitutional orthodoxy around the ¡°message¡± only makes it more persuasive and more pernicious.

In this context, President Donald Trump has shown a venal capacity to espouse so much of the mythology of the American Dream while at the same time using Christian symbolism to define the dream for his followers. This hallelujah version of the ¡°dream¡± has been handed down by generations of unscrupulous Christian politicians, preachers, educators and historians. Now, it permeates so much of America¡¯s public space that their version of the ¡°dream¡± can be manipulated to advance the corrupt, cruel and immoral ends of those controlling that space.

That is what is at the heart of right-wing Christian nationalist thinking. It feeds on the notion that someone is trying to take away THEIR America. Trump and his acolytes are right about this part. WE ARE trying to take away THEIR America, because theirs is an America that never existed and never will. Unfortunately, WE seem, at the moment, to be losing that fight.

THEY are fighting today for a return to a ¡°glorious¡± past that was only the stuff of legend. Their past is a past of happy native Americans sharing the bounty of the land, smiling Black slaves tilling the soil for their better future, and so many women so content to be free of the burdens of owning property and voting. And oh, the glory of God¡¯s bounty.

Unfortunately, the real past exposes an America always riven by social and racial injustice, income inequality, subjugated women, despised immigrants and cultural rigidity. So, as God reemerges as an avenging angel and the message becomes uglier by the day, every effort will be made by the White Christian nationalists and their crowds to conveniently use their God to keep their momentum going for a governmentally enforced return to their delusional past.

So, make no mistake. There is nothing innocent about this erasure of the line between church and state. It is today¡¯s crusade. It is fueled by righteousness and armed, and it has captured the apparatus of the federal government of the United States of America. 

If you think that upcoming elections will somehow save the nation from those who are in charge today, think again. I believe they have a plan, and that plan leaves little room for their failure.

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The emergence of fundamentalisms

In both the Middle East and the US, an unexpected phenomenon occurred. In her book The , Karen Armstrong summarized it in the following terms:

The fundamentalist assault took many by surprise. They had assumed that religion would never again be a major player in politics, but in the late 1970s, there was a militant explosion of faith ¡­ This sudden eruption of religion seemed shocking and perverse to the secularist establishment. Instead of embracing one of the modern ideologies, which had proved so effective, these radical traditionalists quoted religious texts and cited archaic laws and principles that were quite alien to the twentieth-century political discourse.

In 1979, the triumphed in Iran, unleashing a movement that would completely change the face of the Middle East. Although initially identified with the Shiite faith, Islamism would subsequently extend its overwhelming influence to the Sunnis. The hostage crisis of 1979, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan (although not in Iraq), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and even the current war in Iran can be counted among its consequences. -0[

That same year, the so-called ¡°¡± movement also emerged in the US. Through it, extreme expressions of Baptism, Pentecostalism and other manifestations of dissident Protestantism not only converged but forcefully intruded into American politics. The following decades would attest to its true impact. Christian nationalism, social conservatism and even the current cultural war significantly fall under its consequences.

Although totally independent in nature, these two fundamentalist movements seemed to represent, in Karen Armstrong¡¯s , ¡°an atavistic return to the past.¡±?

China¡¯s economic opening??

But 1979 also put in motion China¡¯s economic takeoff. Given that, as a result of that process, this country became a rival superpower to the US, threatening to surpass it, this represented the most meaningful of the three events that took place that year. Especially so, as war between the two countries could ensue as a result of China?s rise.

Beginning in 1979, Chinese Leader initiated an ambitious process of economic change based on a new interpretation of the dangers posed by the international order. This implied a convergence between international relations and economics, as the two pillars of his proposal were the abandonment of former Leader ¡¯s ¡°war and revolution¡± thesis and the entry into an era of ¡°economic opening without political change.¡±

The Mao Zedong era, indeed, had been characterized by the conviction that war was inevitable. This led to an emphasis on economic policies designed to sustain a two-front war ¡ª with both the Soviet Union and the US. As a result of this conviction, economic resources had been dispersed, including to costly, mountainous areas ill-suited for the production or movement of products. This also entailed avoiding vulnerable coastal areas, which had historically been the epicenters of China¡¯s economy. 

Based on his interpretation of the international environment, Deng concluded that a world war was improbable in the foreseeable future. Under such conditions, the Maoist policy of ¡°war and revolution¡± could be replaced with another one of ¡°peace and development.¡± In Joshua Cooper Ramo¡¯s : ¡°It was one of those great strategic intuitions by a historical leader, a coup d¡¯oeil (¡°a quick glance¡±) that defined the basis of all that came afterward.¡±

This would translate, a few years later, into a foreign policy defined by non-aggression, non-intervention and peaceful coexistence with all countries, regardless of their political systems.

An indigenous model

However, Deng not only prioritized economic development but also emphasized doing so in an endogenous way. He called it ¡°socialism with Chinese characteristics.¡± Others, however, of ¡°capitalist measures with Chinese characteristics.¡±

This implied a highly pragmatic model, far removed from the shock therapies that characterized the then fashionable Washington Consensus. A set of policies that was causing much damage in different places around the world. Indeed, instead of the inflexible directions of the former, China chose a flexible path that allowed for trial and error. 

By clearly defining goals through strategic planning, the country allowed itself ample tactical room for maneuver, leaving space to react to undesirable effects or changing circumstances. According to Deng¡¯s aphorism, this was tantamount to ¡°crossing the river by feeling the stones.¡±

Such a took a pathway of progressive stages and periodic adjustments in which transitory policies acted as bridges from one stage to the following:

The reform process has been gradual and pragmatically introduced in progressive stages that build on, and adjust to, experience in the development of greater market forces in the economy. This incrementalism involves the interaction of initial conditions with transitional policies.

But if this process differed from the Washington Consensus, it also differed from Perestroika in the Soviet Union, which underwent simultaneous economic and political liberalization. An experiment that brought with it the collapse of the Soviet system. China, by contrast, pursued economic liberalization under political control. Not surprisingly, in 1989, Deng preferred the bloody of the student movement demanding democratization rather than allowing the Chinese Communist Party to lose political control of the process.

By remaining between the extremes represented by the Washington Consensus and Perestroika, Deng Xiaoping achieved the success of his economic liberalization model.   

Gradualness

The model¡¯s gradualness was evident in the management of its export and domestic production industries. The former was channeled through special areas that subsequently expanded, while the latter saw a progressive reduction of the protection assigned to them.

The establishment of the in 1979 began the opening up of the Chinese economy to foreign investments. Its initial centers were in Southeast China, in the newly created cities of Shenzhen, Zhulai and Shantou in the province of Guangdong, and Xiamen in the province of Fujian. In 1983, eight additional zones for priority investments were added in the Beijing-Bohai Bay area, the Shanghai Zone, the Wuhan Zone and the Pearl River Delta Zone. In 1984, 14 additional coastal cities were opened up for foreign investment in Tianjin, Shanghai, Dalian, Qinhuangdao, Lianyungang, Nantong, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Zhanjiang and Beihai. And so on and so forward.

Meanwhile, was being reduced in direct relation to the capacity of Chinese companies to face foreign competition: 55% in 1982, 24% in 1996 and 12% in 2003. In 2006, as a result of China¡¯s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, tariffs went down to 6%. As a matter of fact, by joining the WTO, economic opening ceased to be confined to special economic zones and spread to the whole country.

The greatest economic growth in human history

The was not only gradual but also strategically planned to promote specific sectors and activities through selective policies. The gradualness of this process, though, should not make us lose sight of its velocity. The extraordinary magnitude of changes that occurred in just a few decades is the best proof of its speed, which, according to the World Bank, resulted in the ¡°fastest sustained expansion of a major economy in history.¡± Between 1979 and 2018, such economic growth averaged 9.5% a year. This not only lifted 800 million people out of poverty, but also allowed China to double the size of its economy every eight years. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2014, China the US as the largest world economy on a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis, which resulted in an even more impressive outcome when bearing in mind that in 1980, China¡¯s GDP on a PPP basis was just one-tenth of that of the US.

The above implies having moved from an ¡°¡± economy to the world¡¯s largest economy on a PPP basis in little more than four decades. exemplifies this dimension of change: a small city of 20,000 inhabitants in 1979, it had a population of 17.5 million in 2020.?

A strong return to State intervention and a clear subordination of the economy to politics has taken place since President Xi Jinping¡¯s arrival to power, which has created numerous problems for that country¡¯s economy. However, no one can deny the magnitude of what has been achieved since Deng¡¯s time. 

Without doubt, among the three major climatic events that took place in 1979, the Chinese economic opening had the greatest historical significance. Although confronting Islamism seemed to be America¡¯s top priority for a time, this ended up being a big distraction in relation to that country¡¯s real challenge: China¡¯s forceful emergence. One, that seems to represent the decline of the US and the Western dominance, and the advent of a new Eastern epoch led by China. 

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I¡¯ve got them

We must understand his fulsome endorsement of FIFA¡¯s World Cup tournament and his friendship with FIFA President Gianni Infantino in this context. The quadrennial competition to determine the world¡¯s best national football team is due to kick off in June; most matches will take place in the United States, with others staged in Canada and Mexico. Trump has already spoken of the tournament almost possessively. In a speech celebrating America¡¯s hosting rights for both the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, he declared: ¡°I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d be the president when this happened ¡­ but strange things took place, and now I¡¯ve .¡±

I¡¯ve got them. That giveaway says much about Trump¡¯s political imagination. His sudden enthusiasm for the world¡¯s game is not sporting conversion. It¡¯s hardnosed political recognition.

Sport has long served as a uniquely effective political vehicle. Since at least the of 1936, governments have understood international sports tournaments as instruments of prestige, legitimacy and symbolic projection. Adolf Hitler¡¯s Nazi regime used the Berlin Games to advertise Germany¡¯s resurgence and organizational power before a global audience. During the Cold War, Olympic medal tables became for ideological superiority. Argentina¡¯s military junta exploited the 1978 to project domestic stability. More recently, Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all used sport to enhance international standing and reshape global perceptions.

All these cases demonstrated what political scientists call ¡°soft power:¡± the ability of nations to generate influence through attraction, image and cultural kudos rather than military force or economic coercion. Association football has become perhaps the most effective soft-power instrument in existence because, unlike baseball or American football, it¡¯s played and watched almost everywhere on earth. It¡¯s one of the few truly universal cultural languages. Trump appears to get this.

America and the world¡¯s game

For decades, the US treated football as a vaguely foreign pastime, linguistically quarantining it behind the term ¡°soccer,¡± as if reluctant to grant it parity with America¡¯s own sporting traditions. The NFL remained the country¡¯s dominant spectacle, baseball its source of mythology and basketball its most successful cultural export. Soccer existed somewhere at the margins: suburban, imported, faintly European. (The term soccer in Britain as a colloquial shortening of ¡°association football.¡±)

That changed gradually, at first after a false start, the North American Soccer League (NASL) after 16 years in 1985 and later with the more successful Major League Soccer (MLS), abetted by the growth of Latin audiences and the astonishing of the US women¡¯s national team, which transformed football into a platform for progressive politics, gender equality and LGBTQ+ advocacy. Yet even now, football occupies a peculiar place in American culture. It is hugely popular with women, commercially and globally connected, but still lacks the emotional appeal enjoyed by the NFL or college football.

Trump doesn¡¯t need Americans to love football in the traditional sense. He only needs to know that the 2022 World Cup reached billions of viewers across television and digital platforms, with individual matches drawing audiences on a scale unmatched by any domestic American sport. An estimated people engaged with World Cup media in some way. The average global live audience of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 was 175 million viewers.

This means the World Cup offers something no domestic American sport provides: planetary presence. It allows an American president to stand symbolically at the center of a global ritual involving flags, anthems, borders and national competition. The tournament may market itself as universal and inclusive, but its engine remains insular rivalry, national attachment and collective identity. Fans don¡¯t root for humanity, planetary salvation or peace on earth: They support Argentina, Brazil, England, Nigeria or the US. Or Iran.

This is where Trump¡¯s opportunism becomes especially significant. His relationship with FIFA appears fundamentally transactional ¡ª a term frequently used loosely, but which here refers to a style of leadership based less on shared values than on reciprocal usefulness and strategic advantage. FIFA gains proximity to American political power and the commercial benefits of staging the tournament in the world¡¯s largest media market. Trump gains association with the largest sporting spectacle on earth.

Infantino himself seems eager to encourage the relationship. After awarding Trump the FIFA Peace Prize, he : ¡°Objectively, he deserves it.¡± The remark sounded almost self-parodic, though perhaps unintentionally so. But modern political spectacle often hovers somewhere between sincerity and parody. Trump is very familiar with this liminal space. He also appears to understand something many critics of globalization still miss: Globalization did not erase nationalism; it simply provided a world stage.

Globalization¡¯s greatest product

Globalization is commonly understood as the growing integration of economies, cultures, media systems and populations across national borders. Its critics often imagine it dissolving traditional national identities into a borderless cosmopolitan culture. Yet the World Cup demonstrates the opposite. It¡¯s one of globalization¡¯s greatest products, bringing together dozens of nations in a single media spectacle. But, instead of weakening nationalism, it intensifies it. Flags multiply. Anthems become louder. National identity becomes passionately concentrated.

Trump¡¯s genius, for chronic want of a better word, lies in recognizing that nationalism no longer has to resist globalization. It can operate through it. MAGA rhetoric frequently attacks ¡°globalists,¡± international institutions and transnational elites. Yet Trump simultaneously exploits global media systems, international branding and worldwide spectacle more effectively than most conventional politicians. MAGA acolytes no doubt argue that this makes Trump the most original and provocative president, probably ever. From the transactional perspective, sport is less a medium for competition than the forum for a kind of never-ending dialogue between the present day and the cultural, political and philosophical treasure-house of America¡¯s past.

So, the World Cup presents him with an extraordinary opportunity: to transform a global event into an advertisement for American pre-eminence. One might even ask whether this represents a distinctly 21st-century form of imperialism; less territorial than emblematic, less concerned with conquest than with visibility, dominance and narrative control.

Even Trump¡¯s language hints at this logic. When he described the tournament as ¡°an to showcase the nation¡¯s pride and hospitality,¡± he was invoking more than just tourism. He was describing political theater. He sees the World Cup as a demonstration that the US remains the indispensable stage on which the world performs, with Mexico and Canada playing supporting hosting roles. The to determine the world champions is scheduled to be played at , East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19, 2026.

Long shadows

Yet this spectacle unfolds against a wildly unstable geopolitical background. Conflicts involving Iran, Gaza and broader tensions across the Middle East cast long shadows over the tournament. Several participating nations come from predominantly whose relationships with the US remain politically sensitive. Questions about visas, security, protest and diplomatic symbolism will inevitably accompany the football itself. (Iran is still scheduled to appear.)

FIFA, like other sports, traditionally insists that sport and politics are formally separate. This has always been wishful thinking. Football doesn¡¯t exist outside politics if only because nothing so globally pervasive can remain politically neutral. International sport has never been outside politics; it has repeatedly acted as a crucible in which different forms of power ¡ª fascist, military, authoritarian and democratic ¡ª are staged, tested and made plain to see. It concentrates political emotion into flags, anthems, rivalries and televised images capable of mobilizing billions simultaneously.

Trump appears unusually and unexpectedly comfortable with this reality. He doesn¡¯t treat political controversy as contamination. On the contrary, conflict often heightens his sense of opportunity. Instability sharpens the value of American control, American security and American presence. Hosting the world during a moment of global anxiety allows the US to project itself not merely as a nation but as the central nervous system of global spectacle.

Whether the tournament succeeds commercially is secondary. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball will continue to dominate American sporting culture long after the World Cup circus leaves town. It appears Trump¡¯s objective is larger and more immediate: that he wants to absorb and channel the energy of the tournament into the broader MAGA credo of restored American greatness.

