The Uighur Tragedy

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1811- July- 31/07/2020

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Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

In recent months and weeks, Western governments have been condemning China over its alleged detainment and re-education of Uighur Muslims living in Xinjiang. While the Chinese government has denied the existence of these programmes, satellite imagery has shown an increase of large interment camps in the region. This week’s cover story by Yasmine El-Geressi focuses on Beijing’s alleged atrocities in Xinjiang, as the UN and the Human Rights Watch have been calling for independent observers to be allowed in the province.

Economic hardship has pushed more women in Egypt to seek work. While women have always been allowed to work throughout the country’s modern history, some conservative families have still been discouraging their daughters/wives from working as they think women should prioritise domestic duties. In recent years, more women have become the breadwinners of their families as recent statistics from CAPMAS state that women head 14 per cent of households in Egypt. Ali El Shamy writes on this recent development and how these women are challenging gender norms of their society.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has yet to reveal who will be his running mate for the upcoming November elections. His choice will be met with scrutiny due to his old age. While we still don’t know whom he will choose, we know that he will likely choose a woman for the Vice Presidential position.

Joseph Braude writes on Joe Biden’s likely running mates, and the advantages and disadvantages of each candidate.

Bodybuilding has become an obsession for many young men in Egypt. As such many men seeking to gain a muscular body will spend countless hours at the gym, and adopting specific diet regiments that focuses on muscle growth. Egyptian born bodybuilder Mahmoud Al Durrah has won several competitions such as the Canadian nationals and Mr Olympia. Yasmine El-Geressi interviews Al Durrah as he shares his journey, struggles, daily diet and why he thinks he amassed such a big following on social media.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

16 There Is No Scramble for the Arctic

Issue 1810- July- 24/07/2020

34 The Age of Strategic Instability

24 The Tragedy of Vaccine Nationalism

30 Post-Pandemic Japan Will Attract the World

34 The Body’s Overlooked Defence system

Dying to Succeed: Q&A with Egyptian 48 Mr. Olympia Competitor and Entrepreneur Mahmood Al Durrah 3

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Philbin Became TV’s 42 Regis Greatest Host By Be

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shows pilgrims holding coloured umbrellas 2020 ,29 A picture taken on July coronavirus 19-along matching coloured rings separating them as a COVID pandemic measure while circumambulating around the Kaaba, Islam›s holiest shrine, at the centre of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, at the start of the annual Muslim Hajj pilgrimage. - Getty

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Men transport cows with a van after buying from a cattle market ahead of the Muslim festival Eid al-Adha or the ‹Festival of Sacrifice›, in the Pakistan›s port city of Karachi on July 29, 2020. - Getty

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Netanyahu Warns Hezbollah Against Playing with Fire After Frontier Incident Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces thwarted an attempt by Hezbollah to infiltrate across the Lebanon frontier on Monday, which the Iranian-backed Shi’ite group denied. “Hezbollah should know it is playing with fire,” Netanyahu said in a televised address from Israel’s defense ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv. He cautioned that any attacks from Lebanese territory would draw a powerful response.

Earlier, a Reuters witness in Lebanon counted dozens of Israeli shells hitting the disputed Shebaa Farms area along the frontier. Fires burned

governor and police chief were appointed in the contested city of Aden, after a Saudi push to reunite allies in a fight against Iran-aligned Houthi forces. The United Nations Yemen envoy said the initiative was an important step toward a peaceful resolution of the five-year conflict. Riyadh is seeking to end a conflict between southern separatists and the Saudibacked government, which has been based in Aden for five years after being driven from the capital Sanaa by the Houthis. The government and the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, are the main Yemeni forces in a

and smoke rose from the area, but no casualties were reported by Israel or Hezbollah. Occupied

by Israel, the Shebaa Farms is claimed by Lebanon. The United Nations regards it as part of Syrian territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Israeli forces have been on alert along the northern border in anticipation of Hezbollah retaliation for the killing of one of its members a week ago in an alleged Israeli attack on the edge of the Syrian capital Damascus.

Yemen Separatists Rescind Self-Rule as Saudis Push to End Feud

Yemen’s southern separatists rescinded a declaration of self-rule on Wednesday and a new

Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition. But the Yemeni allies have been in a standoff since last August when the STC took over Aden. Wednesday’s developments were part of a new framework unveiled by Saudi Arabia to resolve the quarrel among the allies and implement their powersharing deal.

U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Top 150,000, Among Highest in Deaths Per Capita Globally U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus surpassed 150,000 on Wednesday, a number higher than in any other country and nearly a quarter of the world’s total, according to a Reuters tally.

Of the 20 countries with the biggest outbreaks, the United States ranks sixth in deaths per capita, at 4.5 fatalities per 10,000 people. Only the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Peru and Chile have a higher per capita rate, the tally shows, with U.S. deaths making up nearly 23% of the

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global total of just over 661,000. The increase of 10,000 COVID-19 deaths in 11 days is the fastest in the United States since early June.

The pace of infections has accelerated since the U.S. death toll passed 100,000 on May 27. The epicenter has also moved, to the South and West from the area around New York, which still has by far the highest toll for one state at more than 32,000. Arkansas, California, Florida, Montana, Oregon and Texas each reported record spikes in fatalities on Tuesday.

U.S. to Withdraw About 12,000 Troops from Germany but Nearly Half to Stay in Europe The U.S. military on Wednesday unveiled plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany, in fallout from President Donald Trump’s long-simmering feud with Berlin but said it will keep nearly half of those forces in Europe to address tension with Russia. Trump announced his intention last month to cut by about a third the 36,000-strong U.S. troop contingent in Germany, faulting the close U.S. ally for failing to meet NATO’s defense spending target and accusing it of taking advantage of the United

States on trade.

“We don’t want to be the suckers any more,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday about the decision. “We’re reducing the force because they’re not paying their bills; it’s very simple.” Defense Secretary Mark Esper has not portrayed the pullout in those terms and said the military’s plan would prevent the troop movements from undermining NATO and its efforts to deter Russian intervention, following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

nearly decade-long war. “More sanctions will follow as part of a sustained campaign of economic and political pressure to deny the Assad regime the resources it uses to wage war against the Syrian people,” the White House said in a statement. A crackdown by Assad on protesters in 2011 led to civil war, with Iran and Russia backing the government and the United States supporting the opposition. Millions of people have fled Syria and millions more have been internally displaced. The U.S. sanctions, imposed under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act and other measures, come as Assad grapples with a deepening economic crisis.

U.S. Slaps Sanctions on Syria in Push for Assad to End War The United States on Wednesday imposed new sanctions aimed at cutting off funds for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and warned that anyone doing business with Damascus was also at risk of being blacklisted.

Assad’s son, Hafez, was among four people and 10 entities, including a Syrian army unit, targeted by Washington over accusations they either aided government funding through luxury real estate construction - sometimes on land belonging to displaced civilians - or prolonged the

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NASA’s New Mars Rover Launches From Florida to Seek Signs of Past Life NASA’s next-generation Mars rover Perseverance blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Thursday atop an Atlas 5 rocket on a $2.4 billion mission to search for traces of potential past life on Earth’s planetary neighbor. The next-generation robotic rover - a car-sized sixwheeled vehicle carrying seven scientific instruments - also is scheduled to deploy a mini helicopter on Mars and try out equipment for future human missions to the fourth planet from the sun. Its arrival at Mars is planned for Feb. 18 at the site of an ancient river delta. It soared into the sky from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT) under clear, sunny and warm conditions carried by an Atlas 5 rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance. The launch took place after the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) facility in Pasadena, California where its mission engineers were located was rattled by an earthquake. This marked NASA’s ninth journey to the Martian surface.

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The Uighur Tragedy How China is Brutally Crushing the Muslim Minority

by Yasmine El-Geressi The Chinese government has reportedly detained more than a million Muslims in more than 85 identified camps since 2017 where they undergo forced re-education and political indoctrination. Most of the people who have been arbitrarily detained are Uighur, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group primarily from China’s Xinjiang, an autonomous area in the northwest.

China is facing global political criticism over its alleged persecution of the Uighurs. Human rights organizations, UN officials, and many foreign governments are urging China to stop the crackdown. China initially denied the existence of the camps, before claiming they were a necessary measure against separatist violence in Xinjiang. Chinese officials maintain that what they call vocational training centers do not infringe on Uighurs’ human rights. They have refused to share information about the detention centers, and prevented

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journalists and foreign investigators from examining them.

WHO ARE THE UIGHURS AND WHY ?ARE THEY TARGETED The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnicity who regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. The majority live in Xinjiang, where they number about 11 million people. The area has been under Chinese control since 1949, when the communist People’s Republic of China was established. Uighur communities are also found in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, and several thousand live in Australia.

Uighurs speak their own language — an Asian Turkic language similar to Uzbek — and most practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam. Some activists, including those who seek independence from China, refer to the region as East Turkestan.

Once situated along the ancient Silk Road trading route, Xinjiang is oil- and resource-rich. As it developed along with the rest of China, the region attracted large numbers of Han Chinese, a migration encouraged by the Chinese government.

Mass immigration of Han Chinese has made Uighurs a minority now in the province and many Uighurs complain that Han Chinese are taking their jobs, and that their farmland has been confiscated for redevelopment.

Protesters attend a rally in Hong Kong on December 2019 ,22 to show support for the Uighur minority in China. (Getty)

Activists say that over the years, central government policies have gradually curtailed the Uighurs’ religious, commercial and cultural activities. Beijing is accused of intensifying its crackdown after street demonstrations in Xinjiang in the 1990s, and again in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 where 200 people were killed and hundreds injured while protesting for economic rights. The Chinese government, however, blamed the protests on violent separatist groups — a tactic it would continue to use against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.

CCP policy in Xinjiang escalated sharply in spring 2017 motivated by China’s external insecurities — most notably, the belief that the CCP had to act to prevent terrorist networks from diffusing into Xinjiang from abroad. That year, China’s President Xi Jinping issued a directive that “religions in China must be Chinese in orientation” and “adapt themselves to socialist society”. The directive led to a fresh crackdown on religious freedom and increased surveillance on the minority population under the guise of combating terrorism and extremism. Western experts are skeptical, and even the most generous estimates of Uighur militant capability do not imply that insurgency inside Xinjiang is present, or even imminent.

But as a result, the CCP is imprisoning and involuntarily reeducating huge numbers of people who have shown no in-

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But there’s another reason why Beijing wants to clamp down on Uighurs in Xinjiang: The region is home to some of the most important elements of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s flagship trade project. clination toward anything other than normal Uighur cultural or Muslim religious practice on the basis of inaccurate threat perceptions.

But there’s another reason why Beijing wants to clamp down on Uighurs in Xinjiang: The region is home to some of the most important elements of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s flagship trade project. The BRI, which went into effect in 2013, aims to link Beijing with some 70 countries around the world via railroads, gas pipelines, shipping lanes, and other infrastructure projects. It is considered President Xi Jinping’s pet project, and an important part of his political legacy. China is estimated to have invested between $1 trillion and $8 trillion into the project. Experts point out that China’s growing emphasis on BRI projects coincides with Beijing’s crackdown in Xinjiang. Adrian Zenz, a leading scholar on China’s policies toward the Uighurs based in Germany, told The New York Times : “The role of Xinjiang has changed greatly with the BRI,” and that China’s ambitions have turned Xinjiang into a “core region” of economic development.

”A MASSIVE INTERNMENT CAMP“ Reuters journalists, observing satellite imagery, found that thirty-nine of the camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018; they cover a total area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields. Similarly, analysing local and national budgets over the past few years, Zenz found that construction spending on security-related facilities in Xinjiang increased by 20 billion yuan (around $2.96 billion) in 2017.

He also believes that Chinese officials began using dedicated camps in Xinjiang as far back as 2014.

There are an estimated one million (if not more) Uighur Muslims detained in these so-called “re-education camps” where they bombarded with the traditions of the country’s majority Han Chinese and made to learn Mandarin Chinese. They are also forced to criticise or renounce their faith with the goal

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of stripping them of their religious and ethnic identity and replace it with absolute loyalty President Xi Jinping and the state.

Some of the targeted “de-extremification” restrictions gained coverage in the West, including a ban on certain Muslim names for babies and another on long beards and veils. The government also made it illegal to not watch state television and to not send children to government schools. The government reportedly tried to promote drinking and smoking, because people who didn’t drink or smoke — like devout Muslims — were deemed suspicious.

In addition to the bizarre exercises aimed at “brainwashing” them, a report published by AFP exposed the physical torture and deprivation taking place in the camps. AFP described camps where thousands of guards carrying spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns surveil the detainees, who are held in buildings surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras. AFP journalists also reviewed public documents that showed government agencies overseeing the camps purchased 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.

