Jonathan and Hunt Sprinting Towards Number 10

The First Week of the African Cup of Nations

Iran Fumes As Washington Launches Counteroffensive

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1754- June - 28/06/2019

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1754- June- 28/06/2019

Egypt’s Obesity Epidemic: Tackling a Weighty Problem www.majalla.com

Johnson Or Hunt Sprinting Towards Number 10 www.majalla.com

Editorial The Conservative leadership competition has been narrowed down to its final two candidates. As it stands, the former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, and the current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are both vying to become the UK’s next Prime Minister. Both men aim to do what Theresa May failed to do, take the UK out of the European Union but they both differ on the best way to do so. This week’s cover story

by Yasmine El-Geressi and Ali El Shamy focuses on both candidates’ agendas and how their approaching the Brexit question.

Yasmine El Geressi writes on the recent “Peace to Prosperity” workshop which took place last week in Manama, Bahrain. The conference presented the economic component of the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, as the political component would not be revealed until Israel forms its new government. Despite the absence of Palestinian representatives, Jared Kushner still praised the conference and indicated that the Trump administration would not be punitive toward the Palestinians. The Arab states that took part thought of the conference as a possible good step for Palestinian development, but said they would not pursue anything that goes against Palestinian statehood ambitions.

Joseph Braude writes on the continued rising tensions between the US and Tehran, as the latter recently shot down a US drone flying over the region. In retaliation, the US conducted a cyberattack on Iranian computer systems, including on the Iranian intelligence group believed to be behind the recent oil tanker attacks. The Trump administration also implemented more sanctions, as the Islamic Republic said it would begin its second phase of diminished JCPOA commitments.

Yasmine El Geressi writes on the obesity epidemic in Egypt, as a recent study indicates that the North African country has the highest adult obesity rate around the globe. The writer states how societal factors such as poverty have led to unhealthy lifestyles and how the lack of access to sports facilities has made Egyptians inactive.

Ali El Shamy writes on how Egyptians conflate body image with health and how advertising companies have used this to try to sell weight loss supplements, many of which either do not work or can be pose risk’s to people’s health.

Finally, Majalla gives a brief overview of the first week of the 2019 African Cup of Nations which is currently taking place in Egypt.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng. majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website. eng.majalla.com

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Editor-in-Chief

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

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

26 The Fall of Sebastian Kurz?

Issue 1754- June - 28/06/2019

to Asharq Al-Awsat: Saudi Arabia 08 Abe Plays Crucial Role in Middle East Peace

Bahrain Conference: US Launches

16 Economic Formula for Middle East Peace

20 Preparing for a Venezuela After Maduro

28 Why Blacklisting Huawei Could Backfire

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44 Egypt’s Lucrative Weight Loss Industry

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Devotees covered in mud and dried banana leaves take part in the Taong Putik ("mud people") Festival on June 2019 ,24 in the village of Bibiclat in Aliaga town, Nueva Ecija province, Philippines. Each year, the residents of Bibiclat village in Aliaga town celebrate the Feast of Saint John by covering themselves in mud, dried banana leaves, vines, and twigs as part of a little-known Catholic festival. According to locals, the Taong Putik festival (literally meaning "mud people festival"), traces its history from the Pacific War and reenacts how rain stopped the execution of 14 villagers by Japanese soldiers in 1944.

The townsfolk considered this as a miracle from Saint John, and every year since then the villagers roll in mud to show their gratitude to the saint. (Getty)

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Martin Shucory is seen engulfed in confetti as Maryam Rajav, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, speaks via video feed at a rally outside of the U.S. State Department in support of regime change in Iran on June 2019 ,21 in Washington, DC. (Getty)

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eekly news and that Tokyo suppers the internal reform efforts pursued by the Kingdom. “We are therefore seeking to bolster the strategic partnership between the two countries,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat’s editor-in-chief Ghassan Charbel, as Osaka prepared to host the G20 summit. Abe said that he has worked closely with the Crown Prince in bilateral cooperation, as well as on regional and international affairs. At the G20 summit, the PM said that he was looking forward to exchanging ideas with Crown Prince Mohammed on how to bolster bilateral ties and cooperation.

US Launches Economic Formula for Middle East Peace The Trump administration's 50$ billion economic support plan for the Palestinians cannot succeed without addressing the political elements of a Middle East deal, international financial chiefs and global investors said Wednesday in comments that pushed back on the U.S. insistence that the two must be separated. Panelists at the two-day conference in Bahrain welcomed the proposal's ambitious investment and development goals, but warned it would

fall short without good governance, rule of law and realistic prospects for lasting peace - which they said are largely missing from the initiative.

Iran on Course to Exceed Nuclear Pact Limit Within Days

Abe to Asharq Al-Awsat: Saudi Arabia Plays Crucial Role in Middle East Peace In an interview Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Majalla’s sister publication, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stressed that Saudi Arabia plays a critical role in peace and stability in the region Iran is on course to breach a threshold in its nuclear agreement with world powers within days by accumulating more enriched uranium than permitted, although it has not done so yet, diplomats said, citing the latest data from U.N. inspectors. France, one of the European powers caught in the middle in an escalating confrontation between Washington and Tehran, said it would ask U.S. President Donald Trump to suspend some sanctions on Iran to allow negotiations to defuse the crisis. A week after Trump called off air strikes on Iran minutes before impact, world leaders are trying to pull the two countries back from the brink, warning that a mistake on either side could lead to war.A move by Tehran that clearly breached its 2015 nuclear

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agreement with world powers would transform the diplomatic landscape and probably force European countries to take sides.

Turkey's Opposition Strikes Blow to Erdogan with Istanbul Mayoral Win Turkey’s opposition has dealt President Tayyip Erdogan a stinging blow by winning control of Istanbul in a re-run mayoral election, breaking his aura of invincibility and delivering a message from voters unhappy over his ever tighter grip on power. Ekrem Imamoglu of the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) secured %54.21 of votes, the head of the High Election Board announced on Monday - a far wider victory margin than his narrow win three months ago. The previous result was annulled after protests from Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party, which said there had been widespread voting irregularities.

The decision to re-run the vote was criticised by Western allies and caused uproar among domestic opponents who said Turkey’s democracy was under threat.

Trump Threatens 'Obliteration,' Iran Calls White House 'Mentally Retarded’ U.S. President Donald Trump threatened

on Tuesday to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American,” in a new war of words with Iran which condemned fresh U.S. sanctions on Tehran as “mentally retarded.” The U.S. president on Monday signed an executive order imposing additional, largely symbolic, sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior figures, with punitive measures against Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expected later this week. In rhetoric similar to the kind of harsh words he used to aim at North Korea, Trump tweeted: “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

Rouhani, a pragmatist who won two elections on promises to open Iran up to the world, said the White House’s actions were “mentally retarded” - an insult that other Iranian officials have used in the past about Trump, but a departure from Rouhani’s own comparatively measured tone over the years.

Tunisian President Hospitalised 'in Severe Health Crisis'

Tunisia’s -92year-old president, Beji Caid Essebsi, a major player in the country’s transition to democracy since 2011, was taken to a military hospital on Thursday after suffering a “severe health crisis”, the presidency said. One of Essebsi’s advisers told Reuters he was in a “very critical” condition but was alive. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said on Facebook that Essebsi was receiving the attention he needed and that people should stop spreading fake news about his condition, after some reports said the president had died. The presidency said in a new statement that “his condition now is stable and he is

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under the necessary checks’’. The elderly head of state was hospitalised last week as well, for what the presidency described as non-serious treatment.

MPs Seek to Block No-Deal Brexit by Stopping Government Funds

Pro-European Union lawmakers will seek next week to block a new prime minister from taking Britain out of the European Union without a deal and against the will of parliament by trying to cut off some of the government’s funding. Former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve and former Labour Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett have tabled an amendment to routine finance legislation – dubbed estimates - that was set to be nodded through early next week. Senior veteran Conservative lawmaker Ken Clarke added his influential weight to their bid, saying he would vote for the amendment. The change aims at denying funds to certain government departments unless parliament has ratified a deal, or Withdrawal Agreement, with the EU, or lawmakers have agreed to Britain leaving without a deal. Boris Johnson has pledged to leave the EU with or without a deal on Oct. 31 if he wins. His rival Jeremy Hunt has said he would, if absolutely necessary, go for a no-deal Brexit.

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Johnson Or Hunt Sprinting Towards Number 10

How Both Candidates have approached the Brexit Question 10

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Boris defended his Brexit plan to renegotiate a deal with the EU but admitted he could not rip up the entire withdrawal agreement, something which some Conservative Eurosceptics have said they believed he was planning to do.

BORIS JOHNSON: THE FAVORITE Boris Johnson, the -55year-old Conservative member of Parliament former foreign minister, and former mayor of London is the presumed frontrunner to replace outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, who was forced to step aside after failing to deliver a Brexit deal. Johnson started out as the favourite in a very crowded contest and commanded a huge lead throughout all the rounds of voting while largely avoiding the media. In the fifth and final round, Johnson won 162 votes to runner-up Jeremy Hunt’s 77.

An ardent Brexit backer, Johnson embraced the Leave campaign in February 2016, after a dramatic will-heor-won’t-he that played out in public. As a popular Conservative politician, Johnson added legitimacy to the campaign, becoming the unofficial leader of “Vote Leave”.

Boris Johnson addresses supporters during a rally for the 'Vote Leave' campaign on April 2016 ,15 in Manchester, England.

(Getty)

by: Yasmine El-Geressi and Ali El Shamy The two remaining contenders to replace Theresa May as Conservative party leader and, by extension, British prime minister - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt - must now prove that they can succeed where May failed and take Britain out of the European Union by the twicedelayed October 31 deadline. There is no majority in Parliament to agree on May’s negotiated deal which the EU have refused to renegotiate or a majority in the House of Commons to leave without a deal, and both candidates have been vague on the details of any convincing solution out of Britain’s catch22-.

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In Theresa May’s cabinet, Johnson held the job as Foreign Secretary, and quit in July 2018 in protest of May’s handling of Britains departure from the EU, which he saw as a “soft Brexit” that would keep the UK closely tied to EU institutions, rather than a more decisive break they preferred. Johnson, as an MP, had voted down the Brexit deal twice but when it came up for a vote the third time at the end of March, though, the deal suddenly didn’t seem as humiliating to Johnson — mainly because May promised to resign if Parliament passed it that time around. The deal didn’t end up passing that time either and May couldn’t break the Brexit deadlock, and she was forced to resign last month.

During his campaign launch to replace Theresa May, Boris insisted that he doesn’t want a no- deal Brexit, but would prepare “vigorously and seriously” to leave without one. And he said the UK will leave the EU on

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October 31 under his guidance, with or without a deal.

Following the launch, Boris was criticized for avoiding media scrutiny by not to take part in interviews or debates. Johnson finally broke his silence and placed himself before the media after three days of front-page headlines about his private life when The Guardian newspaper reported that police were called to the apartment he shares with his partner Carrie Symonds.

Neighbors had reported a heated argument; police later stated Johnson and Symonds appeared fine and that no further action was required.

Boris hasn’t always been clear about his the details of his Brexit plan and during the initial stage of the leadership process, he was accused of giving different messages to different Tory MPs, telling Brexiters that a 31 October departure date was definite, but being more circumspect with others. But after embarking on a “media blitz” this week in an attempt to deny accusations that he is hiding, some of his vision became clearer.