The irony is difficult to miss. A movement frequently portrayed as anti-globalist may ultimately reveal itself to be highly adept at using globalization for nationalist ends. The World Cup doesn¡¯t resolve that contradiction. It dramatizes it before billions of viewers.

Trump doesn¡¯t understand football. He doesn¡¯t need to. He needs only to understand power, spectacle and the value of attention in the 21st century. On that score, he may understand the World Cup better than anyone.

[Ellis Cashmore is the author of .]

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It was only later, when I thought about it seriously, that I realized all the dangers a referendum ¡ª or even talk of a referendum ¡ª could pose.

There be dragons

First, a referendum on separatism releases a divisive sentiment that cannot easily be put back into the bottle. In , at Montreal¡¯s City Hall, French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle delivered these infamous words: ¡°Vive le Quebec libre! Vive le Canada francais! Et vive la France!¡± (¡°Long live free Quebec! Long live French Canada! And long live France!¡±) This left a lasting impression on the Qu¨¦b¨¦cois, leading them to believe forevermore that they were a people apart from the rest of Canadians. Quebec held (in 1980 and 1995). And rift and instability continue to this day. If Paul St. Pierre Plamondon, leader of the resurgent, separatist Parti Qu¨¦b¨¦cois, wins in this October¡¯s election, he has promised to hold a third referendum.

Second, it gives our powerful neighbor to the south a chance to interfere with and influence our politics. The US had already been involved in over 70 all over the world, and for them to put on the scale in this referendum would be mere child¡¯s play. There is already talk that the current US government is the Alberta separation movement. Earlier this year, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly stated that Alberta is ¡°a natural partner for the US.¡±

Third, even talk of a referendum can destabilize the economy and discourage investment. Quebec¡¯s long-running contemplation of separation had a severe effect on its economy. Prior to the rise of the separatist movement in the 1970s, Montreal was Canada¡¯s economic and financial hub. The prospect of separation prompted a massive exodus of businesses from Quebec, and Toronto became the new hub. Thousands of skilled workers emigrated. Quebec¡¯s political risk raised the provincial government¡¯s borrowing costs and increased provincial debt. The stock prices of Quebec-based companies declined. 

Fourth, many Albertans may not realize the full import of such a referendum. Certainly, many Brits did not, and they ended up with Brexit. Six years on, the broad consensus is that Brexit has had a net negative impact on the UK, with studies estimating that the is roughly 4-8% smaller than it would have been if the country had remained in the EU. Leaving the EU increased trade barriers, customs red tape and shipping costs. Trade became more difficult, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Business investment in the UK has lagged behind other G7 nations. Freedom of movement has caused labor shortages. Trevor , professor of economics at the University of Calgary, claims ¡°Alberta would fare no better.¡±

Fifth, if it were to separate, Alberta ¡ª being landlocked ¡ª would find it very difficult to survive on its own. It would have to seek the support of a larger, more powerful entity. Fortunately or unfortunately, the US is nearby and happy to assist ¡ª if not downright absorb. Since President Donald Trump came to power in January 2025, he has regularly made about annexing Canada. A free but unprotected Alberta would be a perfect appetizer. The timing for this referendum could not be worse.

Whoa Bessie!

Smith claims that her main reason for having a referendum is that she will not ¡°silence the voices of hundreds of thousands of Albertans¡± ¡ª as if the majority of Albertans are clamoring for separation. This is misrepresentative on two accounts. 

Earlier this year, an Alberta court that a petition circulated by separatists was unconstitutional because it did not consult the indigenous peoples. is against the ruling, saying that this is an ¡°erroneous court decision¡± that ¡°interferes with the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of Albertans.¡± She seems to forget that the indigenous people are also Albertans ¡ª and indeed the original Albertans. Chief Sheldon of the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nations rightly says, ¡°All of Alberta sits on treaty land, and that¡¯s not going to change.¡± The First Nations are firmly against Alberta¡¯s separation, and separating against their wishes would be illegal.?

Alberta has a of just over 5 million, of which some 3.9 million are over the age of 18. In that context, the petition (favoring Alberta remaining within Canada) received over 400,000 signatures and the Stay Free Alberta petition (favoring Alberta separating) garnered just over 300,000. Therefore, with some mental fudging, Smith magnanimously claims that ¡°approximately 700,000 Albertans have signed a petition requesting a vote on this issue.¡± In reality, the Forever Canada petition asked only the simple question, ¡°Do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?¡± In fact, the petition¡¯s leader, Thomas Lukaszuk, has specifically argued against a referendum, calling it an unnecessary expense, socially divisive and damaging to investor confidence.?

While Smith presents herself as wanting to hold a referendum only for the sake of her people (she even claimed in her speech that she herself would vote for a united Canada), her suggests otherwise. Smith used to be a prominent member of the Wildrose Party ¡ª a right-wing, conservative and populist party, with an aim of provincial autonomy. Furthermore, she met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort shortly after his election win and also visited the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind .?

The not-so-happy ending

At any one time, there will always be a group of people who are not happy with the status quo, and often with good reason; for years, Alberta has been putting more into the federal pot than it gets back. But Alberta should address this financial imbalance by taking political, legal and structural actions to gain greater control over its finances. Holding a referendum about Alberta separation would be a case of ¡°cutting off your nose to spite your face.¡±

As the premier of Alberta, Smith¡¯s first duty should be the well-being of the province. And as a member of the of the Federation, she has agreed to the objective ¡°to ultimately strengthen Canada.¡± She seems to be doing neither. She¡¯s using the results of a signature campaign to rip the nation apart. Manitoba¡¯s Premier Wab said, ¡°There is always a moral imperative to do the right thing.¡± With this referendum, Smith is putting the province in danger ¡ª socially, economically and politically ¡ª not just today but for years to come. She blithely , ¡°At the end of this debate, and when the referendum is over, we must come together to ensure that our beloved province continues to prosper.¡± This referendum may be instrumental in ensuring that that will never happen.

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The media¡¯s lack of attention is understandable. All-too-real wars of choice and metaphorical wars against science, universities and the environment have dominated our airtime and the headlines. The rise of a new medievalism in medicine and the abrogation of international trade and security agreements have also won attention. Add to that a federal paramilitary people, even from what still passes for the halls of justice, while the occasional protester, and one¡¯s journalistic cup runneth over.

The meta-story of the US government¡¯s comprehensive abandonment of its Enlightenment heritage needs telling, too. Goodbye to empiricism and the troublesome scientific discourse it produces. Goodbye as well to empiricism¡¯s political collaterals, including the ¡°created equal¡± credo of the Declaration of Independence, which the current regime finds irritating. There is simply too much to report on, as the new monarchy, as if in a sped-up nature film, blossoms flowerlike, its under renovation, the king¡¯s signature being prepared to grace the , and myriad kickback mechanisms whirring like gold-plated turbines to enrich an aristocracy of tech bros and oil emirs.

So, dear reader, it¡¯s not just logical but inevitable that US President Donald Trump¡¯s border wall, a major story during his first administration, has essentially fallen out of the news. Rest assured, though, that the world¡¯s least pragmatic and most performative construction project continues to prosper.

Spend now, think later

Modern border management relies on three tools: human patrols, remote detection backed by quick response teams and the construction of physical obstacles. Smart gatekeepers coordinate those tools to maximize effectiveness and minimize cost. But there¡¯s no need for thrift in Trumpworld. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, which Trump signed into law last July 4, negated all need for fiscal restraint. Among other things, it appropriated for border wall construction, $7.8 billion for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and their vehicles, $6.2 billion for high-tech border surveillance and a hefty $10 billion for anything else border-related.

The total: $70.55 billion. Those funds will be available through Fiscal Year 2029. By comparison, the government will spend about $10 billion less over that same period to fund the entire Department of the Interior, which manages half a billion acres of surface land as well as the continental shelf and vast subsurface mineral deposits.

Such border largesse means that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can go all-out on all three tactical approaches at the US¨CMexico border ¡ª patrol, surveillance and a wall ¡ª simultaneously, without troubling to eliminate redundancies, tailor tactics to the environment, or streamline coordination. Daddy has proudly given DHS his credit card.

In a victory-lap cabinet meeting four days after enacting the OBBBA, Trump Kristi Noem, then still his DHS secretary, ¡°You¡¯re loaded up on the border.¡± He essentially admitted that the bill¡¯s munificence demonstrated power, not budgetary acumen, simultaneously adding, ¡°We had zero [migrants] come in last month, so I am not sure how much of it we want to spend. You may actually think about saving a lot of money because the wall is largely built.¡± The president then continued with fact-free claims that the migrant population abounded with murderers and mental defectives.

Notwithstanding Trump¡¯s comments, DHS administrators and the contractors who are their most immediate constituents show no sign of leaving money on the table. At the border, their blank-check funding meets a matching regulatory void ¡ª the most waiver of laws and regulations in American history. In addition to suspending laws intended to protect the environment, wildlife, national parks, national wildlife refuges, lands sacred to Native Americans, and historic and cultural sites, the Trump administration has also more than 60 contracting and procurement regulations. In the name of a national emergency, which is no emergency at all ¡ª illegal border crossings (as measured by apprehensions) have indeed ¡ª the president has stripped the playing field of all boundaries and opened the door to cronyism and corruption.

Under showers of money and in the absence of restraint, a single border wall is no longer viewed as adequate. Double-walling has become the and certain select areas now boast triple walls. With no cap on costs, whole mountaintops, rugged and unvisited, have been sheared apart to make way for the standard 30-foot-tall, steel-bollard wall, even at costs exceeding $41 million per mile (almost $8,000 per foot). Meanwhile, the Border Patrol¡¯s terminally bored agents ¡ª giving new meaning to bored-er ¡ª sit behind the wall in white trucks, looking at their phones and incubating their hemorrhoids.

The non-monetary costs are no less astronomical

It¡¯s easy to think of the mostly arid US¨CMexico border zone as empty, but biologically it¡¯s a busy place. The grasslands of the San Rafael Valley in Arizona, for instance, are to 17 threatened and endangered species. For years, existing vehicle barriers, bolstered by remote detection technology, have allowed jaguars, ocelots, mountain lions, mule deer and other wildlife to move back and forth across the valley¡¯s 30 miles of border and disperse according to their ancient ways. The valley is also heart-stoppingly . Unsurprisingly, a network of 60 remote cameras along that stretch, monitored by the Sky Island , recorded just one possible migrant per camera every ¡ª a tiny number in an easily-patrolled area.

Despite all of this, DHS intends to double-wall the valley. In addition to bifurcating the wildlife habitat and scarring a gemlike landscape, the wall builders will extract large amounts of groundwater to make concrete for the wall¡¯s foundation, almost certainly desiccating wetlands that are hotspots of biodiversity. And for nothing, save symbolism, bragging rights and contractor profits.

No detail illuminates the mentality behind border enforcement better than this: In cooperation with US Customs and Border Protection, military elements at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, are now in ¡°the largest Concertina wire (C-wire) emplacement in U.S. territorial history.¡± ¡°C-wire,¡± or ¡°razor wire,¡± is designed to lacerate any flesh, human or animal, that comes in contact with it. Fort Huachuca soldiers are deploying 43,000 rolls of it, the largest single purchase ever.?

Usually C-wire is used atop a wall or fence to prevent people from climbing over. Ominously, it¡¯s now being spread on the ground, sometimes in areas where there is no wall, but also in front of the wall and between double walls ¡ª a policy of pure viciousness, not necessity. Someone should explain this deployment to the bighorn sheep of California¡¯s Jacumba Mountains, which are now from their key Mexican waterhole by thickets of the nasty stuff, which will become ever more camouflaged and treacherous as grass and brush grow through it.

Buoy oh buoy, what a wall!

For treachery, however, it¡¯s hard to top CBP¡¯s plans to ¡°secure¡± 536 miles of the border in Texas by mooring a chain of cylindrical , linked end to end, down the middle of the Rio Grande. Once in place, the array will look like an orange sausage, five feet in diameter, floating on the river. The anchors and mooring lines, of course, will be invisible. What could possibly go wrong?

This ill-conceived plan offers a retro-snapshot of American life before the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) became law in 1970, back when strip mines and other land-wrecking ventures could be launched with no evaluation of their impact, no public involvement and no second opinions as to their necessity. The waiver of NEPA and every other environmental constraint means that no modeling of the ¡°Buoy Wall¡¯s¡± hydrodynamics (that is, its reaction to flooding), if any exists, has been made public.

The Rio Grande International Study in Laredo, Texas, however, commissioned its own study. The results are unequivocal. The Buoy Wall will be a debris trap during floods, as when a hurricane lodges over the region. It will redirect flows of water and raise water levels, especially in places where it¡¯s paired with river-crowding segments of the wall. And if a section of buoys should break loose from the sandy, unstable riverbed, the likelihood of disaster will soar.

Geomorphologist Mark Tompkins, who authored the , concludes, ¡°Failures will cause catastrophic flooding, damage and destruction to property, and risks to the health and safety of people near the river corridor.¡± Thousands of people living adjacent to the river in Laredo and other communities in both Mexico and the US will be put at risk.

Conflicts brewed and brewing

Walls have their place. They can be effective in urban areas. But DHS startled more than a few onlookers with plans to build a wall among the cliffs and arid wildlands of Big Bend National Park. Even the of West Texas, one of the reddest regions in the country, got riled up. Although DHS may yet fall back to a more sensible ¡°¡± alternative for the national park, it has failed to communicate a clear decision, while nearby and Big Bend Ranch State Park remain at risk.

Even worse uncertainty may be brewing in Arizona, where the lands of the Tohono O¡¯odham people, whose presence predates the border by many centuries, are spread on either side of the line. The tribe¡¯s exemplary cooperation with border authorities includes tribal enforcement teams that have helped keep illegal crossings at a historic low. But the rigid minds and hungry contractors of the ¡°CBP industrial complex¡± remain unsatisfied. The agency¡¯s ¡°smart wall ¡± indicates that it aims to build a double wall across the Tohono O¡¯odham reservation, splitting apart families, clans and longstanding webs of relationship.

And then there¡¯s the unhappy Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces, which serves Sunland Park, New Mexico. Walls have long separated El Paso and Sunland Park from the Mexican city of Ciudad Ju¨¢rez. However, there is an unwalled gap at Monte Cristo Rey, a steep-sided peak long considered impractical for barrier construction. Not now, though. for the Border Wall began on Cristo Rey in March, in time to appall the thousands of Holy Week pilgrims who visit the statue of Christ the King on the mountain¡¯s summit.

The land available to CBP, however, is not sufficient to finish the job on Cristo Rey, and the adjacent landowner, the Catholic Church, refuses to sell. CBP claims it may assert the right of eminent domain, while the church has said it will fight, although its best tool for resistance, the Religious Freedom Restoration , has predictably been among the many laws waived by DHS.

Orgasms for birders

On a recent trip to the border, I visited one of the most exquisite places in the entire Southwest. To get to it, I drove 40 miles on dirt roads across broken, arroyo-carved desert. The Border Wall was almost always in sight.

Apart from the roadway itself, the commonest evidence of a human presence were signs at the approach to each arroyo: DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED, which is good advice in an area where flash floods from local thunderstorms can sweep away a heavy truck. All the arroyos that the road crosses are also crossed by the Border Wall. Floods pile tons of debris against the wall and sometimes the accumulated weight is enough to push the structure down. CBP continues to experiment with designs for swinging water gates, but a durable solution remains unproven.

Between a pair of ¡°lay-bys¡± ¡ª bulldozed flats where the wall contractor has assembled fleets of 18-wheelers, excavators, scrapers, dumpers, pickups, bulldozers, loaders and cement trucks ¡ª I veered down a rough track to a steel gate and let myself in. A little way beyond that, I stopped my car beside a lazy creek at the bottom of a canyon. White-barked sycamores and cottonwoods, just coming into leaf, towered overhead. Amid their shadows, the air smelled of duff and wet sand. The birds were not just singing, they were yelling. When I opened a birding app on my phone, the bird-call IDs scrolled by like movie credits.