Some released detainees contemplated suicide or witnessed others kill themselves.

Women have shared stories of sexual abuse inside the camps, with some saying they were forced to undergo abortions, sterilisation or have contraceptive devices implanted against their will. A report by the Associated Press found that having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region

Women have shared stories of sexual abuse inside the camps, with some saying they were forced to undergo abortions, sterilisation or have contraceptive devices implanted against their will.

of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”

Children whose parents have been sent to the camps are often forced to stay in state-run orphanages. Uighur parents living outside of China often face a difficult choice: return home to be with their children and risk detention, or stay abroad, separated from their children and unable to contact them.

In August 2018, a UN human rights committee was told there were credible reports that China had “turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp”. The reports are backed by rights groups, with Human Rights Watch saying people with relatives in 26 so-called “sensitive” countries like Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Turkey have been rounded up.

Anyone who has contacted someone abroad via WhatsApp is also targeted, according to HRW. HRW says Uighur people in particular are subject to intense surveillance

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Chinese policemen push Uighur women who are protesting at a street on July 2009 ,7 in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region, China. (Getty)

In addition to the bizarre exercises aimed at “brainwashing” them, a report published by AFP exposed the physical torture and deprivation taking place in the camps. tion numbers of 311 people held in the camps, as well as hundreds of their neighbors and relatives. The authorities checked three generations of each detainee’s family and monitored people as young as 16 years old for behavior that would indicate adherence to ethnic Uighur culture and traditions. As the Economist reported, “authorities divide each city into squares, with about 500 people. Every square has a police station that keeps tabs on the inhabitants. So, in rural areas, does every village,” as part of their “grid management” policing system.

THE WORLD REACTS, AT LAST As more and more reports emerge of Beijing’s atrocities toward Uighurs, officials and lawmakers in the West have begun to loudly condemn China and call for a forceful policy response.

- from facial recognition cameras to QR codes on people’s doors, so officials can check the codes to see who is inside at any point. People are also reportedly made to undergo biometric tests.

Detainees are selected and monitored because they were Muslims and behaved in ways that China’s leaders thought objectionable. For example: They wanted to go on a religious pilgrimage. They frequently worshiped at a mosque. They had friends whom the authorities had designated as suspicious. They maintained what the government considered a “heavy religious environment” at home, or they wore a beard, or attended a funeral, or obtained a passport, or had more than one child.

Details of how people were taken to the camps are found in a 137-page document was obtained by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times which outlined information that authorities in Karakax County in southwestern Xinjiang collected on residents between 2017 and March 2019. The sheet includes names and government identifica-

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The US government recently announced Magnitsky style sanctions against Chinese officials over the allegations which passed overwhelming support from Congress. In October 2019, the US imposed visa restrictions on Chinese officials “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in” the detention of Muslims in Xinjiang. It had also blacklisted companies and institutions it believes are involved in human rights violations in the region. his month, the UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab accused China of “gross and egregious” human rights abuses. France’s foreign minister recently condemned the treatment of Uighur Muslims in China and said Paris wanted independent observers to be allowed into Xinjiang. The European Union has called on China to respect religious freedom and change its policies in Xinjiang. And human rights organizations have urged China to immediately shut down the camps and answer questions about disappeared Uighurs.

Human Rights Watch has advocated other actions that countries could take: publicly challenging Xi; denying exports of technologies that facilitate abuse; pressing China to allow UN investigators in Xinjiang; and preventing China from targeting members of the Uighur diaspora.

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Who Will be Joe Biden’s Running Mate?

The Democratic Presidential Candidate’s Selection Will be Deeply Consequential

by Joseph Braude The presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Joe Biden, has run a novel campaign that departs from

precedent in several key respects. Perhaps foremost among them is the salience of his choice for Vice President, which looms larger now than in any campaign in recent memory. Biden’s eventual selection,

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expected later this month, will exercise outsize influence on his administration and the Democratic Party’s future trajectory.

THE STAKES

Mr. Biden has all but secured the Democratic nomination for President, having won a sufficient number of delegates in early June. However, concerns about his health have continued to nip at the Senator’s heels. Although this is partially ascribable to circumstances beyond the Senator’s control — at 77, Biden is the oldest major party nominee to run for President — it has been exacerbated by persistent gaffes and mediocre performances in Democratic primary debates.

Indeed, Biden himself has reportedly acknowledged that his advanced age might force him to run for only one term, repeatedly signaling to his aides that he is unlikely to run for reelection. As one prominent adviser to the campaign put it, “If Biden is elected he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.” In public, Biden has been more careful to preserve an ambiguous posture, responding to a question about a one-term commitment by saying, “I feel good and all I can say is, watch me, you’ll see. It doesn’t mean I would run a second term.

I’m not going to make that judgment at this moment.”

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks about the coronavirus outbreak, at the Hotel Du Pont March ,12 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Getty)

Given the dominant sway exercised by modern Presidents over their parties, and the commanding position that a sitting Vice President typically enjoys in primary elections when seeking their party’s nomination, Joe Biden is, in effect, faced with the task of selecting the Democratic party’s next Presidential nominee and titular leader of the party. Unsurprisingly, this has produced a large pool of candidates eagerly seeking the nod, with the only common denominator being that all — per Biden’s March 15 pledge — are women.

THE TOP CONTENDERS

Who, then, is likeliest to get the nod? By most accounts, Biden is currently leaning towards selecting Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate. Demographically, Harris brings relative youth and racial diversity to the ticket, hailing from biracial African-American and Indian-American descent, and has won a degree of national prominence unusual for freshman senators. Ever since the outbreak of Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s

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Demographically, Harris brings relative youth and racial diversity to the ticket, hailing from biracial African-American and IndianAmerican descent, and has won a degree of national prominence unusual for freshman senators. killing, demand for an African American on the ticket has risen sharply among the Democratic activists.

Moreover, as a recent candidate for the party’s nomination, Biden’s staff is confident she has weathered sufficient scrutiny to ensure no future scandals are in the offing.

Nevertheless, Harris’s early primary attacks on Biden — accusing him of “racial insensitivity” — have left several of Biden’s key advisers reluctant to nominate Harris. Former Senator Chris Dodd, who is reportedly playing a key role in shaping Biden’s deliberations, interviewed Harris and was unimpressed. “She had no remorse,” he said of the exchange.

That leaves a second tier of choices, each with her own mix of advantages and disadvantages. Biden’s camp tends to see both Senator Elizabeth Warren and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice as capable of assuming the duties of the Presidency should Biden’s health deteriorate. But Warren’s presidential campaign underperformed and she herself is over 70.

Perhaps equally problematic, she adds no racial diversity to the ticket. Rice, an African-American woman, would add such diversity, and moreover cultivated a personal relationship with Biden during their time together in the Obama administration. She has never held elective office, however, and is mostly known for having attracted heavy criticism from the Right during the Benghazi affair.

Whichever course Biden ultimately charts, the ramifications for the Democratic Party and American foreign policy will likely be profound. Whomever he selects is all but sure to lead one of Washington’s main camps for years to come.

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There Is No Scramble for the Arctic Climate Change Demands Cooperation, Not Competition, in the Far North

by Thomas Graham, Amy Myers Jaffe The Arctic is so remote, so cut off from the rest of the world, that at times it appears to defy the normal rules of politics. Relations between the United States and Russia, for example, have been deteriorating for years. Recently, the two countries have clashed in practically every geopolitical arena around the world-except, it seemed, in the

Arctic. At the Arctic Council, the region’s main diplomatic forum, Washington and Moscow have worked side by side. Together with the council’s other members, they have agreed on the need to protect the region’s fragile ecosystem and established protocols to ensure that its abundant natural resources are developed for commercial use in an ecologically responsible fashion. And in the decades following the end of the Cold War, they both

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JULY 2020 ,26: The Kondopoga landing ship takes part in a military parade on Russian Navy Day in Severomorsk, Murmansk Region. Lev Fedoseyev/TASS (Photo

by Lev Fedoseyev\ TASS via Getty Images)

scaled back their military presence.

Now, that spirit of cooperation is fraying. As the Arctic’s icecap melts away, new trade routes are emerging and with them a set of new security challenges. Over the past several years, Russia has rebuilt its military presence along the Northern Sea Route-the newly accessible shipping lane that runs from just east of Norway all the way to the Bering Strait-in order to ensure safe passage for container ships, counter smuggling and other illicit activities, and defend several thousand miles of northern border left unprotected by the retreating ice. Throughout the region, Moscow is enhancing its military capabilities. In 2014, Russia created a new military district with responsibility for the entire Arctic region, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and in 2017 it began to build a small fleet of icebreaking vessels equipped for antisubmarine warfare, although the ships will not enter service for several years. Russian strategic air patrols off the coast of Alaska, which resumed back in 2007, and their routine interception by U.S. military jets have also drawn more attention recently as suspicions of Russian intentions mount in Washington. NATO, meanwhile, has voiced concerns about increased Russian submarine movements near the so-called GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) gap, a naval chokepoint in the North Atlantic.

Partly in response to all this activity, the United States is rebuilding its own military capabilities in the region, which have atrophied since the end of the Cold War. Besides tracking Russian submarines near the GIUK gap, Washington has stepped up its strategic air patrols off the coast of Siberia to probe Russian defense systems and gather other intelligence. The Trump administration also plans to build a fleet of icebreakers to carry out what it has referred to as “national and economic security missions” in the Arctic. Additional investments will likely be necessary down the line, both to police commercial activities along the Alaskan coast and throughout the U.S. exclusive economic zone and to defend the country’s commitment to freedom of navigation in the polar region.

Neither side’s actions are necessarily aggressive in nature, nor do they portend an impending geopolitical fight over who controls the region. In fact, Russia’s military buildup has taken place solely in areas where its legal authority is undisputed. Submarine and aircraft activity near the GIUK gap and off the Alaskan coast is a part of Russia’s global strategy to deter potential military attacks and not focused on the Arctic per se. Much the same is true of U.S. actions in and around the region.

At a time of deepening distrust between the United States and Russia, however, the danger is that even actions taken for legitimate security reasons could spark unnecessary geopolitical tensions. Hard-liners in both countries, intent

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Relations between the United States and Russia, for example, have been deteriorating for years. Recently, the two countries have clashed in practically every geopolitical arena around the world-except, it seemed, in the Arctic. on inflating the threat, are already painting a picture of the Arctic as a site of intense geopolitical competition, and because the overall state of U.S.-Russian relations is so dismal, they are gaining traction. It is not difficult to imagine an incident that would further reinforce their views.

Russia, for example, considers the Northern Sea Route to be within its territorial waters, whereas the United States maintains that the passage is in international waters.

Should Washington insist on carrying out freedom-ofnavigation exercises there (as it did in May in the Barents Sea, at the western end of the maritime route through Russian waters), a standoff with Russia, even a military clash, might ensue.

The growing suspicion on both sides is not dangerous just in its own right. It could also impede cooperation in areas where U.S. and Russian interests still align-chief among them the environmental problems that climate change has created in the Arctic. Russia, in particular, has its work cut out for it. Last year, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that thawing permafrost, which can lead normally frozen ground surfaces to melt and collapse, threatened to inflict serious damage on several Russian oil and gas facilities in the Arctic that together account for 45 per cent of the country’s production capacity. An assessment by the Arctic Council in 2017 came to similar conclusions.

Sure enough, this June, a large storage tank filled with diesel fuel collapsed after thawing permafrost caused its foundation to sink. The accident caused an Exxon Valdez-sized oil spill that has spread to the nearby Lake Pyasino and possibly the Pyasina River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean.

Newer Russian oil and gas facilities are equipped to withstand permafrost melting with so-called thermosyphon systems, which keep the ground surrounding the facilities frozen and are used throughout Alaska. But many of Russia’s aging processing facilities, tanks, and pipelines have not been updated for the changing conditions. After

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the oil spill in June, the Kremlin ordered companies to take remedial action, but with oil prices low, it is unclear how firms can finance and implement improvements in a timely manner. Russia’s oil industry, hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, is struggling just to maintain its planned normal annual expenditures, and the virus has restricted the activities of oil and gas work crews across the region.

Wildfires are another major concern. Last year, multiple blazes raged along the Arctic Circle in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. In Russia, fires burned through an area larger than Belgium. After a historically warm and snowless winter throughout the region, this year could be even worse. The fires accelerate permafrost thaw, damage glaciers, and release substantial quantities of carbon dioxide, making them far more than a regional problem. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump offered Russia assistance with its wildfires, but Russia declined, largely out of national pride: Russia could take care of itself. (The United States, for its part, declined a similar Russian offer during the California wildfires of 2018.)