Renegotiating May’s Deal Speaking to BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, in his first televised interview since his campaign kicked off more than four weeks ago; Boris defended his Brexit plan to renegotiate a deal with the EU but admitted he could not rip up the entire withdrawal agreement, something which some Conservative Eurosceptics have said they believed he was planning to do. “Key things that you have got to do is take the bits of the current withdrawal agreement, which is dead, take the bits which are serviceable . . . The stuff about European citizens. They need to be properly protected . . . In an unconditional way in UK law,” he said. However, “Cherrypicking” of the withdrawal agreement’s “best bits” has been repeatedly rejected by the EU.

Most Euroskeptic Tory members will probably not trust Hunt to deliver the Brexit they seek given his previous remainer attitude and his support for May’s deal.

Throughout a succession of media and public appearances, Johnson struggled to explain in detail how he will get the EU and MPs on side in time to enable the UK to leave with a deal on Halloween. But on a visit to the Wisley Gardens in Surrey, he insisted there was a "new dynamic" in place in Brussels and London since last month's European elections - which saw a surge in support for populist anti-EU parties - and there was "goodwill" on both sides to do a deal.

But the European Commission again reiterated that the Brexit withdrawal agreement will not be negotiated, “full stop”. When asked whether the agreement could be reopened under any circumstances – including to stop a no-deal or prevent a hard border in Ireland, – a spokesperson for the Commission was emphatic: “I can confirm, as has been repeated several times, we will not be renegotiating the withdrawal agreement, full stop,” she told reporters in Brussels. At a meeting of the European Council, Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said all 27 EU leaders were “unanimous” that there should be no renegotiation of the deal, and that “nothing new” came out of discussions on it at the

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British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in Berlin, Germany.

(Getty)

to this, the former Mayor of London said: "what I bring is the ability to change the equation”. But Detlef Seif, the deputy EU spokesman for Merkel’s conservative parliamentary bloc, said such tactics would be fruitless.

“It is foolish to think that on such an important issue as Brexit, the EU would allow itself to be influenced by the refusal of payments,” Seif told Reuters. “That (thinking) is beyond reality.” The EU have also previously made it clear that it will simply refuse to negotiate on any other issue until the UK promises to honour the bill and the other elements of the withdrawal agreement – Northern Ireland backstop included.

The Irish Border

meeting. He had previously said the EU's position was "crystal clear”.

In an interview with Talk Radio, Johnson said he would stick to the October 31 Brexit deadline “come what may, do or die”. In an effort to turn the pressure on his rival, Jeremy Hunt, he tweeted a copy of a letter he had written to Hunt insisting this was the “central question” of the contest. Committing to a deadline that might come too soon to allow a proper negotiation risks triggering a general election and the "political suicide" of the Conservatives, Hunt has said. Responding to his rival's letter, Hunt suggested Johnson was afraid of debating the issue face to face.

The Divorce Bill Johnson suggested he would be willing to "suspend" the 39£bn "divorce bill" the UK has agreed to pay the EU until he had secured commitments on trade and the border. He has said “there should be creative ambiguity” about how and when the previously agreed divorce bill is paid, trying to raise pressure on the EU to grant Britain a new Brexit deal. Pressed over why the EU would agree

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In his BBC interview, Johnson criticised the UK negotiating team for creating the backstop to prevent a hard border in Ireland, saying that in doing so, the UK became "authors of our own incarceration”. He claimed issues including the Irish border would be tackled “on the other side of 31 October during what’s called the implementation period” but then was forced to agree that the UK would not be entitled to such an implementation period without a deal in place on Brexit day. The arrangements for the Irish border are contained within the Withdrawal Agreement and as far as the EU is concerned, these arrangements have already been decided and cannot be changed and they have repeatedly refused to hive off discussion of the backstop until the post-Brexit period. If Johnson is unhappy with those arrangements, then his only option is to walk away with no deal - which case, there’ll be no implementation period after Brexit day.

He also said that there is no one solution to the border checks that a no-deal would necessitate, but rather he said there was "abundant, abundant technical fixes" that could be made to avoid border checks. This line has been used repeatedly by Johnson when discussing the border but when challenged that these “technical fixes” did not exist yet, Johnson replied: "Well, they do actually... in very large measure they do, you have trusted trader schemes, all sorts of schemes that you could put into place.” In response to Jonhson’s claims Detlef Seif, the deputy EU spokesman for Merkel’s conservative parliamentary bloc said such technical fixes were not available now, but added: “If Britain can find a technical solution during the transition period, then please go ahead.”

“GATT 24” Johnson has made repeated references to “Gatt 24” as a way in which Britain could maintain its status quo of

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frictionless trading relationship with the continent. “Gatt 24” refers to Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) which is a piece of legislation allows countries to carry on trading under existing tariff arrangements if they are in the process of negotiating a future free trade agreement.

However, he conceded that this plan would require the approval of the rest of the EU and could not happen unilaterally. This was reiterated by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox - a backer of Jeremy Hunt - who wrote in a letter to one of his constituents that Article 24 "would not, by itself, allow the UK to maintain tarifffree trade with the EU in the absence of a negotiated agreement”. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England and numerous independent trade experts also said such an agreement under the terms of the GATT could not work in a no-deal scenario. Johnson’s acceptance that “GATT24” won’t work shows that he thinks he can leave the EU with some kind of renegotiated withdrawal agreement in place, in place of the one Theresa May failed to get through parliament.

JEREMY HUNT: THE UNDERDOG The current State Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is the other contender vying to become the next Tory leader and Prime Minister. He, nevertheless, has his work cut out for him since he Johnson came in first place during the fifth round of the Tory leadership contest with a massive difference of 85 votes.

Unlike Johnson, who has been one of the poster children for Brexit since 2016, Hunt has had a much more of a “love-hate” relationship with the issue.

First and foremost, he was in favor of remaining in the bloc and during the 2016 Tory leadership race he considered launching a bid based on the promise of a second referendum. In the run-up of the 2016 contest, he also suggested negotiating a deal with the EU before triggering Article 50, as such it can be inferred that he has historically been more in favor of staying in the EU rather than leaving it. It should be stated that he has changed his views since Theresa May’s leadership and has become a “born-again Brexiter” embracing the result of the referendum.

Support for May’s Deal Following Boris Johnson’s resignation as Foreign Secretary in 2018, Theresa May appointed Hunt as the new holder of the post. Since then, Hunt has been one

of May’s biggest ministerial supporters and by late 2018 he continuously backed her controversial Withdrawal Agreement. On December 2018 ,8, he infamously wrote an opinion piece for The Sun in which he stated that the Prime Minister’s deal “offers the surest path to Brexit”.

He further argued that the deal ensured that Britain would regain control of its borders, laws, and money and simultaneously protected jobs and the integrity of the country.

Needless to say, Hunt’s remainer past and his support for May’s deal will not bode well with Brexiters who most likely won’t trust him to head the withdrawal process.

Polls are not favoring Hunt, as a recent one by Comres showed that 61 percent of Conservative councilors intend to vote for Johnson as opposed to the 39 percent who said they would choose Hunt. Johnson is also more popular across the largest regions in the country (South, North, and Midlands), but Hunt fares better in Scotland and Wales (which have smaller Conservative electorates).

Brexit Policies Hunt has tried to convey himself as the more level

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A pro-Brexit protester (L) pushes away the placard of a supporter of a second EU referendum (R) outside the Houses of Parliament in central London on January ,15 2019. (Getty)

negotiating team which would involve the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the European Research Group (a hardline Brexit group which involves Tory MPs such as Jacob Rees-Mogg) and Tories from Scotland and Wales, that way he could potentially ensure that any deal he negotiates can easily gain a majority in parliament. Unlike May, he said that he would not invite the Labor party to the table because he doesn’t think that the main opposition party can take part in the talks with good faith.

Both Hunt and Johnson have stated that their negotiated deals would not involve the Irish backstop; Hunt actually went on record to criticize Theresa May’s Ireland approach: “What Theresa May tried to do was a deal involving the backstop, I was in cabinet at the time and I supported her loyally, but I never thought that was the right approach”. To solve the controversial Irish border issue, Hunt suggested a “technology-led solution” as he thinks that big border checks as we know them will cease to exist within the next decade and most of the said processes will be done online. Consequently, embracing these new technological advances will ensure that the Irish border will remain open.

headed candidate in the race and has frequently stated (both before and during the competition) that a nodeal scenario would be “political suicide” for his party, as it would force an early election. According to Hunt, the Labor party is in the process of changing its position to become the second referendum party, something that could see it gain substantial popularity. (Quite ironic considering that that was something he wanted back in 2016). He further said that he did not believe that parliament would allow a no-deal to happen, a statement that might harm him rather than help him. It can be said that his campaign has somewhat contradicted that of Boris Johnson which has insisted that the country needs to be out of the block by October 31, deal or no deal. Hunt also argued that a no-deal Brexit would be bad for the UK’s businesses, both big and small. During the June 18 debate, Hunt posed Johnson this question: "what would you say to a sheep farmer in Shropshire that I met whose business would be destroyed by 40 percent tariffs? He would say, you got your dream of getting into No 10, but what about my dream to have a family business?”

On the question of how he would restart the negotiating process, Hunt opted for a new cross-party

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Hunt did not rule out a no-deal entirely but insisted that he would only pursue such a prospect as a last resort if no viable deal is set in sight and would do so with a “heavy heart” to avoid no Brexit at all.

The Underdog Hunting the Favorite All leadership votes and most polls indicate that Hunt is the clear underdog in the competition and the fact that only Conservative members are voting in the last round does not help Hunt. A recent article published by the Associated Press (AP) cited a study which showed that 70 percent of Conservative members are men, half are over %86 ,55 are middle class or above and %97 are white. More importantly, most Tory members are highly Euroskeptic and want to leave the bloc no matter the consequences. As such, someone like Johnson who has shown to be an zealous Brexiter from the start and has on more than one occasion insisted that the country should leave on October 31 whatever the scenario will probably resonate more with most Conservative party members. As previously stated, most Euroskeptic Tory members will probably not trust Hunt to deliver the Brexit they seek given his previous remainer attitude and his support for May’s deal. Despite all such challenges, Hunt has yet to back down from the race and is determined to become the next occupant of 10 Downing Street.

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Bahrain Conference: US Launches Economic Formula for Middle East Peace

Kushner Urges Absent Palestinians to Take the ‘Opportunity of the Century’

by Yasmine El-Geressi The Trump Administration’s two-day Peace to Prosperity economic conference, which calls for 50$ billion of investment in the Palestinian territories and its neighbours

within a decade, took place this week in Manama, Bahrain. The workshop, which discussed the economic chapter of Washington’s Middle East peace plan led by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his envoy to the Middle East peace process, Jason Greenblatt, didn’t include representatives of Israel or

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In what was the first interview by a Gulf official with an Israeli media outlet, Bahrain’s foreign minister told Channel 13 news and Axios news site that the Bahraini government tried to convince the Palestinians not to boycott the conference.

In an interview with Al Arabiya on the sidelines of the workshop, Kusher said the economic plan can “double the GDP for the Palestinian people, improve their standard of life, create over a million now jobs, reduce the unemployment rate to below %10, and reduce the poverty rate by about %50.”

Washington hopes Gulf states will support the plan, which expects donor nations and investors to contribute to Palestinian and neighbouring Arab state economies.

Finance ministers from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which share a common foe with Israel in Iran, voiced qualified support for Kushner’s economic formula when interviewed at the workshop.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner speaks at the "Peace to Prosperity" conference in Manama, Bahrain, June 2019 ,25.

(Reuters)

the Palestinian Authority but international diplomats, officials and business people from several key Arab states including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Jordan were in attendance. The political components of the deal have yet to be revealed, having been put off pending the formation of a new government in Israel, something which may not happen before the Autumn. However, Kushner has argued strongly that is is important to press ahead with economic proposals that can demonstrate to the Palestinians the practical advantages of accepting a peace deal.