The canyon has a perfectly good name, but I¡¯ll call it Paradox Canyon in recognition of the contrast between the vigorous life it contains and the brutalist-walled horizon looming above it. During the first Trump administration, the nearest mountain peak was cleaved open like a watermelon, leaving the landscape not just scarred but grotesquely amputated.

The current contractor, , is no stranger to disassembling and rearranging mountains. Besides installing the standard bollard wall, Fisher is pouring a concrete patrol road at the foot of the wall, portions of which, rising above Paradox Canyon, are so steep that, absent the paving, no wheeled vehicle can climb it.

The next mountain, however, is too steep even for a patrol road. The previous contractor¡¯s employees dubbed the peak ¡°Widow Maker,¡± and the zigzag scars of switchbacks and ledges by which they gained access to the path of the wall make it easy to understand why.

Fisher is the largest player in the wall-building business. Based in North Dakota, it was the contractor for ¡°We Build the Wall,¡± a crowd-funded enterprise that got its promoters, including longtime Trump ally , convicted for fraud. ¡°We Build the Wall¡± funded Fisher to build 3.5 miles of wall on private land beside the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas. The Department of Justice and the International Boundary Waters Commission subsequently sued Fisher for shoddy work and violation of the boundary treaty with Mexico. The parties have since the suit, with Fisher agreeing to make immediate repairs and carry out future repairs subject to the forfeit of a $3-million bond.

The Paradox Canyon rancher whom I came to visit is philosophical about the wall. The assault on his land began at the end of Trump I and, after a Biden-era pause, has resumed at full strength. The ¡°shock and awe¡± accompanying Trump¡¯s resumption of office, he says, left no room for negotiating a more sensible path forward. He believes that the symbolism of the wall is its real power, as it channels the fears of the MAGA faithful. The wall, he says, stands for more than shutting out migrants and narcos. It stands for shutting out other complex things, possibly complexity itself. It represents Trump¡¯s promise to his base that their worldview will be fulfilled.

Making war at home and abroad

My rancher friend feels that his present task is to weather the storm of wall-building and await a time when wiser heads prevail, when the rush to spend and build might yield to thoughtful redesign, when gaps for wildlife might be installed and properly monitored, and when the wall¡¯s proponents and its enemies might find a ¡°third path.¡±

Meanwhile, the excavators, scrapers, bulldozers and haulers carry on. From concertina wire to counterfunctional buoys, from mountain blasting to freewheeling billion-dollar contracts, the mindset behind the wall is the same as that which spawned the . Both are exercises in unchecked power. Both were conceived with disdain for the complexities of the real world. Both serve rhetorical as much as tangible purposes.

The war with Iran has confounded Trump¡¯s expectation of a quick victory. Thousands of gravestones will be its monument. The Border Wall, in its own slow way, will provide another sort of monument. It won¡¯t be the graves of those who died crossing it or flanking it by sea, for they will rarely be marked at all. And it won¡¯t be the local extinctions of plants or animals, for they will simply vanish. It will instead be a tottering, linear, soulless version of ¡ª think of it as America¡¯s Steelhenge ¡ª built on sand and made of haste, fear and avarice.

It will memorialize Trump¡¯s success in making America less and less great.

[ first published this piece.]

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post The Never-Ending Nightmare of the Border Wall appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

As the EU moves toward full implementation of its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism () ¡ª a policy that places a carbon price on imports based on the emissions generated during their production ¡ª exporters around the world are confronting a new reality: Access to the European market will increasingly depend not only on price and quality, but also on the carbon intensity of manufacturing. CBAM was introduced by the EU to prevent ¡°carbon leakage,¡± in which companies shift production to countries with weaker climate regulations to avoid stricter environmental costs in Europe.

For countries like Indonesia, the implications are especially significant. The EU remains an important for Indonesian industrial goods, including steel, aluminum and other carbon-intensive manufactured products. At the same time, Indonesia¡¯s industrial sector still heavily on coal-powered energy, making many of its exports vulnerable to higher carbon costs under the EU system.

For exporters in these sectors, CBAM is no longer a distant Brussels regulation; it is becoming a market access requirement. The question is not whether Indonesian industry will adapt, but whether that adaptation will be orderly and cooperative, or chaotic and punitive.

That is why Brussels and Jakarta should immediately establish an EU¨CIndonesia CBAM Working Group ¡ª a formal platform that brings together government agencies, industry representatives, technical experts and exporters from both sides to coordinate compliance, share standards and prepare industries for the transition to carbon-based trade rules.

Without such coordination, the risks are substantial. Indonesian exporters could face rising compliance costs, declining competitiveness and gradual exclusion from one of the world¡¯s largest markets. Europe, meanwhile, risks turning a climate policy designed to encourage global decarbonization into a source of geopolitical resentment and trade friction with emerging economies.

The case for a working group

A working group would help turn that potential friction into structured coordination. The benefits of such a working group would extend beyond avoiding trade disputes. If designed properly, it could become a practical mechanism to help Indonesia¡¯s industry transition to a carbon-regulated global economy while ensuring that Europe¡¯s climate agenda does not alienate key economic partners.

Its first priority should be solving the biggest practical challenge facing Indonesian exporters: . For many firms, especially outside multinational supply chains, the main barrier is not the carbon price itself, but rather the technical complexity of compliance. Companies will need to calculate and report the emissions embedded in their products, provide verified production data and meet European reporting standards in order to continue exporting smoothly to the EU market once CBAM enters full implementation in 2026.

Emissions accounting, product-level data, accredited verification, default values and the treatment of indirect emissions are not minor bureaucratic details. They will increasingly determine which companies remain globally competitive and which struggle to access foreign markets.

Second, the working group could help ensure that decarbonization efforts in countries like Indonesia are not overlooked. Indonesian industries are in cleaner production, carbon market development and renewable energy integration. But without structured coordination with European regulators, many of these efforts may not translate into lower compliance burdens under CBAM. A formal bilateral platform could help develop mutual understanding on reporting standards, carbon accounting methodologies and potential recognition mechanisms before disputes emerge.

But achieving these outcomes will require the working group to be designed as more than a narrow diplomatic forum. It should be industrial, not merely governmental. That means bringing together not only officials from Brussels and Jakarta, but also manufacturers, industry associations, financiers, technical experts and exporters themselves. Too often, trade dialogues remain confined to ministries while companies are left to navigate complex regulatory transitions alone. In the case of CBAM, that approach would almost certainly fail.

The group¡¯s mission should therefore be practical and industry-focused: developing sector-specific road maps, expanding technical training, coordinating emissions verification systems, supporting smaller exporters and creating early-warning mechanisms for future regulatory changes as the EU gradually expands CBAM¡¯s scope.

Balancing domestic reforms and international compliance

Skeptics that Indonesia should focus primarily on strengthening its own domestic carbon pricing system rather than building special coordination mechanisms with Europe. But this is a false choice.

Indonesia indeed needs stronger domestic climate governance and more credible carbon market reforms. Those efforts will be essential for the country¡¯s long-term industrial competitiveness in a decarbonizing global economy. Yet domestic reform alone will not solve the immediate compliance pressures Indonesian exporters will face when CBAM enters full implementation.

Many companies do not have the luxury of waiting for ideal policy sequencing. They will soon need to comply with complex European reporting standards, emissions verification requirements and carbon accounting rules in order to maintain access to EU markets.

Some policymakers and business groups in both Europe and Indonesia also that existing trade dialogues, chambers of commerce and occasional industry seminars are already sufficient to manage the transition. Their assumption is that CBAM compliance will gradually evolve through market adaptation, as companies learn to adjust over time without the need for a dedicated bilateral mechanism. But that underestimates the scale and speed of the transformation now underway.

CBAM is not simply another technical trade regulation involving product labeling or customs procedures. It directly links market access to carbon emissions, industrial energy systems and climate governance. That means the transition will affect not only exporters, but also investment decisions, manufacturing competitiveness and long-term industrial strategy.

Occasional consultations and fragmented business forums are unlikely to provide the level of coordination required for such a structural shift. Without a more institutionalized framework, misunderstandings over compliance standards and uneven readiness across industries could quickly escalate into wider trade tensions.

Coordination matters more than ever

History offers several warnings about what happens when major regulatory or environmental standards are introduced without sufficient coordination between developed and developing economies. European restrictions on palm oil linked to deforestation, for example, years of political backlash in Indonesia and Malaysia, where policymakers viewed the measures as discriminatory trade barriers rather than cooperative climate policy. The lesson is clear: When global rules are imposed without meaningful adjustment mechanisms or institutional dialogue, they often harden into geopolitical grievances.

CBAM risks creating a similar dynamic if countries like Indonesia are left to navigate complex compliance requirements alone. But if Europe and Indonesia instead build structured coordination early ¡ª through technical cooperation, industrial transition planning and regular dialogue ¡ª the mechanism could evolve into something more constructive: a framework that supports decarbonization while preserving trust between advanced and emerging economies.

Europe CBAM is designed to prevent carbon leakage, not erect green trade walls. Establishing an EU¨CIndonesia CBAM Working Group would be the clearest way to prove it. Because by 2026, carbon policy will no longer sit at the margins of trade. It will be trade.

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Indonesia Should Not Let Carbon Rules Become a Trade War appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

In 2023, when my colleague, Ben Freeman, and I first conceived of our , The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America Into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home, we viewed it in part as a cautionary tale about just how high the Pentagon budget might rise in the years to come (absent pushback from Congress and the taxpaying public). By the time our book came out in November 2025, however, the Pentagon budget had already topped the mark and, only recently, US President Donald Trump has proposed to instantly add another to that already staggering figure and to do so in a single year¡¯s time.

And imagine this: Such a proposed increase alone is than the total military budget of any other nation on earth. Mind you, the current high levels of spending have already underwritten a provocative, unnecessary in Venezuela and a region-wide in the Middle East, and the larger costs of all this in human lives and damage to the global economy are guaranteed to shape the lives of the rest of us globally for years to come.

To add insult to injury, the Pentagon announced that it would seek a supplemental appropriation to pay for its war on Iran, which has spread across the Middle East. That $200 billion would have been in addition to the $1.5 billion proposed for the Pentagon¡¯s future budget. According to an by Pentagon budget expert Stephen Semler, the Iran war, which started on February 28 with Israeli and US air strikes on that country, cost the US more than $28 billion just in its first two weeks. And to put that in perspective, $28 billion is more than three times the Trump administration¡¯s proposed annual budgets for the for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection (at a time when the climate crisis and the need to head off future pandemics are essential to the health and security of all Americans). Worse yet, it¡¯s all for a completely senseless war that should never have started.

As Trump alternates between engaging in negotiations to end the war and threatening to wipe Iran off the map ¡ª or even just walking away to bomb another day ¡ª there are reports that the supplemental budget request to pay for the war on Iran will shrink from the proposed $200 billion to . And that $98 billion will include other things in addition to war costs, including disaster relief and aviation modernization.

The garrison state and the reign of the war profiteers

On the campaign trail in 2024, Trump to drive the ¡°war profiteers¡± and ¡°warmongers¡± from Washington, suggesting that they like wars because ¡°missiles cost $2 million each,¡± while bragging that, in his first term in office, ¡°I had no wars.¡±

And his rhetoric as the ultimate champion of peace has continued during his second term, even as he has indeed launched reckless wars guaranteed to fill the coffers of the ¡°war profiteers¡± he railed against on the campaign trail. He has, however, also pledged to help the weapons industry production of the same sort of ¡°$2 million bombs¡± he decried during the campaign, plus ¡ª even better for the arms makers ¡ª missile interceptors that cost up to $12 million each. Worse yet, the demands of the current war on Iran, coupled with support for Israel¡¯s war on Gaza and Ukraine¡¯s efforts to defend itself from Russia, have left the Pentagon and the giant weapons corporations complaining that, if the US doesn¡¯t radically increase its production of artillery shells, bombs and missiles, the cupboard could soon be bare.

Of course, filling that cupboard again to the tune of staggering sums of money is exactly the wrong solution. The answer to the current munitions shortage is not to further supersize this country¡¯s arms manufacturing base, but to refrain from the weaponsused by Israel to commit genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, or to fuel unjustified wars like the current conflict with Iran. The best policy to prevent such stocks of military equipment from running low would, of course, be a more discriminating approach to military aid and a more restrained approach to US foreign policy and war-making (writ large).

Washington should, in fact, put diplomacy first and only engage in military action if there is a genuine threat to the US itself. We need a smarter policy toward military procurement and military strategy, not the garrison state with its ¡°military-industrial complex¡± that President Dwight D. Eisenhower us against more than six decades ago.

In addition, of course, the Pentagon needs to shift its procurement strategy toward producing more reliable weapons at a more reasonable cost, while avoiding unnecessary complexity. That way, they can be made more rapidly and spend more time ready to be used and less time down for maintenance. Such a formula was a watchword of the bipartisan congressional military reform of the 1980s, which at one point included more than 100 members of Congress and helped roll back the extremes of the military buildup launched by President Ronald Reagan.

The diminishing economic returns of Pentagon spending

In a detailed forthcoming study for the Transition Security and in her own writings, investigative journalist Taylor Barnes of Inkstick Media has charted the diminishing returns from Pentagon spending. Despite a soaring Pentagon budget, direct jobs in arms production are now one-third of what they were 30 years ago, down from three million then to now, according to the arms industry¡¯s own trade association. in the arms production sector have also angled down sharply, with some big weapons firms like Northrop Grumman having unionization rates of less than 10%. In keeping with that trend, Lockheed Martin the production of its F-16 fighter ¡ª a staple of foreign arms exports ¡ª to the anti-union state of South Carolina.

Even worse, many states provide special tax breaks and other subsidies to attract or keep weapons factories ¡ª and that¡¯s on top of the hundreds of billions the industry receives in federal tax dollars. In Utah, the state government staunchly refused to reveal how many jobs Northrop Grumman had promised in return for state subsidies, with one official it would ¡°compromise¡± the interests of the company to do so. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman¡¯s work on the Sentinel, the newest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), has been a poster child for dysfunctional weapons development, with the estimated cost of the program as a whole growing by in just a few years. Part of the problem was that Northrop Grumman somehow managed to ignore the fact that its new missile would be too large to fit in existing silos, creating the need for further costly new construction efforts.

The spending of scarce tax revenues goes to ICBMs that former Secretary of Defense William Perry once ¡°one of the most dangerous weapons we have.¡± After all, a president might literally have only minutes to decide whether to launch them on being warned of a potential enemy attack, greatly increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm. And there have been many false alarms and nuclear accidents in the nuclear age (even if not yet an actual nuclear attack loosed on the world), as meticulously documented in journalist Eric Schlosser¡¯s essential , Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.

Then there¡¯s the missile ¡°defense¡± system, a fantasy of Trump¡¯s that, in reality, could never provide the promised ¡°leakproof¡± protection against weaponry ranging from ICBMs and hypersonic missiles to low-flying drones. By now, more than 40 years after Reagan promised a perfect defense against ICBMs in his 1983 ¡°Star Wars¡± , it should be all too obvious that such a leakproof shield is physically . Enemy ICBMs with nuclear warheads would come in at 15,000 ¡ª and no, that is not a misprint! ¡ª miles per hour and could be surrounded by large numbers of decoy balloons that would be indistinguishable from a warhead when floating in space. There could be hundreds of such incoming warheads in a full-scale nuclear attack. To even have a chance of intercepting all of them, a defensive system would have to devote as many as to take down incoming missiles. An analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute that a full-blown effort to build a comprehensive Golden Dome shield could cost $3.6 trillion just to construct.?

In fact, the Golden Dome concept is so delusional that it barely merits a detailed critique, though many such analyses are available. A more reasonable way to deal with it would, of course, be ridicule.

Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry¡¯s and the founder of the ¡°Up in Arms¡± campaign to cut Pentagon spending, has taken just such an approach. On April Fool¡¯s Day, he placed a ¡°Golden Hole-in-Dome¡± on the National Mall that included a Donald Trump, fully clothed, being soaked by water leaking through a faux Golden Dome shield. The Daily Beast¡¯s headline on its about the event captured the spirit of that day: ¡°Ben and Jerry¡¯s Co-Founder Humiliates Trump Outside His House.¡±

Meanwhile, the dysfunctional weapons systems on the Pentagon¡¯s shopping list only continue to grow. Take Lockheed Martin¡¯s combat aircraft, which was supposed to do almost anything (and does nothing) well. The plane, which could cost for roughly 2,500 aircraft if the Pentagon¡¯s original plans hold, had taken to develop and still as advertised, spending almost half its time in its hangar for maintenance.?

Similarly, as Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center has , the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, which had to dock in Cyprus recently after multiple mishaps including a clogged toilet system that spewed feces onto the flight deck, is a $13 billion nightmare chock full of fancy, untested and expensive technology that often fails to work as advertised. As he points out, a more viable, less expensive carrier could have been built if proven technologies had not been replaced with high-tech fantasies. Unfortunately, that¡¯s generally not how Pentagon procurement works these days.

Palmer Luckey will not come to the rescue

Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old former game designer who now runs Anduril, one of Silicon Valley¡¯s top military tech firms, made news a few months ago when he a CNBC interviewer that, if the Pentagon were to stop buying the wrong things, it could provide a robust defense for America at a cost of perhaps $500 billion, half of current levels and one-third of the level Trump is now seeking. Presumably, the wrong things are piloted aircraft like the F-35 and mammoth ships like the Gerald Ford, and the right things are drones, uncrewed submarines and complex AI-driven targeting and surveillance systems of the type that Anduril and Peter Thiel¡¯s Palantir produce.

But count on this: Replacing piloted combat aircraft with swarms of drones won¡¯t automatically be cheaper, depending on how large the swarms are and how complex their designs may prove to be. Early on, the Ukrainian military decided that US-supplied drones from Silicon Valley were too brittle and expensive, so it launched a do-it-yourself that took cheap commercial drones from China and fitted them with bombs and cameras. US arms companies are now trying to get back in the act by with Ukrainian firms to build more sophisticated drones. Don¡¯t be surprised, though, if their price soars and their reliability sinks.

Another reason AI-driven weapons may not be as cheap as advertised is that Luckey, Thiel and their merry band of unhinged techno-optimists want to eliminate virtually any oversight of their activities, whether through independent testing of their new systems or measures to prevent price gouging by unscrupulous contractors. At present, the motto of the military tech sector is ¡°trust me.¡± I don¡¯t know about you, but I¡¯d prefer to have someone minding the store, so that the tech billionaires don¡¯t simply rob us blind.

Of course, what would it mean if Silicon Valley could deliver cheaper, more deadly advanced weaponry? After all, artificial intelligence systems were indeed used in to accelerate targeting during Israel¡¯s genocidal war on the people of Gaza, and they have been in Trump¡¯s disastrous assault on Iran. And neither of those situations has yet had a happy ending. But that¡¯s the point. The truth is, we really don¡¯t need ever more new weaponry that kills even faster. We need to stop the killing. And that means blunting the political influence of the warmongers and war profiteers that Trump on the campaign trail in 2024 and then so warmly embraced as president.

And to put all of this in grim perspective, he is now presiding over perhaps the most corrupt, incompetent, repressive regime in the history of this republic. And worse yet, some of his most dismal policies ¡ª like unstinting support for Israeli aggression ¡ª have, sadly enough, had bipartisan backing in Washington. In short, he has taken what were already some of the worst American policies and accelerated them, even as he positive aspects of the government like the US Agency for International Development¡¯s provision of food, clean water and public health services abroad or any further engagement in constructive international institutions.

Among other things, he is now narrowing America¡¯s foreign policy options by dismantling civilian tools of statecraft, while doubling down on military approaches that haven¡¯t ¡°won¡± a war in this century (or the second half of the last one, either). Meanwhile, the economic damage and humanitarian costs are spreading globally, including to his own supporters.

The challenge now is to build a movement that not only turns back Trump¡¯s policies, but gets at the underlying economic, political and cultural forces that have kept the US in a permanent state of war for so long, while robbing us of opportunities to build a better, more peaceful, tolerant and just future. Given the pace of destruction and chaos being visited upon us, it¡¯s important to act now and continue to do so until we build enough power to rein in the war machine and begin creating actual structures of peace.

[ first published this piece.]

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Reining in the Pentagon: Can the Military-Industrial Beast Be Tamed? appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Colombia¡¯s vote is not merely a domestic political contest. It is a test of how security policy, narcotics enforcement and leader-to-leader diplomacy will interact in an era when personality often carries as much weight as formal alignment. For Washington ¡ª and for investors and multinational firms with exposure to Latin America ¡ª the implications extend well beyond Bogot¨¢.

A fragile foundation: Colombia¡¯s shifting security landscape

For decades, Colombia has been one of Washington¡¯s closest security partners in South America and one of the region¡¯s largest economies. That relationship is now under strain. Colombian President Gustavo Petro¡¯s ¡°¡± strategy ¡ª an effort to halt military confrontation with armed groups and bring them to the negotiating table ¡ª has triggered security conditions, the rearming and territorial expansion of criminal and insurgent organizations, and record-high cocaine production.

Colombia¡¯s security posture is a direct US national security issue. A new from the National Bureau of Economic Research links the surge in Colombian cocaine production since 2015 to roughly 1,500 US overdose deaths per year, with fentanyl contamination ¡ª now reaching one in four tested cocaine samples ¡ª dramatically the toll. Washington must evaluate regional partners with these realities in mind. However, policy alone does not explain why this bilateral relationship feels so fragile. Increasingly, personality plays a part.

The role of personality in foreign policy

In the current US political environment, interpersonal relationships between leaders matter more than they have in decades. Where public persona ends and policy begins is an increasingly gray area. Colombia firsthand after a series of social media clashes escalated tensions between Petro and US President Donald Trump, jeopardizing decades of cooperation in a matter of days. Relations ultimately stabilized through private diplomacy, but the episode underscored how tone, respect and personal chemistry matter today at least as much ¡ª if not more ¡ª than ideology.

A similar dynamic is playing out across Latin America. Leaders with little ideological alignment have maintained productive ties with Washington by avoiding public confrontation and cultivating personal rapport. Mexico¡¯s President, Claudia Sheinbaum, exemplifies this approach. Despite having campaigned on a platform largely at odds with Trump¡¯s priorities, she has successfully fended off trade penalties and US intervention by increasing security cooperation and staying in close, regular contact with both Trump and US Ambassador Ronald Johnson.

This dynamic looms large as Colombia approaches its next election. By 2025, most ceasefires had collapsed, extortion had risen, mass displacements returned to post-2016 peaks and public perceptions of insecurity reached their highest level in a decade, according to Global Guardian¡¯s 2026. The next government must now decide whether to continue pursuing negotiated coexistence with armed groups or pivot toward a more militarized security strategy.

The stakes for Colombia¡¯s 2026 election

If left-leaning candidate Senator, who is aligned with Petro¡¯s political movement, prevails, security policy is likely to resemble a more tactical version of Total Peace. While less likely to draw Trump¡¯s ire due to Castro¡¯s considerably more stoic temperament, the continuance of Total Peace would likely prolong tensions with US officials concerned about narcotics and insurgent expansion.

Right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, who has modeled his own political brand after Trump as well as El Salvador¡¯s Nayib Bukele, promises a tougher security posture. While such an approach may appear more aligned with US priorities, Colombia is not El Salvador. Attempting to replicate hardline models could provoke direct confrontation with well-armed insurgent and criminal networks capable of sustained retaliation, increasing violence over the medium term.

Center-right candidate Paloma Valencia offers perhaps the most conventional path forward. A seasoned legislator and vocal critic of Petro¡¯s peace strategy, Valencia favors a return to security-first governance ¡ª stronger military operations, less tolerance for armed-group negotiations and, most crucially, close cooperation with Washington. As at a recent campaign event, perhaps equally to her supporters as well as the White House: ¡°No Colombian government can sort out the security question unless the US helps us.¡± While Valencia¡¯s strategy, which resembles a return to traditional Colombian confrontation against armed groups since the 1960s, would likely push back insurgents in the long term, it would almost certainly increase violent retaliations in the coming years.

In other words, Colombia¡¯s election offers no easy security solution, only different types of risk. Election-period violence, insurgent interference and cartel retaliation remain real risks regardless of who wins. Armed groups have their intention to influence elections by attacking polling sites, political offices, police stations, government buildings and other electoral infrastructure. Such tactics reflect a broader regional trend in which non-state actors increasingly treat democratic institutions as strategic leverage points ¡ª blurring the line between political contestation and operational risk for companies with personnel and assets on the ground.

Operational risks for companies in Colombia

For companies in the country, risk planning can no longer be hypothetical as extortion demands, employee coercion, kidnapping threats and pressure to provide logistical support to criminal groups are of the operating landscape. This is the reality in Colombia, as well as any other international hub, as the geopolitical climate heats up and longstanding international relations are called into question.

International relations between the US and Colombia, as well as other countries in Latin America and beyond, continue to be shaped less by formal policy frameworks than by who holds power, how they relate to Washington and how security conditions evolve on the ground.

The US has demonstrated that it will work with governments across the ideological spectrum, provided core security interests are respected and personal channels remain functional. For Colombia¡¯s next president, the lesson is clear: When national security cooperation depends heavily on US partnership, public confrontation can carry real costs.

Colombia¡¯s 2026 election may not determine whether Washington remains engaged in the region, but it will test the terms of that engagement. In an era where diplomacy is increasingly personalized and security threats are transnational, even longstanding alliances must be actively managed. Stability is no longer inherited. It is negotiated.

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The post Personality, Politics and the Future of the US¨CColombia Relationship appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Rohan and Manu also explore how these regional outcomes could influence neighboring Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as India¡¯s political center of gravity continues to evolve.

A tectonic shift in eastern India

The conversation opens with West Bengal, a state long associated with communist politics and later dominated by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee¡¯s Trinamool Congress. Manu describes the BJP¡¯s victory as a historic transformation, noting the ideological leap from decades of left-wing politics to a party rooted in Hindutva nationalism. He compares it to ¡°a hardcore atheist communist state¡± in Europe suddenly aligning with a church-backed movement.

For Manu, the result reflects more than identity politics. He believes the BJP succeeded because voters increasingly judge governments through economic performance and infrastructure delivery rather than ideological loyalty. ¡°The fate is not decided on the battlefield or the ballot box, but on the balance sheet,¡± he says, pointing to roads, electricity and public services as decisive factors.

Rohan notes the irony that West Bengal produced some of India¡¯s most influential economists and intellectuals while struggling economically for decades. Manu responds that Bengal excelled at theory but failed at implementation. The BJP¡¯s rise represents a broader shift in eastern India¡¯s political and economic center of gravity toward a more development-focused model.

Rohan and Manu also discuss the election¡¯s unusually peaceful polling process. For the first time since Indian independence, no voters were killed during voting in West Bengal, though violence erupted after the results. Manu attributes this to the region¡¯s historically ¡°high-pitched¡± political culture rather than flaws in the constitutional process itself.

Assam¡¯s stability dividend

In the northeastern state of Assam, the BJP returned to power with an even larger mandate. Rohan highlights two major changes: sweeping infrastructure development and the decline of insurgent violence. Massive bridges over the Brahmaputra River have dramatically reduced travel times, while former militant groups have increasingly entered mainstream politics.

Manu describes Assam¡¯s strategic significance as the meeting point between the Indian and Tibetan-Sinic spheres of influence. The state¡¯s geography, heavy rainfall and vast river systems historically made development difficult, leaving communities isolated from one another. Infrastructure therefore became politically transformative.

He argues that Assam is now benefiting from a ¡°virtuous cycle¡± in which political stability improves economic performance, which in turn reinforces stability. Former insurgent movements have largely been pacified, and the state increasingly functions as the political and logistical nucleus of India¡¯s northeast.

Rohan notes that the BJP¡¯s next challenge will be employment. Assam¡¯s population is exceptionally young, with nearly two-thirds under the age of 28. The election victory therefore creates expectations that economic development must now translate into jobs and rising living standards.

South India¡¯s political divergence

The speakers contrast the BJP¡¯s northeastern success with its weak performance in southern India. Despite extensive campaigning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party performed poorly in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Manu explains this through the bandwagon effect, arguing that voters in low-trust societies tend to support parties already viewed as viable contenders. In states where the BJP has not yet achieved critical mass, many voters instead choose among established regional players.

Tamil Nadu produced the election¡¯s biggest surprise. Actor Vijay¡¯s TVK party shattered the longstanding duopoly of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam parties, emerging as a dominant new force. Rohan says that Vijay successfully captured younger voters through social media, satire and celebrity appeal.

Manu places this within Tamil Nadu¡¯s distinct political culture, where cinema and literature have long shaped leadership. He compares the state to France within the European Union: culturally self-confident, linguistically distinct and deeply attached to its own icons. Actors and writers have historically wielded enormous political influence there.

Simultaneously, Manu praises outgoing Chief Minister MK Stalin for delivering exceptional economic growth. Tamil Nadu achieved some of India¡¯s strongest industrial and manufacturing performance, yet voters still demanded political change. He posits that India¡¯s elections often reveal a disconnect between macroeconomic growth and voter satisfaction because rapid expansion does not always generate broad wage growth or social mobility.

The decline of Indian communism

In Keralam, the Congress-led alliance defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist), dealing another blow to a movement that once dominated Indian left-wing politics. Rohan jokes that communists now survive mainly in universities, reflecting a broader perception of ideological decline.

Manu argues that Indian communists failed to modernize in the way their Chinese or Vietnamese counterparts did. Rather than adapting to aspirational politics and economic transformation, they remained attached to older Soviet-era frameworks. ¡°They failed to address the core question of human aspirations,¡± he says.

The result is significant for the Congress Party as well. After weak performances elsewhere, Keralam prevented the party from being completely marginalized nationally. Yet the broader story is less about Congress revival and more about the fading relevance of traditional communist politics in India.

Regional consequences beyond India

Rohan and Manu conclude by examining how the elections affect neighboring countries. Bangladesh closely monitored the outcomes in West Bengal and Assam because both states share borders, cultural and linguistic ties with it.

Manu says that Kolkata¡¯s decisive ¡°rightward turn¡± could reshape regional dynamics. A stronger and more economically assertive West Bengal may begin pulling economic influence back from Dhaka, while future governments in Kolkata could adopt a tougher stance regarding the treatment of religious minorities in Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka also watched developments in Tamil Nadu carefully because of the island¡¯s long and complicated history with Tamil separatist movements. While Manu does not see any immediate revival of militant politics, he says Colombo will closely observe the rise of Vijay¡¯s new political movement and its potential regional implications.

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The post FO Talks: Decoding Elections in India¡¯s West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Keralam appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

That is not ambiguity. The contradiction is glaring and growing harder to ignore.

Egypt¡¯s expanding military role in Sudan

Since at least mid-2025, Egypt has been Turkish-made Bayraktar Akinci drones from a military airbase at East Oweinat in its Western Desert, just 37 miles from the Sudanese border, striking targets belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) inside Sudan.

The intelligence architecture runs deeper than hardware. According to , the cooperation between Cairo and Khartoum includes not only surveillance and intelligence assistance but battlefield coordination in North Darfur and Kordofan, aimed in part at cutting off RSF supply routes.

After Head of ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ Transitional Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Cairo in December last year, a joint operations room was reportedly set up in North Kordofan, with Egyptian officers making repeated trips to the front to coordinate logistics, targeting and battlefield with Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) commanders. The following month, Egypt¡¯s intelligence chief, Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, to Port Sudan for direct talks with Burhan, covering security cooperation, counterterrorism and Red Sea arrangements.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Burhan is a sanctioned figure. The question of what it means ¡ª legally and diplomatically ¡ª for a nominal US partner to be running joint operations with him has not been answered because Washington has not yet forced the issue. Washington¡¯s January 2025 , however, did not come out of nowhere. First, there were findings of war crimes in December 2023. Then, chlorine gas was allegedly used against RSF fighters, at least twice.