Both the permafrost thaw and wildfires could be much better managed if Arctic states did more to help one another. U.S. and European companies could provide technical assistance to the Russian oil and gas sector as it upgrades its infrastructure. Western governments could allow Russian companies access to public and private funding for climate adaptation and environmental remediation programs. Western sanctions against Russia currently forbid such assistance, but the sanctions could be tweaked to exempt climate-related cooperation and environmental cleanups-initiatives that would be in the interest of Arctic countries and beyond. In addition, coopera-

The Arctic Council could offer a useful multilateral forum to hash out environmental and development cooperation, provided its mission is broadened accordingly.

tion on environmental issues could help build the trust needed for Washington and Moscow to address more sensitive issues, including security arrangements for the region.

The Arctic Council could offer a useful multilateral forum to hash out environmental and development cooperation, provided its mission is broadened accordingly.

Through a future treaty, the council’s members (which could include new members down the line) could promote a multilateral approach to accident prevention and response, wildfire management, and other climaterelated regional issues. Security arrangements, however, lie beyond the mandate of the council and would thus require a new forum. The Arctic littoral states (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States) could form the core of these new discussions. But they would need to include others-China, notably, has aspirations to mine Arctic resources for its own use. The most urgent goal would be a code of conduct to regulate military activities in the region and reduce the risks of incidents escalating into armed conflict. The United States could work together with its Arctic regional allies to broach a dialogue with Russia, and possibly China, on how to get there.

The Arctic might seem a peripheral issue in U.S.-Russian relations. But it is one where small steps are enough to preserve mutually beneficial cooperation and head off ef-

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Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House October 2019 ,02 in Washington, DC. The two leaders discussed 5G wireless technology and Arctic security and European-American relations during and earlier working lunch at the White House. (Getty)

Relations between the United States and Russia, for example, have been deteriorating for years. Recently, the two countries have clashed in practically every geopolitical arena around the world-except, it seemed, in the Arctic. forts by hard-line forces in both countries to turn it into a region of dangerous geopolitical competition. Russian leaders have said that no breakthrough to more constructive relations, such as the reset of the early Obama administration years, is possible under current circumstances but that they are ready to take small steps to put relations on a more productive footing. The United States should test that proposition, and there is no better place to do so than in the Arctic.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

Employees of Russia’s stateowned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft take part in a clean-up operation following a massive fuel spill in the Ambarnaya River outside Norilsk .2020 ,10 on June )Getty(

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Egyptian Female Breadwinners Making Their Mark in Society

How More Women Are Becoming the Sole Providers for Their Families

by Ali El Shamy In May 2015, the BBC did a special report where they interviewed an elderly Egyptian woman called Sessa who earned a living as a shoe shiner in Luxor.

The woman was originally from the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Qena, and her early life was largely traditional in many respects. She got married, became pregnant soon afterwards and was preparing to live her life as a stay at home mother, something

that was expected of her in Conservative rural Egypt.

However, while she was pregnant with her daughter, her husband passed away. In order to provide for her daughter, she would have to find work. But Sessa’s mother warned her that she would find it difficult to find work as woman, as such she advised her to dress and act as a man in order to have better luck in the job market.

From there, Sessa would spend the next 42 years masquerading as a man, and she would earn money

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doing various labour jobs mostly reserved for men such as building. Even her current line of work as a street shoe shiner is seen as a man’s job in Egypt.

Sessa remarked that neither her father nor brother in her family would give her any financial help after her husband died, and the only person who would help was her late mother. Faced with such difficult circumstances, Sessa had to do what she could for her daughter. Although female employment in formal sectors existed in the 1970s, those jobs were reserved for women who usually had a university diploma and not working class women with little to no formal education. While Sessa might not have sought work had her husband not died, her story, with the exception of the masquerading as a man, resonates with many women in Egyptian society today.

Asmaa Megahed a -31year-old Egyptian carpenter works at her atelier in the Abdeen district of downtown Cairo on February 2018 ,26.

(AFP PHOTO)

According to a figures provided by Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), women are the main or sole breadwinner for around 14 per cent of Egyptian households. It should be noted that other independent figures estimate that the percentage of female-headed households might actually be as high as 30 per cent.

While official figures might be considered low, it is progress considering the fact that Egyptian society is still interlocked in a conservative patriarchal hierarchy that dictates that men should and must be the main breadwinners of the family. Furthermore, men who do not fulfil this role of being the main provider of the family are often emasculated and seen as less of a man. Even in households where both the husband and the wife work, many women are reluctant to take up positions which would ensure a higher wage than that of their husbands in order to maintain their spouse’s position as the head of the household.

While the number of women who are the main providers of the family are on the rise, not enough studies have indicated why that is. Some speculate that rising divorce rates in Egypt have encouraged female divorcees to seek greater job opportunities to provide more for their children, rather than relying on their ex-husbands. Additionally, there are women who are forced into becoming the main breadwinners through no fault of their own, for example women whose husbands abandoned them and their children, or women who have become widowers. Finally,

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According to CAPMAS, around 35 per cent of female breadwinners work in the informal sector of the economy. the rising numbers of young male drug addicts has rendered many fathers unable and unwilling to work, as such their wives (or in many cases ex-wives) became the sole provider for their children.

THE INFORMAL ECONOMY AND PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT According to CAPMAS, around 35 per cent of female breadwinners work in the informal sector of the economy. One clear example of an informal sector job that is female dominated is house cleaning. In urban Egyptian cities, well off households will often hire maids or cleaners providing opportunity for women who lack formal education access to a steady income. An advantage of this kind of work is the fact that women can work in multiple households a week, increasing their earnings. Furthermore, house cleaners who are seen as proficient and trustworthy will often get recommended to other households seeking maids, thus giving these women the opportunity to gain access to multiple sources of income. However, jobs in the informal sector have many drawbacks among them is the lack of insurance, social security, health care and pension. Women who work in the informal sector can also be susceptible to abuse, which can often go unchecked due to a lack institutions that are made to protect employees from such incidences.

There is also the issue pertaining to those who wish to shift their line of work from the informal to the formal sector. For example, a woman who works as a house cleaner who wishes to transition as a janitor in an office building will face competition from men. Unlike, domestic housekeeping jobs, which are female dominated, formal janitorial positions with fixed salaries and employee benefits are jobs that men regularly apply to. While competition for jobs is not an inherently negative aspect, statistics have shown that hiring managers in Egypt tend to have preconceived notions when it comes to potential female employees. In a 2010 study published by

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the World Bank, when respondents were asked on the disadvantages of hiring women, around 49 per cent answered with domestic duties and marriage, while 43 per cent answered family responsibilities.

When asked what could be done to break down these obstacles, 40 per cent said that there was no solution, while others were a bit more optimistic as 23 per cent suggested more flexible working hours, and 13 per cent said the services of nurseries would help.

This shows that in Egyptian society, most people think that domestic duties and childcare should be a woman’s utmost priority.

Another sector that many Egyptian women usually flock to is the public sector. There are multiple reasons why most women prefer working for the public sector, rather than the private sector. First and foremost, they prefer the more egalitarian nature they face in public sector employment. For example, a World Bank study indicated that private sector employers tend to display a bias against female employees since they view hiring women will be more costly rather than beneficial. The reason for such bias paradigms again goes back to the idea that a woman’s first duty should and will be her domestic duty, as such they think all female employees will be unwilling to put in the same number of hours as their male counterparts and moreover employers will factor in the time periods in which female employees will be off for maternity leave. Women’s dependence on the public sector is shown in the fact that one in every two women who live in urban areas are

A World Bank study indicated that private sector employers tend to display a bias against female employees as they think hiring women will be more costly than beneficial.

employed by the public sector, while only one in five men in urban areas work in the same sector.

WOMEN STILL LAGGING BEHIND Although, the number of female headed households is on the rise, Egyptian women by large still lag behind men in labour force. According to the Global Economy only around 22 per cent of women participated in the labour force in 2019, this number is dwarfed by the percentage of Egyptian men who participate in the labour force, which in 2019 amounted to about 71 per cent. One of the keys that can narrow down this gap is creating more opportunities for young girls and women in education. The rate of female illiteracy needs to drop, as CAPMAS recently reported that around 31 per cent of Egyptian women are illiterate as opposed to 21 per cent of Egyptian men.

It should be noted that progress has been made in terms of increased female participation in education.

According to one statistic, in 1996 only around 67 per cent of girls were literate, but in 2013 that number increased to 90.3 per cent. Moreover, fewer girls are dropping out of primary school, as recent

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An Egyptian doctor gives medical advice to girls about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) during an awareness campaign in Giza, on the outskirts of the capital Cairo on February 2020 ,18. (Getty)

Progress has been made in terms of increased female participation in education.

According to one statistic, in 1996 only around 67 per cent of girls were literate, but in 2013 that number increased to 90.3 per cent. studies have shown that more girls than boys are enrolled in primary schools and more young women than young men are enrolled in university. While more needs to be done, Egypt seems to be moving in the right direction. However, more work needs to be done to address the biases against women in the workplace and the discrimination they tend to face from employers as well as potential employers.

An elderly Egyptian woman sits after her shift as a labourer works at a charcoal factory in Egypt’s Sharkia governorate, in the fertile Delta north of the capital ,29 Cairo, on January )Getty( .2020

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The Tragedy of Vaccine Nationalism Only Cooperation Can End the Pandemic

by Thomas J. Bollyky, Chad P. Bown Trump administration officials have compared the global allocation of vaccines against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 to oxygen masks dropping inside a depressurizing airplane. “You

put on your own first, and then we want to help others as quickly as possible,� Peter Marks, a senior official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who oversaw the initial phases of vaccine development for the U.S. government, said during a panel discussion in June. The major difference, of course, is that airplane oxy-

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In this photo illustration (fake) vials labelled as COVID19- vaccine and a syringe seen displayed on one hundred US dollar banknotes.

(Getty)

gen masks do not drop only in first class-which is the equivalent of what will happen when vaccines eventually become available if governments delay providing access to them to people in other countries.

By early July, there were 160 candidate vaccines against the new coronavirus in development, with 21 in clinical trials. Although it will be months, at least, before one or more of those candidates has been proved to be safe and effective and is ready to be delivered, countries that manufacture vaccines (and wealthy ones that do not) are already competing to lock in early access.

And to judge from the way governments have acted during the current pandemic and past outbreaks, it seems highly likely that such behaviour will persist. Absent an international, enforceable commitment to distribute vaccines globally in an equitable and rational way, leaders will instead prioritize taking care of their own populations over slowing the spread of COVID-19 elsewhere or helping protect essential health-care workers and highly vulnerable populations in other countries.

That sort of “vaccine nationalism,” or a “my country first” approach to allocation, will have profound and far-reaching consequences. Without global coordination, countries may bid against one another, driving up the price of vaccines and related materials. Supplies of proven vaccines will be limited initially even in some rich countries, but the greatest suffering will be in low- and middle-income countries. Such places will be forced to watch as their wealthier counterparts deplete supplies and will have to wait months (or longer) for their replenishment. In the interim, healthcare workers and billions of elderly and other high-risk inhabitants in poorer countries will go unprotected, which will extend the pandemic, increase its death toll, and imperil already fragile health-care systems and economies. In their quest to obtain vaccines, countries without access to the initial stock will search for any form of leverage they can find, including blocking exports of critical vaccine components, which will lead to the breakdown of supply chains for raw ingredients, syringes, and vials. Desperate governments may also strike short-term deals for vaccines with adverse consequences for their long-term economic, diplomatic, and strategic interests. The result will be not only needless economic and humanitarian hardship but also intense resentment against vaccine-hoarding countries, which will imperil the kind of international cooperation that will be necessary to tackle future outbreaks-not to mention other pressing challenges, such as climate change and nuclear proliferation.

It is not too late for global cooperation to prevail over global dysfunction, but it will require states and their political leaders to change course. What the world needs is an enforceable COVID-19 vaccine trade and investment agreement that would alleviate the fears of leaders in vaccine-producing countries, who worry that sharing their output would make it harder to look after their own populations. Such an agreement could be forged and fostered by existing institutions and systems. And it would not require any novel enforcement mechanisms: the dynamics of vaccine manufacturing and global trade generally create layers of interdependence, which would encourage participants to live up to their commitments. What it would require, however,

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By early July, there were 160 candidate vaccines against the new coronavirus in development, with 21 in clinical trials. is leadership on the part of a majority of vaccine-manufacturing countries-including, ideally, the United States.