Under the plan, donor nations and investors would contribute about 50$bn over 10 years, with 28$bn going to the Palestinian territories – the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip – as well as 7.5$bn to Jordan, 9$bn to Egypt and 6$bn for Lebanon. Among 179 proposed infrastructure and business projects is a 5$bn transport corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza.

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Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said Riyadh would support "anything that brings prosperity to the region" and that he was "very optimistic" about the prospects of the plan, but said that it was important that it be driven by the private sector. Noting Saudi Arabia's support for the Palestinians, he said the conference had shown them there was an international commitment to bringing prosperity to the Palestinians.

The United Arab Emirates' finance minister, Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was more direct in his assessment.

"We need to give this initiative a chance. In order for it to succeed, we need international institutions. If this is the only initiative on the table, we need to give it a chance.

We supported the Palestinians over the past 15 years, in order to keep the issue on the table. But now we need to move forward," he said.

Saudi Arabia said on the eve of the conference that any peace deal should be based on a Saudi-led Arab initiative that calls for a Palestinian state drawn along borders which predate Israel’s capture of territory in the 1967 Middle East war. It envisages a capital in East Jerusalem

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and refugees’ right of return - points rejected by Israel.

Kushner said on Monday the plan would not adhere to the Arab initiative.

Kusher told reporters on Wednesday that the conference proved that the economic issues of the conflict were “solvable” but conceded that the success of the plan hinges on reaching a long-elusive peace agreement. “The reason why we thought it was important to bring out the economic vision before the political vision is because we need people to see what the future can look like,” he said, adding that they would release the political plan when the time is right.

Palestinian leaders have boycotted the workshop, and are refusing to engage with the White House – accusing it of pro-Israel bias after a series of recent Trump decisions. On Wednesday, while the workshop was underway, the Palestinian Liberation organisation (PLO) reiterated its rejection of the plan, saying the proposal’s lack of political vision guarantees its failure. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, was scathing about its prospects of success. “Money is important. The economy is important. But politics are more important.

The political solution is more important,” he said.

Kushner insists, however, that the economic plan is intended to help draw Palestinians back to the negotiating table by showcasing the benefits a peace deal could bring. Speaking at the conference, he said that the White House did not intend to punish the Palestinians for their decision to boycott.

would be significant at a time of rising tensions with Iran. Six Israeli journalists were allowed to attend the conferences, despite the lack of diplomatic ties between Israel and Bahrain.

Kushner said that even without the Israeli and Palestinian governments represented, the presence of Israeli business executives and journalists with their Arab counterparts

Speaking to Israeli journalists, Bahrain's foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmad Al Khalifa said that he would like to convey a message "to everyone": The conference is "an opportunity not to be missed.”

Finance ministers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which share a common foe with Israel in Iran, voiced qualified support for Kushner’s economic formula when interviewed at the workshop.

"If Camp David and the late President Anwar Sadat were game changers for the events of that day, I think that if we take this seriously this could be a very important game changer,” he said.

Asked whether he believed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be resolved, he answered: "We need to see a two-state solution. As Israelis have a country in their region and the citizens enjoy their own citizenship in their country, we need to see a Palestinian country with Palestinians enjoying their own citizenship."

In what was the first interview by a Gulf official with an

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Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, speaks at the "Peace to Prosperity" conference in Manama, Bahrain, June 2019 ,25.

(Reuters)

Israeli media outlet, Al Khalifa told Channel 13 news and Axios news site that the Bahraini government tried to convince the Palestinians not to boycott the conference.

"It is always a mistake to miss an opportunity to achieve peace. … This was an opportunity that we wanted to see them here, but they chose not to come.”

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund’s who participated at the workshop said that economic improvement in the West Bank and Gaza could happen under three conditions: that the Palestinian authority undertakes comprehensive economic reforms; that Israel eases restrictions on the movement of goods, people and capital; and with stronger financial support from international donors.“Improving economic conditions and attracting lasting investment to the region depends ultimately on being able to reach a peace agreement,” she said after attending the workshop.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had a hand in earlier peacemaking efforts and has been

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Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF: “Improving economic conditions and attracting lasting investment to the region depends ultimately on being able to reach a peace agreement” supportive of Kushner's plan, also spoke of the need for the economic proposal to have a political component.

"Obviously, it isn't a substitute for the politics," Blair said in a conversation with Kushner. "There will be no economic peace. There will be a peace that has a political component and an economic component, but the economy can help the politics and the politics, of course, is necessary for the economy to flourish.”

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Iran Fumes As Washington Launches Counteroffensive US Strikes Back at Tehran with Cyber-Attacks and Economic Sanctions 20

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by Joseph Braude President Trump surprised many in Washington and internationally when he abstained from responding militarily to Iranian attacks in international waters — but a more quiet American counterattack of cyber sabotage and targeted sanctions is underway, and the leadership in Tehran is incensed.

AMERICAN RESPONSE: CYBER ATTACKS AND SANCTIONS The world briefly held its breath after the Iranian military shot down a U.S. drone during a period of high tension between Tehran and Washington.

President Trump’s harsh rhetoric had stoked fears among many that the two nations were drifting towards open confrontation. But on June 21, the President announced that he had called off a military strike at the last minute after being informed by military briefers that as many as 150 Iranians would be killed in the attack.

This account struck administration officials as implausible, as the President had been informed much earlier about the possible casualty count.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran on June 2019 ,24, in Washington, DC. (Getty)

Later that day, clarity about President Trump’s intentions emerged with reports that the task of retaliating had been delegated to U.S. Cyber Command. The digital wing of the Department of Defense launched online attacks against multiple Iranian computer systems, including the Iranian intelligence group believed to have planned the attacks against oil tankers in recent weeks. Trump opted for a cyber offensive instead of a kinetic response because it was deemed to be less likely to trigger further escalation. Iran’s telecommunications minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi denied the cyber attack: “No successful attack has been carried out by them,” he claimed, “although they are making a lot of effort.”

The White House has augmented its cyber assault with a further intensification of the sanctions campaign. On June 24, the administration announced new sanctions impact Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, as well as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.

The effectiveness of the sanctions campaign in

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Trump opted for a cyber offensive instead of a kinetic response because it was deemed to be less likely to trigger further escalation. reducing Iranian oil exports was underscored this week in that reports indicate they tumbled further — to below 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) in June. It was a decline of almost 40 percent from the previous month, and nearly 90 percent lower than the 2.5 million bpd average of 2018 before Trump announced the American withdrawal from the JCPOA.

IRANIAN DENUNCIATIONS PROVOKE TRUMP’S IRE Apparently stung by the American response, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lashed out on Tuesday. He opined that the White House suffered from a “mental handicap” and that “the Americans have become desperate and confused.” Speaking in a televised address, Rouhani railed against the sanctions campaign — “unusual measures,” he said — and “nonsense talk.”

The same day, Iran›s Supreme National Security Council Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani threatened that Iran would begin “the second phase of diminishing JCPOA commitments” on July 7, in a step aimed at “the countries that mistook [Iran]’s patience for weakness and inaction.”

Likewise, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, denounced the latest round of sanctions, calling it “another indication that America does not attach any respect to the international laws and the prevailing international opinion,” and demanding that the United States must stop «its economic warfare and terrorism against the Iranian people.»

These statements did not sit well with President Trump, who swiftly responded over Twitter: “Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality. Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!”

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Preparing for a Venezuela After Maduro How the United States Can Help Rebuild

by James Dobbins U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to liberate Venezuela from Nicolås Maduro’s regime have stalled, despite some unusually favorable circumstances, including a spectacularly incompetent government in Caracas, a restive

population, a regional consensus in favor of regime change, and the presence of a widely recognized and constitutionally legitimate successor. The Trump administration has followed the same playbook in Venezuela as in Iran and North Korea: maximal demands, tightened economic sanctions, and vague threats of military action. It

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hasn’t worked in any of the three cases, although all three countries are feeling the pain.

The centerpiece of the administration’s campaign has been sanctions on the Venezuelan regime and economy. But it’s difficult to starve out a leadership when the leaders are the last to go hungry. Sanctions can play a useful role in preparing the ground for a military intervention by softening up the regime and demonstrating that the intervening country has exhausted all options except force. This is how the United States used sanctions to prepare for its interventions in Haiti in 1994, Bosniain 1995, Kosovo in 1999, and Iraq in 2003.

If the Trump administration is serious about preparing for a military intervention, it will have to plan not only for U.S. troops to force their way into Venezuela and topple the regime, but also for the lengthier and usually more demanding postconflict stabilization and reconstruction phases.

The United States would need to build regional support for and, ideally, participation in the intervention; position its forces in order to show that it is serious; and create a legal basis for the use of force, such as a formal request from the internationally-recognized government of Juan Guaidó.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro delivers a speech during the ceremony of recognition by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), at the Fuerte Tiuna Military Complex, in Caracas on January 2019 ,10.

(Getty)

Before invading, the United States would need to figure out how to maintain peace and restore normality throughout Venezuela after the fighting was over, perhaps by seeking the help of international peacekeepers. It would need a plan to get businesses up and running again, stabilize or replace the currency, install an effective administration, purge the military leadership and security services of Maduro loyalists, and begin longer term reconstruction efforts. The absence of well-considered and adequately resourced plans for post-entry stabilization badly complicated American efforts in Afghanistan and, less excusably, did the same in Iraq.

After a military intervention, Venezuela might well prove a more benign environment than Afghanistan or Iraq, and the successor regime might be more capable than the governments the United States installed in Kabul and Baghdad, but

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Even if the United States does not intervene, Maduro’s regime might still collapse, thanks to the efforts of the Venezuelans themselves. a principal lesson from the United States’ recent wars is not to base planning on best case scenarios.

Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia, for example, has been fighting a civil war since the mid1960-s.

There is no sign that the Trump administration set any post-conflict preparation in train before U.S. officials began issuing musing about military action, or even that they have now done so. Trump, who at one point indicated that military intervention was “on the table,” has since reportedly grown cold on the possibility, jokingly accusing John Bolton, his national security adviser, of wanting to get him into a war.

AFTER MADURO Even if the United States does not intervene, Maduro’s regime might still collapse, thanks to the efforts of the Venezuelans themselves. Should that happen, the burden of reconstruction will fall on the successor government, which will look to the United States for help. The first task will be to form an interim administration pending a new presidential election. How free Guaido will be to staff his government as he wishes will depend on what deals he has to make with the current leadership to oust Maduro. He may have to agree to some form of amnesty and even a residual role for the current military leadership.

Humanitarian relief will be the next priority.

There should be no shortage of international donors. Restarting the Venezuelan economy will require lifting sanctions and removing the market distortions imposed by the Maduro regime while also protecting the country’s most vulnerable people. Stabilizing the now almost worthless currency and increasing oil production will present serious challenges. The new government

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will need to choose between introducing a new currency, as the United States did in Iraq or, as some Venezuelan experts favor, adopting the U.S. dollar, at least on an interim basis. Boosting oil production will require the new administration to reform the state-owned energy company and bring in a large influx of foreign capital, both tasks that will be complicated by the Maduro regime’s arrangements nwith China and Russia. Venezuela owes Chinasome 20$ billion, which it is currently unable to pay. Meanwhile, Russia has acquired exclusive export rights to, and part ownership of, several Venezuelan energy sectors, including the state oil company’s U.S. subsidiary, CITGO. To win power, Guiado may have to strike deals with the army and other security institutions.

Those deals may impede his attempts to reform the military, crack down on corruption, and impose accountability for past crimes. Several members of Venezuela’s current leadership are reportedly implicated in money laundering, drug smuggling, and other criminal activity. Whether those people can be extradited to the United States to face trial will likely depend on whether Guaido and the National Assembly feel compelled to issue an amnesty and if they do, how broad it is.

ZOMBIE SANCTIONS If the Maduro regime doesn’t collapse any time soon, the United States will have to decide

Should it become evident that Maduro is not about to fall, the Trump administration should revisit its panoply of sanctions and rescind those that fall most heavily on the people of Venezuela, while continuing to target and isolate the Maduro regime.

what to do about the sanctions it has imposed on Venezuela. Washington has confronted this problem before. President John F. Kennedy abandoned attempts at forced regime change in Cuba after the failure of a U.S. backed invasion by anti-Castro Cubans at the Bay of Pigs.

President Barack Obamasimilarly abandoned the idea of forced regime change in Syria after radical Islamist groups came to dominate the opposition. But in both cases, Washington left economic sanctions in place even after it had abandoned any real prospect of achieving its original purpose. That further impoverished an oppressed people while giving the regimes an external excuse for their economic

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Thousands of protesters gather at Plaza Baquedano to demonstrate their support for opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim president against Nicolas Maduro on January 2019 ,23 in Santiago, Chile.

(Getty)

mismanagement. The same could happen to Venezuela.

Trump has shown that he is willing to walk away from the negotiating table if the opportunity proves insufficiently attractive. He abandoned a potential agreement with North Korea in Hanoiwhen Kim Jong Un offered only partial denuclearization. He left the seven-nation nuclear deal with Iran. He may yet walk away from attempts to oust Maduro.

In business one can always move on to other opportunities, no harm done. In statecraft, on the other hand, walking away from a problem may just allow it to grow worse. North Korea builds more bombs. Iran resumes nuclear enrichment.

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Venezuela hemorrhages more refugees.

So although Trump is right to be leery of the cost and risks of invading Venezuela, indefinitely adding to the misery of the Venezuelan people in the hope of bringing down their government isn’t an attractive option either. Should it become evident that Maduro is not about to fall, the Trump administration should revisit its panoply of sanctions and rescind those that fall most heavily on the people of Venezuela, while continuing to target and isolate the Maduro regime.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The Fall of Sebastian Kurz?

After a Shocking Scandal, Austria’s Conservative Wunderkind Is Down but Not Out

By Franz-Stefan Gady In July 2017, Austria’s then vice chancellor and leader of the right-wing populist Freedom Party(FPÖ), Heinz-Christian Strache, spent a vodka-and–Red Bull–fueled night on the Spanish island of Ibiza with one of his closest political allies, Johann Gudenus, the former deputy mayor of Vienna. Over drinks in a luxury villa, the two men attempted to collude with a woman they believed to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

Their aim was to use Russian money to sway the outcome of

Austria’s upcoming parliamentary election. Unfortunately for Strache and Gudenus, the whole thing was secretly recorded on video.

The fallout from IbizaGate, as the scandal quickly became known, has plunged Austria into its biggest political crisis since the end of World War II. On May 17, two German newspapers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel, published extracts from the six-hour video. They showed Strache offering the Russian woman government contracts and a stake in Austria’s most important tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung, in exchange for her

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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and President Alexander van der Bellen (not pictured) speak to the media on May 2019 ,19 in Vienna, Austria. (Getty)

campaign support. Although it is still unclear who was behind the elaborate sting operation, its political consequences were immediate. At the time the videos were released, Strache’s party, the FPÖ, was the junior partner in a coalition government with the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP). Within 24 hours of IbizaGate, he resigned as party leader and deputy head of government. That same day, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz of the ÖVP called for snap elections and replaced all FPÖ ministers with technocratic caretakers. A mere nine days later, a parliamentary vote of no confidence forced Kurz and his entire government out of office. A new caretaker government, led by Austria’s first female chancellor, Brigitte Bierlein, will be in power until a new coalition government can be formed after elections in September.

Having served a mere 525 days in office, the thirty-twoyear-old Kurz has entered the annals of Austrian history as the shortest-serving chancellor of the post-war era and the only head of government ever to be toppled by a no-confidence vote. His ouster was a stunning reversal for a politician whom the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, had only a year ago praised as a “rock star.” Ultimately, the secret to Kurz’s success—his willingness to move the ÖVP to the right while bringing the FPÖ into government—also proved to be his undoing.

For many, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kurz’s downfall offers one simple lesson: governing with the far right is not only morally repugnant but the pinnacle of political irresponsibility. Yet this view underestimates the complexity of Austria’s political situation and its implications for Europe.

It also fails to offer any insights into how establishment parties should deal with far-right populist movements. For as temporarily embarrassing as IbizaGate has been for Kurz and Austria, it is also reassuring. The scandal has shown that a mature democracy such as Austria, with strong political institutions, a free press, and a centrist political establishment, is capable of defending established political norms against a far-right onslaught. It has also highlighted the center-right’s ability to curtail and even reverse the growth of the far right’s influence in government and—most important—among voters themselves.

AUTHORITARIAN DEMOCRACY? Kurz’s bid to form a coalition with the FPÖ after Austria’s 2017 elections was controversial from the start. The chancellor enabled the far right to spread its xenophobic, far-right populist agenda into the upper echelons of government. And by bringing the FPÖ into government, Kurz also drew criticism for opening the country up to increased Russian influence. (The optics of Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl—an independent supported by the FPÖ—kneeling in front of Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding in August 2018 didn’t help.) Kurz even faced criticism from within his own party. In a book tour promoting his recently published memoir, former Vice Chancellor and

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For many, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kurz’s downfall offers one simple lesson: governing with the far right is not only morally repugnant but the pinnacle of political irresponsibility. ÖVP leader Reinhold Mitterlehner called Kurz a “right-wing populist” and warned that he was transforming Austria into an “authoritarian democracy.”

Yet Kurz’s embrace of populism was more strategic than his critics give him credit for. His alliance with the FPÖ was intended to stop the decline of the ÖVP, which has governed Austria in a grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) for much of the country’s post-war history. This coalition was underpinned by a power-sharing system known as Proporz, in which the two mainstream parties divvied up all mid- and senior-level positions in government, the civil service, and the state-owned sector. This system can best be described as the “Portisch consensus,” named after the journalist Hugo Portisch, who hosted a pair of historical television documentaries, produced from 1981 to 1995, that exerted a powerful influence on Austria’s post-war identity. Portisch wove a narrative in which, after the civil war of the 1930s and the experience of Nazi rule from 1939 to 1945, the future SPÖ and ÖVP parties realized that they needed to work together to preserve the Austrian state. As the Portisch consensus emphasizes, the grand coalition and the Proporz system were the pillars of Austrian national unity and prosperity. The FPÖ, whose first leader had been a major general in the SS, had no place in Austrian democracy.

By the time Kurz became the leader of the ÖVP in 2017, both Proporz and the grand coalition were dying. Infighting between the SPÖ and ÖVP, and their inability to work together to pass much-needed tax and welfare reforms, had rendered the coalition deeply unpopular among Austrian voters. By the spring of 2017, the FPÖ was consistently beating both the SPÖ and the ÖVP in polls. And although the FPÖ had been dragged down by scandals and internal feuding every time it had previously approached power, Kurz and his strategists judged that ignoring the populist far-right party would only strengthen it in the long run. As long as the FPÖ stayed out of government, it could attract votes from Austrians fed up with what they increasingly regarded as a corrupt and sclerotic establishment.

With the FPÖ threatening to win a majority in the not-toodistant future, Kurz decided to act. He transformed the ÖVP into what he called a political “movement” and reformed the party’s structure to strengthen his leadership position. Kurz

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also began to make inroads among populist voters by moving the ÖVP to the right and adopting FPÖ positions on topics such as immigration and Islam. Notably, he openly challenged Merkel’s decision to welcome migrants to Europe in the fall of 2015 and advocated for a closure of the so-called Balkan Route in 2016. Yet Kurz was neither anti-establishment nor anti-EU; at his core, he remained a center-right politician, albeit an anti-establishment one who made occasional use of populist rhetoric.

The strategy worked: by the October 2017 parliamentary elections, the ÖVP was once again the most powerful political faction in Austria. Under the leadership of Strache, meanwhile, the FPÖ tried to make itself a more appealing coalition partner by purging some of its most extreme far-right elements. After the FPÖ entered government in December 2017, displacing the SPÖ from the coalition, Strache expedited this process, issuing official condemnations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and softening the party’s stance on immigration. Strache also embraced Kurz’s liberal economic agenda and abandoned plans to introduce more direct democratic mechanisms, such as legally binding plebiscites without parliamentary approval.

By joining forces with the FPÖ, Kurz was able to move the farright party closer to traditional center-right positions in select areas such as economic liberalization, deregulation, and the European Union. He also exerted discreet behind-the-scenes pressure to rein in the far-right’s rhetoric after a number of what he and Strache referred to as “particular cases,” or Einzelfälle— their euphemism for xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islam remarks by individual FPÖ party members.

The subsequent downfall of Kurz’s new coalition—which remained broadly popular throughout its time in government— arguably had less to do with the FPÖ’s far-right rhetoric than with its long history of being ostracized under the Proporz system.

Because the FPÖ had been shut out of the federal government for most of the postwar years, it lacked the powerful patronage networks in government, civil service, and state-owned enterprises enjoyed by the ÖVP and SPÖ. These networks have historically determined who gets lucrative government contracts and plum posts at both state and federal levels.

The decade-long dominance of the grand coalition guaranteed a balance of power based on corporatist interest groups affiliated with the two major parties—an arrangement known as social partnership, which to this day constitutes the fulcrum of the Proporz system. Although it fostered social cohesion, this system excluded everyone other than the ÖVP- and SPÖaffiliated interest groups from influencing the political process at state and federal levels. This opened the door to corruption whenever the FPÖ came into power, as the party did not feel bound by the prevailing norms of the grand coalition. And although the establishment parties have had their fair share of

corruption scandals, these cases were the exception rather than the rule, whereas the reverse has been true for the FPÖ.

IbizaGate was especially enraging to the public thanks to a recent shift in the norms of appropriate behavior under the Proporz system. Over the past decade, Austrian media and civil society organizations have led a general push for more transparency in politics and the public sector. One illustration of this shift has been the widespread criticism of the former ÖVP governor of Lower Austria, Erwin Pröll, for directing 1.35 million euros of public money to his private foundation in 2017. Only a few years back, such criticism would have been unthinkable —Pröll had governed the ÖVP’s most important state for decades, and such payments were considered one of the spoils of office.

HE'LL BE BACK IbizaGate has clearly tarnished Austria’s international image, but the scandal needs to be put in perspective. The FPÖ remains a party dedicated to democratic principles, and it still enjoys the support of between 18 and 25 percent of the electorate, although this number will likely decrease in the coming months now that

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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and German Chancellor Angela Merkel chat prior to a meeting of EU leaders to discuss Brexit at the European Council on October 2018 ,17 in Brussels, Belgium.

(Getty)

Even after his fall from grace, Kurz remains the country’s most popular politician and the ÖVP the leading political party, supported by over 37 percent of voters, according to one recent poll. Kurz will likely get his redemption in the elections scheduled for September.

Austrian tabloids appear to have turned on the party. The SPÖ, meanwhile, is slowly becoming a nonfactor. Crippled by an ongoing leadership debate and unable to articulate an appealing vision for social democracy in the twenty-first century, it now trails the FPÖ in some polls.

Even after his fall from grace, Kurz remains the country’s most popular politician and the ÖVP the leading political party, supported by over 37 percent of voters, according to one recent poll. Kurz will likely get his redemption in the elections scheduled for September. It is an open question, however, what his future government will look like.

The ÖVP could try to form a new coalition with the weakened FPÖ, although senior Kurz advisers I spoke to said that is unlikely. A new version of this coalition would require the FPÖ leadership to publicly demonstrate an increased respect for Austria’s political norms by, for example, embracing recent efforts to improve transparency (including through stronger campaign finance laws) and continuing to purge farright elements from the party. It would also require the FPÖ to sideline its chief ideologue and party strategist, Herbert Kickl.

As interior minister, Kickl was the most controversial cabinet

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minister in the Kurz-Strache government, thanks to his alleged role in a scandal involving Austria’s domestic intelligence agency, his attacks on press freedom, and his push for tough anti-immigrant policies. Kurz attempted to oust Kickl following IbizaGate but overplayed his hand—all of the FPÖ ministers resigned in solidarity with Kickl, leading to the announcement of snap elections. The main lesson for Kurz should be that he can enter into a new coalition with the FPÖ only if it is clearly the junior partner in government, with the ÖVP controlling all the major ministries.

Kurz’s only alternative, given his known opposition to a grand coalition with the SPÖ, is a coalition with the liberal New Austria (NEOS) party. At the moment, the ÖVP and NEOS are polling short of a parliamentary majority, which has led some to suggest an ÖVP-NEOS–Green Party coalition. Yet a large chunk of NEOS and Green voters vehemently dislike Kurz, and it is unclear whether Kurz, after dragging the ÖVP to the right, would be willing to move his party back to the center on issues such as immigration. The free-market NEOS and the left-wing Greens would also have to agree on a joint approach to welfare state reform—a difficult proposition. In that sense, Kurz, following the September 2019 elections, could have no alternative but to try another iteration of the FPÖ-ÖVP coalition.

The good news is that the past 525 days have shown the maturity of Austrian democracy. There is little danger of the country turning into a Hungarian-style illiberal democracy, even if the FPÖ does reenter government. The bad news is that such a new ÖVP-FPÖ coalition would not only further polarize Austrian society but almost inevitably end prematurely. Another failed coalition would, in turn, undermine public trust in the Austrian political process and hurt the country’s macroeconomic prospects. Kurz, even if he achieves a record victory at the polls in September, will be caught between a rock and a hard place.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Why Blacklisting Huawei Could Backfire The History of Chinese Indigenous Innovation

by Lorand Laskai Last spring, when the U.S. Department of Commerce added the Chinese telecommunications company ZTE to a trade backlist, effectively severing ZTE from its vital U.S. suppliers, Chinese President Xi Jinping told an audience at a tech company that the Chinese people must “cast aside the illusion and rely on ourselves.” “The illusion” was the idea that China can prosper even as it relies on foreign technology.

The Trump administration seems determined to prove Xi

right. Last month, it blacklisted the telecommunications giant Huawei, the third major Chinese company to be added to the Commerce Department’s blandly named Entity List within the last year. Huawei is an indispensable Chinese company, central both to the rollout of China’s 5G mobile network at home and to the country’s efforts to expand its digital influence abroad. The Trump administration is also considering blacklisting several of China’s largest artificial intelligence companies.

The Trump administration is betting that banning Chinese tech companies will bring Beijing to the negotiating table

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with the aim of negotiating “structural changes” to the Chinese economy. And barring that, it is hoping to deal China a blow in the race to harness next-generation technologies, such as AI and 5G. But within China, the administration’s moves have created a powerful new consensus in support of “self-reliance” and “indigenous innovation,” two mantras of the Chinese Communist Party that the country’s tech industry has reluctantly taken up. Washington has underestimated China’s ability to “tighten its belt,” as Xi put it after the ZTE blacklisting, and to develop replacements for foreign technology. The Trump administration may well be paving the way toward a more technologically independent, and possibly more powerful, China.

THE HISTORY OF SELF RELIANCE

People visit the Huawei stand during day one of the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Asia at Shanghai New International Expo Centre on June ,11 2019 in Shanghai, China. 2019 CES Asia is held on June 13-11 in Shanghai. (Getty)

In China, the concept of “self-reliance,” or ziligengsheng, traces its roots back to the civil war, when Mao Zedong’s communist guerrillas found themselves isolated and facing annihilation at the hands of the U.S.-backed nationalist forces. According to Communist Party lore, the communists lived off the land and decentralized the production of economic and military goods as they rebuilt their forces and marshaled their strength. When, in 2014, Xi revived the concept as a call to reduce China’s dependence on foreign technology, the Mao-era slogan seemed an awkward fit for the age of global supply chains.

But China has a long tradition of defying international embargoes. During the Cold War, China succeeded in developing an atomic bomb even after the Soviet Union had cut off its technical support. Throughout the 1990s, China developed sophisticated satellites and rockets despite comprehensive U.S. sanctions on space-related technologies. In 2015, when the Obama administration prevented Intel from selling processors to China for its latest supercomputer, Chinese researchers quickly developed a local replacement. Less than a year and a half later, China unveiled TaihuLight, then the world’s fastest supercomputer, which ran entirely on Chinese-made processors.

These successes are partly the result of official policy.

For decades, the Chinese government has urged scientists and researchers to go about their work with “the spirit of two bombs, one satellite”—a reference to China’s nuclear and missile programs during the height of the country’s isolation in the 1960s. To make the spirit a reality, China has developed a sprawling network of state and military research labs, including the Chinese Academy of Science, arguably the world’s largest research organization, with 115 research centers and 60,000 scientists.

This investment has translated into a formidable capacity for indigenous development, either through copying, and then building on, foreign technologies or through developing homegrown alternatives. China’s space sector, which has

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The Trump administration is betting that banning Chinese tech companies will bring Beijing to the negotiating table with the aim of negotiating “structural changes” to the Chinese economy. been almost entirely cut off from the United States for the past two decades, has built most of its satellites and rocket components from scratch. U.S. export controls on space-grade microchips have “actually benefitted China in unexpected ways over the years, because we’ve had to develop our own,” Zhao Yuanfu, a top state scientist, told the online magazine Sixth Tone in February. After nearly a decade of work, China produces all the microchips it needs for advanced satellites, including the BeiDou Navigation Satellite constellation, China’s answer to the U.S. militaryrun Global Positioning System.

But indigenous development takes hold only when foreign options run out, and few tech sectors in China are as cut off from the outside world as the space industry. For decades, Chinese researchers, at the behest of Chinese leaders seeking “secure and controllable” IT systems, have worked on a domestic alternative to Microsoft Windows. But the weak demand for a homegrown operating system due to the wide availability of foreign alternatives, not to mention the sheer complexity of building one from scratch, has stymied their efforts.

China has also invested heavily in disrupting Intel and AMD’s near duopoly on cutting-edge central processing units. Yet Chinese developers continue to rely on more advanced foreign CPUs, which are more powerful and versatile than home-grown Chinese CPUs. As a result, even as China’s economic and political power has expanded, its economy has grown more, not less, dependent on foreign technology and components.

“The biggest challenge for indigenous innovation is not technology, talent, or capital, but the market,” Gao Xudong, a researcher at Tsinghua University, said in a 2017 interview. “Even if we produce a good product through indigenous innovation, it will not succeed if there is no market.” China’s technology industry illustrates the problems markets pose to Beijing’s self-reliance push.

The wide availability of superior foreign software and hardware has hampered progress. Moreover, China’s tech giants have long been noncommittal toward Beijing’s self-reliance drive, choosing to invest in lucrative

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consumer-facing applications rather than the “core technologies” that the state values. The country’s three largest tech companies, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, all owe their large valuations to consumer products built on Western technologies. None other than Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has repeatedly bashed the idea of indigenous innovation and extolled the advantages of global supply chains. “The idea that one needs to do everything themselves is a mentality only for peasants,” Ren said in an interview last year.

HUAWEI OR THE HIGHWAY Blacklisting Huawei, however, has turbocharged the indigenous innovation effort. As a result of the blacklisting, the company plans to launch a replacement for Google’s Android operating system later this year. It is also working to replace a myriad of U.S. components and software to which it will soon lose access. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Huawei has up to 10,000 developers working around the clock in three cities to “eliminate the need for American software and circuitry.”

Beneath this burst of outward activity, a quieter and more consequential shift is taking place. U.S. action against Chinese companies has begun to change their calculus toward indigenous development. Reeling from U.S. sanctions, Huawei executives traveled to Peking University last week to launch an R & D partnership with the university to bolster Huawei’s capacity for “indigenous innovation.” By using the official slogan, Huawei’s bosses seemed to be offering a mea culpa for their past resistance to self-reliance. Other executives have also changed their tune. Reflecting on the ZTE incident, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, told a recent tech forum, “If we do not master

Blacklisting Huawei, however, has turbocharged the indigenous innovation effort. As a result of the blacklisting, the company plans to launch a replacement for Google’s Android operating system later this year.

the core technologies, we will be building roofs on other people’s walls and planting vegetables in other people's yards.” After the ZTE incident last year, Alibaba launched a chip business that will aim to reduce China’s dependence on foreign chips.

Even before the Trump administration began blacklisting Chinese tech companies, Beijing had advanced toward self-reliance. In 2014, the government launched a massive initiative to reduce China’s dependence on foreign chips. As part of that push, it will invest more than 100$ billion in semiconductor design and manufacturing. Made in China 2025, the 2015 master plan to upgrade China’s industrial capacity, specifically targets foreign inputs in high-tech sectors and aims for “self-sufficiency” in crucial components. China has also begun mobilizing its financial markets, establishing a new “tech board” on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to invest in companies working on technology the state deems strategically important.

Yet the United States may find that it has done more for self-reliance by banning ZTE and Huawei than the Chinese government has managed in a decade of official policy. Now that they are walking in lockstep, government and industry can move much faster. An international juggernaut with annual revenue comparable to that of Microsoft, Huawei can pour a lot of money into replacing core U.S. technology

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He Gang, president of Huawei's consumer business mobile phone product line, introduces Huawei Nova 5 smartphone during a new product launch event on June 2019 ,21 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China.

(Getty)

in its products. What is more important, by intentionally sourcing from Chinese suppliers, large companies such as Huawei can provide Chinese component makers with crucial opportunities to gain experience and develop new technical competencies. On average, Chinese chip and optical component suppliers are inferior to international leaders, since they lack scale and the ability to iterate their products with large customers. Orders from a company of Huawei’s size could change that.

Replacing the many U.S. suppliers on which Chinese companies rely will be a tall order, and at least in the short term, Chinese suppliers will be unable to fully meet the needs of companies such as Huawei. Advanced processors and chipsets that power the cutting-edge computation involved in machine learning, cloud computing, and 5G networks are almost exclusively developed by a handful of Western companies. Although some Chinese companies, such as Huawei’s chip unit HiSilicon, can build their own chips for some applications, they still rely on U.S. software and intellectual property to design the chips and international foundries, such as Taiwan’s TSMC, to manufacture them.

Nevertheless, China does have several factors working in its favor. For starters, it doesn’t need to develop everything itself. Chinese companies have long been comfortable

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acquiring technology abroad through partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, or outright intellectual property theft. U.S.export controls wouldn’t stop most of these, as they restrict only the export of U.S. technology or foreign products that contain significant U.S.-origin software or components. Technological partnerships and academic exchanges between China and the European Union played a critical role in China’s development of the BeiDou constellation. And Chinese state-backed funds, often using offshore shell companies, have proved adept at evading scrutiny from U.S. sanction enforcers. As the U.S. technological embargo expands, so will the opportunities to poke holes in it.

Another advantage is China’s enormous domestic market.

Few companies outside the United States are able to turn down opportunities to sell in China, and even fewer governments are willing to stomach the economic pain of turning away Chinese demand at Washington’s say-so.

Although in the short term the pain imposed on China’s tech industry by the blacklisting might appear to vindicate the administration’s move, over the long term its actions will pave the way to a more technologically formidable China.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Egypt’s Obesity Epidemic: Tackling a Weighty Problem www.majalla.com

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Ahmed Aboul Gheit: His Long Journey to Become the Arab League’s Secretary General

by Moncef Al-Mazghany 1. Early Life and Education

Ahmed Aboul Gheit was born on June 1942 ,12 in Masr El Gedida, Cairo, Egypt. In 1962, he graduated from Ain Shams University with a bachelor’s degree in business. He did not pursue a career based on his chosen degree as he started working for the Egyptian foreign ministry in 1965.

2. Marriage and Family Life

Aboul Gheit is married to Laila Kamal El Din Saleh and together they have two children. He has stated that his wife has been supportive of all his endeavors and has never given up on him. He also said that his wife took it upon herself to focus on their children’s wellbeing and education.

3. His Rise in Diplomacy

Aboul Gheit’s rise on the diplomacy ladder has been gradual. In 1968, he became the Third Secretary to at

the Egyptian Embassy in Cyprus. He returned to Egypt in 1972, where he started working at the National Security Advisor’s office until 1974.

Between 1974 and 1977 he worked as the First Secretary for Egypt's Ambassador to the United Nations.

From 1977 to 1979, he was the first secretary at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1979 to 1982 he was Political Consultant at the Egyptian Embassy in the Soviet Union and in 1984 he became the Egyptian Foreign Minister’s political advisor. He was then promoted as the Prime Minister’s special advisor.

Between the years of 1992 to 1996 he became the Egyptian Ambassador to Italy, Macedonia and San Marino, respectively.

Then between 1996 and 1999 he was the Egyptian Foreign Minister’s assistant. All his hard work paid off as he was finally appointed as Egypt’s Foreign Minister in 2004 and he remained at the post until the Arab

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Spring which saw the removal of long time President Hosni Mubarak from power. He would take time off from politics until June 2016 when he was elected as the Secretary General of the Arab League.

4. His Memoirs

During his time off between 2011 and 2016, his first set published in 2011 was titled: “Witness to War and Peace: Egypt, the October War, and Beyond”. The following year he published his second memoir called: “My Testimony”.

5. Views on Arab Spring and Current Terror Crisis Aboul Gheit has long been a critic of the Arab Spring, he famously said “The Arab Spring is a catastrophe, it has entirely destroyed states as well threatened the future of their people. “ He is not optimistic that the terror crisis can be quickly resolved as he believes that defeating groups that spread such fundamentalist ideology to the youth will take decades.

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To Elevate Your Exercise Routine, Head Outside Walking or Hiking in a Natural Area May Benefit Your Heart More Than Working Out Indoors.

Harvard Health For many people, summer’s long days and warm weather make it a great time to exercise outdoors. And that just might be a great way to boost the rewards from your workout, says Dr. Edward Phillips, assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School.

“When you’re moving your body, your heart, lungs, and muscles don’t know or care where you are. But your mind does,” says Dr. Phillips. And if you’re exercising outdoors in a beautiful natural setting, you might be tempted to go a little farther than if you set out to walk for just 30 minutes around your neighborhood,

he notes. “Some people say it’s hard to rack up 7,000 steps a day walking a familiar route. But they often find they can go twice as far on a hike, especially if there’s a nice vista at the destination,” he says. If you choose a trail that includes some hills, which will force your heart to work harder, that will also increase your fitness.

WALKING POLE PERKS? Of course, you should be careful not to overdo it, especially if you have any conditions that affect your stamina or mobility, such as arthritis (also see “High-altitude hiking”). Using walking

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poles may help; they propel your body forward as you stride and provide extra stability when walking on uneven terrain.

And unlike standard canes, walking poles don’t have an image problem, so they’re also handy for regular walks. “I have a patient who won’t use a cane because he doesn’t want to look disabled. But he willingly uses walking poles, and now he can keep up with his wife on walks,” says Dr. Phillips.

Using poles adds an upper-body workout to your walk that tones your arms, shoulders, and back. This increases the number of calories you burn, without making you feel like you’re working harder. Several studies have shown increases of %20 to %25 in cardiovascular

“When you’re moving your body, your heart, lungs, and muscles don’t know or care where you are. But your mind does,” says Dr. Phillips workload and calorie burn. Yet people using poles tend to report ratings of perceived exertion that are similar to walking without poles.

High-altitude hiking If your summer travel plans include spending time in the mountains, you may wonder if and how the elevation may affect your heart. The higher you go in altitude, the less oxygen you take in with each breath. Your body responds by raising your heart rate and the amount of blood pumped with each beat. This temporarily boosts blood pressure, although your body adapts to the lower oxygen level within a few days.

For generally healthy people, as well as those with high blood pressure or other risks for heart disease, here’s a rule of thumb: Go no higher than 8,000 feet in the first leg of the trip and stay there for at least one night. Take it easy for a day or two before any strenuous hiking and pay attention to how you feel. If you’re feeling fine, then you should be okay to go a couple of thousand feet higher each day. But people with known heart or lung disease should check with their physician for more specific advice before traveling to a high-altitude destination.

GOING GREEN As far as hiking’s other advantages go, consider this: Natural settings tend to be quieter, cooler, and have better air quality than urban areas. And a number of small studies hint that spending time in green space — nature preserves, woodlands, and even urban parks — may ease people’s stress levels. Considering that stress contributes to high blood pressure and heart disease risk, anything you can do to counteract stress is likely to be helpful, says Dr. Phillips.

Here are some tips for a safe and enjoyable hiking experience: Hike with a partner or a hiking group. Venturing out with companions is good for both camaraderie and safety. If you go alone, let someone know where you are headed and when you plan to return.

Protect your feet. Choose well-fitting footwear with good ankle support. Make sure to break them in with shorter walks so you don’t get blisters when you’re miles from a trailhead.

Bring water. Don’t forget to stay hydrated, especially in warm, sunny weather.

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Egypt’s Obesity Epidemic: Tackling a Weighty Problem Adult Obesity in Egypt is the Highest in the World

by Yasmine El-Geressi In December last year, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi went on a -20minute televised rant complaining about the country’s rising pandemic of obesity. In his second tirade against obesity in as many months, el-Sisi interrupted health minister Hala Zayed as she presented new numbers on the weight of Egyptians. “Why are we

doing this to ourselves”, he asked and preached that Egyptians should exercise more and suggested overnight people should be banned from TV. Although a flood of jokes were spilled on social media and el-Sisi was slammed for taking an elitist approach to the problem and not offering concrete plans to combat obesity, noone can dispute that Egypt has a serious and dangerous weight problem. According to a study published in the

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New England Journal of Medicine in 2017, two thirds (35.5 percent) of adults in Egypt are obese - the highest rate in the world.

As well 19 million obese adults out of Egypt’s 98 million population, the global study by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation also found that 10.2 percent of Egyptian children are obese, around 3.6 million.

Ali H. Mokdad, Professor of Health Metric Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the co-authors of the study which spans 195 countries and territories from 1980 through 2015, told Majalla that the rapid rise in obesity in Egypt is mainly due to a change in behaviours which is having the biggest impact on the poor.

“Egyptians simply are exercising less and eating more.

Egypt has less physical activity and more caloric intake, this is resulting in a rapid rise in weight and obesity.

Unfortunately, the epidemic is affecting poor and less educated people more”, he said.

Egyptian Um Adham, 43, cooks Falafel in a street in the capital Cairo.

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Historically, Egyptians ate a Mediterranean-style diet, a combination of fresh vegetables, fruit and some protein, which correlates to low levels of heart disease and diabetes. However, there have been fundamental shifts in the country’s eating habits, associated with changes in working patterns and the high cost of food, compounded by Egypt’s subsidy program. While in some Western countries, ingredients linked to obesity like hydrogenated oils, trans fats and sugar - are often taxed or restricted, in Egypt many of these calorific and low-nutritional value staples are actually subsidised by the government. 80 percent of the country have access to these subsidies, meanwhile, the economic crisis is increasing the prices of nutritious fruits and vegetables, forcing Egyptians - %30 of which live in poverty - to turn to rice, bread, pasta and other high carbohydrate and sugar-heavy foods to silence their hunger. And when it comes to fast food, there’s something for every budget -from American fast food chains marketed to the upper class to local alternatives offering the same high-fat foods at a fraction of the price - lining the streets of Egypt’s cities. People who are uneducated on the effects of this food and aren’t financially stable tend to be the ones investing in fast food, and other unhealthy products.

Diet struggles are coupled with few opportunities for exercise. Although Egyptians are known for their enduring passion for football, a lack of public parks, spaces or bike lanes, let alone sports facilities, mean Egyptians spend hours watching sport rather than actually playing. There has however been a rise in the number sporting clubs in Egypt, but with membership fees reaching 1,000,000

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In addition, topping the obesity poll, Egypt also has one of the world’s highest rates of diabetes, with nearly 16 percent of working-age adults diagnosed with the disease and 86,500 die from it every year, according to a 2014 study.

EGP, these elite clubs are not accessible to the vast majority of Egyptians. Public schools also don’t pay enough attention to physical education, especially for young women.

There is also a phenomenon of cooking shows in Egyptian media and channels that are aired 24 hours a day. There is evidence to suggest that people who watch cooking shows are more likely to become obese compared to others. In Egypt, there are also no restrictions on food and beverage advertisements.

While it is well-documented that socioeconomic status is robustly associated with obesity, the underpinning psychological mechanisms remain unclear. But research by the European Association for the Study of Obesity found that socioeconomic disadvantage increases psychological distress, this, in turn, promotes maladaptive coping behaviours, such as emotional eating, and ultimately obesity. Egypt has gone through a period of political and security instability, and consistently high rates of inflation. Studies have also found that Cairo ranks as one of the most stressful, noisiest, as well as the most polluted cities in the world, creating a stressful living environment for most the 20 million people living in the over-crowded city.

With so many people eating badly, Egyptians suffer from a range of health issues. “Obesity is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality. There is a rising epidemic of diabetes and chronic kidney diseases in Egypt. There is a rise in non-communicable disease. Obesity will result in poor health for Egypt and an increase in financial demand on medical resources,” Professor Mokdad said.

In addition, topping the obesity poll, Egypt also has one of the world’s highest rates of diabetes, with nearly 16 percent of working-age adults diagnosed with the disease

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and 86,500 die from it every year, according to a 2014 study.

Childhood obesity also leads to many health risks.

According to UNICEF, the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) among children is a major challenge in Egypt, especially for overweight/obesity and stunting. DBM is characterised by the coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight, obesity or diet-related deficiencies within individuals. Children who are overweight are more susceptible to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and coronary heart disease and micronutrient deficiencies due to a poor diet.

The obesity crisis in Egypt is not just a health risk but also an economic threat as it not only costs millions of people their health but also carries significant costs to the economy. The global economic impact amounts is roughly 2$ trillion annually, or 2.8 percent of global GDP—nearly equivalent to the global impact of smoking or of armed violence, war, and terrorism. In particular, weight and obesity treatments increase the cost of healthcare and mounts pressure on the system. While medical care in Egypt has gradually improved over the past 30 years, an expanding and ageing population coupled with deficiencies in the existing public healthcare system already presents enormous challenges. Indirect costs include the economic impact of work absences, lost wages, and reduced productivity of patients and caregivers.

The scale of Egypt’s obesity problem means that no single solution creates sufficient impact to reverse

“If an Egyptian tomorrow decides to live healthy by eating a balanced diet and be physically active, the environment and system have to be in place to support such activities,” Professor Mokdad.

obesity: only a comprehensive, systemic program of multiple interventions is likely to be effective. Professor Mokdad says that capturing the full potential impact requires engagement from as many sectors as possible.

“The solution has to be multi-approach. Many have to be involved in order to maintain weight and gradually lose weight from the ministry of health to other government agencies, schools, workplace, city planning, parents (have to be a role model for children), policies to support a healthy diet, etc,” he explained.

While education and personal responsibility are critical elements of any program to reduce obesity, they are not enough on their own. Professor Mokdad suggests that additional interventions need to be in the mix that rely

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A man walks with his bread bought from Magra El-Oyoun market in Cairo, Egypt (Getty)

less on conscious choices by individuals and individual responsibility and more on changes to the environment and societal norms. These interventions make healthy behaviour easier and more normal, thereby relying less on individual willpower.

“Basically, if an Egyptian tomorrow decides to live healthy by eating a balanced diet and be physically active, the environment and system have to be in place to support such activities,” said Professor Mokdad.

There have been fundamental shifts in the country’s eating habits, associated with changes in working patterns and the high cost of food, compounded by Egypt’s subsidy program.

Getting the obesity and overweight epidemic under control will take more than just telling everyone to go on a diet, it needs to be regarded as a public health issue and not as a personal failing. Like with all major global health problems, such as pollution or

malaria, obesity will not disappear with one simple solution, one person, or one policy. A challenge of this magnitude requires an ambitious, holistic, broad, and multipronged approach.

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Egypt’s Lucrative Weight Loss Industry Dangers of Conflating Body Image with Health

by Ali El Shamy Obesity in Egypt is a growing crisis which has long been ignored. According to data published by the CIA Factbook in 2016, Egypt was among the top 20 countries with the highest adult obesity prevalence rate. Another study published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017 found that Egypt, in fact, had the highest adult obesity rate as it estimated that 35 percent of Egyptian adults are obese. Needless to say that the epidemic has created a large weight loss industry in the country, just by browsing through the

country’s countless satellite channels you’ll find many talk shows who have invited weight loss trainers, nutritionists, and doctors who present various ways to shed off the kilos promising that their clients got a new body in a matter of weeks to months of their regiment. Moreover, there are many ads on TV which try to sell products which will either help quickly burn fat or build up muscle. While what is presented on TV might yield the results promised, there are questions regarding the health benefits of quick weight loss methods and supplements. There is also reason to believe that public ignorance regarding the difference

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between body image and health only helps the rapid weight loss industry grow.

BODY IMAGE VS. HEALTH

Weight loss helpline advertisement featuring late Egyptian professional wrestler Mamdouh Farag.

Over the past decade, Egypt has developed a gym culture which has seen many young Egyptians of various social classes become more conscious of exercise. That is not to say that older Egyptians do not join gyms, but people of different ages tend to work out for different reasons. Middle age and older Egyptians, often go to the gym to slim down to healthier body weights or maintain body sugar levels.

Most young Egyptians, on the other hand, go to the gym to gain what they perceive to be ideal bodies, young men aim for muscular bodies complete with a six-pack while young women set their sights for slimmer bodies. These young people will often start working on these “perfect” bodies before the summer season so they can be ready to show off their efforts at the beach, as such the term “form’et el sahel” has become popular in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. The phrase literally means “the Sahel body form” referring to the North Coast which is one of, if not the most, popular summer destinations for Egyptians.

This popular desire for the perfect summer body has been exploited by many advertisers, for instance, one ad for “Dr. Ming’s Chinese Tea” promised that the product can help give people the kind of bodies they seek. In addition to that, the ad stated that the tea can increase focus, tackle body fat, reduce stress and boost sex drive in men. Late Egyptian professional wrestler, Mamdouh Farag, was known for appearing in weight loss TV adverts; he once advertised a special kind of tea which could burn fat. He also advertised a special helpline which can help give male callers advice on how to get muscular bodies, while female callers can ask for the best ways of slimming down.

While speaking to Majalla, Dr. Essam Abd El Samed, an Egyptian anesthesiologist living in the UK, has said that this confusion between body image and health is spread all across the Arab world, not just Egypt. He further criticized Egyptian cosmetic and nutritionist medical practitioners for doing what their patients ask for disregarding both their physical and psychological wellbeing. He stated that when someone in the UK goes to a plastic surgeon for a certain procedure, the physician will often tell the client to go for psychological screening to make sure that he or she isn’t suffering from body image issues. Dr. Essam emphasized the importance of such screenings, especially if the client is asking for invasive cosmetic procedures that can pose further health risks.

According to Dr. Essam, these preliminary practices

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Most young Egyptians go to the gym to gain what they perceive to be ideal bodies, young men aim for muscular bodies complete with a six-pack while young women set their sights for slimmer bodies. don’t exist in Egypt, as cosmetic doctors will perform these procedures for monetary gain without thinking of the potential harm on the patients’ psychology and body.

While most of the ads target adults who have the mental capacity to decide what supplements are best for them, there was one commercial for a whey protein called “lotif” showcased two different types of their product. The “lotif” inside the black container was meant for those who are performing intense exercises and bodybuilding routines, but the one in the white container was for regular aerobic exercises and could be used by both children under 13 and adults over 65.

Adverts such as these are especially dangerous since uninformed parents of overweight children could buy them in the belief that it could be the magical product that will help them slim down. Dr. Essam was critical of such ads since it doesn’t make medical sense that a supplement can be effective for both young children and the elderly.

EFFICACY OF ADVERTISED PRODUCTS Most of the weight loss products advertised on Egyptian TV claim to be approved from the country’s health ministry, this supposed seal of approval makes the products seem legitimate to the public eye.

When asked on the credibility of such approvals, Dr. Essam said that most sellers and ads are actually lying. Furthermore, the doctor said that a lot of these supplements are imported from abroad and are sold in the black market; one area in Cairo that the doctor says is popular for black market medicine trading is the Al Moski district.

Dr. Essam would go on to describe the process by which medicines and supplements are tested before they hit the market. Firstly, new medicines need to be lab tested to see how they affect the human’s physiology, anatomy and body enzymes…etc. The

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product will then move on to animal testing before being human tested.

When asked about supplements and whey proteins, which have become mainstream in both Western countries and Egypt, Dr. Essam stated that many Egyptians are not taking the supplements correctly as some up to rely on them without eating proper meals. Nevertheless, he isn’t too keen on supplement usage in the first place as he believes that humans can naturally gain the nutrition they need from food rather than food supplements. His philosophy is that one should stay away from pills unless one needs it. On the question of whether or not whey proteins are a healthier alternative to steroids, he said that he preferred that people gain proteins from food such as food, fish, lentils, and beans.

In addition to the risks these supplements pose, Dr. Essam expressed concerns regarding the way medicines (not just fitness supplements) are stored in Egypt. He claims there is a lack of supervision on medicine storage in the country and as a result, some medicines might be rendered ineffective or dangerous due to being stored in non-ideal conditions.

RAPID WEIGHT LOSS OBSESSION According to the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), losing weight too quickly has negative side effects. First and foremost you are likely to regain the weight you rapidly lost, “The most effective way to lose weight and keep it off is to lose it gradually” the NHS website states. Additionally, losing weight too quickly can be just as dangerous as being obese, since you become at risk of other health problems such as malnutrition and gallstones. A safe weekly rate of weight loss, according to Britain’s health service, is one between 0.5 kilos and 1 kilos.

Dr. Essam is equally as critical of this trend of rapid weight loss since he believes that quick slimming should only be used in the cases of extreme medical conditions. For example, he described a cabbage

A safe weekly rate of weight loss, according to NHS, is one between 0.5 kilos and 1 kilos.

soup diet that Mayo Clinic developed back in 1988, which could help a person lose 5 to 6 kilos a month; however, the purpose of this diet was for morbidly obese people who had to undergo a specific heart surgery that needed them to be leaner by any means necessary.

He also said that rapid weight loss diets that are marketed on talk shows by television doctors are a waste of money since slower weight loss methods are better for maintaining a desired slimmer figure.

Moreover, Dr. Essam described bodies that lose weight quickly as “sponges” that will collect all the water, fat and calories it finds available and will thus eventually become obese again.

Dr. Essam ended the interview by saying that doctors who appear on TV to advertise their rapid weight loss methods aren’t “good” physicians since they don’t speak of the risks associated with their plans.

WHAT CAN BE DONE It is evident that there is a lack of awareness among the Egyptian public regarding healthy weight loss and as previously stated many Egyptians look for quick ways to get the bodies they want. The current Egyptian government has started prioritizing public health and this can be seen through many campaigns such as the “100 Million Healthy Lives” initiative. It is nevertheless necessary that the health ministry and other health officials campaign in favor of proper and healthy methods of weight loss. There should also be more regulation on the kinds of ads allowed on Egyptian television channels, and more importantly on the drugs and supplements that are floating around shops and the black market. All in all, if society continues to conflate health with body image, then many Egyptians will keep searching for easy and rapid ways to lose weight.

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“Lotif” whey protein ad showcasing a young girl with the white version of the product, which can supposedly be used by both young children and the elderly.

“Lotif” whey protein ad featuring Egyptian weight lifting champion El-Shahat Mabrouk.

If society continues to conflate health with body image, then many Egyptians will keep searching for easy and rapid ways to lose weight.

Egyptian advertisement showcasing “Dr. Ming’s Chinese Tea”, which supposedly helps users slim down.

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The First Week of the African Cup of Nations How the Tournament Brought about Drama on and off the Pitch

by Ali El Shamy The 2019 African Cup of Nations officially opened on June 21, as Egypt presented a simple yet stunning opening ceremony at the recently renovated Cairo International Stadium. The thousands of spectators were treated to a wonderful fireworks display, as a model of the three Giza pyramids took center stage of the stadium. The ceremony celebrated Egypt’s heritage with symbols from ancient Egypt were showcased and tanoura dancers showed their moves to the 70,000 viewers. The pyramids were illuminated with the flags and emblems of the 24 participating teams and by the closing stages of the ceremony, the drape adorning the largest pyramid dropped to reveal an immense model of the African Cup trophy. Finally, the tournament’s official song was performed by an ensemble African troupe consisting of Egyptian singer Hakim, Nigerian singer Femi Kuti and Ivorian singer Dobet Gnahore who sang the song in Arabic, English, and French. The first week of the tournament came and went and has bought with it a number of dramatic moments both on and off the pitch.

EGYPT QUALIFY TO ROUND OF 16 DESPITE LACKLUSTER PLAYING STYLE As hosts, Egypt are among the favorites to lift the African Cup. However, their opening match against Zimbabwe exposed some of the problems that the Pharaohs might face throughout the tournament. When Mexican coach Javier Aguirre took over the team last year, Egypt seemed to have abandoned Hector Cuper’s boring defensive tactics, opting instead for a more adventurous playing style. However, over the next few games, the tactics became inconsistent and what's worse is that during their game against Zimbabwe the team was playing the long ball tactic, one of the most amateurish playing styles in football. If the team hopes to go far in the tournament, then it is critical that they adopt a more attacking style after all Egypt has one of the world’s best forwards in Liverpool’s Mo Salah.

Thankfully, the team improved by their second group match as they comfortably scored two goals against DR

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Congo in which Ahmed Elmohamady and Salah’s strikes ensured that the seven-time champions would go through to the next round. It should be noted that the team was less thrilling during the second half since DR Congo kept on pressing and trying to keep their tournament hopes alive. However, Egypt’s defense and a world-class save from Mohamed El Shenawy secured a second clean sheet. While the host’s playing style still leaves a lot to be desired, the crowd’s support and a winning spirit will be vital for the rest of the tournament. Fortunately, certain individuals in the team have already shown a winning personality, namely defender Ahmed Hegazi who despite breaking his nose in the opening game, still played in the DR Congo game.

EGYPTIAN FA REMOVE AMR WARDA FROM TEAM AMID SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS Days before Egypt second group game, a model by the name of Merhan Keller leaked screenshots of inappropriate Whatsapp and Instagram messages from the footballer, and she also shared similar messages that Warda allegedly sent to other women. The screenshots also show the player becoming more unpleasant to the women after they rejected his advances. Shortly before the Congo DR match, the Egyptian FA delivered a statement saying that it expelled Warda from the remainder of the tournament.

Opening ceremony at Cairo International Stadium at 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Group A match between Egypt and Zimbabwe at Cairo International Stadium on June 2019 ,21 in Cairo, Egypt. (Getty)

“The head of the Egyptian Football Federation, Hani Abu Reda, has decided to dismiss Amr Warda from the team’s camp after consulting with the team’s technical and administrative staff, in order to maintain the state of discipline, commitment, and concentration,” the statement read.

After Egypt’s 0-2 victory Mo Salah weighed in on the controversy as he tweeted: “Women must be treated with the utmost respect. “No” means “no”. Those things are and must remain sacred. I also believe that many who make mistakes can change for the better and shouldn’t be sent straight to the guillotine, which is the easiest way out.”

Certain individuals in the Egyptian team have already shown a winning spirit, namely defender Ahmed Hegazi who despite breaking his nose in the opening game, still played in the DR Congo game. wives. Warda denied those allegations, but he was still dismissed from the team just three weeks after joining.

NIGERIA’S LATE GOALS HELP THEM QUALIFY Burundi made its African Cup debut this week as they faced off against Nigeria. Despite being the underdogs, the Burundi side put on a brave performance against the three-time African winners. The first half ended 0-0, but the Nigerians gradually improved their performance and at the 77th minute Odion Ighalo scored the game’s first and only goal. Nigeria scored late again in their second match against Guinea as Kenneth Omeruo scored a late header which was enough to see Nigeria become the first team to go through the next stage.

ALGERIA COMFORTABLY DEFEAT KENYA So far, Algeria has shown the best North African performance in the tournament. During their opening game against Kenya, the team pressed high, made 12 shots (four of them on goal) and made clinical passes.

Algeria’s constant attacking saw them get rewarded with a penalty after a foul on Youcef Atal, which Baghdad Bounedjah converted into a goal. Manchester City winger Riyad Mahrez then scored from Ismael Bennacer's beautiful cut-back assist, which turned the scoreline 0-2 before half time. Despite not slowing down in the second half, Kenya managed to prevent any further Algerian goals.

MORROCO NEEDED A BIT OF LUCK

He shortly made another tweet stating: “We need to believe in second chances... we need to guide and educate. Shunning is not the answer.”

It should be noted that this is not the first time Warda has faced such allegations, during a 2017 loan spell to Greek side PAOK, he was accused of sexually harassing two of his teammates'

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Despite being one of the tournament favorites, Morocco struggled against Namibia. The Namibians’ defensive tactics forced the Atlas Lions (the Moroccan team’s nickname) to rely on long-range shots. The Moroccan’s closest shot on goal came as substitute Sofiane Boufal made a shot inside the penalty box, which Namibian goalkeeper Lloyd Kazapua narrowly saved with his right

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leg. Morocco got a free kick at the 89th minute, Namibia forward Litamunua Keimuine tried to defend the shot but mistakenly scored against his own goal in the process and thus the game finished 0-1. While Morocco needed a bit of luck in the end, their constant attacking will be an asset to them during the tournament.

TUNISIA AND ANGOLA END GAME ON EQUAL TERMS Things seemed to look up for Tunisia in their opening

So far, Algeria has shown the best North African performance in the tournament. During their opening game against Kenya, the team pressed high, made 12 shots (four of them on goal) and made clinical passes.

game as Youssef Msakni scored a first-half penalty putting then 0-1 at halftime. Tunisia paid for not creating more chances, as a second-half goalkeeping error from Ben Moustapha led to a Djalma Campos rebound goal. The game ended 1-1, as both teams almost matched each other in terms of stats; both teams had 9 shots (both also had 3 shots on goal), and Angola had 51 percent of the ball’s position in comparison to Tunisia’s 49 percent.

MALI TURNS MAURITANIA’S DEBUT INTO A DISASTER Mauritania was thrilled to make its African Cup of Nations debut this week, but Mali soon taught the Arab nation that the tournament does not make exceptions for newcomers. At the 37th minute of the game, Abdoulay Diaby scored from outside the six-yard box and just before halftime, Mauritania conceded a penalty which Moussa Marenga converted into a goal. Adama Traoré scored Mali’s third goal at the 55th minute to turn the score 0-3. Around 20 minutes later, Mauritania was rewarded with a penalty and Hacen made history as he managed to score Mauritania’s debut African Cup of Nations goal. The joy was short-lived, however, as Adama Traoré scored his second goal which again from outside the six-yard box ending the game 1-4 in favor of Mali.

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Egypt's forward Mohamed Salah (C) Egypt's defender Abdullah al-Saeed (2ndL) and Egypt's midfielder Amr Warda (2nd-R) vie for the ball during a training session two days ahead of their opening match against Zimbabwe in the 2019 football Africa Cup of Nations.

(Getty)

Riyad Mahrez of Algeria and Dennis Odhiambo Omino and Francis Kahata Kahata Nyambura of Kenya during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Group C match between Algeria and Kenya. (Getty)

Mali's midfielder Diadie Samassekou (R) is marked by Mauritania's midfielder El Hacen EL Id during the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) football match between Mali and Mauritania. (Getty)

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B

ook Reviews

How Should a Liberal Be? Walter Bagehot and the Politics of Progress

by Sebastian Mallaby Foreign Affairs Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian. James Grant. Norton, .2019 368pp.

In James Grant, it sometimes seems, the nineteenth century has been resuscitated. Towering, gaunt, bow-tied, and pinstriped, he writes with a sly wit that recalls the novels of William Thackeray. His signal achievement is a fortnightly cult publication bearing the antique title Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. He is a nostalgic believer in the nineteenthcentury gold standard. He eyes modern banking innovations with stern, starch-collared suspicion, as though peering at them through a monocle. Even traditional financial instruments elicit a wry scorn. “To suppose that the value

of a common stock is determined purely by a corporation’s earnings,” Grant once wrote, “is to forget that people have burned witches, gone to war on a whim, risen to the defense of Joseph Stalin and believed Orson Welles when he told them over the radio that the Martians had landed.”

Now, Grant has written a delightful biography of Walter Bagehot, the great nineteenth-century Englishman in whom Grant perhaps recognizes a grander version of himself: the would-be Victorian sage is paying tribute to the authentic one. From 1861 until his death in 1877, Bagehot served as the third and most famous editor of The Economist.

He was a confidant of William Gladstone, the dominant liberal politician of the era, and his words exercised such sway over successive governments that he was regarded as an honorary cabinet minister. After Bagehot’s death, a contemporary remarked that he might have been the most

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fascinating conversationalist in London.

Like Grant, Bagehot was a vivid wordsmith and a cult figure. Unlike Grant, Bagehot was generally a modernizer, a believer in progress, and therefore an opponent of the gold standard. (Bagehot’s views on certain matters, such as gender and race, were far from enlightened.) In his slim 1873 volume, Lombard Street, Bagehot explained how central banks should quell financial panics by printing currency and lending it liberally—“to merchants, to minor bankers, to ‘this man and that man,’ whenever the security is good.” To Grant’s evident dismay, this formulation has proved wildly influential ever since. In his memoir of the 2008 financial crash and the bank bailouts that followed, Ben Bernanke, the former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, cited Bagehot more than any living economist.

Walter Bagehot, 3 February 24 - 1826 March 1877, was a British journalist, businessman and essayist, who wrote about government, economics and literature, digital improved reproduction of a woodcut publication from the year 1888.

(Getty)

If the tension between the hard-money biographer and the soft-money subject permeates Grant’s book, it is not the only theme that captures one’s attention. For just as Bagehot was the father of the lender-of-last-resort doctrine, so was he a progenitor of a wider political tradition. What U.S.President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called “the Third Way,” and what others sometimes label “the radical center,” Bagehot summed up in his favorite political watchword: “animated moderation.” He believed, as Grant writes, “in progress, religious liberty, limited government, clean elections, non-entanglement in foreign wars, [and] free trade.” Like other liberals of the time, he “opposed the brutal laws to punish free speech, crush delinquent debtors, hang shoplifters, and maim poachers.” Even as he defined the political center, Bagehot rejected the mystical traditionalism of conservatives and the leveling democratic ideals of revolutionaries. For the modern reader, living at a time when classical liberal values are in retreat, it is instructive to contemplate a giant who embodied them.

LIBERAL REALISM Although Bagehot has much to teach his political heirs, his liberalism was often selective—a reminder that even the greatest liberals are not always right and not always liberal.

Bagehot believed in progress and change but did not fancy too much of them. As a young man in Paris in the early 1850s, he witnessed Louis-Napoléon, the French president and a nephew of Napoleon I, disband Parliament and take the title of “emperor.” Bagehot defended the crackdown and the attendant executions, regarding them as a necessary response to the red specter and claiming that they commanded support among the “inferior people.” As Grant summarizes Bagehot’s perspective, “The overexcitable French were incapable of governing themselves in a parliamentary system; their national character did not allow

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Liberals, as Bagehot himself put it, should be “heedless of large theories and speculations.” Their duty, above all, is to be right—not theoretically but practically. it.” Democracy be damned. France needed a tyrant.

Nearly a dozen years later, at the onset of the American Civil War, Bagehot’s liberal values had apparently not deepened. He sided with the Confederates, partly because the Union’s tariffs on British manufacturers irked him.

Claiming to abhor slavery, he nonetheless wondered if there were “any grounds for assuming that, as a body, the negroes would prefer being their own masters with Northern treatment to being cared for and occasionally maltreated by their Confederate owners.” After President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Bagehot accused him of encouraging a slave uprising. “To arm savages against your antagonist is to make war like savages, and to descend to the level of savages,” he wrote.

Contemptuous of slaves, Bagehot was also heartily misogynistic. Addressing the question of the economic role of women, he declared himself “very favorable to their employment as laborers or in other menial capacity.” But he doubted that the female temperament was capable of taking on responsibility. “I am sure the nerves of most women would break down under the anxiety,” he asserted. In a prelude to his biography, Grant quotes the British historian G. M. Young, who saw in Bagehot “the most precious element in Victorian civilization, its robust and masculine sanity.” The second adjective was perhaps more fitting than the first.

Yet there is a lesson in Bagehot’s failings. For him, gradualism was a virtue: the iniquities of the status quo had to be balanced against the risks of rapid change, which might outstrip the human capacity for adaptation. In the cases of slavery and women, Bagehot got that balance very wrong. It was true that white Northerners in the United States abused free black laborers, but it certainly did not follow that slavery was more desirable; and one wonders what Bagehot’s contemporary Florence Nightingale, the pioneering British nurse known for her bravery during the Crimean War, would have had to say about the allegedly frail nerves of women. But in other instances, Bagehot

B

ook Reviews

balanced continuity and change in a more defensible way, proving the vital principle that there is more to wisdom than principles.

Thus it was with the Victorian debate over the franchise. The democratic principle logically implied that everyone should have the vote; Bagehot nonetheless feared that a universal franchise would undermine democracy in practice. He favored relaxing the requirement that voters own property, but gradually.

It would be counterproductive to extend rights to those who were not ready to exercise them. In 1866, when Gladstone, then the chancellor of the exchequer, introduced a bill that would allow more working-class men to vote, Bagehot criticized the proposal as overreach. The bill, he charged, would “enfranchise a very large number of persons who will consider their votes, and whose wives will consider their votes, as so much saleable property.” This was not a frivolous concern. