Egypt-Ethiopia Nile Dispute Comes to a Head

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Issue 1809- July- 17/07/2020

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Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

www.majalla.com/eng This week, the international dispute surrounding the GERD dam project took a drastic turn as Ethiopia took the unilateral decision to start filling the dam, a move that has been condemned by both Sudan and Egypt. Although all three states have been attempting to resolve the issue diplomatically, war rhetoric used in both Cairo and Adis Ababa has sparked fears that the conflict might soon involve military action. Yasmine El-Geressi writes this week’s cover story which focuses on these latest developments and how the GERD project might negatively impact Sudan and definatly negatively impact Egypt.

Recently, Iran and China have signed a new economic and military deal that some have speculated is a beginning of a deeper Sino-Iranian alliance. Some fear that the deal will pave the way for Chinese military presence in the region, thus greatly influencing the balance of power both for states within the region and proxy states outside the region. Joseph Braude writes on this new agreement and notes that talks of an alliance is still premature.

Hundreds of young Egyptian women and girls have accused a 22-year-old Egyptian man of sexual assault and rape.

The series of accusations have sparked a renewed #MeToo movement in Egypt, as statistics have shown that a large portion, if not the majority, of the female population has faced sexual assault to varying degrees. Yasmine El-Geressi writes on this recent incident as she speaks with Professor Helen Rizzo, a sociology professor from the American University in Cairo, on the sexual harassment women in Egypt and the wider Arab world face everyday.

India has recently been named as the most dangerous country for women by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, having judged it on criteria such as the frequency of sexual and nonsexual violence against women. In spite of high profile rape cases bringing the issue to public discourse, little has been done to ensure the safety of women in the streets. Ali El Shamy writes on the frequency of sexual assault and rape cases in India as he takes a look at how legal loopholes sometimes allow perpatrators to escape and incidences in which sectarian violence intertwined with sexual violence.

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Editor-in-Chief

Ghassan Charbel Editorial secretary Mostafa El-Dessouki HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd 10th Floor Building 7 Chiswick Business Park 566 Chiswick High Road London W4 5YG Tel : +44 207 831 8181 Fax: +44 207 831 2310

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

34 The Pandemic and Political Order

Issue 1809- July- 17/07/2020

28 Pinning Down Putin

42 What Iran Wants in Afghanistan

24 The Great Unequalizer

48 Get the Facts About COVID-19 Vaccines

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With ‘Stateless,’ Cate Blanchett Tackles the ‘Human Drama’ of Immigration 3

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38 When Toppling Monuments Serves

Authoritarian Ends

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A vendor wearing a mask arranges carpets in his shop at Central Souq on July 09, 2020 in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. - Getty

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Villagers use nets to catch offering thrown by Tenggerese worshippers during the Yadnya Kasada Festival at crater of Mount Bromo amid the coronavirus pandemic on July 07, 2020 in Probolinggo, East Java, Indonesia.

Tenggerese people are a Javanese ethnic group in Eastern Java who claimed to be the descendants of the Majapahit princes.

Their population of roughly 500,000 is centered in the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park in eastern Java. The most popular ceremony is the Kasada festival, which makes it the most visited tourist attraction in Indonesia. - Getty

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eekly news

Seven Ships Catch Fire at Iran’s Bushehr Port At least seven ships have caught fire at Iran’s Bushehr port, the Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday, in what appeared to be the latest in a series of fires and explosions around the country, some of which have hit sensitive sites.

No casualties have been reported, the agency said. Plumes of dense black smoke billowed into the air, in a photograph of the incident published by the official IRNA news agency.

State broadcaster IRIB showed fighters tackling clouds of smoke at a shipyard at the southern port on the Gulf. There have been several explosions and fires around Iranian military, nuclear and industrial facilities since late June,

meters to 560 meters, he said. Egyptian and Sudanese officials could not immediately be reached for comment. But the move is likely to spark fierce protests from those countries, which also depend on the Nile’s waters. On Tuesday, talks between the three nations to regulate the flow of water from the dam failed to reach agreement. The $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will have an installed capacity of 6,450 megawatts - more than doubling its existing capacity - and is the centrepiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter. including a fire at Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear facility on July 2.

Ethiopia Starts Filling Grand Renaissance Dam Ethiopia has started filling the Grand Renaissance dam, a giant hydroelectric project it is building on the Blue Nile, its water minister said on Wednesday, a day after talks with Sudan and Egypt on the issue became deadlocked.

“The construction of the dam and the filling of the water go hand in hand,” Seleshi Bekele said in televised comments. “The filling of the dam doesn’t need to wait until the completion of the dam.” The water level had increased from 525

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China Vows Retaliation After Trump Ends Preferential Status for Hong Kong President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the former British colony, prompting Beijing to warn of retaliatory sanctions. Citing China’s decision to enact a new national security law for Hong Kong, Trump signed an executive order that he said would end the preferential economic treatment for the city. “No special privileges, no special economic treatment and no export of sensitive technologies,” he told a news conference.

Acting on a Tuesday deadline, he also signed a bill approved by the U.S. Congress to penalize banks doing business with Chinese officials who implement the new security law. China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday Beijing will impose retaliatory sanctions against U.S.

through parliament. An independent member of parliament published documents last month indicating the prime minister, from a small liberal party, owned shares in companies that had won deals worth 44 million dinars ($15 million) from the state. He says he has done nothing wrong, but said he would resign if investigations being led by an independent anti-corruption committee, a parliamentary committee and a judge found he had. individuals and entities in response to the law targeting banks, though the statement released through state media did not reference the executive order.

U.S., Gulf Nations Issue Sanctions on Six Targets for Ties to ISIS The United States and six Gulf countries on Wednesday imposed sanctions on six targets, accusing them of being affiliated with ISIS, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The Treasury said the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC) - which also include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - blacklisted three entities and an individual in Turkey and Syria.

The Treasury accused money services businesses, which include al Haram Exchange, Tawasul Company, and al-Khalidi Exchange, of having “played a vital role in transferring funds to support Syria-based ISIS fighters and ... provided hundreds of thousands of dollars of liquidity to

ISIS leadership.” Abd-al-Rahman ‘Ali Husayn al-Ahmad al-Rawi, selected by ISIS in 2017 to serve as a senior financial facilitator, was also blacklisted, the Treasury said, accusing him of being one of a few that have provided ISIS “significant financial facilitation” into and out of Syria. The TFTC also blacklisted Afghanistan-based Nejaat Social Welfare Organization and its director, Sayed Habib Ahmad Khan, accusing the organization of being used as a cover company to support the activities of the Afghan affiliate of ISIS, known as ISIS-K.

Tunisian Prime Minister Resigns Tunisian Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh has presented his resignation to President Kais Saied, political sources told Reuters, after the biggest party in his coalition began pushing for a vote of no confidence in the government.

Saied now has a week to nominate a replacement as prime minister, who will have two months to form a new government and pass it

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Egypt’s Sisi Meets Libyan Tribesmen After Eastern Call to Intervene Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi met mainly eastern Libyan tribesmen in a show of solidarity on Thursday, days after Libya’s eastern-based parliament urged Cairo to intervene in their country’s civil war. The meeting reflects the growing regional stakes in Libya, divided since 2014 between areas held by an internationally recognised government in Tripoli, backed by Turkey, and a rival eastern administration, backed by the UAE, Russia and Egypt. On Tuesday, the eastern-based parliament allied to commander Haftar Khalifa called for Egypt to help counter Turkish support for Libya’s internationally recognised government in Tripoli. Turkey has helped the Tripoli administration force Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) to abandon an offensive on Tripoli. Any major escalation could risk igniting a direct conflict in Libya among the foreign powers that have already poured in weapons and fighters in violation of an arms embargo.

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Egypt and Ethiopia’s Slow-Motion Nile Dispute Comes to a Head After Almost a Decade of Negotiations, Ethiopia Has Taken Controversial Action by Filling the Dam Without a Deal

by Yasmine El-Geressi Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have been at loggerheads with each other for almost 10 years over Addis Abba’s controversial dam being built on the Nile River.

Ethiopia asserts that the new hydroelectric dam, the largest in Africa, which is going to be bigger than Greater London with a total capacity of 74 billion cubic metres, will not harm Egypt. Egypt disagrees.

Ethiopia maintains that it is only claiming its right to

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utilise one of its resources for national development under international law. Egypt claims its rights to the Nile waters under international agreements.

So far, the project has generated the most intractable challenge yet amongst Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia and is, now, the Middle East and North Africa’s most complex and potentially most destabilising interstate freshwater dispute. Egypt has been attempting to raise international pressure on Ethiopia to strike a deal on the use of water from the Nile, which sustains life for tens of millions of people, however the latest round of African Union led-talks on reached another gridlock on Tuesday.

The crisis took a new turn on Wednesday when Ethiopia began filling the reservoir without singing an agreement on water flows, a step Egypt has warned will threaten regional security, bringing to a head a roughly decade-long dispute between the two countries, both of which are key U.S. allies in Africa and home to about 100 million people.

NATIONAL DANGER VS NATIONAL PRIDE

A general view of the Blue Nile river as it passes through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), near Guba in Ethiopia, on December 2019 ,26. (Getty)

A 1929 treaty (and a subsequent one in 1959) gave Egypt and Sudan rights to nearly all the Nile waters.

The colonial-era document also gave Egypt veto powers over any projects by upstream countries that would affect its share of the waters. Neither agreement made any allowance for the water needs of the other riparian states that were not parties to the deal, including Ethiopia, whose Blue Nile contributes much of the river waters.

Ethiopia has long believed that it should not be bound by the decades-old treaty. Mooted first by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s, Ethiopia’s grand dam became a reality and a national obsession under Meles Zenawi, the long-time prime minister who ruled until 2012. He asked Ethiopians to finance it through donations and the purchase of low-denomination bonds from ordinary, poor people. Civil servants had to donate a month’s salary at the start. Local banks and other businesses were expected to buy bonds worth millions of birr. With almost every Ethiopian a stakeholder, it’s easy to see why the dam is a sign of renaissance and national pride.

Ethiopia went ahead and began constructing the colossal $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in early 2011 at the start of the Arab uprisings, without compliance with international norms

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The project has generated the most intractable challenge yet amongst Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia and is, now, the Middle East and North Africa’s most complex and potentially most destabilising interstate freshwater dispute. vis-à-vis Egypt and Sudan. Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi was quoted as saying in September last year that it would never have got under way had Egypt not been distracted by the political turmoil.

With a projected capacity of 6,000 megawatts, the project is central to the country’s efforts to become the continent’s biggest energy exporter. It will provide power to 65 million Ethiopians, who currently lack a regular electricity supply. Ethiopia also maintains that the dam is crucial or attaining developmental goals and combating poverty.

The dam wouldn’t change Ethiopia’s water consumption, but Sudan and Egypt, which are downstream from the dam on the Blue Nile River, fear that it could seriously disrupt their water access. Ethiopia has been developing the GERD without engaging downstream countries in material issues that affect them or allowing them a full,independent evaluation of the GERD through Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs).

Egypt almost entirely relies on the Nile and views the GERD as an existential threat. 90% of the country’s 100m people live along the Nile or in its vast delta.

The river, long seen as an Egyptian birth right, supplies most of their water. Egypt fears that the dam could restrict its already scarce supply of the Nile waters, which is almost the only water source for its citizens and is already under pressure because of climate change. It could also affect transport on the Nile in Egypt if the water level is too low and affect the livelihood of farmers who depend on the water for irrigation.

Sudan is caught in the middle in the dispute over the

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dam, which lies about 20km from its border: It could benefit from cheap electricity, and controlled water flows could help to prevent flooding and grow more food. But Khartoum fears that a lack of coordination could lead to its own Roseires Dam becoming overwhelmed, increasing the flood risk for millions downstream.

THORNY OBSTACLES While years of bilateral and multilateral talks, expert commissions, an agreed Declaration of Principles between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have resulted in the three sides reaching 90% of a deal, they have failed to produce a deal on how fast to fill the reservoir, how much water will be released during droughts and how to resolve any future disagreements.

Egypt wants Ethiopia to fill its reservoir slowly and to release enough water so that the river’s flow is not disrupted, especially during droughts. Ethiopia feels it is being forced to run its reservoir down too much during periods of drought which they say would undermine energy generation. Egypt wants commitments now and have called for disagreements to be resolved through binding international arbitration, while Ethiopia wants the three countries to take things year by year and settle and disagreements through negotiations.

Now the deadline has arrived: Ethiopia has started the reservoir this week at the start of the wet season in July, when rains flood the Blue Nile. It is a process

that is expected to take up to seven years. Filling the GERD without a deal sharply escalates tensions.

For both countries, this is far more than a technical or legal issue. It has major economic and thus political implications and affects each country’s self-image, which generates considerable domestic pressure to stick to maximalist positions.

The International Crisis Group warned last year that the two American allies “could be drawn into conflict” over the dam. A conflict between the two states could draw global interest as it would put millions of civilians at risk. It would threaten the vital international trade route through the Suez Canal and along the Horn of Africa.

WARTIME RHETORIC

Egypt has a history of threatening military action against states that contemplate building dams on the Nile River. In 1979, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat stated that “the only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” President al-Sisi has been quoted as saying that Egypt would take all the necessary measures to protect their rights to the Nile waters.

Last month Ethiopia even accused Egypt of sponsor-

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi (L), Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (C) and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn shake hands during a meeting in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on March 2015 ,23, to sign the agreement of principles on Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance dam project. (Getty)

the UNSC, citing Article 35 of the UN Charter that pertains to threats to international peace and security.

In two letters to the UNSC in June, Sudan also voiced its deep concerns about Ethiopia’s rush to fill the reservoir without an agreement, citing very high risks to the lives of millions of Sudanese.

The African Union has said it will try and find a solution but the Egyptian ministry said the virtual meeting held earlier this month failed to yield an agreement on both technical and legal levels.

TWO-FRONT CHALLENGES For both countries, this is far more than a technical or legal issue. It has major economic and thus political implications and affects each country’s self-image, which generates considerable domestic pressure to stick to maximalist positions. Partly for this reason, Egyptian negotiators do not believe that Ethiopia is committed to reaching an agreement. They also accuse Ethiopia of dragging out the talks to gain bargaining power as construction advances. Ethiopia, in turn, suspects that Egypt is stuck in the past, attached to defunct treaties that allow it to dominate the Nile waters.

ing cyber-attacks to disrupt the project.