WINNERS AND LOSERS The goal of a vaccine is to raise an immune response so that when a vaccinated person is exposed to the virus, the immune system takes control of the pathogen and the person does not get infected or sick. The vaccine candidates against COVID-19 must be proved to be safe and effective first in animal studies, then in small trials in healthy volunteers, and finally in large trials in representative groups of people, including the elderly, the sick, and the young.

Most of the candidates currently in the pipeline will fail. If one or more vaccines are proved to be safe and effective at preventing infection and a large enough share of a population gets vaccinated, the number of susceptible individuals will fall to the point where the coronavirus will not be able to spread. That populationwide protection, or “herd immunity,” would benefit everyone, whether vaccinated or not.

It is not clear yet whether achieving herd immunity will be possible with this coronavirus. A COVID-19 vaccine may prove to be more like the vaccines that protect against influenza: a critical public health tool that reduces the risk of contracting the disease, experiencing its most severe symptoms, and dying from it, but that does not completely prevent the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, given the potential of vaccines to end or contain the most deadly pandemic in a century, world leaders as varied as French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres have referred to them as global public goods-a resource to be made available to all, with the use of a vaccine in one country not interfering with its use in another.

At least initially, however, that will not be the reality. During the period when global supplies of COVID-19 vaccines remain limited, providing them to some people will necessarily delay access for others. That bottleneck will prevent any vaccine from becoming a truly global public good.

Vaccine manufacturing is an expensive, complex process, in which even subtle changes may alter the purity, safety, or efficacy of the final product. That is why regulators license not just the finished vaccine but each stage of production and each facility where it occurs. Making a vaccine involves purifying raw in-

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gredients; formulating and adding stabilizers, preservatives, and adjuvants (substances that increase the immune response); and packaging doses into vials or syringes. A few dozen companies all over the world can carry out that last step, known as “fill and finish.” And far fewer can handle the quality-controlled manufacture of active ingredients-especially for more novel, sophisticated vaccines, whose production has been dominated historically by just four large multinational firms based in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Roughly a dozen other companies now have some ability to manufacture such vaccines at scale, including a few large outfits, such as the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest producer of vaccines. But most are small manufacturers that would be unable to produce billions of doses.

Further complicating the picture is that some of today’s leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates are based on emerging technologies that have never before been licensed. Scaling up production and ensuring timely approvals for these novel vaccines will be challenging, even for rich countries with experienced regulators.

All of this suggests that the manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines will be limited to a handful of countries.

And even after vaccines are ready, a number of factors might delay their availability to nonmanufacturing states. Authorities in producing countries might insist on vaccinating large numbers of people in their own populations before sharing a vaccine with other countries. There might also turn out to be technical limits on the volume of doses and related vaccine materials that companies can produce each day. And poor countries might not have adequate systems to deliver and administer whatever vaccines they do manage to get.

During that inevitable period of delay, there will be many losers, especially poorer countries. But some rich countries will suffer, too, including those that sought to develop and manufacture their own vaccines but bet exclusively on the wrong candidates.

By rejecting cooperation with others, those countries will have

Forecasts project that the coronavirus pandemic could kill 40 million people and reduce global economic output by 12.5$ trillion by the end of 2021.

Ending this pandemic as soon as possible is in everyone’s interest.

gambled their national health on hyped views of their own exceptionalism.

And even “winning” countries will needlessly suffer in the absence of an enforceable scheme to share proven vaccines. If health systems collapse under the strain of the pandemic and foreign consumers are ill or dying, there will be less global demand for export-dependent industries in rich countries, such as aircraft or automobiles. If foreign workers are under lockdown and cannot do their jobs, cross-border supply chains will be disrupted, and even countries with vaccine supplies will be deprived of the imported parts and services they need to keep their economies moving.

PAGING DR HOBBES Forecasts project that the coronavirus pandemic could kill 40 million people and reduce global economic output by $12.5 trillion by the end of 2021. Ending this pandemic as soon as possible is in everyone’s interest. Yet in most capitals, appeals for a global approach have gone unheeded.

In fact, the early months of the pandemic involved a decided shift in the wrong direction. In the face of global shortages, first China; then France, Germany, and the European Union; and finally the United States hoarded supplies of respirators, surgical masks, and gloves for their own hospital workers’ use. Overall, more than 70 countries plus the European Union imposed export controls on local supplies of personal protective equipment, ventilators, or medicines during the first four months of the pandemic. That group includes most of the countries where potential COVID-19 vaccines are being manufactured.

Such hoarding is not new. A vaccine was developed in just seven months for the 2009 pandemic of the influenza A virus H1N1, also known as swine flu, which killed as many as 284,000 people globally. But wealthy countries bought up virtually all the sup-

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Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dr. Robert Redfield (R), Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testify during a US Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the plan to research, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine, known as Operation Warp Speed, July 2020 ,2 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Getty)

plies of the vaccine. After the World Health Organization appealed for donations, Australia, Canada, the United States, and six other countries agreed to share ten percent of their vaccines with poorer countries, but only after determining that their remaining supplies would be sufficient to meet domestic needs.

Nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations have adopted two limited strategies to reduce the risk of such vaccine nationalism in the case of COVID-19. First, CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nongovernmental vaccine partnership known as Gavi, and other donors have developed plans to shorten the queue for vaccines by investing early in the manufacturing and distribution capacity for promising candidates, even before their safety and efficacy have been established. The hope is that doing so will reduce delays in ramping up supplies in poor countries. This approach is sensible but competes with better-resourcednational initiatives to pool scientific expertise and augment manufacturing capacity. What is more, shortening the queue in this manner may exclude middle-income countries such as Pakistan, South Africa, and most Latin American states, which do not meet the criteria for receiving donor assistance. It would also fail to address the fact that the governments of manufacturing countries might seize more vaccine stocks than they need, regardless of the suffering elsewhere.

An alternative approach is to try to eliminate the queue altogether. More than a dozen countries and philanthropies in initial pledges of $8 billion to the Access to COVID-19 Tools (act) Accelerator, an initiative dedicated to the rapid development and equitable deployment of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics for COVID-19. The ACT Accelerator, however, has so far failed to attract major vaccine-manufacturing states, including the United States and India. In the United States, the Trump administration has instead devoted nearly $10 billion to Operation Warp Speed, a program designed to deliver hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines by January 2021-but only to Americans.

Meanwhile, Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India, has stated that “at least initially,” any vaccine the company produces will go to India’s 1.3 billion people. Other vaccine developers have made similar statements, pledging that host governments or advanced purchasers will get the early doses if supplies are limited.

Given the lack of confidence that any cooperative effort would be able to overcome such obstacles, more and more countries have tried to secure their own supplies. France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands formed the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance to jointly negotiate with vaccine developers and producers. That alliance is now part of a larger European Commission effort to negotiate with manufacturers on behalf of EU member states to arrange for advance contracts and to reserve doses of promising candidates.

In May, Xi told attendees at the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, that if Beijing succeeds in developing a vaccine, it will share the results with the world, but he did not say when. In June, Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, expressed scepticism about that claim and told

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The Wall Street Journal that he expects that the Chinese government will use its vaccines “predominantly for the very large populace of China.” This summer, the United States bought up virtually all the supplies of remdesivir, one of the first drugs proven to work against COVID-19, leaving none for the United Kingdom, the EU, or most of the rest of the world for three months.

LEARNING THE HARD WAY Global cooperation on vaccine allocation would be the most efficient way to disrupt the spread of the virus. It would also spur economies, avoid supply chain disruptions, and prevent unnecessary geopolitical conflict. Yet if all other vaccine-manufacturing countries are being nationalists, no one will have an incentive to buck the trend. In this respect, vaccine allocation resembles the classic game theory problem known as “the prisoner’s dilemma”and countries are very much acting like the proverbial prisoner.

“If we have learned anything from the coronavirus and swine flu H1N1 epidemic of 2009,” said Peter Navarro, the globalization skeptic whom President Donald Trump appointed in March to lead the U.S. supply chain response to COVID-19, “it is that we cannot necessarily depend on other countries, even close allies, to supply us with needed items, from face masks to vaccines.”

Navarro has done his best to make sure everyone else learns this lesson, as well: shortly after he made that statement, the White House slapped export restrictions on U.S.-manufactured surgical masks, respirators, and gloves, including to many poor countries.

By failing to develop a plan to coordinate the mass manufacture and distribution of vaccines, many governments-including the U.S. government-are writing off the potential for global cooperation. Such cooperation remains possible, but it would require a large number of countries to make an enforceable commitment to sharing in order to overcome leaders’ fears of domestic opposition.

The time horizon for most political leaders is short, especially for those facing an imminent election. Many remain unconvinced that voters would understand that the long-term health and economic consequences of the coronavirus spreading unabated abroad are greater than the immediate threat posed by their or their loved ones’ having to wait to be vaccinated at home. And to politicians, the potential for opposition at home may seem like a bigger risk than outrage abroad over their hoarding supplies, especially if it is for a limited time and other countries are seen as likely to do the same.

Fortunately, there are ways to weaken this disincentive to cooperate. First, politicians might be more willing to forgo immunizing their entire populations in order to share vaccines with other countries if there were reliable research indicating the number and allocation of doses needed to achieve critical public health objectives at home-such as protecting health-care workers, military personnel, and nursing home staffs; reducing the spread to the elderly and other vulnerable populations; and breaking transmission chains. Having that information would allow elected leaders to pledge to share vaccine supplies with other countries only if they have enough at home to reach those goals. This type

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of research has long been part of national planning for immunization campaigns. It has revealed, for example, that because influenza vaccines induce a relatively weak immune response in the elderly, older people are much better protected if the vaccination of children, who are the chief spreaders, is prioritized. Such research does not yet exist for COVID-19 but should be part of the expedited clinical trials that companies are currently conducting for vaccine candidates.

A framework agreement on vaccine sharing would also be more likely to succeed if it were undertaken through an established international forum and linked to preventing the export bans and seizures that have disrupted COVID-19-related medical supply chains. Baby steps toward such an agreement have already been taken by a working group of G-20 trade ministers, but that effort needs to be expanded to include public health officials. The result should be a covid-19 vaccine trade and investment agreement, which should include an investment fund to purchase vaccines in advance and allocate them, once they have been proved to be safe and effective, on the basis of public health need rather than the size of any individual country’s purse. Governments would pay into the investment fund on a subscription basis, with escalating, nonrefundable payments tied to the number of vaccine doses they secured and other milestones of progress. Participation of the poorest countries should be heavily subsidized or free. Such an agreement could leverage the international organizations that already exist for the purchase and distribution of vaccines and medications for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The agreement should include an enforceable commitment on the part of participating countries to not place export restrictions on supplies of vaccines and related materials destined for other participating countries.

The agreement could stipulate that if a minimum number of vaccine--producing countries did not participate, it would not enter into force, reducing the risk to early signatories. Some manufacturers would be hesitant to submit to a global alloca-

The key thing to understand is that allocating COVID19- vaccines will not be a one-off experience: multiple safe and effective vaccines may eventually emerge, each with different strengths and benefits.

tion plan unless the participating governments committed to indemnification, allowed the use of product liability insurance, or agreed to a capped injury-compensation program to mitigate the manufacturers’ risk. Linking the agreement to existing networks of regulators, such as the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities, might help ease such concerns and would also help create a more transparent pathway to the licensing of vaccines, instill global confidence, reduce development costs, and expedite access in less remunerative markets.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW CAN HURT (AND HELP) YOU Even if policymakers can be convinced about the benefits of sharing, cooperation will remain a nonstarter if there is nothing to prevent countries from reneging on an agreement and seizing local supplies of a vaccine once it has been proved to be safe and effective. Cooperation will ensue only when countries are convinced that it can be enforced.

The key thing to understand is that allocating COVID-19 vaccines will not be a one-off experience: multiple safe and effective vaccines may eventually emerge, each with different strengths and benefits. If one country were to deny others access to an early vaccine, those other countries could be expected to reciprocate by withholding potentially more effective vaccines they might develop later. And game theory makes clear that, even for the most selfish players, incentives for cooperation improve when the game is repeated and players can credibly threaten quick and effective punishment for cheating.

Which vaccine turns out to be most effective may vary by the target patient population and setting. Some may be more suitable for children or for places with limited refrigeration. Yet because the various vaccine candidates still in development require different ingredients and different types of manufacturing facilities, no one country, not even the United States, will be able to build all the facilities that may later prove useful.

Today’s vaccine supply chains are also unavoidably global. The country lucky enough to manufacture the first proven vaccine is unlikely to have all the inputs necessary to scale up and sustain production. For example, a number of vaccine candidates use the same adjuvant, a substance produced from a natural compound extracted from the Chilean soapbark tree. This compound comes mostly from Chile and is processed in Sweden. Although Chile and Sweden do not manufacture vaccines, they would be able to rely on their control of the limited supply of this input to ensure access to the eventual output. Vaccine supply chains abound with such situations. Because the science has not settled on which vaccine will work best, it is impossible to fully anticipate and thus prepare for all the needed inputs.

The Trump administration, as well as some in Congress, has

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Britain’s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (2L), wearing PPE (personal protective equipment), of a face mask or covering, eye protection and an overall as a precautionary measure against spreading COVID19-, meets scientists including Christina Dold (R) during a visit to the manufacturing laboratory where a vaccine against the novel coronavirus COVID19has been produced at the Oxford Vaccine Group’s facility at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, west of London on June ,24 2020, during a visit to learn more about their work to establish a viable vaccine against coronavirus. (Getty)

After Trump imposed the duties, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, along with China, Russia, and Turkey, all immediately retaliated. The EU went through a similar learning experience in March. The European Commission originally imposed a broad set of export restrictions on personal protective equipment. It was forced to quickly scale them back after realizing that cutting off non-EU members, such as Norway and Switzerland, could imperil the flow of parts that companies based in the EU needed to supply the eu’s own member states with medical supplies.

American and European policymakers now understand-or at least should understand-that what they don’t know about cross-border flows can hurt them. Paradoxically, this lack of information may help convince skeptical policymakers to maintain the interdependence needed to fight the pandemic. Not knowing what they don’t know reduces the risk that governments will renege on a deal tomorrow that is in their own best interest to sign on to today.

THE POWER OF FOMO

blamed the United States’ failure to produce vast supplies of everything it needs to respond to COVID-19 on “dependency.” But when it comes to creating an enforceable international vaccine agreement, complex cross-border supply chains are a feature, not a bug. Even countries without vaccine-manufacturing capacity can credibly threaten to hold up input supplies to the United States or other vaccine-manufacturing countries if they engage in vaccine nationalism.

The Trump administration was reminded of this dynamic in April, when the president invoked the Defence Production Act and threatened to ban exports to Canada and Mexico of respirators made by 3M. Had Trump followed through, Canada could have retaliated by halting exports of hospital-grade pulp that U.S. companies needed to produce surgical masks and gowns. Or Canada could have stopped Canadian nurses and hospital workers from crossing the border into Michigan, where they were desperately needed to treat American patients. Mexico, for its part, could have cut off the supply of motors and other components that U.S. companies needed to make ventilators. The White House seemed unaware of these potential vulnerabilities. Once it got up to speed, the administration backed off.

Of course, the Trump administration should have already learned that trading partners-even historical allies-are willing and able to swiftly and effectively retaliate against one another if someone breaks an agreement. In early 2018, this was apparently an unknown-at least to Navarro. Explaining why Trump was planning to put tariffs on steel and aluminium, Navarro reassured Americans: “I don’t believe there is any country in the world that is going to retaliate,” he declared.

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When the oxygen masks drop in a depressurizing plane, they drop at the same time in every part of the plane because time is of the essence and because that is the best way to ensure the safety of all onboard. The same is true of the global, equitable allocation of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19.

Vaccine nationalism is not just morally and ethically reprehensible: it is contrary to every country’s economic, strategic, and health interests. If rich, powerful countries choose that path, there will be no winners-ultimately, every country will be a loser. The world is not doomed to learn this the hard way, however. All the necessary tools exist to forge an agreement that would encourage cooperation and limit the appeal of shortsighted “my country first” approaches.

But time is running out: the closer the world gets to the day when the first proven vaccines emerge, the less time there is to set up an equitable, enforceable system for allocating them. As a first step, a coalition of political leaders from countries representing at least 50 percent of global vaccinemanufacturing capacity must get together and instruct their public health officials and trade ministers to get out of their silos and work together. Combining forces, they should hammer out a short-term agreement that articulates the conditions for sharing, including with the legions of poorer, nonmanufacturing countries, and makes clear what would happen to participants who subsequently reneged and undertook vaccine nationalism. Such a step would get the ball rolling and convince even more of the manufacturing countries to sign on. The fear of missing out on vaccine access, in the event their countries’ own vaccine candidates fail, may be what it takes to pressure even today’s most reluctant leaders to cooperate.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Post-Pandemic Japan Will Attract the World A New Destination for Workers and Students Who Once Went West

by Gracia Liu-Farrer When the COVID-19 pandemic is over, people will again be on the move, crisscrossing the planet in search of career opportunities, education, and better lifestyles. But the destinations and directions of those movements may be forever changed.

Life in some countries, including the United States, will appear less desirable than it did before the pandemic. And the

very nature of the recent crisis may drive would-be migrants to prize safety, stability, and the ability to maintain family connections.

The United States, whose response to the virus exposed chaos and division, stands to lose migrants. But other countries will gain them, and with them, the attendant benefits of diversity, dynamism, and new talent. Few stand to profit more than Japan, a relatively secure and stable country with low

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unemployment-even a need for more laborers-and excellent universities that can lure students who may now be reluctant to risk expensive study in the West.

Japan has long been considered a fairly homogeneous country. After the pandemic, it is likely to grow more diverse and globally connected. This transformation, which will remake Japanese society and challenge the traditional understanding of its national identity, is necessary if Japan wants to remain a significant power in the global arena.

A NEW LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

A Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo arrives at ShinYokohama railway station in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture on July 2020 ,22.

(Getty)

Unlike many other wealthy industrialized countries, Japan has a fairly small immigrant population. Just over two per cent of its 126 million residents are noncitizens, and since 1980, only around 440,000 immigrants have become naturalized citizens.

By contrast, 13 per cent of residents in the United States are either naturalized citizens or noncitizens. The coronavirus crisis has led Japan to further restrict immigration, including by blocking long-term foreign residents from re-entering the country. Such actions suggest a country fundamentally hostile to immigration.

But Japan is poised to shed this reputation. The Japanese government has in recent years created new categories of visas and relaxed the criteria of existing ones in order to recruit and retain more foreign workers and international students. In the five years before the pandemic, the number of foreign residents in Japan increased by 31 per cent. The country has attributes likely to attract even more migrants after the pandemic.

These include good job prospects, relatively affordable higher education, and a safe and orderly social environment. Japan has long boasted these comparative advantages, but the havoc of the global health crisis has made them all the more salient.

Japan›s labour market remains strong, despite the worldwide economic recession and rising unemployment. The country›s unemployment rate at the end of May was 2.9 per cent, a slight rise over previous months but nowhere close to the rates in many other industrialized economies, such as France (8.1 per cent) and the United States (13.3 per cent). The job vacancy ratio as of May was 1.2-meaning that there were 1.2 jobs available for every applicant. That number is lower than last year›s (1.6) and is forecast to drop further as the pandemic persists, but it nevertheless indicates the presence of unfilled jobs in Japan.

These strong employment numbers in fact point to a fundamental problem: a demographic crisis has created severe labour shortages in Japan. Its population first began to decline in 2005 and has steadily shrunk since 2011. The workforce is shrinking even faster than the overall population. In 2019, more than 28 per cent of the population was older than 65, and only around 60 per cent of Japanese residents were between the ages of 15 and 64. Japan›s labour shortages are the highest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, and officials foresee a shortage of 6.4 million workers by 2030. The pandemic might trigger an economic

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Life in some countries, including the United States, will appear less desirable than it did before the pandemic. recession for several years to come, but this will not alleviate the long-term labour shortage. Japan will need both highskilled and low-skilled migrants to fill its workforce, drawing from nearby China as well as Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam.

Japan›s private sector has further contributed to the country›s strikingly low unemployment rate. Since the Great Recession in 2008, Japanese companies have saved a large proportion of their profits as a buffer against hard times, instead of rewarding investors and increasing employees› salaries. By the end of March, Japanese companies reported total cash reserves of 283 trillion yen (about $2.65 trillion). When the pandemic hit, companies were able to dip into their reserves to retain their workers. Of course, those reserves are not inexhaustible: if the crisis lasts for a long while and the economy shrinks, Japanese companies will eventually empty their coffers. But their instinctive conservatism has helped guide the country through unsettled times.

A DESTINATION FOR EDUCATION In addition to drawing more job-seeking migrants than in the past, Japan is becoming increasingly popular as a destination for international students, especially those from China and other Asian countries. Japan has attracted students from abroad since the 1980s, but the global dominance of the English language tilted the scales in favor of universities in Europe and North America. Most Chinese students, for instance, prefer to study in the United Kingdom or the United States rather than study in Japan. But the coronavirus could well disrupt that trend.

More international students in U.S. universities come from China than from anywhere else-but their numbers will probably plummet soon. Experts already predicted a drop-off as a result of the Trump administration›s immigration policies and its trade war with Beijing. Now, the COVID-19 crisis may further inhibit Chinese students from heading west. Parents and students have become reluctant to pay high tuition costs when so many colleges and universities have moved classes online. The recent spate of anti-Asian attacks in the United States and other Western countries has also alarmed them.

American and British struggles to control the pandemic, and growing social unrest in the United States, have further shaken confidence. And in the wake of the global crisis, many families may make geographic distance a more important factor as they decide whether-and where-to send their college-age children overseas.

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Japan offers a compelling alternative for Chinese and other Asian students who seek to study abroad. Several Japanese universities are among the world›s best. Tuition in Japan costs a fraction of what it does in the United States and Great Britain. And many Japanese universities now offer instruction in English.

Strong job prospects make a Japanese education all the more worthwhile. Japan offers a highly organized and institutionalized job search process for university graduates and is committed to increasing the numbers of foreign graduates in its labor force. In the five years from 2015 to 2019, the number of international students in Japan grew by 40 percent from less than 250,000 to almost 350,000. Of the international students graduating from Japanese educational institutions between April 2018 and March 2019, 35 percent found jobs in Japan, and another 30 percent continued their education there.

Since the pandemic began, some Japanese universities have received record numbers of applications from China. The growth in interest builds on a trend already in progress: many Chinese students have come to Japan in recent years to pursue graduate education after studying in Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States. When asked about their reasons for coming to Japan, most applicants referred to job opportunities, the relative safety of the country, and closeness to home.

NECESSARY INTERNAL REFORMS Since the pandemic, Japanese businesses have taken steps that are likely to better accommodate immigrant workers. Such reforms were needed, because the structure of Japanese firms had long frustrated the career ambitions of women and foreign

Unlike many other wealthy industrialized countries, Japan has a fairly small immigrant population.

Just over two per cent of its 126 million residents are noncitizens, and since 1980, only around 440,000 immigrants have become naturalized citizens.

employees. Firms hire employees as members to be rotated through different positions and different locations according to the needs of the company. Career progression is typically slow. This membership style of employment deemphasizes clear job descriptions, stresses teamwork, and demands commitment and sacrifice (often demonstrated through long work hours). This system has produced the stereotypical figure of the heavy-drinking, overworked ÂŤsalarymanÂť-typically male and Japanese-but has made it difficult for others to succeed within its strictures. The long work hours and system of rotation make child rearing-a duty that often falls on womendifficult. Foreign workers chafe against the slow process of promotion and the unfamiliar lack of autonomy on the job.

COVID-19 has spurred changes in the system, because such a work style-lacking clearly defined job responsibilities and requiring constant supervision and coordination-is difficult to sustain when offices have gone remote. Japanese employers have therefore been forced to reconsider their hiring and managing practices. In the remote workspace, firms see the merit of hiring individuals to perform specific, well-defined jobs.

Some firms now plan to make these changes permanent. With these broader reforms, corporate Japan will be able to attract and retain more foreign workers with specialized skills.

Obstacles still stand in the way of Japan becoming more globalized and diverse. The pandemic has prompted tighter entry

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Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games mascots merchandise inside an Olympic Games and Paralympic Games gift shop in Shinjuku, Tokyo. (Getty)

Obstacles still stand in the way of Japan becoming more globalized and diverse. But Japan›s advantages as a destination for migrants and students are plainly evident as the pandemic smashes economies and renders Western universities less accessible and less attractive than they used to be. restrictions at the border, unemployment will tick upward as long as COVID-19 persists, and Japanese companies must reform if they and the broader society are to become more open to the world. But Japan›s advantages as a destination for migrants and students are plainly evident as the pandemic smashes economies and renders Western universities less accessible and less attractive than they used to be. Japan›s companies have long been integrated into the global economy. Soon, Japanese society will be, too.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

Sadek Sarker (C) enjoys lunch with fellow Bangladeshi Muslims, many of whom are studying Japanese and doing casual work, as they gather in an apartment to celebrate Eid on 2020 ,24 May in Kawaguchi, Japan. - Getty

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The Age of Strategic Instability

How Novel Technologies Disrupt the Nuclear Balance

by Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall For decades, American policymakers and military planners have focused on preserving what is known in the nuclear lexicon as “strategic stability.” During the Cold War, especially as mutual assured destruction became accepted logic between the United States and the Soviet Union, the pursuit of strategic stability provided a framework for managing the existential risks associated

with massive nuclear arsenals. Under conditions of strategic stability, each superpower recognized that its adversary could massively retaliate against a nuclear first strike—which created a disincentive to resorting to nuclear weapons. Preserving confidence that each side had a “second-strike capability” thus became essential. And even with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, strategic stability has continued to structure thinking among policymakers and planners about how to create predictability in the

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nuclear relationship and reduce incentives to escalation.

Yet as the quest for strategic stability has continued to guide defence planning and arms control, it has become increasingly untethered from technological and geopolitical realities. Since 2011, tensions have been mounting in the U.S.-Russian relationship, giving rise to the very real possibility that some combination of deliberate actions, misunderstandings, miscalculations, and accidents could lead to nuclear escalation and catastrophe.

After several decades of rules, agreements, norms, and human relationships fostering prudent behaviour and shrinking nuclear arsenals—from the Cold War peak of more than 70,000 warheads, each side now retains between 6,000 and 6,500—arms control is being undermined and abandoned. Last August, U.S. officials withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in reaction to evidence of Russia’s noncompliance. In May, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty (which has allowed unarmed observation flights, in order to enhance transparency). The sole remaining U.S.-Russian agreement is New START, which limits the aggregate number of strategic offensive arms in each arsenal—and if that is not renewed in early 2021, it too will collapse. Meanwhile, new technologies are presenting their own challenges to long-standing thinking about escalation.

Accordingly, the traditional focus on strategic stability may no longer be sufficient to manage today’s risks. Even with the resurrection of arms control agreements now being abrogated or dismantled, there is reason to doubt that strategic stability, at least as understood in the old paradigm, could be re-established or preserved.

UPENDING THE PRECARIOUS BALANCE Russian President Boris Yeltsin (R) hands his pen to US President George Bush (L) after signing a historical strategic arms reduction treaty on January ”2-“START in the Kremlin 1993 ,03 in Moscow, which will guaranty the reduction of the nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia by )two-thirds. (Getty

To fathom the unprecedented nature of the challenges ahead, it is important to understand the logic that governed classic strategic stability—a logic driven by the imperative of discouraging escalation between two nuclear-armed superpowers. In this construct, both the United States and Russia (or, until 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union) believed that the other side lacked the capacity to threaten the “survivability” of its nuclear forces: each knew that after a nuclear attack, it would still have sufficient nuclear warheads and delivery systems (and the command-and-control network necessary to launch them) to retaliate.

As a result, each side retained confidence that its second-strike capability would be preserved. This mutual recognition created a disincentive to strike first, since both Moscow and Washington knew that any nuclear attack would be met with a nuclear response—thereby maintaining a perilous but thus far real equilibrium.

That long-standing logic has been upended by new technologies and the spread of competition to new domains. For nuclear strategists of an earlier era, whatever the exigencies of calculating throw-weight, first- and second-strike capabilities, and missile ranges, the basic considerations were relatively simple: there was a fairly linear escalation ladder from conventional to nuclear weapons, with just two players involved. Policymakers and de-

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Beyond nuclear, cyberspace is the realm that has garnered the most widespread public attention thus far.

Cyberspace is both a war fighting domain and a capability that can be deployed in other domains. fence planners today have to contend with a system of complex interactions that are far less predictable and therefore harder to manage or control. Preserving stability and avoiding escalation become exponentially more difficult in this environment.

There is now a broader array of capabilities that can be considered “strategic”—meaning that their use can have consequences significant enough to potentially impair or disable the target’s ability to respond effectively and thereby to deter aggression.

Once, this was the unique purview of nuclear weapons. Now, advances both in nuclear weapons and their means of delivery and in other technologies and capabilities create new uncertainties that undermine deterrence and potentially create incentives for escalatory behaviour.

On the classic nuclear front, Russia is working to achieve prompt, penetrating, and precise strikes on distant targets. This effort involves work on heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles, multiple hypersonic delivery systems, and novel weapons delivery capabilities, such as a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed underwater drone. The Chinese nuclear arsenal is considerably smaller but also expanding and will benefit from China’s investments in advanced technologies with military applications.

Beyond nuclear, cyberspace is the realm that has garnered the most widespread public attention thus far. Cyberspace is both a war fighting domain and a capability that can be deployed in other domains. With respect to strategic stability, cyber gives adversaries the ability to disable a country’s way of life by stealthily attacking its “soft underbelly” rather than by using classic, observable military capabilities. U.S. policymakers and strategists have begun discussing whether the United States should threaten a nuclear response to a debilitating wide-scale attack on energy infrastructure, with the goal of deterring any such attack. Adding this to the list of casus belli for nuclear response could serve as a deterrent, but it would also open up a new escalatory pathway without clear firebreaks.

Space has also become a contested domain, with similarly worrying implications for strategic stability. Space capabilities are integral to enabling or disabling critical capabilities in other domains; satellites, for example, are essential to both military and civilian communications, and adversaries have targeted them in order to challenge U.S. dominance. American defense planners

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are wrestling with the implications for deterrence and stability: what if, for example, U.S. satellites that provide early warning of missile launches were damaged or disabled?

Biotechnology is another area with potentially strategic implications. Innovation has spawned new capabilities that have enormous positive potential, especially in advancing health science and generating new therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of a wide range of diseases. However, these developments also have a darker side and could be weaponized with potentially strategic effects. At the end of 2016, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology offered a warning: “While the ongoing growth of biotechnology is a great boon for society, it also holds serious potential for destructive use by both states and technically-competent individuals with access to modern laboratory facilities.” For example, if a deadly virus was discovered to have been engineered and conveyed to a specific country, would that be interpreted as a strategic attack that would warrant a strategic response? There is no established logic to a reality in which new technologies can have the kind of existential impact that was once unique to nuclear weapons.

THE INSTABILITY OF COMPLEXITY The development and interplay of these new capabilities present significant challenges to policymakers and defense planners whose training and experience have been based in linear nuclear strategizing. At the moment, some of the most forward-looking thinking is taking place in U.S. military organizations charged with ensuring the nuclear deterrent and facing the practical, operational challenges presented by emerging adversarial capabilities. General John Hyten, then commander of U.S. Strategic Command and current vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed in 2017, “It’s now a multipolar problem with many nations that have nuclear weapons, . . . and it’s also multidomain. . . . We have adversaries that are looking at integrating nuclear, conventional, space and cyber, all as part of a strategic deterrent.

Arms control among the major nuclear powers should remain a goal, but policymakers will also have to enlarge the problem set in order to effectively address the interplay of existing and new capabilities.

. . . We can’t [assume] that having 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons under the New Start Treaty somehow deters all our adversaries. It doesn’t.”

A useful framework for taking stock of this new reality comes from work on understanding the behavior of complex adaptive systems (CAS). A complex adaptive system is a system that is inherently anarchic, lacking in central control or coherent governance. Yet its elements interact and impact one another and the entire system. Originally developed to model systems that defied computer-based simulation, CAS evolved to anticipate heterogeneous and often multidimensional system dynamics in a broad range of contexts.

Some key characteristics of complex adaptive systems are especially relevant to a warfighting environment. They involve interactions between or among asymmetric capabilities, and what happens at the level of the entire system cannot necessarily be predicted by the nature of the components of that system. This means that understanding the dynamics of nuclear escalation will not necessarily allow a decision-maker to understand what happens when nuclear, cyber, and biological threats interact. In addition, the response of a system to a specific input may be disproportionate to that input, which makes outcomes unpredictable.

In a conflict, what one side perceives to be a limited, measured

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A man looks in Moscow at ,2013 ,14 on May a computer screen displaying a photo published by Russian state English language television RT website, which shows a man, identified as Ryan C. Fogle, the third secretary of the political section of Washington’s embassy in Moscow (L), being escorted by a Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, ex-KGB) agent (R) )during his arrest. (Getty

action might have an outsize effect, leading to misinterpretation and escalation.

Altogether, it has become far more difficult to predict behaviours, interactions, and outcomes. With more and new players, domains, and capabilities, and no rules of the road governing usage, classical notions of strategic stability offer scant guidance. Deterrence now has to work across a much broader and more complex landscape. And less predictability can lead to pre-emptive behaviour, with catastrophic consequences, and more hedging, which can accelerate arms races, as nations seek confidence that their own interests are protected when adversaries field new weapons.

BEYOND ARMS CONTROL Accordingly, simply returning to traditional arms control will be far from adequate to address the dangers of today’s and tomorrow’s realities. Arms control among the major nuclear powers should remain a goal, but policymakers will also have to enlarge the problem set in order to effectively address the interplay of existing and new capabilities.

The United States can play a major leadership role in both reducing tensions and building new norms. U.S. strategists and planners need to undertake a broad and integrated effort to develop a framework for synchronizing deterrence across multiple plat-

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forms—and for developing a related framework that addresses the implications for strategic stability. This will require working through a wide range of scenarios and exploring multiple escalation pathways, and doing so in coordination with allies in order to build confidence and predictability and avert preemptive escalatory behavior in a far more dynamic environment.

Washington should also try to start a new high-level dialogue with Moscow about strategic stability, despite the current state of the U.S.-Russian relationship. During other tense moments in the past, nuclear talks have helped reestablish predictability, created a check on arms racing, and ultimately enabled each to be confident that it had adequate capabilities to hold the other at risk, which discouraged escalatory behavior and preemptive first strikes. At times, such conversations have even succeeded in persuading both sides to reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons.

If government-to-government relations are too fraught to begin these discussions, Track II dialogues could be used to generate initial options.

China poses a very different challenge. While the United States and Russia retain the world’s largest nuclear stockpiles and have decades of experience in managing their strategic competition, China has an estimated arsenal in the low couple of hundreds.

Given the substantial asymmetry in the nuclear domain, the focus with China must be on the growing competition for the technology edge in many of the new strategic domains identified here, including cyber, space, and bio, and in the enabling technologies of future warfare such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. In order to avoid future arms racing that mimics the madness of the height of the Cold War, the United States and China should begin a serious exchange about establishing guardrails and potential constraints on the most destabilizing capabilities.

The United States and other countries with substantial strategic arsenals bear a unique responsibility for managing these new geostrategic and technological realities. Over time, dialogues among leading powers about the range of new capabilities could produce a comprehensive and integrated view of the battle space that enables thorough consideration of interactions that are possible across multiple domains. If sustained by determined leadership and informed by science, these processes could eventually lead to the creation of a more stable overall balance.

As anyone who has taken part in U.S. strategic exercises knows, the timeline for making decisions about launching nuclear weapons in an actual crisis would likely be very short, with inadequate information and immense pressure to act. Given the proliferation of new warfighting tools with strategic effects, American leaders now have to consider even more complex conditions—and yet still find ways to manage uncertainty, reduce the risks of miscalculation, and strengthen incentives for rational behavior and restraint. Only by doing so, and working to develop common understandings with allies and adversaries alike, can they reestablish confidence that they can avert escalation that may otherwise engulf the world.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Maryam Rajavi: Iran’s Face of Hope Maryam Rajavi, leader of The National Council of Resistance of Iran, recently held an influential virtual conference attended by the Iranian diaspora in more than 104 countries. This marked the first time that Iranians from all over the world have expressed their desire to change the country’s ruling system in such a momentous way that cannot be ignored. Through this, Rajavi has united with the dissenting voices in Iran that want to uproot the dictatorial regime by echoing their sentiments globally.

by: Elie Fawaz

The Iranian regime should be worried.

The strong and diverse western participation that attended the opening of the conference, which were represented by 1000 political and parliamentary leaders as well as religious and cultural figures from all over the world, demonstrates that the West is beginning to listen to Rajavi and the people she represents. It is difficult for the West to ignore the sizable opposition that took part in the conference and the facts that Rajavi presented surrounding the domestic crimes of the regime, crimes such as suppressing and killing protesters or deliberately ignoring the dangers of Covid19, resulting in the death of more than 70,000 citizens. A president like Obama, for example, will no longer be able to convince the world that this “rational regime” can be engaged with or to pour billions of dollars into it, only for the world to discover later that the money is being used to kill Iranians, Syrians, Yemenis and Lebanese under the guise of a revolution and deceptive slogans.

“The expectation that religious fascism might give up its terrorist activities one day if it receives concessions or incentives and that perhaps there will be a sudden emergence of moderates from this brutal ruling cantonment that may push the regime toward reform and moderation is simply wrong.”