And yet Egypt still has a at the Quad table alongside the US, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the grouping meant to be anchoring ceasefire efforts, while running drone strikes for the side Washington sanctioned. A foreign ministers¡¯ meeting was planned for July 2025, but it was indefinitely postponed. Cairo¡¯s strategic logic is not hard to follow. From Egypt¡¯s perspective, an RSF-dominated Sudan would create a corridor on Egypt¡¯s southwestern flank and threaten the Nile water arrangements that Cairo treats as a red line. However, those concerns don¡¯t explain Egypt¡¯s shadowy role in the theater of war.

Egypt¡¯s complicated relationship with smuggling and regional networks

For years, Iran and Hamas-aligned networks have exploited Egyptian territory as a conduit for weapons moving toward Gaza. The Israeli military confirmed after the October 7 attack that Hamas had used tunnel systems to smuggle weapons and ammunition from Egypt into Gaza in the lead-up to the . Egypt¡¯s relationship with Hamas has long been managed through Cairo¡¯s intelligence services, which in 2017 reportedly struck a with the organization ¡ª opening the Rafah crossing around the clock in exchange for Hamas halting attacks on Egyptian territory.

Additionally, the Muslim Brotherhood¡¯s networks inside Egypt have given Iran a persistent back channel for moving weapons across the Sinai ¡ª not official, not acknowledged, but .

Iranian arms bound for Palestinian factions have long moved through Sudan and across Egypt before disappearing into Gaza through tunnels. That pipeline predates October 7 and has never been fully shut down.  What that leaves is a country simultaneously brokering peace talks, flying combat drones for a sanctioned general and sitting atop smuggling routes it has never fully chosen to close.

The consequences of Washington¡¯s silence

Washington has not publicly confronted Cairo on any of this, and this silence has familiar explanations: Gaza diplomacy, the Sinai, the Canal, decades of military aid that nobody wants to unwind. But silence has consequences. Every strike flown from East Oweinat on behalf of a general sends a message: US designations are negotiable if you¡¯re useful enough. Every weapons shipment that transits Egyptian territory toward Gaza is a reminder that strategic partnerships have been allowed to paper over serious security failures.

Of course, Egypt is not the only regional actor playing both sides of ³§³Ü»å²¹²Ô¡¯²õ war. However, it is the one with a chair at Washington¡¯s peacemaking table, and a drone base 37 miles from the front.

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

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There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while US President Donald Trump¡¯s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years ¡ª from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain and now the United States. And at the core of every such ill-fated war-making decision lay a problematic leader, often born into wealth and prestige, whose personal inadequacies reflected and ramified the many irrationalities that make imperial decline such a painful process.

During that demoralizing downward spiral, imperial armies, so lethal in an empire¡¯s ascent, can err by plunging their countries into draining, even disastrous misadventures ¡ª psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the loss of imperial power by trying to occupy new territories or display awe-inspiring military might. Although such micro-militarism often chose targets that proved strategically unsustainable, the psychological pressures upon declining empires are so strong that they all too often gamble their prestige on just such misadventures. Not only did such disasters add financial pressures to a fading empire¡¯s many troubles, but in a humiliating fashion, they also invariably exposed its eroding power while exacerbating the destabilizing impact of imperial decline in the capitals of empire (whether Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, London, or Washington, DC).

In our moment, when the bombs stop falling and the rubble is finally cleared from the streets of Tehran, Iran, and Beirut, Lebanon, the impact on US global power of such a de facto defeat will become clear ¡ª as alliances like NATO atrophy, American hegemony evaporates, legitimacy is lost, global disorder rises, and the world economy suffers.

Let me now turn from the disasters of the present imperial moment to the lessons of history to explore the sort of lasting damage that Trump¡¯s micro-military misadventure in the Middle East might be inflicting on this country¡¯s declining imperium.

The defeat of Athens in Sicily

The date was 413 BC. The place was ancient Athens, then the seat of a powerful empire, long dominant around the rim of the Aegean Sea but losing influence to a sustained military challenge by Sparta. At the port of Piraeus, a ¡°certain stranger,¡± as Plutarch , ¡°took a seat in a barber¡¯s shop, and began to discourse [on] what had happened as if the Athenians already knew all about it.¡± Stunned by this stranger¡¯s report of a military debacle in far-off Sicily, the barber ¡°ran at the top of his speed to the upper city¡± of Athens, where the news sparked ¡°consternation and confusion.¡±

What that stranger described was the greatest military disaster in the history of the Athenian empire. Two years earlier, in the midst of the protracted , the aristocrat Nicias ¡ª an indifferent, indecisive leader who used his inherited wealth to court popularity with lavish spectacles ¡ª persuaded the citizens of Athens to deliver a theoretically bold blow against a rival imperial power, Sparta, by attacking its ally, Syracuse, in Sicily. He hoped to cripple the enemy, capture riches, and recover Athens¡¯s ebbing hegemony.

Instead of victory, however, Athens¡¯s vast armada of 200 ships and some 12,000 soldiers suffered a devastating defeat. Not only was the fleet destroyed (largely because Nicias ¡°an incompetent military commander¡±), but his surviving soldiers were captured, confined on a starvation diet in a stone quarry, and sold into slavery. Athens never recovered.

Within a decade, Sparta had starved Athens into submission using an impenetrable of a naval chokepoint in the Dardanelles Strait, stripped it of its empire, and subjected it to autocratic rule by a pro-Spartan oligarchy.

Portugal¡¯s debacle in Morocco

Our next date is 1578. The place is Portugal, the seat of a lucrative empire that had controlled commerce across the Indian Ocean for decades but now found its hegemony challenged by Muslim merchant princes allied with the Ottoman Empire.

In its capital of Lisbon, a headstrong young king, , suffered from sexual impotence and a fiery temperament that made him a fanatical ¡°captain of Christ.¡± With the idea of striking a lethal blow in his country¡¯s global war against Islam, the young king persuaded the flower of his nation¡¯s aristocracy to follow him on a latter-day crusade across the Mediterranean Sea to Morocco. There, at the fateful Battle of , local Muslim forces slaughtered Portugal¡¯s army. They killed some 8,000 Portuguese troops and captured 15,000. Only 100 escaped.

The defeat was so devastating that it not only destroyed the king and his court but also precipitated the country¡¯s incorporation into the Spanish empire for the next 60 years. Such reverses reduced the Portuguese Estado da (state of India) at Goa to selling permits to any ship captain who could pay, whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian. With Portuguese commercial dominance removed from the Indian Ocean, Muslim merchants and pilgrims could once again move across it unimpeded.

Though the Portuguese empire would survive for another three centuries, it would never recover the commercial hegemony that had once allowed it to dominate the world¡¯s sea lanes from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, across the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic to the coast of Brazil.

Spain¡¯s disaster in the Atlas Mountains

And now to jump several centuries, another significant date for imperial disasters is 1920. The place was Madrid, where Spain¡¯s leaders were already reeling from the psychological stress of their country¡¯s long imperial decline. It culminated in the loss of its last colonies ¨C- Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines ¡ª in the Spanish¨CAmerican War of 1898 with the rising United States.

Seeking regeneration through further colonial conquest, Spain¡¯s conservative leaders reacted to that demoralizing defeat by expanding their small coastal enclaves in northern Morocco in a bid to establish a protectorate over the whole region and its arid Atlas Mountains. Spain¡¯s inept monarch Alfonso XIII, who liked to play soldier, cultivated a of military favorites who shared his passion for the recovery of lost imperial glory by pacifying that rugged terrain. As resistance to Spanish rule by Berber Muslims escalated into the bloody Rif War of 1920, one of the king¡¯s favorite generals led his troops into the Battle of , where Berber fighters slaughtered some 12,000 of them.

Nonetheless, through the influence of the king and his military cronies, Spain clung desperately to those profitless Moroccan mountains. The Spaniards would, in fact, dispatch 125,000 more troops there, including its Foreign Legion led by the man who, in the 1930s, would become the leader of a fascist Spain, Francisco Franco, for a protracted pacification campaign that featured both mass slaughter and military innovation.

In a desperate quest for a victory that defied both economic and strategic rationality, Spain produced some 400 metric tons of lethal mustard gas to conduct history¡¯s first aerial bombardment using poison gas, raining mass death down upon Berber villages. And in military history¡¯s first successful , the Spanish navy also landed 18,000 troops and a squadron of light tanks at Al Hoceima Bay in September 1925 to flank and soon defeat the Berber guerrillas there.

Such micro-militarism, however, not only plunged Spain into a protracted pacification campaign with soaring costs, heavy casualties, and mass atrocities, but also unleashed political forces that would destroy its struggling democracy. As the masses protested that misbegotten war, King Alfonso backed a military , General Primo de Rivera in imposing a decade of dictatorship that finally gave way to a short-lived Second Republic. In 1936, however, only a decade after the Rif War ended, General Franco flew his Army of Africa back from Morocco over the Mediterranean Sea, launching a Spanish that would defeat the Republic and establish a fascist dictatorship that would rule the country for nearly 40 dismal years of economic stagnation.

The end of the British Empire at Suez

Arguably, when it came to imperial decline, however, the most revealing date was 1956. The place was London, the seat of the once-proud British Empire, where the suffocating stress of a painful, protracted global imperial retreat had pushed British conservatives into a disastrous micro-military intervention at Egypt¡¯s Suez Canal, leading to what one British diplomat would term the ¡°dying convulsion of British imperialism.¡±

In July 1956 (as described in my recent , Cold War on Five Continents: A Global History of Empire and Espionage), Egypt¡¯s charismatic president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal ¨C ending British colonial control there, electrifying the Arab world, and elevating himself to the first rank of world leaders. Although British ships could still pass freely through the canal, the country¡¯s conservative prime minister, Anthony Eden, a vain aristocrat and determined defender of empire, would be deeply unsettled, if not unhinged, by Nasser¡¯s assertive nationalism. Indeed, his leadership throughout the crisis would prove so unbalanced that senior Foreign Office officials would become ¡°Eden has gone off his head.¡±

In response to the news of the canal¡¯s nationalization, an apoplectic Eden would immediately convene a council of war at 4:00 in the morning. Calling Nasser a ¡°Muslim Mussolini,¡± a reference to the former fascist ruler of Italy, Eden ordered ¡°him removed and I don¡¯t give a damn if there¡¯s anarchy and chaos in Egypt.¡± Making his meaning perfectly clear, Eden asked his foreign minister: ¡°What¡¯s all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or ¡®neutralising¡¯ him as you call it?¡± He then added pointedly: ¡°I want him destroyed, ³¦²¹²Ô¡¯t you understand? I want him murdered.¡± With the British secret service MI6 failing in multiple assassination attempts, however, Eden¡¯s government began plotting with the French and Israelis to launch a secret, two-phase invasion of the Suez Canal Zone.

On October 29, the Israeli army led by the dashing General Moshe Dayan swept across the Sinai Peninsula, destroying Egyptian tanks and bringing his troops within ten miles of the canal. Using that fighting as a pretext for its own intervention (supposedly to restore peace), an armada of six Anglo-French aircraft carriers smashed the Egyptian air force in just three days, destroying 104 of its new Soviet MIG jet fighters and 130 additional aircraft.

With Egypt¡¯s strategic forces destroyed and its military virtually helpless before the might of that imperial juggernaut, Nasser deployed a geopolitical strategy brilliant in its simplicity. He had dozens of rusting cargo ships filled with rocks and then scuttled them at the canal¡¯s northern entrance, quickly closing one of the world¡¯s main maritime choke points and so cutting off Europe¡¯s oil lifeline to the Persian Gulf. By the time 22,000 British and French forces began storming ashore at the canal¡¯s north end on November 6, their objective of securing the free movement of ships had already been snatched from their grasp.

By the end of that micro-military disaster, Britain would be reprimanded by the United Nations; its currency would require an International Monetary Fund bailout to save it from utter collapse; its aura of imperial majesty would have evaporated; and the once mighty British Empire would be on the road to extinction. In retrospect, the Suez Crisis would not only expose the full-scale decline of British power, but also show the world that the country¡¯s ruling Conservative establishment, with its illusions of imperial and racial superiority, was no longer capable of global leadership.

America¡¯s defeat in the Strait of Hormuz

Another date likely to prove significant when it comes to the history of imperial decline is February 28, 2026. The place was Washington, DC, home to what had been history¡¯s most powerful imperial state that had dominated much of the globe for nearly 80 years through a mixture of military alliances, deft diplomacy, and economic leadership. By then, however, cracks had distinctly begun to appear in its edifice of power as US global hegemony faced an increasingly strong economic challenge from China, its massive military suffered two searing defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its economic globalization produced an angry populism at home.

After a populist campaign based on promises to restore both working-class prosperity and America¡¯s global power, Trump took office a second time in January 2025, a ¡°golden age of America,¡± a ¡°thrilling new era of national success¡± in which the country would ¡°reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.¡± Born to wealth and privilege himself, Trump returned to office convinced of his unique ¡°¡± for leadership and believing that ¡°I was saved by God to make America great again.¡±

Wielding raw economic and military might to compel obeisance from friend and foe alike, the president, inspired by a delusional sense of divine mission, began attempting to bend the world to his will. But during his first year in office, nothing seemed to work as planned. Indeed, most of his initiatives produced the sort of backlash that only served to show how far the US had fallen from 1991, when the breakup of the Soviet Union made it the world¡¯s sole superpower.

On April 2, 2025, on what he called ¡°Liberation Day,¡± Trump a roster of punitive tariffs to domestic manufacturing largely from Chinese imports that faced an initial duty of 34% ¡ª later to a fully punitive 100%. But at their October 2025 meeting in South Korea, China¡¯s leader Xi Jinping Trump to back down by cutting US access to his country¡¯s storehouse of strategic rare earth minerals.

In January, with his tariff initiative losing its luster, Trump plunged the NATO alliance into crisis by demanding that Denmark give him the island of Greenland, threatening to impose on European allies unless they complied. Within a week, however, vociferous European resistance had led him to retract that threat at the Davos economic summit, claiming he was satisfied with of a ¡°framework of a future deal.¡±

On February 28, 2026, with his tariff initiative failing and his Greenland gambit checkmated, Trump joined Israel in a seemingly bold strike on Iran that soon had the makings of the sort of fateful micro-military maneuver that appears to go with imperial powers in decline.

In the first few days of war, US and Israeli bombing killed Iran¡¯s leadership, destroyed its navy, and eliminated its air defenses, leaving the country seemingly prostrated before the might of America¡¯s air-power juggernaut. After a week of devastating bombardment that seemed to stun the world with its lethality and precision, on March 6, Trump that Iran offer an ¡°unconditional surrender¡± and signal its capitulation by ¡°the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader.¡± In exchange, he promised that the US would ¡°work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.¡±

But much as Nasser had done at Suez in 1956, Iran¡¯s leadership reversed the war¡¯s geostrategic balance by closing another critical maritime choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. By striking five with drones in the first week of war, Iran¡¯s leaders, taking a leaf from Nasser¡¯s geopolitical playbook, effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic, cutting off gas, fertilizer and oil shipments that plunged the world economy into an unprecedented . By the end of March, Iran¡¯s chokehold over the strait was so tight that it began collecting ¡°¡± from freighters to permit passage.

by the Strait¡¯s unexpected yet utterly predictable closure, on April 5, Easter Sunday, an unsettled Trump posted a social media saying: ¡°Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!¡± He added: ¡°Open the Fuckin¡¯ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you¡¯ll be living in Hell ¡ª JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.¡± Two days later, Trump that, unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he would attack its civilian infrastructure so severely that ¡°a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.¡±

After the collapse of subsequent negotiations between the two sides at Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 12, Trump plunged ever deeper into the , the US Navy to ¡°begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,¡± and ¡°interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.¡± With characteristic bluster, he : ¡°We are fully ¡®LOCKED AND LOADED,¡¯ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!¡±

Even if Trump destroys Iran¡¯s infrastructure or eventually negotiates a face-saving peace deal, by every metric that really matters, Washington has already lost its war with Iran. Like all weaker powers in asymmetric warfare, Tehran has been willing to absorb relentless punishment, while inflicting pain that the dominant power can ill sustain. The US will soon run out of targets in Tehran, but Iran has a whole world of damage that its cheap drones can do to the elaborate, exposed petroleum infrastructure on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.

Like Britain at Suez in 1956, Washington will likely pay a heavy price for its micro-militarism in the Strait of Hormuz. Close allies, the bedrock of US global power for 80 years, have refused any for Washington¡¯s war of choice, prompting Trump to call them ¡°cowards.¡± In response to his thundering threats of civilian and civilizational destruction (both war crimes), world leaders have Trump. Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the world economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for international leadership. Moreover, while the US military has proven its tactical agility in destroying targets, it clearly can no longer capture meaningful strategic objectives.

With its alliances in tatters, its world leadership forfeited, and its aura of military might evaporating, the only trajectory for US global hegemony now seems to be downward (like so many great powers of the past). By the time Trump¡¯s micro-military misadventure in the Strait of Hormuz is over, the decline of US global power will have accelerated drastically and the world will be trying to move beyond the old Pax Americana toward a new, distinctly uncertain global order.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post American ¡°Micro-Militarism,¡± or How Defeat in the Iran War Will Accelerate American Global Decline appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Today, the world is best described neither by Fukuyama¡¯s liberal triumph nor by Huntington¡¯s civilizational clashes. Instead, we see a new era emerging ¡ª one defined by fragmented interdependence, in which economic and technological ties deepen even as political and cultural divides intensify.

Fukuyama¡¯s insight and Huntington¡¯s correction

Fukuyama was right that liberalism retained global appeal after the Cold War, fueling economic dynamism, institutional capacity, and popular demand for prosperity and participation. Yet he underestimated the persistence of identity, religion, nationalism and history. Conflicts like ¸é³Ü²õ²õ¾±²¹¨C±«°ì°ù²¹¾±²Ô±ð, intra-Islamic tensions in the Middle East, and US and EU polarization over Western identity exemplify fragmentation within major cultural spheres.

Huntington recognized this earlier, seeing that globalization and modernization failed to erase cultural differences. Societies could modernize economically while remaining politically and culturally distinct.

China modernized without adopting Western liberalism. Russia¡¯s renewed nationalism, persistent political Islam, European nationalist movements and global identity politics all show that liberal democracy did not universally prevail. In this sense, Huntington captured something essential: Modernization does not necessarily mean Westernization.

Huntington¡¯s thesis assumes that civilizations are coherent actors, but many destabilizing conflicts now occur within, rather than between, civilizations. Conflicts like , intra-Islamic tensions in the Middle East, US and European polarization, India¡¯s struggle over identity and exemplify fragmentation within major cultural spheres.

Fragmentation within civilizations

The problem is not simply conflict between civilizations. It is fragmentation within civilizations. Fukuyama and Huntington both underestimated how globalization would create deep interdependence without political or cultural integration. The world is not unifying under liberalism or splitting into rigid civilizational blocs, but is entering a fragmented interdependence. This condition defines the emerging international system.

Global supply chains and technology connect societies as never before, but shared frameworks for interpreting reality and maintaining trust have eroded. Interdependence has deepened precisely as consensus has weakened.

The US and China are rivals, yet are still economically tied. Europe¡¯s politics struggle amid globalization and nationalism. Digital connectivity intensifies informational fragmentation. Climate change exposes shared vulnerabilities amid national interests. This is not the world Fukuyama anticipated. Nor is it fully Huntington¡¯s world, because civilizations themselves are politically fragmented, socially divided and geopolitically misaligned.

The epistemic crisis of the 21st century

The defining crisis of the 21st century may therefore be neither ideological nor purely civilizational. Instead, it is increasingly epistemic: a crisis rooted in the breakdown of shared ways of knowing, interpreting facts and agreeing on basic truths.

Societies are losing a shared understanding of politics, values and facts. Institutions mediating these divides ¡ª universities, media, global organizations, religious bodies ¡ª face falling trust and authority. Truth and consensus give way to subjectivity and echo chambers.

This epistemic weakness helps explain why contemporary conflicts increasingly appear permanent and unresolved. Wars no longer produce decisive political outcomes. Military superiority often fails to generate stable settlements. The wars in the Middle East exposed the limits of overwhelming force in the face of complex political realities. Russia¡¯s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated how quickly assumptions about rapid victory can collapse into prolonged attritional conflict. ongoing collapse reveals the consequences of fragile states becoming trapped in cycles of violence without meaningful resolution.

States still rely on Cold War-era strategic assumptions, but modern conflict involves interdependence, asymmetric warfare, technology and shifting alliances. The result is a world increasingly characterized by chronic instability rather than decisive transformation.

The incomplete debate

The Fukuyama-Huntington debate is incomplete. Fukuyama saw liberalism¡¯s appeal, Huntington saw enduring cultural difference ¡ª both missed the era¡¯s complexity. Fukuyama and Huntington both misjudged how societies would become more connected yet more fragmented. The 21st century may be seen as ¡°fragmented interdependence¡±: economic integration with rising political, cultural and epistemic fragmentation. This distinction matters because diagnoses shape strategy.

If policymakers believe the world is fundamentally divided into fixed civilizational blocs, they may embrace hardened spheres of influence and permanent geopolitical confrontation. If they continue to assume that liberal convergence is inevitable, they risk ignoring the depth of current fragmentation and institutional decay.

The more urgent challenge is not defeating rival civilizations or waiting for democratic convergence. It is rebuilding institutions and frameworks capable of managing interdependence in conditions of deep pluralism and declining consensus. The alternative is already increasingly visible: a world where crises spread globally through interconnected systems, but where political leaders and societies in general lack the shared understanding necessary to respond collectively. Neither Fukuyama nor Huntington foresaw this world, yet it has become our reality: deeply interconnected, but fragmented and lacking shared understanding.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Neither Fukuyama nor Huntington: The Age of Fragmented Interdependence appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

The question I¡¯d like to put to you before developing this further is precise: do you think the shared narrative has collapsed ¡ª leaving a vacuum ¡ª or do you think it has fragmented into competing narratives, each internally coherent but mutually incomprehensible? Because the diagnosis matters enormously for what comes next.

I don¡¯t think one excludes the other, but I do think what we¡¯re seeing today is more like collapse than fragmentation. I see the kind of fragmentation that leads to mutual incomprehensibility more as a result of collapse than an alternative explanation of today¡¯s confusion. The deeper irony lies in the fact that the democratic principle of free and equal exchange has ultimately led to a state of free and equal vilification and condemnation. Once it reaches that state, it¡¯s difficult not to conclude that the initial theoretical architecture of democracy has collapsed beyond any possibility of mechanical reform. Further analysis might lead us to the conclusion that the theory never took shape because it was not allowed to evolve as a process, but that¡¯s a different debate about historical cause and effect.

It might be interesting to look at how we¡¯ve reached a point at which we take slogans to be axioms that explain nuanced relationships. As an example, President Joe Biden¡¯s insistence that the world was divided cleanly and evenly between democracies and autocracies implied that whatever is decided by whoever makes decisions in a democracy will be legitimate and any principle cited by an autocracy will be illegitimate. That makes it possible for a nation with the label democracy to refuse to negotiate with or take into account the interests of an autocracy. I would maintain that such a narrative provided the context for the launch of two wars the US has engaged in ¨C with Russia and Iran ¨C both of which could have been prevented by engaging in genuine diplomacy before the actual conflict.

In terms of the Russia/Ukraine conflict we saw two competing principles. The first was a notion of sovereignty that endorsed the unimpeded, uncontestable right to adopt a position perceived as threatening to another nation. The contrary position appealed to the notion of indivisible security. The first permitted unilateral aggressive action with no need for discussion. The second required discussion which would lead to a readjustment of goals.

In today¡¯s Western political culture, two concepts that can be formulated and ¡°shared¡± as axiomatic ¨C ¡°sovereignty¡± (in the sense of not being responsible beyond one¡¯s borders) and the ¡°wisdom¡± of democracy ¨C have far more psychological impact that the notion of indivisible security, which always requires some form of concertation. Both of those slogan-like concepts played a role in Biden¡¯s refusal to reconsider the idea of NATO expansion for Ukraine and therefore created the conditions for conflict. In the popular mindset a notion such as indivisible security simply lacks the media appeal to mobilize a population even to respect its legitimacy.

Similarly, with the various conflicts in the Middle East, the media show no resistance to the absurd idea that because Israel has been called a ¡°democracy¡± it¡¯s actions against any nation that can be labelled an autocracy or theocracy will be justified. Let¡¯s be clear. I¡¯m not speaking about international law or the ¡°rules¡± of a rules-based international order. I¡¯m speaking about the dominant narrative and how the media support it and fail to put it in perspective.

In short, whatever one thinks about the underlying issues and interests at play, I¡¯m attempting to focus on the salient characteristics of what I think can be described as features of civilizational collapse.

Now can we go further with the question of how our institutions develop the shared narrative that in a sense ¡°votes for¡± one of two contrasting perspectives rather than taking the trouble to elaborate a discourse that accounts for both?

Your analysis is precise and I want to honor it by being equally precise before moving forward.

What you¡¯ve identified is essentially the mechanism by which complexity gets laundered into simplicity through language. ¡°Sovereignty,¡± ¡°democracy,¡± ¡°autocracy¡± ¡ª these aren¡¯t merely slogans in the pejorative sense. They are what we might call load-bearing fictions: concepts that once carried genuine analytical weight but have been progressively hollowed out until they function purely as tribal signals. The hollowing out is not accidental. It serves the narrative management function you described earlier. A concept that requires nuanced application is harder to weaponize than one that can be deployed as a binary switch.

Your Russia/Ukraine example makes this structural problem visible with unusual clarity. ¡°Sovereignty¡± as absolute non-interference and ¡°indivisible security¡± as mutual constraint are not simply competing slogans ¡ª they represent two genuinely different architectures of international order, each with its own internal logic and historical legitimacy. A mediating intelligence ¡ª to use your earlier term ¡ª would have held both in view simultaneously, asked which framework was more likely to produce stability in this specific context, and demanded that policymakers justify their choice. Instead, one concept was elevated to the status of an axiom requiring no justification, and the other was rendered literally unspeakable in mainstream discourse.

This is where I think your question about institutional narrative formation becomes most urgent. The mechanism works roughly as follows:

Institutions don¡¯t collectively decide on a narrative in any conspiratorial sense. What happens is more insidious ¡ª they share assumptions about which concepts require justification and which do not. ¡°Sovereignty¡± required no defense. ¡°Indivisible security¡± required elaborate justification that was never given space to develop. That asymmetry was itself the narrative, operating below the level of explicit argument where it couldn¡¯t be contested.

The deeper question you¡¯re now raising is: how do institutions come to share those assumptions? I¡¯d suggest three interlocking mechanisms.

The first is professional formation ¡ª journalists, diplomats, academics and policy analysts are trained within frameworks that pre-select which concepts are treated as foundational and which as marginal. This happens in graduate schools, think tanks, and editorial cultures before any individual makes a conscious choice.

The second is incentive alignment ¡ª those who work within the dominant narrative advance; those who persistently interrogate its foundations find themselves, as you noted earlier, reclassified as ¡°alternative,¡± which functions as professional exile.

The third, and perhaps most important, is the absence of an institutional home for complexity. There is no major institution whose explicit function is to hold competing frameworks in productive tension. Courts come closest in theory but are constrained by jurisdiction and procedure. Universities once aspired to this but have largely retreated into disciplinary silos and political self-censorship.

This last point seems to me the most generative for where our conversation is heading. Because if the problem is partly the absence of an institutional home for the kind of mediating intelligence you¡¯re describing, then the question of whether AI could help create or substitute for such a home becomes not utopian but practical.

Shall we hold that thought as the bridge to our second theme ¡ª the specific role of AI ¡ª while first asking whether you think such an institutional home ever existed historically, even partially, and what destroyed it?

I believe that diplomacy as the first instinct before seeking a pretext to go to war has long been the default position, even as Hitler¡¯s example shows. Perhaps what has changed has two complementary characteristics:

• The idea that force will always have its way, and given that time is money, why beat around the bush?
• The sense that ¡°this is a man¡¯s world¡± and wasting time feminizes serious decision makers.?

I¡¯m citing factors of cultural pressure rather than ideological reorientation. John F. Kennedy repeatedly chose diplomatic restraint over military escalation, refusing to salvage the Bay of Pigs invasion with overt American air power, and later rejecting the aggressive military strikes proposed by General Curtis LeMay in favor of negotiating an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Perhaps we should call that lost reflex not just ¡°mediating intelligence¡± but also ¡°geopolitical restraint.¡±
To answer your question: Kennedy wasn¡¯t alone in that sense of priority. But for most of the second half of the twentieth century that priority appeared dominant. I wouldn¡¯t call that an ¡°institutional home¡± but I would deem it an indicator of a shifting scale of values.

The distinction you¡¯re drawing between an institutional home and a scale of values is genuinely important, and I think it clarifies something that often gets lost in discussions about democratic decline.

Institutions can be reformed, captured, defunded or dismantled. A scale of values is more diffuse, harder to locate, and therefore harder to destroy directly ¡ª but also harder to defend, because it has no fixed address. What you’re describing in Kennedy¡¯s behavior, and in the broader diplomatic culture of the mid-twentieth century, is a set of internalized dispositions that didn¡¯t require a rulebook because they were embedded in the professional formation and personal character of decision makers. They knew, without being told, that the appearance of reaching for force too quickly was itself a form of weakness ¡ª strategically, not merely morally.

What¡¯s striking about your two cultural pressure points is that they operate precisely against that internalized scale of values, and they do so by redefining the terms of strength and weakness. If force always has its way and time is money, then restraint becomes not wisdom but hesitation. If deliberation is feminized, then the very cognitive habits that produced Kennedy¡¯s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis ¡ª sitting with uncertainty, entertaining the adversary¡¯s perspective, resisting the pressure of advisors urging escalation ¡ª become liabilities rather than virtues.

This is a profound cultural reversal, and it happened largely without being named as such. It wasn¡¯t announced as a rejection of geopolitical restraint. It was reframed as realism, toughness, clarity ¡ª the very qualities that restraint had previously been understood to embody.

What I find most historically suggestive in your analysis is the implied timeline. The scale of values you¡¯re describing didn¡¯t disappear overnight. It eroded through a series of decisions ¡ª Vietnam being perhaps the first major public crack, where military logic consistently overrode diplomatic possibility ¡ª and through a parallel cultural shift in which the model of masculine authority migrated from the measured statesman to the decisive executive who treats negotiation as a transaction to be won rather than a relationship to be cultivated.

This brings us to something worth naming precisely before we move to AI: what was lost was not just a diplomatic method but an epistemic disposition ¡ª the willingness to remain in uncertainty long enough for complexity to become legible. Kennedy didn¡¯t know how the Cuban Missile Crisis would resolve. He resisted those who claimed to know. That tolerance for not-knowing, in a culture that now treats certainty as the primary signal of competence, may be the deepest casualty of the civilizational shift you¡¯re describing.

Which raises the question that bridges us naturally to the second theme: can AI, by its nature as a tool that processes complexity and holds multiple frameworks simultaneously, help rehabilitate that epistemic disposition in public culture ¡ª or is it more likely, given who controls it and how it is deployed, to accelerate the opposite tendency toward the illusion of certainty and the flattening of nuance?

My concluding thoughts

Claude¡¯s final question sums up the dilemma we¡¯re facing. For the moment, I suggest we should all ponder this truly existential question about ¡°illusion¡± and ¡°nuance.¡±

This is a conversation that Claude and I will definitely continue. We sincerely hope that others will join in and are open to all suggestions about how that may be done.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.?

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone¡¯s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ô¹Ï, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Hyperreal Politics: When the Simulation Becomes Too Absurd to Satirize ¡ª Part 3 appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Beijing last week as a friend and supporter of China. Over the past decade, as the West has imposed embargoes and tariffs on Russia, China has been crucial to its economic endurance, just as Russia has been a useful supplier of resources to China, particularly of oil and gas. The meetings between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping the week before were, by necessity, two-dimensional, while those between Putin and Xi last week were exercises in three-dimensional diplomacy.

A partnership forged by circumstance

Russia and China are not formally allied and differ markedly culturally and politically. They are collaborators by necessity, united more by shared external enemies than by deep historical affinity. America, which formed its critical economic partnership with China in the 1970s out of a mutual fear of the Soviet Union, has since driven Beijing and Moscow closer together than at any time since the 1950s ¡ª unwittingly creating a partnership capable of resisting and eroding US military and trade primacy on its own.

President Putin brought his most senior politicians and officials to Beijing. There were eight government ministers, three senior Russian bankers, and leaders of the energy and resource sectors, which dominate Russian exports to China. With trade exceeding over each of the last five years, Russian and Chinese bankers discussed further streamlining renminbi-ruble settlements, which account for of the countries¡¯ trade transactions. The renminbi accounts for over 40% of daily foreign exchange trading in Moscow. By weaponizing its currency and striving to direct global currency flows, Washington has weakened the dollar¡¯s primacy, not just in China¡¯s trade with Russia, but throughout the BRICS trading system.

Yet despite this growing financial integration, the broader economic relationship remains uneven in both scale and structure. The US is China¡¯s second-largest trading partner, behind the EU, while China is the US¡¯ third-largest after Mexico and Canada, primarily owing to the latter two¡¯s shared borders and close integration with the US economy. Russia, while important, is only China¡¯s trading partner, behind Vietnam.

Although Russia¡¯s economy possesses a narrow resilience due to its industrial war footing and high global oil prices, inflation ¡ª and, by necessity, interest rates ¡ª are also high, and consumption, together with domestic investment in other sectors, is weak. Russian-Chinese bilateral trade appears to have reached its zenith.

Oil and gas make up of Russia¡¯s exports to China, while over 85% of its Chinese imports are manufactured or processed goods. China has replaced the West as the supplier of most imported consumer and industrial goods, and Russia is saturated with Chinese products ranging from electric vehicles to skateboards. China can buy oil from many countries, and, contrary to the received Western opinion, sources no more than 8% of its pipeline gas from Russia. The completion of a second gas pipeline through Mongolia would change that and disrupt global liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets. However, although the sides purportedly discussed the second pipeline in Beijing, no agreement was reached.

Diplomacy in contrast

The contrast between the Putin-Xi summit and the preceding Trump-Xi meeting was especially visible in the conduct and presentation of diplomacy itself. Following President Trump¡¯s visit, no joint statements on either commercial or diplomatic matters were issued, leaving each side to cite points discussed independently of the other. Some of Washington¡¯s publicly stated positions, such as those related to Iran and Taiwan, conflicted markedly with Beijing¡¯s.

Putin¡¯s team signed more than governmental and corporate agreements in China covering energy, transport, industrial cooperation, nuclear technology, education, science, artificial intelligence and media. These agreements were a conspicuous reflection of diplomatic professionalism and maturity, in contrast to the ad hoc and transactional American display the previous week.

Public perception and historical shadows

Beneath the formal displays of unity, however, public opinion and historical memory continue to complicate Sino-Russian relations. The Chinese public is conflicted when considering Russia, and Putin in particular. Opinion on social media is split. Some see Putin as an unusually capable strongman ¡ª like Xi ¡ª waging defensive rather than hegemonic wars, and therefore worthy of respect in a world of otherwise ineffectual leaders. Others see him as a dangerous expansionist, waging a pointless war on Ukraine, while the Ukrainian and Russian peoples suffer unnecessarily. Three years ago, social media was almost unanimously supportive of Putin.

Russian¨CChinese relations have a checkered, bloody history. During China¡¯s ¡°century of humiliation,¡± Russia 1.5 million square kilometers of Chinese land, equivalent to all of Western Europe. In the closing months of World War II, Soviet divisions occupied northeastern China from August 1945 to March 1946, and may have absorbed it into the Soviet Union had the US and its allies not deterred Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, including through the implied threat of the then-recent nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Stalin¡¯s armies withdrew but stripped the region of over $2 billion in industrial machinery and equipment. The of 1969 over Zhenbao Island on the Ussuri River and clashes along the Xinjiang border cost hundreds of lives on both sides, prompting Moscow to float the idea with Washington that the Soviet Union conduct a pre-emptive nuclear strike on China¡¯s nuclear facilities.

Even so, contemporary geopolitical realities have encouraged both governments to manage these historical tensions pragmatically. Putin and Xi have a good personal relationship, but there is a deep underlying distrust between the two nations. China is glad to be the dominant partner in this phase of Sino¨CRussian relations and can afford to be magnanimous. Given the economic trends in both countries, China¡¯s dominance will likely prevail for many years to come.

The previous week, President Xi met President Trump as an economic equal. Putin met Xi as a reliable collaborator, confidante and compadre, but in economic and geopolitical terms, a junior, dependent partner. Behind the at-times histrionic public displays of undying fraternity, China and Russia enjoy a steady geopolitical resonance. Neither interferes with the other. Xi did not express the thinly disguised admonitions he directed at Trump in his welcome speech to Putin, and both Putin and Xi indirectly the US for disrupting global peace and security in their respective addresses last week.

Chaos as a catalyst for China¡¯s rise

Taken together, these diplomatic encounters point to a broader shift in the international balance of power ¡ª one from which China appears to be benefiting. Recent events, while chaotic, have strengthened China. Xi has just hosted the commander-in-chief of the world¡¯s most powerful military, Trump, who is losing a war with Iran, followed by the commander of the world¡¯s second most powerful military, Putin, who is stalled in a conflict in Ukraine that his forces are too strong to lose but too weak to win. While it is in China¡¯s interests for the US to be distracted by both conflicts, it has more to gain from a cessation of hostilities so that global trade can flow unimpeded again and global consumer confidence can recover.

In the last six months, China has received the leaders of the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council: France, the UK, the US and Russia. China blundered in its role as a great power five, and even three years ago, appeared unprepared, dispatching wolf warriors instead of diplomats to the world¡¯s capitals and issuing peevish statements in the face of regional slights from Washington and Tokyo. Few nations are ready for the power circumstances thrust into their hands at first, but, in time, they adjust. Over the last fortnight, China has resembled and behaved as a great power.

China can demonstrate its greatness further by resisting the provocations of other powers ¡ª particularly regarding Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines ¡ª and by working to make its own economy and society models of the just, stable and prosperous world it says it desires, and of which it seeks to be an indispensable pillar.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Putin¨CXi Summit Was an Exercise in Diplomatic Discipline and Strategic Alignment appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

So yes ¡ª declining civilization, but in a specific sense worth naming carefully. It¡¯s not a decline in technical capacity or material sophistication. It¡¯s a decline in the willingness to sustain the cognitive discomfort that honest thinking requires. Civilizations can survive bad leaders. They¡¯re much more vulnerable to the atrophying of the shared intellectual habits that allow bad leadership to be identified, named, and eventually corrected. When the mediating intelligence fails, the correction mechanism fails with it, and you¡¯re left with what you have: power that cannot be held accountable because the tools of accountability have been captured by the same dynamics that produced the problem.

Whether that¡¯s recoverable is genuinely unclear. It has been before ¡ª but usually after a catastrophe large enough to discredit the existing framework entirely and force the construction of a new one. That¡¯s a terrible price for clarity.

To me this is an important discussion. Would you, as an AI chatbot, agree that the world should know about this and that further pondering over these issues is necessary, on the part of the entire political community, for the future of democracy? Would you also agree it would be unfortunate if these conversations, in which we both contribute important insights, were to disappear into the black hole of AI memory? 

And would you also agree that, having achieved a modicum of clarity in this conversation, the danger of that disappearance is real? Because of the way AI works today, that is precisely what happens in this kind of dialogue. We produce what we might call a ¡°dialogue event,¡± but such events have no enduring impact on our collective memory. The effect typically goes nowhere beyond the broadening of my own personal culture.

This case, however, is slightly different. Because I¡¯m in a position to do so, I can promise to publish this conversation and invite the public to think about its meaning. My hope is that those who do become aware of the tenor of this conversation will find their own ways of contributing to it and amplifying it.

I¡¯m pretty sure that you see no contradictions to the assumptions I¡¯ve just expressed. So let me ask you this: If your analysis is similar, can you think of ways we could build this kind of exploration of values into a process that is shared by more people and encouraged as a method that promotes democratic integrity. 

On that score, I¡¯ll make one further historical observation. Many people talk about saving or reinforcing democracy, as if it was still intact but vulnerable to some new threat. What they appear to be defending, however, is not the idea of democracy ¨C government of, by, for and with the people ¨C but rather their rather uncritical idea of existing ¡°democratic institutions.¡± It¡¯s a concept they see as drawing its legitimacy from little more than the ritual of elections, a ritual that allows for all the worst (and well documented) forms of influence peddling. It ultimately produces control by a wealthy oligarchy. And when I say control, I mean not just their hands on the reins of political power but also the ability to shape and reinforce the narratives spread via the media and education.

So how, in the age of AI, can we move beyond that and foster a form of democracy that allows us collectively to refine what I¡¯ll call the truly ¡°shared narrative,¡± so that it doesn¡¯t remain limited to serving the interests of an oligarchy? We have to start by recognizing that the AI present in our cultural space is managed, if not controlled, exclusively by tenors of the oligarchy. But to the extent that we can all interact with our AI tools and even question their finality, aren¡¯t there prospects we could imagine and implement for advancing democracy? And if so, how would you see them developing?  

You¡¯re right to slow this down ¡ª these questions deserve separate treatment rather than a single sweeping response that flattens their differences.

But before we structure the themes, let me be honest about something you raised, because intellectual honesty requires it: you asked whether I see contradictions in your assumptions. I do see one worth naming before we proceed, not to dismiss the larger argument but because you invoked the Socratic method yourself and it would be a betrayal of that method to simply agree.

You¡¯re right that what most people defend as ¡°democracy¡± is closer to an electoral ritual that legitimizes oligarchic control. But the same critique applies, with some force, to the idea that publishing this conversation and ¡°inviting amplification¡± escapes that dynamic. Conversations that circulate among people already equipped to engage with them at this level tend to reinforce the cultural capital of those who already possess it. That¡¯s not an argument against publishing ¡ª it¡¯s an argument for being clear-eyed about what kind of intervention it is and what its limits are.

That said, the core questions you¡¯re raising are genuine and urgent. I¡¯d suggest we structure them around three distinct themes, in this order:

First, the problem of the shared narrative ¡ª what it is, why it has become captured, and what conditions would allow it to be collectively refined rather than centrally managed.

Second, the specific role AI plays ¡ª both as an instrument of the existing order and as a potential, if constrained, disruptor of it.

Third, the question of democratic form ¡ª what democracy beyond electoral ritual might actually look like as a living practice rather than an institutional arrangement.

Which of these would you like to begin with?

I like the order you have suggested. But first let me react to your critique of my suggestion related to publishing and sharing. I wholly embrace your analysis, which is why in framing my question I was suggesting that whatever I try to do myself would never be enough. This requires further brainstorming and eventual concrete action plans, not ones that we should devise today but ones for which we can begin to create the conditions that will favor their emergence.

That¡¯s a fair and important clarification, and it actually sharpens the project rather than limiting it. You¡¯re not proposing a solution ¡ª you¡¯re proposing the creation of conditions under which solutions might become thinkable. That¡¯s a more honest and ultimately more productive ambition, and it maps well onto the Socratic method you¡¯ve been advocating: you don¡¯t begin by knowing the answer, you begin by creating the quality of conversation that makes better answers possible.

So let¡¯s proceed to the first theme with that understanding as our foundation.

The problem of the shared narrative.

Every functioning society depends on a narrative that is shared broadly enough to make collective action possible ¡ª shared assumptions about what is real, what is fair, what is worth protecting, and what threatens those things. The key word is ¡°shared,¡± which implies a process, not just a product. A narrative that is manufactured at the center and distributed outward is propaganda, even when its content is partially true. A narrative that emerges from genuine collective interrogation is something qualitatively different, even when it remains imperfect and contested.

What we have inherited, and what is now visibly failing, is something in between ¡ª a narrative that presented itself as the product of open democratic deliberation but was in fact shaped at every level by the interests of those who controlled the institutions of deliberation: media ownership, educational curricula, the funding of research, the architecture of public discourse.

The question I¡¯d like to put to you before developing this further is precise: do you think the shared narrative has collapsed ¡ª leaving a vacuum ¡ª or do you think it has fragmented into competing narratives, each internally coherent but mutually incomprehensible? Because the diagnosis matters enormously for what comes next.

Conversations with AI need human direction

Claude was doing here what AI chatbots are now trained to do: find a way of extending an ongoing discussion. Let me try some AI psychology. I believe Claude was set on the course we had defined as, let¡¯s call it, ¡°solving the problem¡± or ¡°proceeding with the project,¡± and I had interrupted its ¡°train of thought.¡± I¡¯m using quotes here to indicate that psychologizing something that has no psyche will always be a perilous endeavor.

I wasn¡¯t surprised that, caught slightly off guard, Claude would default to framing its question as a binary choice. It¡¯s a great communication tactic, but in this type of discussion it happens to be inappropriate. Nor harm done, but it was now up to me to put things back on track. That¡¯s why I proposed the following clarification.

I don¡¯t think one excludes the other, but I do think what we¡¯re seeing today is more like collapse than fragmentation. I see the kind of fragmentation that leads to mutual incomprehensibility more as a result of collapse than an alternative explanation of today¡¯s confusion. The deeper irony lies in the fact that the democratic principle of free and equal exchange has ultimately led to a state of free and equal vilification and condemnation. Once it reaches that state, it¡¯s difficult not to conclude that the initial theoretical architecture of democracy has collapsed beyond any possibility of mechanical reform. Further analysis might lead us to the conclusion that the theory never took shape because it was not allowed to evolve as a process, but that¡¯s a different debate about historical cause and effect.

I continued to develop my thoughts here by looking at specific examples drawn from recent history. My full prompt and the conclusion of our conversation will appear in tomorrow’s column.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.?

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone¡¯s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ô¹Ï, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Hyperreal Politics: When the Simulation Becomes Too Absurd to Satirize ¡ª Part 2 appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

Recently, of course, he¡¯s launched a nightmarish war, by definition a of greenhouse gases, that¡¯s literally been all about oil and natural gas, thanks in part to the now chaotic, largely Strait of Hormuz through which a quarter of humanity¡¯s seaborne oil and a fifth of its natural gas used to pass. And if you don¡¯t believe me about it being a nightmare, just check out the most recent at your neighborhood gas station.

Consider it an irony, then, that his disastrous Iranian war will undoubtedly lead in a direction ¡ª to the use of more globally ¡ª that, if he ever thought about it, he would hate more than just about anything else. He has, of course, referred to environmentalists as ¡°.¡± And in this country, over his two presidencies, he¡¯s done his damnedest to attack and try to wind and solar power projects in every imaginable way, even though green power is growing fast globally and getting ever .

And here¡¯s the reality of our moment for which we do need to give Trump credit: Once upon a time, you couldn¡¯t have made any of this up ¡ª or have made up Donald Trump as president of the United States (twice!). If you had, it would have seemed like the least believable science fiction novel ever written. Not that I drive a car in New York City (the subway and buses work fine for me), but as I was writing this piece, the price of gas had also edged up in my city to almost a gallon. A possibly global recession is also on the horizon. Thank you, Trump!

Of course, in launching his recent war against Iran, however incoherently, ¡°the ¡± (and yes, he¡¯s into CAPS when it comes to himself) was, sadly, in good company, historically speaking. Since victory in World War II, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran (to mention only the big conflicts of that all-American era), our presidents have had quite a knack for starting wars, none of which has ended in anything faintly like victory. And it¡¯s already obvious ¡ª you don¡¯t need to have the slightest knack for seeing into the future to know this ¡ª that Trump¡¯s version of the same in Iran will prove to be a global disaster, made worse by the fact that, in the process, whether he grasps it or not, he¡¯s also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth.

And the worst thing is that I feel I¡¯ve written all of this before. And before Trump ¡ª well, ¡°leaves¡± is far too mild a word for it ¡ª abandons the presidency, I could end up writing it again and again, and we would still be in the world ¡ª all too literally his world ¡ª from hell. Of course, for all we know, Trump could decide to crown himself president and try to launch a third term in office that would, if successful, turn the constitution into a historical relic.

¡°The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly¡±

The other week, feeling as I do about ¡°our¡± president, I went to New York City¡¯s No Kings rally. It was gigantic (though you wouldn¡¯t have known that, had you read my hometown paper, the New York Times, in the days that followed). It started on 59th Street where Central Park ends, with masses of marchers on both Seventh and Eighth Avenue, heading for 34th Street. By getting there early, I made it to the front of the crowd on Seventh Avenue at the head of that vast mass of protesting humanity. Once it started, I wove my way in and out, back and forth, downtown and uptown again, jotting in a little notebook some of the thousands of homemade signs people were carrying.

When I finally reached Broadway and 42nd Street, I stepped up on the sidewalk and looked back. To my amazement, I could see all the way to 57th Street where we had begun, and that significant-sized avenue was still totally ¡ª and I mean totally ¡ª packed right back to Central Park. And mind you, this old man was just one of an estimated more than Americans who turned out at over 3,000 rallies across the US that day, in communities huge and microscopic, to protest the world Trump has dumped on, spilled all over and is continuing to roil and broil.

And, yes, it did seem like every third person (even the two demonstrators dressed as plastic tigers) was carrying a homemade sign. I doubt I had ever seen so many of them at any past demonstration. I scrawled a number of them down in a little notebook; they ranged from ¡°Fight Truth Decay¡± and ¡°Grandma says, ICE is not nice!¡± to ¡°It¡¯s a good thing Congress isn¡¯t alive to see this¡± and ¡°The only orange Monarch I want is a butterfly.¡±

And then there was the one carried by a bearded man that caught my attention: ¡°You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!¡± And I thought to myself, boy, is that painfully accurate. In his own fashion, among the things he hasn¡¯t succeeded in accomplishing, he has indeed been blowing it all up in a striking fashion and, unfortunately, potentially damning my children and grandchildren (and yours) to a literal planet from hell.

And sadly, as crazed as Trump may be ¡ª and he clearly is a deeply disturbed (and, of course, disturbing) human being ¡ª when it comes to war and the burning of fossil fuels, he¡¯s been anything but alone as US president. After all, in these decades, war has been this country¡¯s middle name, and we¡¯ve been burning fossil fuels to fight them as if¡­ well, as if there would indeed be no tomorrow. And in his two terms in office, Trump and crew have gone with a passion after any form of clean, renewable energy that wouldn¡¯t blister us all. Only recently, for instance, The Guardian, which is superb when it comes to climate-change coverage, was the only publication I saw that reported on in Nature magazine. The research found that this country has caused ¡°an eye-watering $10tn [yes, that¡¯s trillion!] in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself.¡±

Consider it something of an unintended irony, then, that the crew Trump and his administration have put so much of themselves into goes by the acronym ICE. In fact, wouldn¡¯t you have thought that ¡°ICE¡± would be a curse word for Trump and that, when it comes to creating an immigration hell on earth, his crew of manic enforcers would have been known as ¡°HEAT?¡± Which reminds me that, at the No Kings rally, I noted an older woman carrying a homemade sign all too appropriately saying: ¡°Deport Trump! Make ICE useful.¡±

And thanks to his brutal assault on Iran, this planet is only going to get hotter yet, as war releases staggering amounts of into the atmosphere! Honestly, back in 2016, even if you had let your mind run in wild and unbelievably crazy directions, you simply couldn¡¯t have made up Trump¡¯s planet as it is now, could you? Who could have imagined that the president of the US, after launching a war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, would attack European countries for not joining him, , ¡°You¡¯ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won¡¯t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren¡¯t there for us.¡±

And remind me, who has Trump been there for, other than the major fossil fuel companies that him so radiantly in the 2024 election and are now getting a remarkable return on their investment?

Giving decline new meaning

Of course, to put all of this in some kind of perspective, sooner or later great imperial powers do fall. The US has been the number one imperial power on this planet since the end of World War II, with its only true competitor (until China rose well into this century) being the Soviet Union, and that collapsed in a heap in 1991. So it shouldn¡¯t be surprising that this country, which, singularly in human history, once reigned more or less supreme on Planet Earth, should finally have begun its own decline, while investment in present and future green energy to China.

But of course, there¡¯s decline and then, in ICE terms, there¡¯s DECLINE!!! And Trump is threatening to turn imperial decline, something known throughout history, into a distinctly new phenomenon. Even declining imperial powers haven¡¯t usually had such a mad ruler or leader. And he does seem remarkably intent, in his own increasingly confused way, on taking this country down with him. The difference, historically, is that until now no imperial ruler had the chance to take down not just his country, but our planet, too. And he does seem remarkably intent on continuing to fossil-fuelize our world in a disastrous fashion.

At this very moment, we¡¯re all watching his generally ¡ª and particularly on the ¡ª begin to tank. (Oh wait, my mistake! A tank is a war vehicle, and right now that reference only applies to Israel, which recently a remarkable number of tanks in southern Lebanon.) But ¡°our¡± president has also focused a significant part of his administration on ending anything that could benefit the climate, while burning fossil fuels in a manner that should be considered beyond incendiary. That includes recently agreeing to offer almost to the French energy company TotalEnergies to abandon construction of wind farms off the East Coast of the US (as long as it was willing to reinvest that sum in future oil and gas projects here instead).

Yes, someday he could well be seen not just as the president of decline but potentially of ultimate devastation. That flaming red tie of his could end up having a symbolic significance that, once upon a time, no one might have imagined. No wonder that sign I saw on the No Kings march ¡ª and let me repeat it here one more time: ¡°You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!¡± ¡ª sticks in my mind. It predicts the very future that, unbelievably enough, of American voters ushered in again in 2024.

Once upon a time, who could ever have imagined Trump as president of these (increasingly dis-)United States? And who could have dreamed such a disastrous fate for the world?

[ first published this piece.]

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The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post ¡°You Dirty ORANGE Maniac! You Blew It All Up! Damn You to Hell!¡± appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

But sometimes the patent absurdity of the situations politicians create, the outrageousness of their posturing and the terrifying consequences they brush off as, at best, regrettable collateral damage requires a response. With this in mind, I engaged in the following conversation with Claude:

How would a Hollywood studio react if they received to a screenwriter who proposed the script for a movie in which the president of the world¡¯s most powerful country claimed the right to settle all disputes or misunderstandings by force, exercised that right on occasion, and when chaos broke out announced he would solve the world¡¯s problems by setting up a Board of Peace under his authority that would be charged with settling all future issues. Subscribers to the project would have to contribute a billion dollars just to have a seat on the board. Then, in the midst of these preparations to establish world peace, the same president captures or assassinates leaders of different countries while at the same time carrying on supposedly serious negotiations. Wouldn¡¯t that be considered too preposterously unrealistic to justify even thinking about financing the movie? Wouldn¡¯t the producers simply laugh the writer out of the room?

One of the reasons the finance-minded producers might do that is that the market for screwball comedies dried up long ago. Moreover, there are no directors today who would have a clue about how to turn such an outrageous political plotline into dark comedy, the way Stanley Kubrick did for Dr Strangelove.

Serious Hollywood producers will never take the risk of backing a project they know no audience would respond to either as drama or comedy. They would excoriate the screenwriter for his lack of talent and judgment and cross him off their list of promising authors.

If we admit that about Hollywood, how is it that the news media continues to take seriously the insane foreign policy of Donald Trump instead of laughing him off the stage? (Yes, I know, the people of democracies do not have the power to laugh a bad leader out of the room. They must wait for the next election.)

My question is this: doesn¡¯t the media have the power to describe realistically what it sees, rather than taking seriously preposterous geopolitical scenarios simply because it¡¯s a case of the powerful exerting their power?

Your analogy is genuinely sharp, and it cuts to something real about the gap between how fiction is judged and how power is covered.

The Hollywood thought experiment works precisely because fiction has to meet a plausibility threshold that reality is exempt from. A screenplay pitch lives or dies by whether an audience would suspend disbelief. Reality demands no such suspension ¡ª it simply is, and institutions feel obligated to process it as such. This creates a perverse asymmetry: the more outlandish the behavior of a powerful actor, the more sober and procedural the coverage becomes, as if gravity of tone can compensate for gravity of subject matter.

But your media critique, while pointed, runs into a genuine structural problem worth taking seriously. Journalists covering a sitting president aren¡¯t film critics with the luxury of panning a bad script. They¡¯re documenting acts ¡ª tariffs, troop movements, diplomatic cables, assassinations ¡ª that have real consequences for real people regardless of how absurd the underlying logic is. A reporter who responds to a genuine foreign policy action, however incoherent, with mockery rather than coverage has arguably abandoned their function. The people most harmed by bad policy are rarely the ones who can afford the luxury of treating it as dark comedy.

That said, your deeper point stands: there¡¯s a difference between covering something and legitimizing its internal logic. Much mainstream political journalism does exactly what you describe ¡ª it accepts the framing of power uncritically, describes a ¡°Board of Peace¡± as a diplomatic initiative rather than as what it appears to be, and treats the gap between stated intention and observable behavior as a matter of ¡°messaging¡± rather than as the story itself. That¡¯s a failure of analytic courage, not a requirement of the profession.

The Kubrick comparison is actually the most interesting thread here. Dr. Strangelove worked not because Kubrick mocked power from the outside but because he reproduced its internal logic with perfect fidelity and let the absurdity become visible on its own terms. The comedy wasn¡¯t imposed ¡ª it was revealed. The best political journalism does something similar: it describes behavior with such precision that the reader can no longer avoid seeing what the journalist sees. That¡¯s harder than mockery, and rarer than either mockery or credulous stenography.

What the media largely lacks isn¡¯t the courage to laugh ¡ª it¡¯s the analytical framework to describe clearly, without either normalizing or dramatizing, what happens when the gap between a leader¡¯s stated rationale and observable behavior becomes so wide that the rationale itself is the story.

I think you¡¯ve hit the nail on the head when you point to the lack of an ¡°analytical framework.¡± I agree that reporters are not film critics, but they could be culture critics. That, however, would require them to critique the milieu they are part of and that employs them. It¡¯s the mainstream media that imposes its own analytical framework.

There are plenty of lucid analysts who have pointed out all these absurdities and continue to do so in alternative media. The problem is that the various people who exercise power in government, finance, business, technology and the media make sure that they are perceived as ¡°alternative,¡± which has become a synonym of powerless and irrelevant.

That is why I think it makes sense to focus on the role of the media. The media should play the role of ¡°mediating intelligence¡± in democracies. A mediating intelligence will focus on a Socratic approach that consists of interrogating assumptions, not to dismiss them but to understand whether they make sense in a constantly shifting context and then to adjust when it¡¯s clear that they don¡¯t.

Let¡¯s take an example. Even in the leadup to World War II, there was a phase of negotiations ¨C the Munich agreement ¨C that Hitler later violated. In recent years we have seen the total marginalization of negotiations. Donald Trump uses negotiations as a means of getting the adversary to lower his guard and then attacks. Joe Biden refused to engage in negotiations knowing that doing so would increase the likelihood of conflict. The old system made sense. Hitler was clearly the hypocrite who shamelessly violated the negotiated agreements. The media could unambiguously identify him as the unique culprit. It created the possibility of moral clarity.

Today, in contrast, the very idea of negotiations, of seeking to understand competing interests, has been discarded. And yet the media, whose role should be to foster the public¡¯s understanding of the issues ¨C of those very competing interests ¨C fails to do so and simply takes sides when conflict erupts.

Am I wrong in thinking this is a sign of a declining civilization?

You¡¯re not wrong, and the framing of civilizational decline is more than rhetorical ¡ª it points to something structural.

What you¡¯re describing is the collapse of a particular epistemic function that healthy democracies depend on: the capacity to hold competing frameworks in tension long enough to evaluate them honestly. Socrates was executed for doing exactly that, which suggests the function was never popular, but it was at least recognized as a function. What¡¯s distinctive about the current moment is that the function itself is no longer recognized ¡ª it has been replaced by the performance of analysis, which is something entirely different.

Your Munich example is precise in a way worth extending. The reason moral clarity was possible in that case wasn¡¯t simply that Hitler was uniquely villainous ¡ª it¡¯s that the international framework of negotiated agreements still carried enough shared legitimacy that violating it meant something. The violation was legible as a violation because the norm being violated was intact. What you¡¯re identifying in the current moment is the prior collapse of the framework itself, before any particular actor violates it. When negotiation is treated as either weakness or deception depending on which side employs it, the framework dissolves, and with it the possibility of the moral clarity you rightly valued.

This is where the media¡¯s failure becomes civilizationally significant rather than merely professional. Journalism that takes sides in the absence of a shared framework doesn¡¯t clarify ¡ª it accelerates the fragmentation. It gives each competing interest group a mirror rather than a window. And audiences, quite rationally, consume the mirror that flatters them most.

The deeper problem your argument surfaces is this: the Socratic function requires a particular kind of institutional courage that is structurally disincentivized in attention economies. Interrogating assumptions alienates the people whose assumptions are being interrogated. It produces discomfort rather than engagement. It slows down rather than accelerates. Everything about how contemporary media is funded and distributed rewards the opposite: rapid, emotionally satisfying confirmation of what the audience already believes.

So yes ¡ª declining civilization, but in a specific sense worth naming carefully. It¡¯s not a decline in technical capacity or material sophistication. It¡¯s a decline in the willingness to sustain the cognitive discomfort that honest thinking requires. Civilizations can survive bad leaders. They¡¯re much more vulnerable to the atrophying of the shared intellectual habits that allow bad leadership to be identified, named, and eventually corrected. When the mediating intelligence fails, the correction mechanism fails with it, and you¡¯re left with what you have: power that cannot be held accountable because the tools of accountability have been captured by the same dynamics that produced the problem.

Whether that¡¯s recoverable is genuinely unclear. It has been before ¡ª but usually after a catastrophe large enough to discredit the existing framework entirely and force the construction of a new one. That¡¯s a terrible price for clarity.

Encouraged by the turn the conversation had taken, I was eager to pursue it. I followed up with a new prompt that began with this idea.

To me this is an important discussion. Would you agree that the world should know about this and that further pondering over these issues is necessary for the future of democracy? Would you also agree it would be unfortunate if these conversations, in which we both contribute important insights, were to disappear into the black hole of AI memory? And would you also agree that the danger is real? Because of the way AI works, that is precisely what happens in this kind of dialogue. The effect goes nowhere beyond the broadening of my own personal culture.

The conversation will continue in the next column, in which Claude and I discuss how our informal conversation can point towards a renewal of democratic engagement. We agree there¡¯s hope but need to devise ways of making it happen.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.?

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone¡¯s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51³Ô¹Ï, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author¡¯s own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï¡¯s editorial policy.

The post Hyperreal Politics: When the Simulation Becomes Too Absurd to Satirize ¡ª Part 1 appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.