Cairo’s increasingly bellicose tone is met with wartime rhetoric and threats in Addis Ababa, where officials are seeking a quick return on their $5bn investment. In October last year, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Ahmed, a Nobel peace prize-winner, warned: “No force can stop Ethiopia from building a dam. If there is need to go to war, we could get millions readied.”

Worsening ties over Ethiopia’s intention to start storing the Nile’s water in the dam’s reservoir compelled Egypt to call for intervention. Talks the US and World Bank mediated amongst the three riparian countries from November 2019 to February 2020 collapsed before the final meeting, when Addis Ababa rejected a binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan on the filling of the GERD’s reservoir and the dam’s operation.

In June, Egypt filed a request for intervention with

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Up for re-election next year and facing prolonged serious unrest and political challenges since he took office in 2018 that have dented his support and the stability of his government, Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister, is under pressure to take a hard line on over perhaps the only issue that unites citizens of all ethnicities. On June 30th protests erupted after a popular musician from the Oromo ethnic group was killed, a reminder of how thin the facade of national unity is.

Rivals at home have seized on the PM’s perceived weakness.

Egypt also does not have much scope to compromise. Egypt is already short of water. The UN sets the threshold for scarcity at an annual 1,000 cubic metres per person. In 2018 Egyptians had just 570 cubic metres; even without the dam, that could drop to 500 cubic metres within five years. The Egyptian president is also worried about developments on his western border. Egyptian-backed Khalifa Haftar, who last year vowed to capture Tripoli, was pushed back after Turkey sent armed drones and Syrian militiamen to support the UNrecognised government in Tripoli. Egypt sees a Turkish presence next door as a threat and last month President al-Sisi said his country had a right to intervene in Libya.

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Tehran Sacrifices India Ties to Win Chinese Partnership A New Diplomatic Axis is Dawning in the Far East

by Joseph Braude

dawning in the Far East.

In the last few days, Tehran and Beijing have made substantial progress towards an economic and military partnership just short of a formal alliance. While Iran stands to gain much from closer ties with China, the price has been steep.

Joint economic ventures with India have been scrapped, future oil sales to China will be heavily discounted, and Tehran has gone quiet about Beijing’s failure to pay past oil debts. Nevertheless, it appears that a new diplomatic axis may be

THE FIRST CASUALTY OF SINOIRANIAN ALLIANCE Last week, Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mohammad Eslami personally attended the first track laying in a new projected 628 km rail line intended to connect the city of Zahedan, capital of Iran’s Baluchistan province, with Chabahar along the Gulf. High hopes had been pinned on the $1.6 billion project, signed during the 2016

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visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Tehran, which heralded the rise of Chabahar as a commercial hub and promised a spur to development in perennially restive Baluchistan. Yet Tehran abruptly called off the project at the eleventh hour, citing delays from the Indian government in dispensing funds.

International observers believe another factor is at work: the People’s Republic of China. According to the New York Times, Beijing and Tehran have recently concluded two years’ negotiations over a joint partnership that promises to vastly increase Chinese investment, and influence, in Iran. The agreement would vastly expand China’s influence in Iran’s financial, telecommunications, and transportation sectors, as well as provide for dozens of other projects.

In exchange, China would receive a regular and heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil for the next 25 years.

A “COLONIAL CONTRACT

Chinese State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) meets Iran›s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the Diaoyutai state guesthouse in Beijing on May 2018 ,13.

(Getty)

With its opening words, the agreement hails “two ancient Asian cultures, two partners in the sectors of trade, economy, politics, culture and security with a similar outlook and many mutual bilateral and multilateral interests will consider one another strategic partners.” Beyond rhetorical flourish and economic partnership, it also signals deepening military cooperation, potentially giving China its first major foothold in the Middle East. Although the finalized details have yet to be released, the leaked version describes joint military training and exercises, extensive intelligence and research sharing, as well as weapons development, in an effort to engage “the lopsided battle with terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes.”

This latter point has proven to be a bone of contention within Iran, as news of the Sino-Iranian agreement leaked. Some Iranian critics have gone so far as to call it «a colonial contract» and compare it to the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchai with Russia. Others have expressed incredulity that China stands poised to make hundreds of billions in new investments in Iran when it appears unable to service its existing oil debts. As former reformist lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeqi put it: «Somebody should ask the

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The agreement would vastly expand China’s influence in Iran’s financial, telecommunications, and transportation sectors, as well as provide for dozens of other projects. In exchange, China would receive a regular and heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil for the next 25 years. other party to our 25-year pact why doesn›t it pay its debts to us,» referring to China’s large and growing debt of oil payments in arrears, now estimated at nearly $30 billion.

In the coming days, Iranian activists are expected to orchestrate protests in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tehran], while demonstrations are also being planned by Iranian diaspora groups in front of various Iranian embassies abroad. Activists on social media say a protest gathering in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tehran has been scheduled for later on Friday. Demonstrations are also planned online, to be held in front of Iranian embassies in various countries.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME It is certainly true that talk of a new Chinese-Iranian alliance is premature. It could well be that the Iranian-Indian railroad was in fact cancelled over quotidian financial delinquencies. Likewise, it is possible that the state of the Iranian economy, otherwise isolated and hemorrhaging from Western sanctions, has forced Tehran to inflate the true significance of its agreement with Beijing in order to show its public some light at the end of the tunnel.

And yet, as Washington’s ire is increasingly felt in both Tehran and Beijing in the era of COVID-19, one cannot preclude the possibility that today’s rapprochement is the shape of things to come.

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Breaking the Silence Surrounding Sexual Harassment in Egypt and Beyond Accusations of Serial Rapes Ignite a #MeToo Firestorm

by Yasmine El-Geressi A new #MeToo firestorm is erupting in Egypt as a wave of allegations of sexual misconduct against a 22-year-old Egyptian university student who attended

some of the country’s most elite schools and universities have been amplified on social media in the past two weeks. More than 100 accusers posted detailed allegations of sexual harassment and assault on the Instagram account “Assault Police”. Some were mi-

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nors when the alleged crimes took place.

Helen Rizzo, an associate professor of sociology and chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, says that while she was horrified at the number of accusers and severity of the accusations, she was “not surprised about the similarities this case seems to have with other wealthy and powerful perpetrators who were able to get away with sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) for years.”

The suspect, Ahmed Bassam Zaki, was arrested last week from his home in a gated community outside Cairo. The government also approved amendments, yet to be passed by parliament, to the criminal code that would grant the right of anonymity to victims of sexual assault. And the prestigious religious institution Al Azhar released a strongly-worded statement lambasting harassment as “forbidden and deviant” and encouraged women to testify about sexual assault while rejecting any suggestion that their dress or behavior was to blame. The Dar al-Iftar, in charge of issuing religious edicts, slammed those who blame women for wearing provocative clothing as “sick”.

The quick and public action was a significant turn for Egypt, where sexual harassment and violence are tragically common.

An Egyptian activist draws graffiti depicting a woman and reading in Arabic: «No to Sexual Harassement» on December 2012 ,14.

Sexual violence came to the forefront of public awareness after high-profile attacks in 2011 in Tahrir Square, the centre of Egypt’s uprising, but also a place where women were subjected to sexual assault, and 2014, when a woman was gang-raped in public. In January, outrage erupted over a viral video that showed a mob swarming a screaming woman in Mansura, north of Cairo.

Sexual harassment is so widespread that a 2013 United Nations study found that nearly all Egyptian women — 99 percent of those surveyed — had been victims of it. A report by Harassmap - a company whose app aims to allow women to highlight unsafe regions of the capital, Cairo - found that more than 95% of women sampled in the city had been harassed.

According to a study conducted by Promundo, a Brazilian organization for gender equality, 64 per cent of Egyptian men admit to harassing women. According to research on sexual violence against women by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2017, Cairo ranked worst for women’s safety, after New Delhi, Karachi and Kinshasa.

“Most women have experienced some form of sex-

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Compounding the lack of justice, the systemic tendency to blame women for what they have endured and the social stigma associated with speaking out about experiences with sexual harassment or assault results in massive underreporting, leaving millions suffering in silence. ual harassment in public spaces and it includes the whole spectrum of behaviors from staring, suggestive and lewd comments, masturbation, grabbing body parts, stalking, and sexual assault. I don’t believe we have the same levels of documentation for domestic violence/intimate partner violence and, in particular, workplace sexual harassment even though we know that women are suffering and living in fear of these forms of SGBV as well,” Prof. Rizzo said.

As Zaki’s case unwound, it was revealed that in 2016, when he was a senior at the American International School in Cairo, allegations were made against him yet punitive action was not taken, reinforcing the view that impunity for sexual harassment perpetrators is rife in Egypt. Prof. Rizzo explains that this culture of impunity and as well as deeply-seated societal issues contribute to harassment: “It is a combination of factors: gender inequality and misogyny at all levels of society, harassers/perpetrators knowing that they most likely won’t be punished and failures at the institutional level,” Prof. Rizzo said.

Compounding the lack of justice, the systemic tendency to blame women for what they have endured and the social stigma associated with speaking out about experiences with sexual harassment or assault results in massive underreporting, leaving millions suffering in silence.

“Like most countries, there is a high rate of underreporting of this type of abuse, harassment and SGBV. Women and girls often do not report because they blame themselves for what happened and feel ashamed, others know that they will be victim blamed and stigmatized-- asked what did they do to bring on this on to themselves (e.g. how they were dressed,

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being out late, questioning of their reputations), that they won’t be taken seriously or believed, their accusations belittled or not seen as crimes (e.g. you’re pretty, why aren’t you taking this as a compliment?) and be revictimized so it is just not worth it,” said Prof. Rizzo.

Though shame and stigma could be argued to be universal, it’s particularly an issue in the Arab world, where women face serious repercussions for speaking out. “Some are afraid that their families will not believe them and again will be blamed and possibly punished for what happened,” she added.

A research project by Harassmap which compared the reports of/data on public space harassment that Harassmap received on its online, anonymous, crowd sourced reporting system/map compared to data on harassment collected through surveys, interviews and focus groups, found that although conceptualized and portrayed in different ways, sexual harassment in Egypt is a display of gendered power and the result of underlying sexist, patriarchal social and cultural discourses and performances.

“Our field and Map data suggest that these are the key reasons for the existence and continuation of sexual harassment in Egypt. The patriarchal social and cultural context facilitates the occurrence and normalization of sexual harassment and researchers have found that sexual harassment is more likely to occur in places where the “situational norm” is tol-

Though shame and stigma could be argued to be universal, it’s particularly an issue in the Arab world, where women face serious repercussions for speaking out.

“Some are afraid that their families will not believe them and again will be blamed and possibly punished for what happened,” she added.

erant or accepting of this practice and less likely to occur where “situational norms” are not supportive,” the report said.

Evidence of this tolerance, the report said, is clear through the passive attitudes of bystanders towards harassed women, the prevalence of victim blaming, the lack of empathy, police officers’ failure to provide assistance to harassed women, the long and complicated legal procedures necessary to prosecute and convict harassers, powerful myths justifying harassment and the social stigma surrounding discussing and reporting sexual harassment.

But sexual harassment is not limited to one country, one culture, one group of people or even one gender.

According to the UN, one in three women across the world have experienced some form of physical or sexual abuse. With numbers climbing as high as 70 per cent in some parts of the world. The Middle East and North Africa are on the high end of the spectrum,

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Egyptians take part in a protest against sexual harassment in Cairo, Egypt on June 2014 ,14. (Getty)

volve women making allegations against men, emerging evidence suggests that sexual harassment against men also exists. A survey for BBC News Arabic of 10 countries and the Palestinian territories found that in two of those countries - Tunisia and Iraq - more men than women reported experiencing verbal and physical sexual harassment. In Tunisia the margin was small, just 1%. But Iraq really stood out. Here 39% of men said they had experienced verbal sexual harassment, compared with 33% of women. And 20% of Iraqi men said that they had experienced physical sexual violence, compared with 17% of Iraqi women.

Despite the serious consequences that can stem from sexual harassment, almost two-thirds of countries lack legislation on sexual harassment, rape or domestic violence, according to the Social Institutions and Gender index. In certain countries, a rapist can escape punishment if he marries the victim, and martial rape is not recognised

though data is scarce due to a lack of research. In a multi-country study from the Middle East and North Africa, between 40 and 60 per cent of women said they had ever experienced street-based sexual harassment (mainly sexual comments, stalking/following, or staring/ogling), and 31 per cent to 64 per cent of men said they had ever carried out such acts. Younger men, men with more education, and men who experienced violence as children were more likely to engage in street sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment is particularly problematic in Morocco where violence against women stands at 54.5 per cent nationwide, according to a government survey. And that doesn’t include the 90 per cent of sexual assault victims who don’t report the crimes against them. The US State Department cites under safety concerns for travellers going to Morocco that “harassment of women are the most frequently reported issues”.

While the majority of sexual harassment claims in-

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The culture of suppressing and inhibiting discourse around the idea of sexual harassment is emblematic of the kind of society one inhabits. Prof. Rizzo says that while there have been improvements regarding women’s rights – “girls have much greater access to education, public health has improved over the last few decades with maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates decreasing, and there is more access to family planning and reproductive health services, more and more women are entering the formal labor force, becoming politicians and involved in civil society organizations” – achieving gender equality in SGBC, the workplace and politics are still major challenges.

“Egypt and the Middle East still have low rates of female formal labor force participation and women holding political office with women being constrained by balancing work and family obligations and discrimination based on gender stereotypes that women are too emotionally weak to be managers, politicians or judges, and employers even using paid maternity leave as an excuse not to hire women because they are supposedly “more expensive and unreliable/less committed” than male workers. And even with the reforms to the personal status laws giving women more options to end their marriages in 2000, they still advantage men over women,” she added.

Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism: “I know there are activists, women and men, seasoned and recently mobilized, and people of good will that recognize the injustices caused by gender inequality and are working to end it.”

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Why Exhaustive Laws Have Failed to Prevent Sexual Assault in India Political and Societal Will Is Needed To Prevent Further Sexual Assault 20

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Another legal problem found within the Penal Code is the fact that it doesn’t include marital rape in its definition of rape. ments, there is one category that has still not been adequately addressed, namely the treatment of women in Indian society. Although there are signs that India is moving towards the right direction in terms of increased female employment and increased female political participation, sexual harassment and sexual assault is still running rampant across the country, particularly in rural India.

Women rights activist Yogita Bhayana stage demonstration outside Patiala House Court, demanding to hang of convicts, on February 2020 ,12 in New Delhi, India. (Getty)

by Ali El Shamy In spite of its status as a developing state, India has been taking strides to become one of the world’s most advanced nations. India, along with China, is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and it has recently overtaken Britain’s spot as the fifth largest economy in the world. India is also a leading country in the realm of technology, and AI science and is one of the few countries in the world to have a space programme. In late 2018, the Indian government has spent more funds towards its space programme as it has set its sights to becoming the fourth state to send a human to space, with only Russia, the US and China having previously done so. While India has been on the path toward further economic development and exceptional scientific accomplish-

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In 2018, the Thomson Reuters Foundation polled 548 experts asking them to rank the most dangerous countries for women, telling them to compare countries on certain criteria, healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual and non-sexual violence and human trafficking. Controversially India was ranked as the most dangerous country for women, garnering criticism from members of the Indian public and political sphere, citing that it was ludicrous that India would rank worse than countries like Syria, and Afghanistan, the former of which was at the time largely occupied by ISIS and the latter of which is still controlled by the Taliban; no reminder is needed for how these groups treat women. Regardless of biases that might have been incited during this polling, it still stands that sexual violence is a widespread social problem in India, according to a 2019 Time article around 90 rape cases are reported in India each day. Although India has a number of laws that protect people from sexual violence, the number of cases that go unreported indicates that many perpetrators get away with their acts. Furthermore, another issue that has complicated the issue of sexual violence is the politicisation of sexual crime, especially when the victim and perpetrator come from different religious sects.

WHICH LAWS PROTECT AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE India’s Penal Code contains exhaustive and clear laws, which list various examples of sexual assault and the punishment that perpetrators of different kinds of sexual violence receive. The law

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differentiates between sexual harassment, sexual assault, stalking, voyeurism, human trafficking and rape. The law even gives specific criteria and examples of what is considered sexual harassment and rape and clearly defines what constitutes consent and lack thereof. While the law is clear and undeniable, many activists have stated that there are many legal loopholes that can be exploited in order to give perpetrators a less severe punishment or in some cases dismiss the case. As such, courts can actually protect those who have committed the crime rather than those who have suffered from the crime. Another legal problem found within the Penal Code is the fact that it doesn’t include marital rape in its definition of rape. As such, husbands who rape their wives are exempt from punishment due to this careless exclusion. An aspect that has led to the rapists escaping punishment is the fact that Indian law and society still views rape and sexual assault as crimes that are done by strangers, however concrete evidence demonstrates that such a views aren’t true in India. A report from the Indian National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) states that 90 per cent of sexual violence offences were committed by those who were close the victim, i.e. members of family or friends. As a result, the cases of sexual assault that are often reported or make headlines are the ones in which the perpe-

The incident (2012 New Delhi bus rape) also highlighted the dilemma of bystander apathy, as many onlookers fear that getting intervening to stop such crimes will force them to get involved in police investigations and court cases.

trator was a stranger.

THE ONE CASE THAT SPARKED A NATIONAL DIALOGUE In late 2012, a young girl and her male friend in New Delhi were riding a public bus home after spending the evening together. A group of young men (which included one minor) then proceeded to gang rape her, and beat her friend unconscious. After committing the crime, they threw the girl out of the bus and she subsequently died in hospital days later. The incident caused national outcry throughout the nation, as many women across India protested in solidarity with the victim and a national debate over women’s rights and amending rape laws was spreading in all states. The incident also highlighted the dilemma of bystander apathy, as many onlookers fear that getting intervening to stop such crimes will force them to get involved in police investigations and court cases. The four men were subsequently arrested, and put on a long trial that lasted into 2020, when they were finally sentenced to death. While the incident

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2018: People holding placards for justice during a demonstration held in the city centre of Srinagar against the Murder and rape of the minor Kathua girl.

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The rape of the eight-year-old Bakarwal girl and what followed afterwards highlighted the religious divisions in India. drugging the girl with anti-anxiety medication, repeatedly raping and burning her, before finally killing her and throwing her corpse in the forest. This incident and what followed afterwards highlighted the religious divisions in India. While many Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir protested against the girl’s rape, a minor group of radically zealous Hindus belonging to the Hindu Ekta Manch, or Hindu Unity Platform staged counter protests asking for the men to be released from jail. The use of sexual violence against religious minorities is not a problem that is unique to India, as there have been many incidences in neighboring Pakistan in which men from the majority Muslim community rape and/or assault women from minority Hindu and Sikh communities.

MORE THAN EDUCATION IS NEEDED did start a new dialogue in India, most activists have stated that no concrete changes have happened as a result of these talks and the streets in India are no safer now than they were back in 2012.

WHEN SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND SECTARIANISM COLLIDE India is a diverse state home to many religious groups, sects, and indigenous tribes. Unfortunately, with this diversity comes the curse of sectarianism that has caused violence targeting those of a certain group. In 2018, an eight-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir was raped and murdered by a group of eight men including one minor. The victim of the crime was a Muslim girl from a nomadic Bakarwal tribe, while the perpetrators were Hindu. Police evidence had showed that the attack was politically motivated as the perpetrators had planned to kidnap a child from the tribe in order to scare them off the land, however according to a report from AP News the plan was quickly discarded once they had kidnapped the girl and the men decided to go further

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Narendra Modi, India’s current Prime Minister, has been outspoken on his desire to enhance women’s safety in India, and just days after taking office in 2014 he announced that his government would adopt a zero tolerance policy on female violence. Moreover, he moved away from the mindset of blaming victims of sexual assault for their plight and instead told parents to raise better sons rather than bring up better daughters. In 2015, he launched the “Save the Daughter, Teach the Daughter” campaign that aimed at reducing female infanticide and promoting gender equality through education.

Nevertheless, critics of the Modi government have pointed out that it has not done enough to counter rising rates of rape, as 2017 statistic pointed out that a woman is raped in India every 15 minutes.

Human rights activists are also critical of Modi for allegedly turning a blind eye towards sexual assault cases that have Hindu nationalist elements; an example of this was when he condemned the rape of the eight year old Bakarwal girl only after mass protests broke out in New Delhi. It is clear that the problem of sexual assault in India will need strong will power from the political elites, the law enforcers and society as a whole.

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The Great Unequalizer The Pandemic Is Compounding Disparities in Income, Wealth, and Opportunity

by Mohamed A. El-Erian, Michael Spence and consumer uncertainties, any of which could As parts of the United States begin to open up after months of coronavirus lockdown, hope is rising that some semblance of economic normalcy could be on the near-term horizon. That hope could still be dashed by lingering health, business,

slow recovery. But for the least fortunate segments of the population, more economic pain is a virtual certainty. Far from the “great equalizer� that some initially dubbed the pandemic, COVID-19 has walloped the U.S. economy in a way that exacerbated inequalities in income, wealth,

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Those whose jobs have withstood the shock of COVID19- are disproportionately in relatively high-paying professions that can accommodate work-from-home arrangements. losses are even more concerning. According to a recent survey by the Federal Reserve, 39 percent of workers in households with annual incomes below $40,000 have been laid off or furloughed.

Women have been hit especially hard, as have minorities: of the 20.5 million jobs that vanished in April, 55 percent belonged to women, pushing the unemployment rate for women to 15 percent and the rate for African American women and Hispanic women to 16.4 percent and 20.2 percent, respectively. There is no question that the pandemic has been an unequal opportunity unemployer.

Migrant farm laborers with Fresh Harvest working with an H2-A visa have their temperature checked and are asked questions about their health before boarding the bus to their shift, in the company living quarters on April 2020 ,28 in King City, California.

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and opportunity. Absent a timely policy response, this negative trend could begin to reinforce itself, as one debilitating setback for the disadvantaged increases the odds of another.

The data are stark and alarming, and they will get worse before they get better. GDP is set to contract by 30 percent or more this quarter. More than 40 million workers, or roughly a quarter of the U.S. labor force, have filed jobless claims in the last three months. The unemployment rate is likely to approach—and could even exceed—the 25 percent record set during the Great Depression.

And all this despite an enormous fiscal and monetary policy relief effort that cost nearly $6 trillion, or 28 percent of U.S. GDP in 2019.

The distributional features of the job and income

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Those whose jobs have withstood the shock of COVID-19 are disproportionately in relatively high-paying professions that can accommodate work-from-home arrangements. According to researchers at the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute, roughly one-third of U.S. jobs can be done remotely, but there are enormous discrepancies by sector—discrepancies that widen further when adjusted for earnings. Whereas 76 percent of (mostly well-paid) finance and insurance jobs can be done from home, for example, the same is true for just three percent of (mostly low-paid) food and service sector jobs.

On the lower end of the wage scale, the jobs that haven’t disappeared are often in high-risk environments such as hospitals, nursing homes, and supermarkets. When workers in these jobs fall ill, they are less likely to have health insurance or precautionary savings to draw on.

The slower the economic recovery, the longer job and income losses will be felt and the more they will drive financial, institutional, and socio-

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political instability. Furloughed workers will risk joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed or falling out of the labor force altogether. The accelerated adoption of automation and digitization will add to the employment problem. Even the children of the unemployed may suffer: they are likely to be less able to adapt to online education during the pandemic and less likely to have the equipment and circumstances to do so. Educational gaps will continue to widen, perpetuating the cycle of economic insecurity.

To accelerate the pace of recovery and prevent deepening inequalities from snowballing, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress should immediately ramp up testing and contact tracing, which will hasten the return of activities that involve contact and movement, including most service activities. Such measures will become even more important as more communities reopen and learn to cope with COVID-19. They will also help to align economic and health objectives by lowering the risk of normal business activities, reducing the perception of a tradeoff between lives and livelihoods.

The government should stay its present course of buffering the economic shock of the pandemic with targeted measures that expand the social safety net and aid damaged and vulnerable segments of the private sector, focusing more on people than companies and more on Main Street than Wall Street. But it will need to move faster and

The slower the economic recovery, the longer job and income losses will be felt and the more they will drive financial, institutional, and sociopolitical instability.

more efficiently. For public resources to have the biggest impact, they need to get to the intended recipients quickly. Long-term damage to people and to the economy accumulates as time passes, and it becomes even more costly to reverse.

Even in the best-case scenario, income and output losses from COVID-19 won’t recover immediately. Many individuals and businesses will be forced to take on debts that in the long run will inhibit spending and investment. But not everyone will be affected equally. The damage will fall disproportionately on poorer households, which in turn

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A man wears a face mask as he check his phone in Times Square on March 2020 ,22 in New York City. (Getty)

will consume less and slow the revival of demand and hence the pace of recovery. Relief measures should therefore be combined with stimulus measures designed to economically reengage the most vulnerable, including through labor-retaining and retooling programs implemented by the government and by public-private partnerships. Without such measures, alienation and marginalization will fester, straining the social fabric and increasing the risk of outright unrest.

countries) by surprise and hugely unprepared. Already, a disproportionate share of the health and economic burden has fallen on those least able to bear it. The Trump administration and Congressmust sustain and enhance their already historic emergency interventions to ease some of that burden and promote growth. Otherwise, economic problems will compound over time and inequalities will deepen, increasing the risk of economic, institutional, and social instability.

The coronavirus pandemic is a generation-defining crisis. It caught the United States (and other

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Pinning Down Putin How a Confident America Should Deal With Russia

by Victoria Nuland Few nations elicit such fatalism among American policymakers and analysts as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For some, the country is an irredeemable pariah state, responsive only to harsh punishment and containment. Others see a wronged and resurgent great power that deserves more accommodation. Perspectives vary by the day, the issue, and the political party. Across the board, however, resignation has set in about the state of U.S.-Russian relations, and Americans have lost confidence in their own ability to change the game.

But today’s Russia is neither monolithic nor immutable. Inside the country, low oil prices, the coronavirus pandemic, and Russians’ growing sense of malaise all bring new costs and risks for the Kremlin. Abroad, Putin has played a weak hand well because

the United States and its allies have let him, allowing Russia to violate arms control treaties, international law, the sovereignty of its neighbours, and the integrity of elections in the United States and Europe.

Washington and its allies have forgotten the statecraft that won the Cold War and continued to yield results for many years after.

That strategy required consistent U.S. leadership at the presidential level, unity with democratic allies and partners, and a shared resolve to deter and roll back dangerous behaviour by the Kremlin. It also included incentives for Moscow to cooperate and, at times, direct appeals to the Russian people about the benefits of a better relationship. Yet that approach has fallen into disuse, even as Russia’s threat to the liberal world has grown.

Whoever wins the U.S. presidential election this coming fall will—and should—try again with Putin. The first order of busi-

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ness, however, must be to mount a more unified and robust defence of U.S. and allied security interests wherever Moscow challenges them. From that position of strength, Washington and its allies can offer Moscow cooperation when it is possible.

They should also resist Putin’s attempts to cut off his population from the outside world and speak directly to the Russian people about the benefits of working together and the price they have paid for Putin’s hard turn away from liberalism.

The fatalists may prove right that little will change inside Russia. But U.S. interests will be better protected by an activist policy that couples a strong defence with an open hand if the relationship improves. Such an approach would increase the costs of Putin’s aggressive behaviour, would keep democracies safer, and may even lead the Russian people to question their own fatalism about the prospects for a better future.

YEAR SLIDE-20 THE

Russia President Vladimir Putin chairs a video meeting of the Pobeda (Victory) organising committee at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow on July ,2 2020, as he thanked Russians today after a nationwide vote approved controversial constitutional reforms that allow him to extend his rule until 2036.

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When Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, he set two goals to justify his policies and consolidate his power. Internally, he pledged to restore order, after years of chaos and impoverishment during the 1990s. Externally, he promised to restore greatness, following the humiliating loss of territory, global influence, and military dominance that had come with the collapse of the Soviet Union almost a decade earlier. Both ambitions resonated with the Russian people. Over the next two decades, Russians would steadily relinquish more and more of their rights—freedom of expression and assembly, political pluralism, judicial fairness, and an open economy (all of which were then new, tenuous, and unevenly shared)—in exchange for the stability of a strong state, a return to oil-fuelled growth, and the prospect of middle-class prosperity.

In the United States and Europe, too, some hoped that Putin would put an end to the oligarchic excess, ruble crashes, dependency on foreign bailouts, and general lawlessness of the 1990s.

Russia might, the thinking went, become more predictable and more reliable as an international partner. Western governments generally looked the other way as Putin’s methods for re-establishing control became increasingly Soviet during his first decade in power: closing down opposition newspapers and TV stations; jailing, exiling, or killing political and economic rivals; and re-establishing single-party dominance in the parliament and regional governments. The George W. Bush administration, preoccupied with terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, believed that Moscow’s internal affairs were its own business and of little consequence to the U.S.-Russian relationship.

When it came to Russian foreign policy, Putin had three initial priorities: reasserting Russian hegemony in neighbouring states, rebuilding the military, and regaining influence at the global decision-making table. For the most part, the United States and its allies encouraged Russia in its pursuit of the third goal, bringing Moscow into the World Trade Organization and creating the G-8 and the NATO-Russia Council. They also made sure to take important decisions, such as whether to launch the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2001 and whether to intervene in Libya in 2011, to the UN Security Council and the G-8 for debate, so that Russia

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Abroad, Putin has played a weak hand well because the United States and its allies have let him, allowing Russia to violate arms control treaties, international law, the sovereignty of its neighbours, and the integrity of elections in the United States and Europe. could join in. The belief was that Russia, like China, would become a more “responsible stakeholder” in global affairs by being integrated into rules-based international institutions.

U.S.-Russian nuclear reduction talks continued, but Washington paid too little attention to Moscow’s substantial military investments outside the nuclear realm. The Bush administration made an early blunder in 2000 by only cursorily consulting with Moscow before withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build bigger missile defences against Iran and North Korea. The Bush team later sought to rectify the mistake by offering transparency and collaboration in missile defence development to meet the growing threats from Tehran and Pyongyang, but Putin rejected the offer. He had already knit the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty into a narrative of grievance against Washington. He later felt justified in cheating on two other pillars of 1980s arms control architecture, the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, accusing Washington of having broken Moscow’s trust first. Taking lessons from the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and from Russia’s own subpar performance in the 2008 war with Georgia, Putin also poured money into irregular warfare, cyber-capabilities, long-range conventional weapons, and hypersonic missiles. Washington and its allies would not wake up to the impact of these investments until Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents worked closely with U.S. allies to prevent Putin from re-establishing a Russian sphere of influence in eastern Europe and from vetoing the security arrangements of his neighbours. Here, a chasm soon opened between liberal democracies and the still very Soviet man leading Russia, especially on the subject of NATO enlargement. No matter how hard Washington and its allies tried to persuade Moscow that NATO was a purely defensive alliance that posed no threat to Russia, it continued to serve Putin’s agenda to see Europe in zero-sum terms. If Russia couldn’t reclaim lands it had once dominated, only a zone of nonalignment stretching from eastern Germany to the Baltic and Black Seas would keep Russia safe, Putin asserted. But few in Washington considered it an option to slam the door on the new democracies of central and eastern Europe,

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which had worked for years to meet NATO’s rigorous admission standards and were now clamouring for membership. Leaving them in a geopolitical gray area would not have kept those states safe and free. Russia’s brutal treatment of those countries that were left in security limbo—Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine— has since made that clear.

Putin has always understood that a belt of increasingly democratic, prosperous states around Russia would pose a direct challenge to his leadership model and risk reinfecting his own people with democratic aspirations. This is why Putin was never going to take a “live and let live” approach to former Soviet lands and satellite states. Instead, he seized on practically every democratic struggle of the last 20 years—Kosovo’s successful push for independence in 2008, the protests that set off the Syrian civil war in 2011, the Bolotnaya Square protests in Moscow in 2011–12, the Maidan uprising in Ukraine in 2014—to fuel the perception at home of Russian interests under siege by external enemies.

For a long time, it worked. Russia’s conquests in Ukraine and Syria were wildly popular at home and deflected attention from its internal problems. With these successes, Putin’s geopolitical appetite grew. He came to believe that democratic states were weak and that Russia could corrode their political systems and social cohesion from the inside.

In no small measure, the United States and its allies have enabled Putin’s boldness. Over the past 12 years, Putin and his cronies have paid a relatively small price for their actions. Russia has violated arms control treaties; fielded new, destabilizing weapons; threatened Georgia’s sovereignty; seized Crimea and much of the Donbas; and propped up despots in Libya, Syria, and Venezuela.

It has used cyberweapons against foreign banks, electrical grids, and government systems; interfered in foreign democratic elections; and assassinated its enemies on European soil. The United States, meanwhile, has drawn redlines it later erased, pulled out of treaties and territory it needed to pressure Russia, openly questioned its own commitment to NATO, strained its alliances with

Both Democratic and Republican presidents worked closely with U.S. allies to prevent Putin from re-establishing a Russian sphere of influence in eastern Europe and from vetoing the security arrangements of his neighbours.

tariffs and recriminations, and even lent presidential credibility to Putin’s disinformation campaigns. U.S. and allied sanctions, although initially painful, have grown leaky or impotent with overuse and no longer impress the Kremlin. Russian diplomats attend international negotiations on Syria, Ukraine, arms control, and other issues with instructions to stall any real agreement, thereby buying their country time to strengthen its ground position. Russia has also mastered the art of exploiting divisions in and between the United States and allied countries, thwarting their efforts at crafting a coherent counterstrategy.

RUSTING RUSSIA

The United States and its allies have also lost focus on the one thing that should worry the Russian president: the mood inside Russia. Despite Putin’s power moves abroad, 20 years of failing to invest in Russia’s modernization may be catching up with him. In 2019, Russia’s GDP growth was an anemic 1.3 percent.

This year, the coronavirus pandemic and the free fall in oil prices could result in a significant economic contraction. International sanctions deter serious foreign investment in Russia from most countries except China. Putin’s insistence on tight state control and on the renationalization of key sectors of the economy has suppressed innovation and diversification. Russia’s roads, rails, schools, and hospitals are crumbling. Its citizens have grown restive as promised infrastructure spending never appears, and their taxes and the retirement age are going up. Corruption remains rampant, and Russians’ purchasing power continues to shrink.

In polls conducted in the country by the Levada Center last year, 59 percent of respondents supported “decisive, comprehensive change,” up from 42 percent in 2017. A staggering 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds said they wanted to emigrate, the highest number since 2009.

Today’s Russia is neither monolithic nor immutable.

Putin, meanwhile, is not going anywhere. A fourth-term president barred from running in the next election, set for 2024, he is technically a lame duck. But the Russian parliament and the Constitutional Court have already rubber-stamped constitutional

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Adviser to the Russian president, Vladimir Medinsky (C), Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (2nd R), and Russia›s President Vladimir Putin (R) attend the unveiling of the Rzhev Memorial to the Soviet Soldier near the village of Khoroshevo. (Getty)

amendments allowing him to run for two more six-year terms and potentially stay in power through 2036. To give the process a veneer of legitimacy, Putin announced a national referendum on the amendments before the coronavirus pandemic put those plans on hold. Another Levada poll, from March of this year, found that only 48 percent of Russians supported extending Putin’s term, with 47 per cent opposed, and 50 per cent of those surveyed said they favoured alternation of power and new faces in politics. Given those figures, Putin may reconsider holding the referendum at all.

More generally, the air of resignation and cynicism inside Russia today is reminiscent of past eras when Kremlin leaders focused too much on adventures abroad and too little on their own people’s welfare, including the stagnant 1980s. The difference is that Putin still has money to throw around. Russia’s two financial crises in the 1990s—and the need to keep his capos fat and happy—incentivized him to maintain a large rainy-day fund. Russia currently has $150 billion in its National Wealth Fund and more than $550 billion overall in gold and foreign reserves. It remains to be seen how much of this money Putin is willing to spend to support Russia’s health system and the country’s economic recovery from the coronavirus. Russians may prove less patient this time around if the pandemic hits their country hard and the oligarchs get bailouts while average Ivans get empty promises and overflowing hospitals.

A UNITED FRONT

The challenge for the United States in 2021 will be to lead the democracies of the world in crafting a more effective approach to Russia—one that builds on their strengths and puts stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens. To call this “great-power competition” or “a new Cold War” would be to give Putin too much credit: today’s Russia pales in comparison to the Soviet adversary. Depicting Putin’s Russia as a peer or an invincible enemy denigrates the United States’ ability to deter and resist dangerous Kremlin policy. But the United States should not take this on alone. As in the past, it must mobilize

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its global alliances, shore up their internal defences, and work jointly with others to rebuff Russian encroachments in hot spots around the world.

The effort should start among the democracies themselves. As the U.S. diplomat George Kennan counseled in his “Long Telegram” of 1946, when dealing with Moscow, “much depends on [the] health and vigor of our own society.” The first order of business is to restore the unity and confidence of U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia and end the fratricidal rhetoric, punitive trade policies, and unilateralism of recent years. The United States can set a global example for democratic renewal by investing in public health, innovation, infrastructure, green technologies, and job retraining while reducing barriers to trade. Free people around the world also need their leaders to provide a shot of inspiration and confidence in democracy itself.

Moscow should also see that Washington and its allies are taking concrete steps to shore up their security and raise the cost of Russian confrontation and militarization. That includes maintaining robust defence budgets, continuing to modernize U.S. and allied nuclear weapons systems, and deploying new conventional missiles and missile defences to protect against Russia’s new weapons systems. As the United States improves in areas in which Russia seeks or has gained an edge—hypersonic missiles, undersea weapons, cyber security, and anti-access/area-denial capabilities—it needs to do more to bring its allies along. For example, it should develop more of its high-tech weapons systems jointly with its allies, establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border, and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises. U.S. requests for targeted military investment would also lead to better burden sharing among NATO allies than has endless political hectoring.

Putin has played a weak hand well because the United States and its allies have let him.

With its own strength re-established, the United States will be better positioned to bring Russia to the negotiating table. The one lesson Putin appears to have learned from the Cold War is that U.S. President Ronald Reagan successfully bankrupted the Soviet Union by forcing a nuclear arms race. Not wanting Russia to suffer the same fate, he is eager to extend the 2010 New START treaty, which limits U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear weapons systems and is set to expire in 2021. Washington should use Putin’s sense of urgency to tie discussions over New START to wider negotiations on all aspects of military power—nuclear and conventional, space and cyberspace. To allow time for those talks, the treaty could be provisionally extended for a year or two, but Washington should not grant Moscow what it wants most: a free rollover of New START without any negotiations to address Russia’s recent investments in short- and medium-range nuclear weapons systems and new conventional weapons. Nor should it insist on including China in the talks right away, as the current administration advocates. If the United States and Russia reach an agreement, they can jointly pressure China to negotiate, but the United States should not sacrifice its immediate security needs in the hope that China will someday agree to trilateral talks.

Doing so would just give Putin more time to build new weapons.

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Russia’s weaponization of the Internet is no less dangerous. The U.S. president must lead a campaign to harden democratic societies against Russia’s efforts to interfere in free elections, spread disinformation, inflame societal tensions, and conduct political influence campaigns.

Democracies around the world need to pool their resources and work more effectively with technology companies and researchers to expose and deter Russia’s malign activities as they happen, not months or years later. In the meantime, governments and technology companies share a responsibility to educate citizens to recognize when they are being manipulated from abroad. They also need to negotiate changes to the profit structure of the Internet, which currently favours virality over truth and allows Putin’s troll armies to get paid by Facebook, YouTube, and other digital platforms while prosecuting their covert war. And there is no reason why Washington and its allies shouldn’t be more willing to give Putin a dose of his own medicine inside Russia, while maintaining the same deniability.

Ukraine is another battlefield for democracy that the United States must not cede to Putin. American and European support for the country have prevented its collapse or complete dismemberment, but the war in the Donbas continues, with Ukrainians dying almost every day.

Russia has actually agreed to terms for its withdrawal from the Donbas, in contrast to the situation in Crimea, as laid out in the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015. What has been missing is a consistent diplomatic effort from Washington, Kyiv, Berlin, and Paris to implement the deal and pressure Putin to follow through. Instead, Putin has stalled and divided them, and key European leaders have blocked the United States from participating directly in the talks, against Ukraine’s wishes. If the United States and its allies make clear to Russia that the road to better relations with all NATO and EU countries goes through Ukraine, Putin might get more serious. If Russia continues to stall, sanctions and other forms of political, economic, and military pressure should be increased. At the same time, the United States should offer Russia a road map for gradual sanctions relief if and as Putin meets his obligation to get out of Ukraine.

Russia’s successes in the Middle East are another product of U.S. ambivalence and neglect. In Syria, Putin saw an opportunity to support a fellow autocrat under pressure from his people while protecting and extending Russia’s regional influence. The United States, seeking to limit its own commitment, mistakenly expected that deeper Russian involvement in Syria would create an incentive for Moscow to help settle the conflict and support free elections. The theory was that with skin in the game, Russia would want the game to be played fairly.

Instead, Russia’s military intervention ensured the survival of Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad; further opened the door to Iranian influence;

Russia’s successes in the Middle East are another product of U.S. ambivalence and neglect.

and sent hundreds of thousands of additional Syrian refugees into Jordan, Turkey, and Europe. The United States, meanwhile, made both Putin’s and Assad’s lives easier by neutralizing a shared threat, ISIS. Today, Russia bombs hospitals and schools in Idlib Province to regain territory for Assad and uses the threat of new refugee waves to deter Turkey, European countries, and the United States from pushing back. Russian troops regularly test the few U.S. forces left in Syria to try to gain access to the country’s oil fields and smuggling routes.