Indeed, the West’s ignorance and negligence of the uprisings of Iranians is more of a crime rather than a simple mistake. It has become shameful for the global community to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed against Iranian youth. How can people ignore the regime’s attempt to impose the death penalty on three young men for taking part in the 2019 protests?

Everyone knows that the regime has become limp and weak and seems to be losing its strong hold over the country.

Soleimani was killed, Israel succeeded in invading Iranian sovereignty by destroying the nuclear facility and bombing other sites without any response from Iran, not to mention the country’s critical economic issues. American pressure on Iran as well as corruption and Iran’s desire to export its revolution and support Assad, the Houthi and its other militias are undoubtedly beginning to weaken the Iranian regime.

Rajavi says in her opening speech of the conference, “Our people should have the right to health, to shelter, job opportunities, to organize and form unions, to have autonomy for ethnic minorities, the right to equal participation in the management of community affairs, gender equality and civil sovereignty, and a country with no death penalty.”

Of course, it is a difficult task, but it seems that the western world, especially the Europeans, have begun to acknowledge the need to change this regime. An indication of this shift was when Belgium started to prosecute the Iranian diplomat and three others who had planned to commit a bomb attack at a gathering in Villepinte organised by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in June 2018. This is a positive development for the Iranian opposition. Europe no longer cares much about the terrorist threat that the Iranian regime poses. Any criminal act by the Iranian regime will only serve to increase its isolation as it seeks to avoid the return of UN sanctions.

Rajavi hopes to see Khamenei, Rouhani, Zarif, and Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alwi prosecuted. Rajavi says that this is crucial to stop the terrorist activities of the Mullahs, and she has urged all governments and international communities to stand with the people of Iran in the face of the greatest threat to global peace and security.

The Iranian regime is in deep trouble: financial collapse, security and military collapse, as well as social and economic collapse. Rajavi’s belief that there is an opportunity to overthrow the regime is realistic, but Rajavi and her council must intensify their efforts and continue to expose the crimes of the Iranian regime. It is true that freedom comes at a cost, but Rajavi should feel proud that there are young Iranian women and men ready to fight for that freedom. This in itself is the first step in overturning the regime and thrusting the first nail in its coffin.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1811- July- 31/07/2020

:Nasser Al Qasabi The Master of Social Satire www.majalla.com

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Regis Philbin Became TV’s Greatest Host By Be

ing Himself Veteran TV Personality Regis Philbin Passes Away

by Robert Lloyd What is a host? A person to welcome you in, to make you comfortable, to show you around and tell you what you need to know. To introduce you to other people you might find interesting. To take any space and make it a home.

Regis Philbin, who died Friday, a month before his 89th birthday, was a host. Maybe the greatest of all hosts, if only for the number and variety of shows he hosted: talk shows, game shows, parades, pageants. As has been widely noted, he holds the Guinness World Record for most hours spent on television, a record that will likely stand until the end of television itself.

But he was great too for his capacity to enjoy people — contrasting his ongoing struggle with things, gadgets and gizmos — at least as they came before him on a television stage. (As to “people,” in the collective, he might wonder, “What the hell is wrong with them?”) He could work

As has been widely noted, he holds the Guinness World Record for most hours spent on television, a record that will likely stand until the end of television itself.

himself into a lather in an instant and an instant later be laughing at himself and everything. As his life in media transitioned from daily presence to delightful surprise, he was finally just Regis, a magnet for love.

Philbin in his early days was energetic, enthusiastic and personable. (Although he was a New Yorker to the core, he was for many years a West Coast broadcaster, including his first national notice as the sidekick on Joey Bishop’s late 1960s talk show, and also as the co-host for many years of “A.M. Los Angeles.”) But once he claimed a space and made it his, as he did with “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee,” it was clear he could stick around until he decided to go. He could let his character fill the space, let his freak flag fly, as it were, within the bounds of old-school professionalism. His job was to be himself, which America agreed was a good thing, and that gave him room to grow even more cantankerous with age.

There is a somnolent gentleness to the big network morning shows, as if they want to ease you out of slumber into the day, before your eyes are fully open. Philbin was something else again — energetic, extroverted, irritable, relishing tales of mishap. (He began the nationally syndicated version of “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee” recounting the morning’s disasters — oversleeping, locking his keys in the car.) His success at that hour seems almost counterintuitive.

Although the symbolic paradigm of the “Live!”-style, co-hosted breakfast show is a married couple who know one another inside and out, that Philbin was married to someone else was made clear daily; that he had a wife named Joy and that much else about their relationship

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His last television appearance was a cameo this year on ABC’s “Single Parents,” a situation comedy co-created by his daughter, J.J. Philbin. have made a good Nathan Detroit, if anyone had asked.

(He could have carried the tunes too.)

So extensive are his credits that merely to read them is exhausting. That his career flowered from a bed of early failures suggests that the problem was less Philbin’s than television’s, and the arrival of the right vehicle. He was in his mid-50s — not that you could tell — when in 1985 he first paired with Kathie Lee Gifford, then Johnson, on the New York-based “The Morning Show,” which became the juggernaut known as “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee” in 1988. Gifford left in 2000, eventually to be replaced by Kelly Ripa, who now cohosts with Ryan Seacrest, to continuing success.

That he had a long history in local television gave his national shows something of their hometown homeliness: Regis’ Big Apple was yours for the taking.

“You were a man about town,” Larry King said to him in a 2017 interview on “Larry King Now.” “You went to the theater … ”

Regis Philbin arrives at the World Premiere of «The Manchurian Candidate» at Clearview Cinema›s Beekman Theatre in New York on July 2004 ,19. (SV/Abaca Press/TNS)

seems almost common knowledge. But to a viewer, Philbin came across not so much as a husband or father but as a slightly eccentric uncle, charming, fun, comically irascible, bringing jokes, stories and maybe an interesting gift or acquaintance when he comes to visit. Overflowing with vitality, he was the person you’d look at and say, “I hope I’m that lively when I’m his age,” when in truth you aren’t now, won’t be and never were.

Philbin’s roots were Irish and Italian and Catholic, but growing up in the Bronx and his long association with comedians gave him a touch of the Borscht Belt. (He was never a comic himself, just funny, though there were notes of his pal Don Rickles in his spikier moments.)

The resonant announcer’s voice, that mix of precise diction with an accent formed in the prewar streets of New York, mirrored the happy duality of his formal-casual, raw-cooked, big-little, celebrity-friend nature. He was not quite something out of “Guys and Dolls,” but he would

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“I had to do all that,” Philbin replied, “because I wanted to tell everybody what I saw last night, as it came out.”

It’s not too much to say that Philbin’s years on “Live!” comprise a kind of incidental diary of New York City life, or a certain segment of it in the late 20th and early 21st century. Where many TV hosts have been famously private about their off-camera lives, Philbin was always forthcoming. Perhaps this has something to do with his greatest success being as a daytime host, working alongside women. (“The Talk” and “The View,” both of which had him as a guest, are temperamental kin.) Philbin was a sharer — even an oversharer when it came to various medical procedures he’d had to undergo. He felt knowable.

Indeed, the sheer number of TV series and films in which he appears as himself — including, but not limited to, “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Mad About You,” “All My Children,” “Seinfeld,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,”

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“The Simpsons,” “Caroline in the City,” “Spin City,” “How I Met Your Mother,” “Damages,” “Ugly Betty,” “30 Rock” and “Fresh Off the Boat” on the smaller screen and “Night and the City,” “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “The Breakup Artist” on the bigger — attests to his cultural eminence. There were also, from early on, more or less straight acting parts in “Get Smart,” “That Girl,” “Love, American Style,” “Fantasy Island,” “Hot in Cleveland” and the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope,” where he acquits himself well enough to suggest that he might have had a career reading other people’s words instead of speaking off the top of his head.

And, of course, there was “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” which he hosted in its original and some subsequent iterations, the first season of “America’s Got Talent,” “Million Dollar Password” and so forth and so on.

Philbin left “Live!” in 2011, but it was not nearly the end of his presence on television. There were other, briefer hosting gigs, and guest-hosting gigs and guest appearances; he had a rambunctious chemistry with “The Late Late Show” host Craig Ferguson, who would introduce him as “one of the most delightful-smelling entertainers you will ever inhale.” He was also a frequent, mocked and mocking presence on the “Late Show With David Letterman,” though in a more serious mood, he was a guest on Letterman’s first show after 9/11. On his final “Late Show” appearance in 2015 (“You’re leaving! So where does that leave Regis?”), the host noted that Philbin had been on the show more than 150 times, the most of any

He was in his mid50-s — not that you could tell — when in 1985 he first paired with Kathie Lee Gifford, then Johnson, on the New York-based “The Morning Show,” which became the juggernaut known as “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee” in 1988.

guest. He exited through the theater, as the band played “Sabre Dance,” shaking hands. “Go ahead and take your time, Regis,” said the host.

Even as a guest on someone else’s show, Philbin’s innate hostliness would come out. He would walk out to waves of adoring applause, and not head straight to the chair, but take a few steps toward the crowd, to acknowledge and bathe in their appreciation, as if it were in some portion his show — which, for the moment, it was. Once seated, he would take to addressing the camera directly, leaning forward from the edge of his chair, hands and arms working mightily as he worked himself up into a Philbean lather. In very late life, he might require a little more partnering and prompting — names escaped him, as they will you — but wherever he went, it was always his show.

His last television appearance was a cameo this year on ABC’s “Single Parents,” a situation comedy co-created by his daughter, J.J. Philbin. It is a perfectly constructed Regis moment, following him at a fast clip through the halls of a hospital as he wrestles with a cellphone, trying to get a signal, purportedly on the line with his old “Live! With” producer, Michael Gelman. “Gelman, can you hear me? Gelman, I’ve only got one bar. What the hell is wrong with this?”

He stuck the landing.

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Television show host Regis Philbin is honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a star in front of the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on April 2003 ,10.

(Lionel Hahn/Abaca Press/TNS)

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The Body’s Overlooked Defence system

It Pays to Moisturise Your Skin

by Harvard Health Letter

and substances from getting inside the body.

Picture it: You’re the body’s military commander, and you’re reviewing your protective forces. Immune system? Check. Stomach acid? Check. Beneficial gut bacteria? Check.

Unfortunately, our skin weakens as we get older, and it requires more effort to keep it healthy. That job can take a back seat if you’re busy tending to other health issues or you’re unsure of how to care for your skin.

Don’t forget to include your skin: it’s one of the most important bastions in the fight against disease, keeping harmful organisms

With infection on everyone’s mind, it’s time to refocus attention

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on the skin and strengthen your defences.

IMPORTANT SOLDIERS

The skin consists of three layers: • The deepest layer (subcutaneous tissue) is made of connective tissue and fat, and provides insulation, energy storage, and shock absorption.

• The next layer (the dermis) contains collagen and elastin, blood vessels, nerves, sweat and oil glands, and hair follicles.

• The topmost layer (the epidermis) is built to be a barrier. It consists of five different layers of its own, each with cells constantly rising to the top part of the epidermis, called the stratum corneum -- the skin we can see and a major part of the body’s defenses.

Within the stratum corneum are up to 30 layers of flat, dead, protein-filled cells that mix with fat and water to create a sort of brick-and-mortar matrix. It keeps moisture in the body and protects us from toxins, ultraviolet rays, and bacteria.

WEAKENED DEFENCES

A number of factors can weaken the stratum corneum. One is aging. “The skin gets thinner, and the cells get flatter. Older skin has a lower water content. Fat diminishes and shifts, so everything is less vigorous and strong, particularly in areas of sun exposure,” explains Dr. Kenneth Arndt, a dermatologist and a prior medical editor of the Harvard Special Health Report Skin Care and Repair.

Dr. Arndt says heavy use of certain medications -- such as topical, oral, or inhaled steroids -- can also thin the skin. Inflammatory skin disorders, such as eczema (atopic dermatitis), can reduce the amount of fat in the stratum corneum, weakening the skin barrier.

And frequent hand washing or exposure to cleaning solvents or alcohol found in hand sanitizers can dry out and damage the skin surface. “The skin gets dry because soap can wash away fats in the skin,” Dr. Arndt says.

In other words, what we need to do to protect our health in the COVID-19 pandemic simultaneously threatens the health of the skin of our hands.

Your skin is one of the most important bastions in the fight against disease, keeping harmful organisms and substances from getting inside the body. of the body, causing fever or swelling, and increasing the risk for sepsis and hospitalization. Fighting back requires powerful antibiotics.