If these U.S. troops left, nothing would prevent Moscow and Tehran from financing their operations with Syrian oil or smuggled drugs and weapons. The U.S. footprint in Syria need not be large, but it cannot be zero, unless Washington wants to ensure that Putin emerges as the Middle East’s definitive power broker. Russia’s recent inroads in Libya, where it is supporting the forces of General Khalifa Haftar with weapons and advice, demonstrate that its appetite in the region is not sated—and why would it be, if relatively cheap investments buy it territorial control, influence, and the ability to violate international humanitarian law with impunity?

AN OFFER OF SHARED PROSPERITY

As it works on protecting its interests at home and abroad, the United States should also consider what Putin wants out of the U.S.-Russian relationship. He certainly wants sanctions relief, so U.S. and European leaders should be clearer about their conditions for rolling back or removing sanctions. Traditionally, they have also offered Russia affirmative incentives—political and economic—for better relations. In 2013, for example, as both the United States and Ukraine were negotiating free-trade agreements with the EU, Washington offered to drop some tariffs and regulatory barriers so that Russia, too, would obtain some benefit from the agreements being settled around it. Russia’s seizure of Crimea froze those discussions.

It is possible that Putin’s sense of security is by now so tightly tied to the Kremlin’s control of the economy that American and European offers of free trade and investment would not interest him. He might also fear that opening the door to better economic relations would make him look weak and needy. That should not prevent Washington and its partners in the G-7 from trying—and offering to provide the Kremlin with an alternative to its growing dependence on China.

The carrot could take the form of a joint investment fund, free-trade zones, or the removal of tariffs on certain goods. It could also include public-private partnerships in sectors such as clean energy, a businessto-business roundtable, and internships for young Russians to work in American and European firms. NATO could offer Moscow a fresh start, including resuming joint military exercises in areas such as accident prevention and emergency response. The United States and Europe could reopen the question of a pan-European security dialogue of the kind then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested in 2008, so long as doing so would not weaken existing institutions, such as NATO, the EU, or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. If the United States and its allies resume working together on their Iran and North Korea policies, they should invite Russia to be a constructive contributor.

Washington would want to start by placing those offers in the shop

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad during their meeting in Sochi on May 2018 ,17. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP) (Photo credit should read MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP via Getty Images)

window. To seal the deal, Russia would need to demonstrate its commitment to ending its attacks on democracies and to negotiating in good faith on arms control, Ukraine, Syria, and other difficult issues. Any incentives would need to be reversible in the event that Russia reneged on its end of the deal.

American leaders need to relearn how to communicate with the Russian people.

In parallel, the United States and its allies should do more to reach out directly to the Russian people, especially younger citizens and those outside the major cities. A package of economic incentives with concrete benefits for ordinary Russians would help: it would undercut the Kremlin’s argument that the United States seeks the continual impoverishment and encirclement of Russia and that win-wins are impossible. Putin has spent 20 years blaming the United States and NATO for his leadership failures at home and aggression abroad. By labelling as “foreign agents” any Russian nongovernmental organizations with collaborative programs with liberal democracies, he has cut off U.S. contact with Russian civil society activists, political opponents, doctors, journalists, and many others. He also closed down most academic exchanges. The clampdown has worked exactly as he intended: fewer Russians know Americans, work with them, or see a future in closer ties.

Washington and its allies could also offer Russians stronger inducements to break out of Putin’s information stranglehold.

With appropriate security screening, the United States and others could permit visa-free travel for Russians between the ages of 16 and 22, allowing them to form their own opinions before their life paths are set. Western states should also consider doubling the number of government-supported educational programs at the college and graduate levels for Russians to study abroad and granting more flexible work visas to those who graduate. Putin may block his citizens from accepting these offers, but if he does, the blame for young Russians’ lack of opportunities will fall squarely on him.

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Finally, U.S. leaders need to relearn how to communicate with the Russian people. Reagan and President Bill Clinton spoke directly to them in speeches and interviews, offering a future of friendship and shared security and prosperity if the two nations overcame their differences. Not only have today’s leaders forgotten how to do this, but they have acceded to Putin’s view that any outreach to average Russians constitutes interference in Russia’s internal affairs, even as Moscow runs massive influence campaigns in the United States and Europe.

In the Soviet era, the United States defeated the Kremlin’s censorship by disseminating its messages through Voice of America and Radio Free Europe broadcasts, Amerika magazine, and regular contact with dissidents. Despite Putin’s best efforts, today’s Russia is more permeable. Young Russians are far more likely to consume information and news via the Internet than through state-sponsored TV or print media. Washington should try to reach more of them where they are: on the social networks Odnoklassniki and VKontakte; on Facebook, Telegram, and YouTube; and on the many new Russian-language digital platforms springing up. Although no one should expect this group to rise up and demand change anytime soon, the United States should not let Putin remain the primary shaper of young Russians’ understanding of democratic policies and values. Washington and its allies must keep making the case that the relationship need not be zero-sum.

THE CHOICE IS THEIRS

Overall, a more coherent approach to Russia will take unity, resources, confidence, and focus. In the United States’ past dealings with Putin, one or all of these elements have faltered. Washington has paid too little attention, underinvested, and allowed itself to be divided from its allies or seduced into appeasement in one area by the promise of progress in another (trading Iran for Syria, Syria for Ukraine, and so on).

Some—myself included—have been overly optimistic in expecting that with more integration with the free world, Russia would become a better and more democratic partner. Others have been overly fatalistic, citing Russia’s unique set of interests, its geography, or its history to justify its aggression and violations of international law. Others still have been ahistorical in their outlook, asserting that if NATO just reversed its enlargement and offered Russia hegemony over Ukraine and a larger sphere of influence, Putin’s appetite would be sated. None of these lenses has given U.S. policymakers better vision.

The coming U.S. presidential election offers the United States a chance to get off defense, restore the strength and confidence of the democratic world, and close the holes in its security after years of drift and division. Once that resolve is firmly on display, the United States can seize the moment of renewal at home and stagnation in Russia to stretch out a hand again. Putin may not want or be able to take it. But the Russian people should know that Washington and its allies are giving him and Russia a choice.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The Pandemic and Political Order It Takes a State

by Francis Fukuyama Major crises have major consequences, usually unforeseen. The Great Depression spurred isolationism, nationalism, fascism, and World War II—but also led to the New Deal, the rise of the United States as a global superpower, and eventually decolonization.

The 9/11 attacks produced two failed American interventions, the rise of Iran, and new forms of Islamic radicalism. The 2008 financial crisis generated a surge in antiestablishment populism that replaced leaders across the globe. Future historians will trace comparably large effects to the current coronavirus pandemic; the challenge is figuring them out ahead of time.

It is already clear why some countries have done better than others in dealing with the crisis so far, and there is every reason to think those trends will continue. It is not a matter of regime type.

Some democracies have performed well, but others have not, and the same is true for autocracies. The factors responsible for successful pandemic responses have been state capacity, social trust, and leadership. Countries with all three—a competent state apparatus, a government that citizens trust and listen to, and effective leaders—have performed impressively, limiting the damage they have suffered. Countries with dysfunctional states, polarized societies, or poor leadership have done badly, leaving their citizens and economies exposed and vulnerable.

The more that is learned about COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the more it seems the crisis will be protracted, measured in years rather than quarters. The virus appears less deadly than feared, but very contagious and often transmitted asymptomatically. Ebola is highly lethal but hard to catch; victims die quickly, before they can pass it on. COVID-19 is the

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Indian migrant workers and labourers along with their families stuck in the national capital, with and without protective masks crowd to board buses to return to their native villages 2020 ,29 on March in Ghaziabad, India. )(Getty

opposite, which means that people tend not to take it as seriously as they should, and so it has, and will continue to, spread widely across the globe, causing vast numbers of deaths. There will be no moment when countries will be able to declare victory over the disease; rather, economies will open up slowly and tentatively, with progress slowed by subsequent waves of infections. Hopes for a V-shaped recovery appear wildly optimistic.

More likely is an L with a long tail curving upward or a series of Ws. The world economy will not go back to anything like its pre-COVID state anytime soon.

Economically, a protracted crisis will mean more business failures and devastation for industries such as shopping malls, retail chains, and travel. Levels of market concentration in the U.S. economy had been rising steadily for decades, and the pandemic will push the trend still further. Only large companies with deep pockets will be able to ride out the storm, with the technology giants gaining most of all, as digital interactions become ever more important.

The political consequences could be even more significant. Populations can be summoned to heroic acts of collective self-sacrifice for a while, but not forever. A lingering epidemic combined with deep job losses, a prolonged recession, and an unprecedented debt burden will inevitably create tensions that turn into a political backlash—but against whom is as yet unclear.

The United States has bungled its response badly and seen its prestige slip enormously.

The global distribution of power will continue to shift eastward, since East Asia has done better at managing the situation than Europe or the United States. Even though the pandemic originated in China and Beijing initially covered it up and allowed it to spread, China will benefit from the crisis, at least in relative terms. As it happened, other governments at first performed poorly and tried to cover it up, too, more visibly and with even deadlier consequences for their citizens. And at least Beijing has been able to regain control of the situation and is moving on to the next challenge, getting its economy back up to speed quickly and sustainably.

The United States, in contrast, has bungled its response badly and seen its prestige slip enormously. The country has vast potential state capacity and had built an impressive track record over previous epidemiological crises, but its current highly polarized society and incompetent leader blocked the state from functioning effectively. The president stoked division rather than promoting unity, politicized the distribution of aid, pushed responsibility onto governors for making key decisions while encouraging protests against them for protecting public health, and attacked international institutions rather than galvanizing them. The world can watch TV, too, and has stood by in amazement, with China quick to make the comparison clear.

Over the years to come, the pandemic could lead to the United States’ relative decline, the continued erosion of the liberal international order, and a resurgence of fascism around the globe. It could also lead to a rebirth of liberal democracy, a system that has confounded skeptics many times, showing remarkable powers of resilience and renewal. Elements of both visions will emerge, in

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The more that is learned about COVID19-, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, the more it seems the crisis will be protracted, measured in years rather than quarters. different places. Unfortunately, unless current trends change dramatically, the general forecast is gloomy.

RISING FASCISM

Pessimistic outcomes are easy to imagine. Nationalism, isolationism, xenophobia, and attacks on the liberal world order have been increasing for years, and that trend will only be accelerated by the pandemic. Governments in Hungary and the Philippines have used the crisis to give themselves emergency powers, moving them still further away from democracy. Many other countries, including China, El Salvador, and Uganda, have taken similar measures. Barriers to the movement of people have appeared everywhere, including within the heart of Europe; rather than cooperate constructively for their common benefit, countries have turned inward, bickered with one another, and made their rivals political scapegoats for their own failures.

The rise of nationalism will increase the possibility of international conflict. Leaders may see fights with foreigners as useful domestic political distractions, or they may be tempted by the weakness or preoccupation of their opponents and take advantage of the pandemic to destabilize favorite targets or create new facts on the ground. Still, given the continued stabilizing force of nuclear weapons and the common challenges facing all major players, international turbulence is less likely than domestic turbulence.

Poor countries with crowded cities and weak public health systems will be hit hard. Not just social distancing but even simple hygiene such as hand washing is extremely difficult in countries where many citizens have no regular access to clean water. And governments have often made matters worse rather than better— whether by design, by inciting communal tensions and undermining social cohesion, or by simple incompetence. India, for example, increased its vulnerability by declaring a sudden nationwide shutdown without thinking through the consequences for the tens of millions of migrant laborers who crowd into every large city.

Many went to their rural homes, spreading the disease throughout the country; once the government reversed its position and began to restrict movement, a large number found themselves trapped in cities without work, shelter, or care.

Displacement caused by climate change was already a slowmoving crisis brewing in the global South. The pandemic will compound its effects, bringing large populations in developing

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countries ever closer to the edge of subsistence. And the crisis has crushed the hopes of hundreds of millions of people in poor countries who have been the beneficiaries of two decades of sustained economic growth. Popular outrage will grow, and dashing citizens’ rising expectations is ultimately a classic recipe for revolution. The desperate will seek to migrate, demagogic leaders will exploit the situation to seize power, corrupt politicians will take the opportunity to steal what they can, and many governments will clamp down or collapse. A new wave of attempted migration from the global South to the North, meanwhile, would be met with even less sympathy and more resistance this time around, since migrants could be accused more credibly now of bringing disease and chaos.

Finally, the appearances of so-called black swans are by definition unpredictable but increasingly likely the further out one looks. Past pandemics have fostered apocalyptic visions, cults, and new religions growing up around the extreme anxieties caused by prolonged hardship. Fascism, in fact, could be seen as one such cult, emerging from the violence and dislocation engendered by World War I and its aftermath. Conspiracy theories used to flourish in places such as the Middle East, where ordinary people were disempowered and felt they lacked agency. Today, they have spread widely throughout rich countries, as well, thanks in part to a fractured media environment caused by the Internet and social media, and sustained suffering is likely to provide rich material for populist demagogues to exploit.

OR RESILIENT DEMOCRACY

Nevertheless, just as the Great Depression not only produced fascism but also reinvigorated liberal democracy, so the pandemic may produce some positive political outcomes, too. It has often taken just such a huge external shock to break sclerotic political systems out of their stasis and create the conditions for longoverdue structural reform, and that pattern is likely to play out again, at least in some places.

Countries with capable, legitimate governments will come through relatively well. Countries with weak state capacity or poor leadership will be in trouble, set for stagnation, if not impoverishment and instability. The problem is that the second group greatly outnumbers the first.

The practical realities of handling the pandemic favor professionalism and expertise; demagoguery and incompetence are readily exposed. This should ultimately create a beneficial selection effect, rewarding politicians and governments that do well and penalizing those that do poorly. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who has steadily hollowed out his country’s democratic institutions in recent years, tried to bluff his way through the crisis and is now floundering and presiding over a health disaster. Russia’s Vladimir Putin tried to play down the importance of the pandemic at first, then claimed that Russia had it under control, and will have to change his tune yet again as COVID-19 spreads throughout the country. Putin’s legitimacy was already weakening before the crisis, and that process may have accelerated.

The pandemic has shone a bright light on existing institutions everywhere, revealing their inadequacies and weaknesses. The gap between the rich and the poor, both people and countries, has been deepened by the crisis and will increase further during a prolonged economic stagnation. But along with the problems, the crisis has also revealed government’s ability to provide solutions, drawing on collective resources in the process. A lingering sense of “alone together” could boost social solidarity and drive the development of more generous social protections down the road, just as the common national sufferings of World War I and the Depression stimulated the growth of welfare states in the 1920s and 1930s.

This might put to rest the extreme forms of neoliberalism, the free-market ideology pioneered by University of Chicago economists such as Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler.

During the 1980s, the Chicago school provided intellectual justification for the policies of U.S.President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who considered large, intrusive government to be an obstacle to economic growth and human progress. At the time, there were good reasons to cut back many forms of government ownership and regulation. But the arguments hardened into a libertarian religion, embedding hostility to state action in a generation of conservative intellectuals,

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A taxi driver wears a face mask and gloves as he drives down Times ,26 Square on March in New York City. 2020 )(Getty

particularly in the United States.

Given the importance of strong state action to slow the pandemic, it will be hard to argue, as Reagan did in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Nor will anybody be able to make a plausible case that the private sector and philanthropy can substitute for a competent state during a national emergency. In April, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, announced that he would contribute $1 billion to COVID-19 relief, an extraordinary act of charity. That same month, the U.S. Congress appropriated $2.3 trillion to sustain businesses and individuals hurt by the pandemic. Antistatism may linger among the lockdown protesters, but polls suggest that a large majority of Americans trust the advice of government medical experts in dealing with the crisis. This could increase support for government interventions to address other major social problems. And the crisis may ultimately spur renewed international cooperation. While national leaders play the blame game, scientists and public health officials around the world are deepening their networks and connections. If the breakdown of international cooperation leads to disaster and is judged a failure, the era after that could see a renewed commitment to working multilaterally to advance common interests.

DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP

The pandemic has been a global political stress test. Countries with capable, legitimate governments will come through relatively well and may embrace reforms that make them even stronger and more resilient, thus facilitating their future outperformance.

Countries with weak state capacity or poor leadership will be in trouble, set for stagnation, if not impoverishment and instability.

The problem is that the second group greatly outnumbers the first.

Unfortunately, the stress test has been so hard that very few are likely to pass. To handle the initial stages of the crisis successfully, countries needed not only capable states and adequate resources but also a great deal of social consensus and competent

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leaders who inspired trust. This need was met by South Korea, which delegated management of the epidemic to a professional health bureaucracy, and by Angela Merkel’s Germany. Far more common have been governments that have fallen short in one way or another. And since the rest of the crisis will also be hard to manage, these national trends are likely to continue, making broader optimism difficult.

Another reason for pessimism is that the positive scenarios assume some sort of rational public discourse and social learning.

Yet the link between technocratic expertise and public policy is weaker today than in the past, when elites held more power. The democratization of authority spurred by the digital revolution has flattened cognitive hierarchies along with other hierarchies, and political decision-making is now driven by often weaponized babble. That is hardly an ideal environment for constructive, collective self-examination, and some polities may remain irrational longer than they can remain solvent.

The biggest variable is the United States. It was the country’s singular misfortune to have the most incompetent and divisive leader in its modern history at the helm when the crisis hit, and his mode of governance did not change under pressure. Having spent his term at war with the state he heads, he was unable to deploy it effectively when the situation demanded. Having judged that his political fortunes were best served by confrontation and rancor rather than national unity, he has used the crisis to pick fights and increase social cleavages. American underperformance during the pandemic has several causes, but the most significant has been a national leader who has failed to lead.

The link between technocratic expertise and public policy is weaker today than in the past, when elites held more power.

If the president is given a second term in November, the chances for a broader resurgence of democracy or of the liberal international order will drop. Whatever the election result, however, the United States’ deep polarization is likely to remain. Holding an election during a pandemic will be tough, and there will be incentives for the disgruntled losers to challenge its legitimacy. Even should the Democrats take the White House and both houses of Congress, they would inherit a country on its knees. Demands for action will meet mountains of debt and die-hard resistance from a rump opposition. National and international institutions will be weak and reeling after years of abuse, and it will take years to rebuild them—if it is still possible at all.

With the most urgent and tragic phase of the crisis past, the world is moving into a long, depressing slog. It will come out of it eventually, some parts faster than others. Violent global convulsions are unlikely, and democracy, capitalism, and the United States have all proved capable of transformation and adaptation before.

But they will need to pull a rabbit out of the hat once again.

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and the author of Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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When Toppling Monuments Serves Authoritarian Ends India’s Hindu Nationalists Erect an Imagined Past on Modern Ruins

by Supriya Gandhi As the coronavirus pandemic rages, workers in the north Indian town of Ayodhya toil to build a new Hindu temple where a mosque called the Babri Masjid once stood. An unassuming structure of brick and plaster, the mosque was built in the sixteenth century on the orders of Babur, the Muslim conqueror from

Central Asia who established the Mughal dynasty in India. For centuries, the mosque adjoined temples and monasteries associated with the legendary Hindu divine king Rama. But in 1992, Hindu nationalist politicians organized a mob to storm the mosque and hack it to rubble, claiming that it had been built on the site of Rama’s birthplace. This episode of iconoclasm signalled the rise of Hindu nationalism as a

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People in support of India’s new citizenship law stage a demonstration in solidarity with the new legislation at the Town Hall in Bangalore on December 2019 ,22.

(Getty)

powerful force in modern Indian politics, culminating in the election in 2014—and re-election in 2019—of one of its most fervent proponents, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Supreme Court of India ruled last year that the demolition of Babri Masjid was illegal, but it still awarded the site to a government-appointed trust that would build a temple there. The decision amounted to a victory for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the larger Hindu nationalist project that seeks to define India as a Hindu nation with a principally Hindu past. Muslims, who make up around 14 percent of the population, have lived in South Asia for more than a millennium, but the BJP and its allies seek to deny their belonging to the nation’s present or past.

A recent bout of iconoclasm in Europe and North America has reopened conversations in the West that are in many respects familiar to Indian historians. Statues of figures associated with slavery, genocide, and white supremacy seem to be falling every day. Some scholars of Indian history were perturbed when protesters flung the statue of the seventeenthcentury British slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol harbour in June. Whatever Colston’s sins, the anarchic removal of the monument recalled the destruction of the Babri Masjid and other Hindu nationalist attacks on mosques and statues to avenge perceived historical wrongs.

But how a society chooses to remember its past is a reflection of how it sees its present. Both supporters and detractors of these monuments and historical structures seek to shape how the story of their countries is told. Modi’s government is erecting the very triumphalist and exclusive vision of history that activists in the West are now trying to topple.

Recent acts of iconoclasm in the United States and in Europe grow out of—and continue to fuel—a conversation about structural racism and the history of slavery and colonization. By contrast, in India, the state steadily works to reshape public space by claiming the right to destroy, preserve, and build. It uses this power to extend its reach and suppress critics and beleaguered minorities.

After Modi won his first term in 2014, he infused the Hindu nationalist project with his own grandiose aspirations and autocratic aesthetics. These efforts include the construction of a mammoth statue—the world’s tallest—of an independence leader whom the Hindu right now claim as their own; the levelling of hundreds of buildings, including historic ones, in the holy city of Varanasi to facilitate pilgrim access to the sacred Vishwanath temple and, perhaps, precipitate another mosque demolition; and, now, the

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The Supreme Court of India ruled last year that the demolition of Babri Masjid was illegal, but it still awarded the site to a governmentappointed trust that would build a temple there. total redevelopment of New Delhi’s iconic Central Vista, which is akin to the National Mall in Washington. This last project in the capital will include, among many other structures, a new prime ministerial mansion and a fresh Parliament building, all meant to last at least 150 to 200 years. The plan is imperial in scope; it evokes past monarchs, who each sought to build Delhi anew. It also signals that Modi’s government has a vision for itself that is not confined by the term limits of elections but seeks to shape the nation for the foreseeable future.

That vision of the future rests largely on a particular view of the past. Vinayak Savarkar, a key early ideologue of Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, declared in 1923 that India was both a fatherland and a holy land, whose history and civilization were essentially Hindu. This notion ran counter to the broadly pluralist and secular nationalism of India’s founders, such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister. Muslims and Christians, Savarkar concluded, even those descended from Hindu converts, were not real Indians.

Hindutva puts religious minorities in India in an impossible double bind. They can never be allowed to completely belong, yet they are still in some sense necessary, for their existence allows true Indians— Hindus—to be identified by contrast. Savarkar drew inspiration from the treatment of African Americans in the Jim Crow era. In 1944, he told an American journalist that he would treat Muslims as “a minority, in the position of your Negroes.” Savarkar’s ideas still animate the rhetoric and actions of his successors, who have set about elevating his public image.

There are no “culture wars” in India like those that rage in the United States, because Hindu nationalists have in large part already won. The print and television media, with only a few exceptions, have found that their best interests lie in amplifying the government line. Hindutva visions of Indian history

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and identity, incoherent and evolving as they often are, have become the new consensus. With the rise of the BJP, the notion that Muslims came to India as foreign colonizers, like the British—along with the false claim that they even perpetrated a “Hindu Holocaust”—has gained strength and popularity.

Hindu nationalism centres around grievance and the desire to correct—or avenge—past wrongs. Its adherents have accused left-leaning, secular scholars of whitewashing the historical record and minimizing the violence of Muslim rulers in previous centuries. And Muslim conquerors and leaders certainly engaged in violence, as monarchs and would-be kings tended to do everywhere. Some of them, incontrovertibly, attacked temples—desecrations that remain a particular source of contention for Hindu nationalists. For instance, the eleventh-century warlord Mahmud of Ghazna smashed and looted temples during his raids of India, including Somnath in Gujarat. The seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Jahangir vandalized temples near Pushkar Lake to intimidate a rebellious ruler nearby. His son Shah Jahan acceded to the throne in 1628 and soon razed 76 unfinished temples in Varanasi. Shah Jahan’s successor, Aurangzeb, presided over several more incidents of temple desecration and destruction. Hindu nationalists exaggerate these instances of iconoclasm and identify contemporary Muslims, who are an economically weak and socially disadvantaged minority, with rulers from the distant past, portraying them as oppressors and deserving

Vinayak Savarkar, declared in 1923 that India was both a fatherland and a holy land, whose history and civilization were essentially Hindu.

This notion ran counter to the broadly pluralist and secular nationalism of India’s founders, such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

of retribution.

Scholars have tried to place the centuries-old acts of iconoclasm in a broader context. Temple raiding, far from being unique to Islam, was an expression of political domination that finds echoes as far back as Roman imperial rule and ancient Mesopotamia.

But Muslim rulers on the subcontinent didn’t oppress non-Muslims in the manner that such acts might suggest. Mughal royals, for example, lavished support on many temples and Hindu ascetic orders.

The Muslim sovereigns who attacked temples for political clout also often paid for others to be built or renovated; and Muslim rulers cast themselves in the genealogies of Hindu deities or sought wisdom in Sanskrit texts. Tellingly, Sanskrit writings

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People taking part in the demonstration to obersve the black day on the 27th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Mosque in Delhi, India on December 2019 ,06.

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provide little evidence of any sustained history of Hindu trauma stemming from these temple attacks.

Moreover, the very notion of a pan-Indian, primordial Hindu identity crystallized only in the nineteenth century during colonial British rule.

In a post-truth world, pugilists and zealots dismiss such scholarly arguments as apologia for Muslim violence or as a weak case for pluralism that divests Hindus of their rights as the majority. Those who question Hindutva narratives risk being smeared as “Hinduphobes” or as sepoys—the Indian foot soldiers of Britain’s East India Company—who speak in the foreign voice of the colonial master. The patient labor of historians, in laying out nuance, is no match for an onslaught of misinformation backed by

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brute force and capital. The state and its allies have generated a flood of Hindu supremacist propaganda, including viral WhatsApp messages, videos, Facebook posts, tweets, and news stories that television anchors then echo and broadcast.

There is little scope for public debate and discussion where freedom of expression is under threat.

Recourse to history––even more sophisticated histories––can take a society only so far. The problem is not, as the German philosopher Georg Hegel once suggested, that Indians have no history. History is everywhere, deployed to enrage and incite.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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What Iran Wants in Afghanistan And What U.S. Withdrawal Means for Tehran

by Colin P. Clarke, Ariane M. Tabatabai Negotiations to end the long-running war between Afghanistan’s central government and the Taliban slowly inch along, punctuated by spasms of violence. The Taliban and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) often lash out with attacks on the Afghan security forces and civilians, with

the ISKP frequently targeting Shiite communities. Any settlement will likely require the United States to withdraw most combat troops from the country. U.S. President Donald Trump is eager to leave Afghanistan after nearly two decades and plans to review several options for drawing down troop levels, something that could easily happen by the end of the year.

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A reduced American presence could provide Iran with an opening to expand its influence in Afghanistan. Tehran has long been wary of instability in its eastern neighbor—decades of conflict have driven hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees into Iran—and so far has refrained from taking the kinds of intrusive actions there that it has in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen where its proxies operate. But Iran will now have more room for maneuver and might be tempted to intervene in Afghan affairs more forcefully, both to protect its own domestic interests and to undermine those of the United States.

IN SEARCH OF STABILITY Tehran and Washington have butted heads in many parts of the Middle East, but they share common objectives in Afghanistan. Iran supported U.S. efforts following the invasion in late 2001, helping build the coalition that would replace the Taliban in Kabul. In early negotiations after the invasion, Iranian officials insisted on the importance of holding democratic elections in the post-Taliban era. Today, neither Iran nor the United States has any desire to see ISKP grow stronger in the country.

Ismail Qaani after he has been appointed as commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards› Quds Forces after a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport killed Qasem Soleimani, on January 2020 ,3 in Tehran, Iran.

(Getty)

Iran requires stability in Afghanistan. The two countries share a porous border, and the consequences of turmoil in Afghanistan often spill over into Iranian territory. Iran is home to hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees; it is also a key avenue for the smuggling of opioids to Europe.

The two countries came to the brink of war at the height of the Taliban’s rule in the late 1990s when, in September 1998, the Taliban killed several Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif. Iran’s leaders vowed revenge and deployed thousands of troops to the border region.