RALLY THE TROOPS

Before you find yourself in the midst of battle, try fortifying your defenses. Dr. Arndt says the best way is to lock in moisture.

“When you add moisture, the skin gets fatter and more flexible,” he says. “The trick is keeping it that way.”

He recommends moisturizing your skin right after you’ve bathed or washed your hands (which adds water to your skin). “Petroleum jelly is excellent at sealing in water, but it’s aesthetically not pleasing,” Dr. Arndt points out. “Creams contain water, oil, and emulsifiers to keep the ingredients mixed together, for ease of use. But things that aren’t greasy don’t work as well or for as long.”

Here are some other options: Skin creams with ceramides. Ceramides, a type of fat, are a main component of the stratum corneum.

Moisturizing oils, such as mineral oil. These have the same effect as petroleum jelly without being as greasy.

Products with humectants. These substances help bind water to the skin for absorption. The ingredients to look for: glycerin, urea, pyroglutamic acid, sorbitol, lactic acid, ¬lactate salts, or alpha hydroxy acids.

OTHER PLANS OF ATTACK

INVASION RISKS

Dry, thin skin is more permeable than plump, healthy skin, and it can crack or tear easily, like tissue paper. “Any time the skin splits or is excessively dry, that’s an avenue for an organism to get in and cause problems,” Dr. Arndt notes. He says the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not contracted through the skin.

But other types of bacteria can make us sick if they breach the skin barrier, such as Staphylococcus aureus or Streptococcus pyogenes.

These bugs may cause a type of infection called cellulitis in the skin tissue. Left untreated, the infection can spread to other parts

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In addition to moisturizing your skin throughout the day, Dr. Arndt suggests avoiding sun exposure and using sunscreen while outdoors.

He also recommends getting a humidifier to add moisture to the air, especially in the fall and winter as the humidity drops and the dry air sucks moisture out of your skin.

And while staying hydrated is crucial to the health of all cells in the body, Dr. Arndt says that keeping water from leaving the skin with creams, oils, and humectants is what’s needed; drinking excessive amounts of water won’t hydrate the skin.

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Dying to Succeed: Q&A with Egyptian Mr. Olympia Competitor and Entreprene Mahmood Al Durrah With 2.5 Million Social Media Followers, “The King of Online Coaching” tells Majalla about his challenges and greatest moments in the sport, the sheer force of will and ambition that goes into building a successful business, what’s on his plate and how to get ripped.

by Yasmine El-Geressi Egypt-born Mahmood Al Durrah has been making waves in the fitness industry since he won the Canadian Nationals as a middle weight in 2012. From then on, he has won several titles and completed in the world’s most prestigious bodybuilding competition, the flex-filled, oiled-muscle display of Mr Olympia in 2018. Along the way, the father-of-two has built a reputation as a bodybuilder, and as a coach, helping people with customized programs, and prepping athletes for competitions while sharing his insight with millions of fitness enthusiasts on social media.

Al Durrah was kind enough to take some time out of his day to answer a few questions.

Q - Tell me about your background in bodybuilding and what has been your greatest moment in the sport?

I started competing back when I lived in Egypt. It was merely a hobby at the time, but I always knew it would be more than that. You sort of have a feeling for these things from a young age. Fast forward to my first competition in Canada in 2012, the Canadian nationals, or Mr. Canada; broke, barely able to afford rent, with 2 kids, and juggling work and contest prep, I was miraculously placed first for my first attempt.

The year after was rough as I was caught in a house fire, and suffered 3rd degree burns. In 2015, I came back and won the Canadian Nationals a second time.

In 2016, I won the North American Legacy cup in a heavier weight class. The contest included Canada, USA, and Mexico, and all islands surrounding. Then in 2017 I won it again plus the overall (beating all the other weight classes) and that›s when I turned pro. There aren›t that many professional Arab Bodybuilders. That was a great moment for me. But surpassing that moment was my rookie year as a pro,

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eur Mahmood Al Durrah posing at the Mr Olympia competition in 2018. (Supplied)

that is what really launched my career as I became one of the very few professionals in the world to make it to the Mr. Olympia stage after winning a professional contest in my first year. It usually takes professionals a few years to do that. I believe that was my greatest moment; winning a pro contest in my rookie year and qualifying for the Mr. Olympia.

Q - What was the reaction of your family and friends when you told them you wanted to be a professional bodybuilder?

My brother was very supportive, he always was worried about my future, didn›t really know what to expect, but was supportive regardless. My mother told me, «who are you to be a professional or like these people? These people are 1 in I don›t know how many million, you are not one of those people». That made a hard dent in me. My father was indifferent but supported me when I competed. The rest of the time he would push for academics. My best friends however, they knew that I’d make it.

They really knew and they›d joke about the day I›m an Olympian, how they›ll be there for it.

Q - Judging by your popularity, you have a physique

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that is in demand. How do you work on improving it? Describe your current training program and diet.

I think people are more drawn to the journey, not the physique itself. I believe a smaller version of myself is what would be more appealing to most.

That being said, if you want to improve, it’s simple: train harder than last time. You have to keep pushing yourself and be consistent. That includes your seriousness in your training sessions, and your commitment to your diet during whichever phase, either getting in shape to compete at dangerously low body fat levels, or growing and adding a lot of more size. My diet is mostly high protein, around 1 kg of assorted meats throughout the day, and an average of 1.5 kg of cooked rice/potatoes. Vegetables are important for fiber and digestion. Supplements are also needed because someone like myself cannot get all his nutritional needs from just food.

It’s a job, and it›s not always fun.

Q - With gyms closed during the pandemic, how have you maintained both your body and your mind?

I had access to many gyms. One of perks of being a professional athlete. (laughs)

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Q - What is the most common mistake you see people making in the gym and what are three sure-fire tips you would give to our readers that want to get ripped?

Most people, including women, don›t life heavy enough. To shape your body, your muscle has to grow. No other way around it. Even for women, to get rid of cellulite, your skin has to tighten, and for it to tighten, your muscle has to grow. The curves, the glutes, hips, all that is shaped with muscle. So how does a muscle grow? It needs to experience a stress that it has not before. The muscle has a brain, it thinks to itself that it needs to adapt to this stress it›s carrying, so it has to grow to withstand it. Very simple, really.

3 weight loss tips for men and women: 1. calories in have to be less than calories out. No other way. Its science. And science is always right.

2. Avoid dairy and sugar. Both cause inflammation, retain water, worsens any skin conditions, and even disrupt hormone balance.

3. Enroll in my program!

Q - For those readers that may not know, do you mind talking about the entrepreneur side of your life? What inspired you to start designing fitness programs and what sets them apart from all the others out there?

I learned from my early engagement with social media, that people like stories. They like to relate.

So, I monetized on that. I documented everything, my burns, my hard days as an immigrant, my earlier motorcycle accident in Egypt, my contests. After I won nationals the second time, I felt that I was ready to start coaching people. I started with bodybuilders only, but slowly spread out to the general public.

Most people sort of want to be successful. Very few are willing to actually die for it. And I have had my fair share of hospital visits. It’s no joke.

A year later (2016) is when I dove into the actual business side of fitness, where I turned my coaching into an actual corporation with people handling my social media and sales. That same year, I also started a supplement line of products, Durabolic Nutrition. The supplement company really taught me a lot about the fitness industry, and how to carry myself and articulate my way with contracts and monetize my audience. I sold my company 2 years after and then signed with one of the biggest companies in North America to endorse, Redcon1. As my coaching company, Durrahnation, continuously grew, focussing more on average people and steering away from just bodybuilding, other companies saw how I endorsed Redcon1 and how my social media platform grew; I landed 3 more contracts a year later: Ironbull Strength, Fitmenu, Wikibolics; all different companies. As my portfolio grew, I spread out into real estate, and stocks.

Q - As an entrepreneur and bodybuilder, I imagine that family life can be a balancing act. Is a healthy work-life balance possible?

It depends what type of life you want. If you want to have a slight above average income, drive a nice Beemer, live in a nice home, then yes, it is possible to have a healthy work life balance. If you want to own several cars or super-cars, live in a massive home, travel 2 to 3 times a year, anytime, to the best resorts, and have your money work for you at some point, then no. The process itself is gruesome. Once you reach that point, however, where the company runs itself and your employees do %80 of the work, it becomes a smooth sail, and you get to enjoy life and family and friends. But the -10year process to get

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Mahmood Al Durrah with his two children. Supplied

Mahmood Al Durrah in hospital recovering from 3rd degree burns -Supplied

there is blood, sweat, and guts. I have horror stories.

Between competing, harsh diets, failing every now and again, and working 12 to 18 hours a day; it does become very unhealthy on your body. Hair loss and eye bags just become part of your new look, and trimming your beard is a luxury. You really have to need it, not want it. Most people sort of want to be successful. Very few are willing to actually die for it. And I have had my fair share of hospital visits.

It’s no joke.

Q - A lot of people online now give fitness advice without being a professional. How can a person tell who to trust?

Mahmood Al Durrah lifting weights in the gym

You have to look at their resume and do some digging. If they aren›t professional athletes, have

My diet is mostly high protein, around 1 kg of assorted meats throughout the day, and an average of 1.5 kg of cooked rice/potatoes. they created professional athlete, and became professional coaches? If they aren›t professional coaches, are they professional athletes with the experience to back up their knowledge? And how far have they gone as pros? If they are neither professional athletes or coaches, how successful are they really at helping others? Do they have real testimonials from real people? What is their reputation? What does their lifestyle look like and does it reflect their success? And is it real success, or Instagram pretend success? You sometimes see people, for example, drive a fancy car, but live in a one bedroom apartment. As funny as that sounds, that›s a red flag!

Q - Do you have any exciting future plans?

I want to expand my coaching company to far greater lengths. Future diet meal prep company, where we create the food for clients. Courses on how to become a successful entrepreneur in the fitness field, and how to be unique in a very saturated and competitive market. Motivational seminars. And maybe, a children›s book (laughs). I was always into writing and comic art, I feel my soul needs a little bit of that at this point in my life.

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Nasser Al Qasabi: The Master of Social Satire

by Majalla-London Early Life Nasser Al Qasabi was born in November 28, 1961 in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

From a young age he had a passion for acting, and he would hone his talents and skills at the King Saud University college theatre. After graduating in the 1980s, he started his career in what was then the emerging Saudi acting industry. Throughout the 1980s, he would appear in various soap operas and TV series, becoming one of Saudi Arabia’s rising stars.

Arabia and it pitted modernisers against traditional clerics. The show ran on Saudi 1 from 1993 to 2005, and then the popular broadcasting company MBC bought its broadcasting rights. This exposed the show to other Arab countries, and Nasser garnered a wider audience across the region. After 18 seasons and 540 episodes, the show would finally come to the end of its run in 2011.

Arabs Got Talent

After Tash ma Tash ended, Nasser needed to start on a new project. Although acting was his main forte, he never shied away from trying something new. In 2012, he Tash ma Tash became a judge in the reality performance Nasser’s big break would come in 1993, show Arabs Got Talent. Joining him in when he starred alongside Abdullah Al- the judges’ panel was MBC director, Ali Sadhan in the satirical comedy series Tash Jaber, Lebanese singer, Najwa Karam and ma Tash (No Big Deal). The series was Egyptian actor Ahmed Helmy. He would episodic, and Nasser would play a dif- then leave the show in 2015 in order to ferent character each episode. The show pursue a new acting project. would satirize aspects of Saudi/Arab society, often times focusing on subjects Selfie that are considered taboo such as the disadvantages that Arab women face. One In Ramadan 2015, Nasser starred in a episode that garnered public discussion dark sketch comedy series called Selfie. focused on educational reform in Saudi The show satirised the terrorist group IS, which at that point in time was at the peak

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of its power in the Levant. In one sketch, Nasser played a father whose son was radicalised by IS and fled to Syria to join them. Nasser’s character then travelled to Syria to retrieve his son, and upon arrival he discovered that most IS militants are ignorant to the teachings of Islam and only regurgitate slogans that their leaders taught them. The group would then kill Nasser’s character for refusing to participate in a suicide bombing. After the episode, Nasser would receive death threats from Twitter accounts associated with IS. This did not stir fear in Nasser, as he told Al Arabiya News “God is my protector.

I’m an artist, and the artist’s essential role is to reveal society’s challenges even if he pays a price.”

Personal Life Nasser is married to Saudi writer and novelist Badriah Al-Beshr. Badriah is a columnist and writer for Al Yamama magazine. In 2011, she became the first woman to win the Arabic Press Award for best newspaper column. Additionally, she published three compilations of short stories and three novels. Nasser and Badriah have four children named Mohanad, Hala, Rakan, and Eman.