Lingering distrust of the Taliban informs Iranian thinking about the outcome of the intra-Afghan discussions at this stage. Tehran fears the most hardcore elements of the Taliban and wants these factions to remain far from power in a new central government. The most hard-line elements of the predominantly Sunni Taliban, while perhaps not as zealous as the ISKP, are poorly disposed

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Iran’s main political and economic interests in Afghanistan include maintaining access to the Afghan market for Iranian goods and guarding against instability along its border. to Iran, the region’s Shiite heavyweight—and the feeling is mutual. Nonetheless, if working with a central government in Kabul that contains elements of the Taliban will help Tehran safeguard its essential interests, Tehran is willing to do so.

Indeed, in recent years Iran has tried to repair and strengthen its relationship with some factions of the Talibanthrough economic, diplomatic, and security initiatives.

Iran’s main political and economic interests in Afghanistan include maintaining access to the Afghan market for Iranian goods and guarding against instability along its border. The Iranian economy is still suffering from the effects of U.S. sanctions and from the disruptions of the COVID-19 crisis. Officials worry that chaos in Afghanistan might push another wave of refugees across the border and that Iran will not be able to afford the disruption. COVID-19 has exacerbated long-standing hardship and poverty among refugees in Iran who already struggled for access to employment and health care. Iran has deported thousands of Afghans, but more violence could lead to a new influx. Therefore, Iran largely favors the status quo, which at least provides a modicum of stability that allows Tehran to focus on other priorities deemed more urgent, especially as the country grapples with another strong wave of novel coronavirus infections and record-high daily death tolls.

There are, however, circumstances under which Iran may feel compelled to intervene in Afghan affairs. Tehran might do so if it finds unacceptable the central government that comes into place in Kabul after a negotiated settlement, one in which, for example, hard-line factions of the Taliban play

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a leading role and seek to challenge Iranian interests in Afghanistan.

In that case, Iran could deploy troops in western Afghanistan to serve as a buffer against any wider turmoil. Iran may also want to act if the Afghan government proves unable to effectively suppress the ISKP and the Islamist militant group continues to pose a direct threat to Iranian interests as well as to Shiite communities. In that case, Iranian leaders may come to the conclusion that its militias can better secure important sites and roll back the ISKP than Afghan security forces can.

?A NEW FRONT If Iran does decide to further insert itself into Afghan affairs, it has potent instruments with which to do so. The new commander of Iran’s expeditionary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, Brigadier General Esmail Qaani, has long experience in Afghanistan, where he played an operational role in recruiting Afghans to fight for Tehran in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and to fight the Taliban in the 1990s. Iran provided intelligence and proxy support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and backed the process that followed to replace the Taliban with a national unity government. Qaani has deep knowledge of

Whatever the shape of the future government in Kabul, Tehran will keep a wary eye on its eastern border—where it may come to the conclusion that the best form of defense is intervention.

the workings of the Iranian-Afghan border from combating drug traffickers, smugglers, and other criminal groups. This experience provides Qaani with an understanding of instability in the region and the threats along the border and also a sharper sense of when circumstances might require more forceful Iranian action.

But perhaps the more likely means for Iranian intervention is a paramilitary force that Tehranhas deployed elsewhere to great effect. Iran has done an impressive job of raising battalions of Shiite foreign fighters to join the war in Syria. Many of these recruits come from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan fighters are organized into the Liwa Fatemiyoun, a force of between 10,000 and 15,000 men that has seen combat in Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia, and the Qalamoun region.

With the conflict in Syria potentially winding

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An Iranian antinarcotics policeman stands guard in front of an Iranian flag on an observation tower in Milak on the road along Iran›s southeastern border with Afghanistan on May 2009 ,20. (Getty)

Iran will now have more room for maneuver and might be tempted to intervene in Afghan affairs more forcefully, both to protect its own domestic interests and to undermine those of the United States.

down, Iran could redeploy Afghan Shiite fighters to Afghanistan to extend its reach throughout the region or to check significant escalation from the ISKP. The terrorist group has the ability to conduct spectacular and awful violence, including horrific attacks in May that targeted a funeral procession and a maternity ward. At the moment, its fighters have remained mostly consigned to the eastern part of Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, far from Iran—but if that were to change, so too would Tehran’s calculus. The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven it is both willing and capable of launching attacks on Iranian soil, as the group did in July 2017.

Proxy forces are central to Iran’s foreign policy and grand strategy. The Quds Force has successfully cultivated relationships with forces throughout the Middle East, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen. Iranian

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leaders are still smarting from the U.S. killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani in early January, and they could very well decide to open a front against Washington in Afghanistan. Iran might seek to orchestrate a string of attacks to both speed the withdrawal and make it seem that Iran played a larger role in forcing the United States to retreat. The attacks could be sporadic and target U.S. supply and logistical lines used to facilitate the withdrawal, evoking images of U.S. troops leaving Vietnam or Somalia and providing Iran with a propaganda victory. Tehran could use Afghan Shiite militias as proxies in order to distance itself from overtly hostile actions. Through the Liwa Fatemiyoun and other militias, Iran could complicate U.S. interests in Afghanistan by instigating attacks against remaining U.S. assets and local partners, or—more likely—it could help secure parts of Afghanistan, boost its own sway in the country, and in so doing further erode Washington’s already waning influence.

Iran has spent billions of dollars to arm, train, and pay thousands of foreign fighters in Syria, including Afghans. Qaani’s most important task as Soleimani’s replacement will be managing the IRGC-QF’s relationship with these forces. His experience with Afghan Shiite fighters suggests that these militants in particular could be poised to play a more prominent role in Iran’s foreign policy. Whatever the shape of the future government in Kabul, Tehran will keep a wary eye on its eastern border—where it may come to the conclusion that the best form of defense is intervention.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1809- July- 17/07/2020

Kanye West: The Outlandish Rapper With the 10 - Day Presidential Run

www.majalla.com

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ealth

Get the Facts About COVID-19 Vaccines Perspectives, Prospects and Challenges

by Mayo Clinic

CORONAVIRUS VACCINE RESEARCH

A vaccine to prevent COVID-19 is perhaps the best hope for ending the pandemic. Currently, there is no vaccine to prevent infection with the COVID-19 virus, but researchers are racing to create one.

Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that cause illnesses such as the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). COVID-19 is caused by a virus that’s closely related to the one that causes

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SARS. For this reason, scientists named the new virus SARS-CoV-2.

While vaccine development can take years, researchers aren’t starting from scratch to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Past research on SARS and MERS vaccines has identified potential approaches.

Coronaviruses have a spike-like structure on their surface called an S protein. (The spikes create the corona-like, or crown-like, appearance that gives the viruses their name.) The S protein attaches to the surface of human cells. A vaccine that targets this protein would prevent it from binding to human cells and stop the virus from reproducing.

CORONAVIRUS VACCINE CHALLENGES Past research on vaccines for coronaviruses has also identified some challenges to developing a COVID-19 vaccine, including: Ensuring vaccine safety. Several vaccines for SARS have been tested in animals. Most of the vaccines improved the animals’ survival but didn’t prevent infection. Some vaccines also caused complications, such as lung damage. A COVID-19 vaccine will need to be thoroughly tested to make sure it’s safe for humans.

A researcher works on a vaccine against the new coronavirus at the 19-COVID Copenhagen’s University research lab in Copenhagen, Denmark, on March )Getty( .2020 ,23

Providing long-term protection. After infection with coronaviruses, re-infection with the same virus _ though usually mild and only happening in a fraction of people _ is possible after a period of months or years. An effective COVID-19 vaccine will need to provide people with long-term infection protection.

Protecting older people. People older than age 50 are at higher risk of severe COVID-19. But older people usually don’t respond to vaccines as well as younger people. An ideal COVID-19 vaccine would work well for this age group.

PATHWAYS TO DEVELOP AND PRODUCE A VACCINE 19-COVID Global health authorities and vaccine developers are currently partnering to support the technology needed to produce vaccines. Some approaches have been used before to create vaccines, but some are still quite new.

LIVE VACCINES Live vaccines use a weakened (attenuated) form of

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Most of the vaccines improved the animals’ survival but didn’t prevent infection. Some vaccines also caused complications, such as lung damage. A COVID19- vaccine will need to be thoroughly tested to make sure it’s safe for humans. the germ that causes a disease. This kind of vaccine prompts an immune response without causing disease. The term attenuated means that the vaccine’s ability to cause disease has been reduced.

Live vaccines are used to protect against measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox and chickenpox. As a result, the infrastructure is in place to develop these kinds of vaccines.

However, live virus vaccines often need extensive safety testing. Some live viruses can be transmitted to a person who isn’t immunized. This is a concern for people who have weakened immune systems.

INACTIVATED VACCINES Inactivated vaccines use a killed (inactive) version of the germ that causes a disease. This kind of vaccine causes an immune response but not infection. Inactivated vaccines are used to prevent the flu, hepatitis A and rabies.

However, inactivated vaccines may not provide protection that’s as strong as that produced by live vaccines. This type of vaccine often requires multiple doses, followed by booster doses, to provide longterm immunity. Producing these types of vaccines might require the handling of large amounts of the infectious virus.

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED VACCINES This type of vaccine uses genetically engineered RNA or DNA that has instructions for making copies of the S protein. These copies prompt an immune response to the virus. With this approach, no infectious virus needs to be handled. While genetically engineered vaccines are in the works, none has been

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ulture

With ‘Stateless,’ Cate Blanchett Tackles the ‘Human Drama’ of Immigration

The Series is Set in the Mid-Aughts, as Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Sent Thousands Fleeing to Other Countries

by Meredith Blake

grappled with similar issues for decades.

Debates over immigration and national identity dominate the political discourse in the Trump-era United States, but many Americans may be unaware that Australia has

That’s about to change with the debut of “Stateless,” a Netflix series co-created by Cate Blanchett that dives into her home country’s treatment of refugees and

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asylum seekers.

The drama is set during the mid-aughts, as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sent thousands fleeing to other countries, including Australia, with the hopes of beginning a new life. The six-part series follows the unusual journey of Sofie (Yvonne Strahovski), an Australian flight attendant who gets involved in a cult, suffers a breakdown and mistakenly winds up in an immigration detention center, where she claims to be a German tourist who overstayed her visa.

At the center — in a parched, economically depressed corner of South Australia — she is held along with hundreds of so-called UNCs (or unlawful noncitizens).

These refugees include Ameer (Fayssal Bazzi), an Afghan man hoping to reunite with his family after a traumatic separation. Outfitted in a silver wig and sequins gowns, Blanchett has a small role as Pat, the singing-and-dancing wife of a charismatic cult leader played by Dominic West.

As implausible as it may seem, Sofie’s story is partially inspired by the case of Cornelia Rau, a white Australian woman who was held in an onshore detention center for several months and helped bring attention to the country’s severe immigration policies.

Cate Blanchett as Pat Masters in «Stateless.»

(Netflix)

Blanchett created the series with Tony Ayres and Elise McCredie. Though “Stateless” deals with subjects that remain deeply polarizing in the U.S. and Australia — and are explored in greater depth in an accompanying podcast called “Post Play: Stateless” — Blanchett insists the series is “not a piece of agitprop.”

“It’s human drama. It’s not just delivering some political message. It’s asking more questions than it answers,” says the two-time Oscar winner, who was also an executive producer on this spring’s politically charged miniseries, “Mrs. America.”

Blanchett and Ayres recently spoke via Zoom about the series and the difficult themes it explores.

Q: What made you want to get involved behind the scenes on this series? Is producing satisfying in a way that performing isn’t?

Blanchett: The producers I truly admire are infinitely inventive. Some of them also happen to be performers or directors, as these skill sets are often interlinked. For me, it’s about balancing the pragmatic with the creative.

Sometimes I am compelled to be involved in a project but know that to shoehorn myself artificially as an actor into that project would capsize or pervert the material. Then

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These refugees include Ameer (Fayssal Bazzi), an Afghan man hoping to reunite with his family after a traumatic separation. also knowing that if one is not in it, that certain financiers may not be willing to take a risk on the material. Some of the most fulfilling creative experiences I’ve had, the most fascinating conversations, have been in and around facilitating the work of others. It’s never been about what role I play, more the quality of the conversation.

Q: The idea for this series originated with a kitchentable conversation back in 2013. Can you tell me about that?

Blanchett: We were thinking about telling stories that were elephants in the room, so to speak — those stories that everybody needed to talk about. Drama is the most inclusive way to have those conversations. It’s the space for long-form empathetic examinations of quite complicated and confronting stories in any culture.

Australia’s treatment of refugees over the last 20 years was one of those subjects that wasn’t being discussed. So we all wanted to find a way we could bring it back into the national conversation in a nonfear-based, inclusive way.

Q: Can you talk about the inspiration for this series and how you decided on setting it in the recent past — rather than the present day?

Ayres: We decided that the best period to tell our story was looking at when Australia still had on-shore detention so that we could understand the current iteration. There were stories of Australian citizens that had been mistakenly put in detention, there were stories of people breaking out of detention, there were stories of Australian citizens who were standing up for refugees, and there were a lot of stories of trauma.

Blanchett: It took a long time to find partners who were brave enough to look at the human drama behind the obviously political patina. For us, it was almost too hot and polarizing and political to deal with what is still an ongoing situation in Australia and globally. So we decided to set it slightly back in time, almost as a prequel to offshore detention, when refugees were processed onshore so that we could reverse-engineer how we’ve

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got here. There’s so much about Australia that I am deeply proud of. So many of our cultural and scientific and athletic exports. But it’s been a great source of shame for me to hear the rhetoric around the building of the wall, the rhetoric around Brexit. The DNA of that is absolutely born inside of Australia. This has massive international relevance and resonance. We need to sort that out in our own country, but that language has absolutely been exported overseas.

Q: Why make Sofie one of the central characters? As a white Australian, she is not representative of the people who end up in detention.

Blanchett: I had been inspired by my work as a goodwill ambassador for the (U.N. High Commission for Refugees) to shine a light on the human stories.

Whenever I went on a mission with UNHCR, I would speak to mothers, to daughters, to sisters. The profound takeaway I had is that this could be me in different circumstances. That was something we carried into the DNA of the series.

We wanted to find a window for people who hadn’t had interface with the refugee experience, to ask themselves, “What if it was my sister? What if it was me, what if it was my daughter who fell through the cracks as our character Sophie did in the mental health system, the judicial system and the immigration system and ended up by complete mistake inside one of these detention centers?” We felt like we could only create that through a middle-class, white Australian character. That was very deliberate.

Ayres: The choice to enter the story with a white Australian woman was a form of Trojan horse. It was strategic: Who can we give to an audience that they

Blanchett: “I had been inspired by my work as a goodwill ambassador for the (U.N. High Commission for Refugees) to shine a light on the human stories.”

can connect to? I think that Yvonne in particular is so extraordinarily empathetic in her performance. She brings us into the story, but then we hopefully will experience other people’s dramas within that, and the dramas of people who are not white.

Q: How did you develop the cult storyline and the character of Pat? Blanchett: I was happy to be involved as an actor in any way that would help the material, and Elise came up with the character where I got to sing and dance.

The show is a lot about identity and what happens to the identity of citizens when they are separated from their humanity. Cult Behavior 101 is you separate yourself from your family, from your past, and your future is reinvented. It’s all about being a new you, a

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better you, a you that is separate from anything that you did in the past. That was kind of a metaphor to what we saw happening in Australia.

When Tony and Elise and I grew up, “Brand Australia” was built on multiculturalism (and) the welcoming embrace of refugees and asylum seekers. And we saw that atrophy and calcify and we use that metaphor of the cult to speak to that story.

Ayres: For us, the idea of a cult where you are made all these promises of what you could be felt a little bit like the experience for the refugees — the promise of what Australia was, that you could escape the past, all of those things. It’s not a direct parallel, but those two stories resonated against each other for us.

Q: How conscious were you of trying to draw parallels

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between the situation in Australia and similar issues in the U.S. and Europe?

Blanchett: We’ve always been of the belief that if you make something deeply specific and true and accurate and well-researched, that it will have universal resonance. And that’s what we hoped the story would achieve. The only way to battle the pandemic is globally and yet we’re still laboring under this rhetoric of nation-building and how each country should deal with it in their own, individual way, but that’s not going to solve the problem. The global displacement crisis is not going to be solved by any one country, nor is climate change, nor is the pandemic.

Ayres: In Australia, we compare how we’re dealing with the pandemic to the charts we’re seeing from America.

That’s the problem — when it’s not a global issue.

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deeply proud of. So many of our cultural and scientific and athletic exports. But it’s been a great source of shame for me to hear the rhetoric around the building of the wall, the rhetoric around Brexit. The DNA of that is absolutely born inside of Australia. This has massive international relevance and resonance. We need to sort that out in our own country, but that language has absolutely been exported overseas.

Q: Why make Sofie one of the central characters? As a white Australian, she is not representative of the people who end up in detention.

Blanchett: I had been inspired by my work as a goodwill ambassador for the (U.N. High Commission for Refugees) to shine a light on the human stories.

Whenever I went on a mission with UNHCR, I would speak to mothers, to daughters, to sisters. The profound takeaway I had is that this could be me in different circumstances. That was something we carried into the DNA of the series.

We wanted to find a window for people who hadn’t had interface with the refugee experience, to ask themselves, “What if it was my sister? What if it was me, what if it was my daughter who fell through the cracks as our character Sophie did in the mental health system, the judicial system and the immigration system and ended up by complete mistake inside one of these detention centers?” We felt like we could only create that through a middle-class, white Australian character. That was very deliberate.

Ayres: The choice to enter the story with a white Australian woman was a form of Trojan horse. It was strategic: Who can we give to an audience that they can connect to? I think that Yvonne in particular is so

Blanchett: “I had been inspired by my work as a goodwill ambassador for the (U.N. High Commission for Refugees) to shine a light on the human stories.”

extraordinarily empathetic in her performance. She brings us into the story, but then we hopefully will experience other people’s dramas within that, and the dramas of people who are not white.

Q: How did you develop the cult storyline and the character of Pat? Blanchett: I was happy to be involved as an actor in any way that would help the material, and Elise came up with the character where I got to sing and dance.

The show is a lot about identity and what happens to the identity of citizens when they are separated from their humanity. Cult Behavior 101 is you separate yourself from your family, from your past, and your future is reinvented. It’s all about being a new you, a better you, a you that is separate from anything that

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better you, a you that is separate from anything that you did in the past. That was kind of a metaphor to what we saw happening in Australia.

When Tony and Elise and I grew up, “Brand Australia” was built on multiculturalism (and) the welcoming embrace of refugees and asylum seekers. And we saw that atrophy and calcify and we use that metaphor of the cult to speak to that story.

Ayres: For us, the idea of a cult where you are made all these promises of what you could be felt a little bit like the experience for the refugees — the promise of what Australia was, that you could escape the past, all of those things. It’s not a direct parallel, but those two stories resonated against each other for us.

Q: How conscious were you of trying to draw parallels

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between the situation in Australia and similar issues in the U.S. and Europe?

Blanchett: We’ve always been of the belief that if you make something deeply specific and true and accurate and well-researched, that it will have universal resonance. And that’s what we hoped the story would achieve. The only way to battle the pandemic is globally and yet we’re still laboring under this rhetoric of nation-building and how each country should deal with it in their own, individual way, but that’s not going to solve the problem. The global displacement crisis is not going to be solved by any one country, nor is climate change, nor is the pandemic.

Ayres: In Australia, we compare how we’re dealing with the pandemic to the charts we’re seeing from America.

That’s the problem — when it’s not a global issue.

Po

rt

ra

it

Kanye West: The Outlandish Rapper With the -10 Day Presidential Run

by Ali El Shamy Early Love for Music Kanye Omari West was born on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Unlike many rappers of his generation, West came from a relatively well-off middle class background as his mother, Dr Donda C. West, was a university professor at Clarke Atlanta University and the Chair of the English department at Chicago State University. His father, Ray West, was a photojournalist, a pastor and currently runs a start up business, a café in Maryland, which was paid for by his son. From a young age, Kanye displayed an affinity for the arts, as he would write poetry and paint. He would write his first rap song at 13. West was a relatively good student as he got mostly As and Bs, and later attended Chicago State University, only to drop out at age 20 in order to pursue his career. His academic mother did not approve of the decision at first, but would later resign from her post and become his manager during his early musical career.

Becoming a Music Producer and Early Struggles as a Rapper During the 1990s and early 2000s, West managed to become a successful music producer in the rap industry. In 2000, he became a producer for Rock-AFella Records and produced labels and crafted songs for a number of famous artists such as Jay-Z, Ludi-

crous and Janet Jackson. Despite his success, his real ambition was to become a rapper. Initially, music producers did not want to sign Kanye as a rapper because he refused to adopt the “gangster rapper” image, which was prominent at the time. In 2003, Kanye released his first studio album entitled The College Dropout, in which he talks about his journey as a musician and encourages people to pursue their dreams and not let society dictate their paths in life.

The album received universal acclaim, and put West in the rapping map. West would then make headlines in 2005, for appearing in telethon benefitting victims of Hurricane Katrina, blurting out “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” on live TV; this wouldn’t be the last time West made political headlines.

Mid-2000s: Mother’s Death and End of Engagement The mid-2000s proved to be a hard time for West; in spite of rising to the top of the rap charts he would encounter a number of challenges in his personal life. In November 2007, West’s mother passed away while undergoing plastic surgery and months later he and his fiancé Alexis Phifer split up ending a 5-year relationship. His next album, 808s and Heartbreak reflected themes of sadness, loneliness and love. West would later cause controversy during the 2009 MTV Music Awards when Taylor Swift received award for best Female Video, but as she was giving her acceptance speech West went on stage

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and grabbed the microphone out of her hand and said that Beyoncé deserved the award. Understandably, the incident caused major controversy, and to this day Swift still holds resentment towards West.

In a private conversation, then President Barack Obama discussed the incident and called West “a jerk”. West would later apologise for his actions and claimed that a recent personal tragedy, in particular his mother’s passing, was causing him to act out.

2010s: A Good Decade for West In spite of controversies, West’s rise to the top was unstoppable. In 2011, he collaborated with long time rapper Jay-Z as they released the album Watch the Throne, which was positively received by audiences and critics. In 2012, he would start a relationship with media personality and entrepreneur Kim Kardashian. He then released his sixth studio album in 2013, called Yeezus and he subsequently went on the Yeezus Tour which was his first solo concert tour in five years. That same year, he and Kim announced that the latter was pregnant with their first child and they would then announce their engagement months later. They then got married in a private ceremony one year later in May 2014. In 2015, he collaborated with Rihanna and Sir Paul McCartney to release the single FourFiveSeconds.

Change in Philosophy In 2018, West announced his support for Presi-

dent Donald Trump something that was met with hostility and criticism in the music world. In April of that year, he released the single Ye vs. The People featuring TI. In the song, West expresses his support for Trump while TI debates his West’s political stances. In October 2018, he would meet President Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, where he passionately expressed his love and support for the president. In 2019, he then stated that he had become religious and that he started attending a church service every Sunday. He then released a Christian hip hop album entitled Jesus is King and collaborated in the American gospel group Sunday Service Choir’s album Jesus is Born.

The Ten-Day Presiden� :20200 tial Run

In July 4, 2020 Kanye announced via Twitter that he would run in the upcoming presidential election, to which American entrepreneur Elon Musk said he endorsed his run. Kanye was vague about his run and did not provide a clear platform of his policies. He also did not indicate if he would run as a Republican or an independent, while he did seem to distance himself from Trump stating: “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation.” But he later said that the country is a “big mess” now. Nevertheless, he also said that he would never compete directly against Trump, indicating that he would run as an independent candidate, which at that point wasn’t viable since most states closed their ballots for independent candidates months ago. Given the spontaneity of the announcement and the lack of any real planning, many have speculated that West’s presidential run was only meant to garner attention for an upcoming album. In July 14, Steve Kramer, a member of Kanye’s campaign team, said that the rapper bowed out of the presidential race having failed to gain backing in Florida.

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o

pinion

Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Al-Rahi’s Warnings are Too Little, Too Late

by: Elie Fawaz

Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi sat in his chair earlier this month listening to the discontentment of his parish delegations visiting him. Immigration, unemployment, bankruptcies that have hit all sectors, despair, potential school drop-outs with the start of the academic year - if it does actually start - poverty, the collapse of the local currency, daunting inflation, and the shortage in raw materials and power cuts. The congregation is starving, and most of its members want to emigrate. Twenty years from now there will be no Maronites left in Lebanon, or they will be such a small minority that they will be of no added value to the country’s the political or economic life.

Al-Rahi displayed a grimace of worry, but what can be done?

It is worth mentioning that leading politician Gebran Bassil had told him that President Michel Aoun would be the “Charles de Gaulle” of the East as of all the Maronite leaders, only Aoun is capable of keeping his promises. Everyone seeks his approval, and Hezbollah needs Christian cover. Al- Rahi was asked: “What will happen to Hezbollah without a Christian cover?” No one has ever asked this question, perhaps in fear of exposing that the idea of a “Christian cover” is a joke as well as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s indifference. This whole situation is a comedy show, similar to one of Rahbani’s plays, where things appear perfect from the outside. Iran-backed Hezbollah receives direct commands from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Quds Forces and is classified as a terrorist organization in many countries. Hezbollah is accused of killing former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, fighting on more than one front in the region, and are supplied with arms and money from Iran. Will it collapse if it does not have “Christian cover” from Aoun?

Bassil continued by claiming that former Sunni Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s political fate is linked to Aoun. Bassil assured that Hariri is wrapped around their finger. What if Hariri decides to break free from their grip? He’ll be finished. Bassil said that with a lot of confidence. “We will restore the stolen rights of the Maronites. Aoun alone is able to restore those rights that were lost in the Taif agreement.” However, why would Hezbollah, which has control over Lebanon, accept going back in time to 1991?

The meeting ended and Al-Rahi entered his office immediately thinking of the patriarchs who preceded him and the rest of the Eastern Maronites. Does Bassil know the Maronites and their history? How did we hand over the sect to such individuals?

He started writing his Sunday sermon: “The worst thing we witness today is that most politicians are concerned only with their cheap gains, interests, and their bank accounts, withholding confidence from others, and condemning those who hold power in constitutional institutions. What makes matters worse is that they strive to be loyal to their parties rather than Lebanon.”

Was the president never warned that the Gulf states, which have always been supporters of Lebanon, could boycott us if he continues to support Hezbollah’s hostile stances towards them? Wasn’t he warned of angering the United States of America? “We will build an Eastern economy consisting of Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon” was his response. “It will be a productive and resistant economy against those who want to uproot us from this land. We do not need the Gulf countries. Aren’t they the countries that support the fundamentalist movements hostile to the Eastern Christianity that you represent? They - the Gulf states - will not help us as long as they still support our enemies. As for the United States, its influence has begun to fade in the East.

President Trump only cares about isolationism and making America great. Our interest is with the East.”

But what about sanctions? Aren’t they going to undermine the Eastern Economy? Moreover, how can we rely on countries that have become bankrupt from US sanctions to revive our economy? Bloc politics brought us Maronites nothing but calamity.

We appeal to the President of the Republic to lift the siege on legitimacy and free national opinion. We ask friendly countries to accelerate their rescue of Lebanon as they have before whenever it was in danger. We turn to the United Nations to work on reestablishing Lebanon’s independence and unity, implementing international resolutions, and declaring its neutrality. Lebanon’s neutrality guarantees its unity and its historical position in a climate full of geographical and constitutional changes. Lebanon’s neutrality is its strength and guarantees its role in stabilizing the region and defending the rights of Arab states and peace conflict, and in the robust relationship between the countries of the Middle East and Europe given to its location on the shore of the Mediterranean.

There are many things that Al-Rahi did not write in his sermon: First, he did not criticize the existing regime in Lebanon and did not hold it responsible of the tragedies the country is going through, nor did he call for an alternative system that prevents sects being supported by external parties and thus monopolizing the country and its fate by employing their strategic interests. As a result, the loyalty of the sects to those external parties becomes greater and stronger than their loyalty to their homeland. Al-Rahi could have condemned those who bargained for the presidential seat in the Mar Mikhael agreement. He could have also condemned Iran’s influence that has turned Lebanon into a province under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s grasp. Perhaps this would have brought back some of the sparkle of an ancient glory.

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17/07/20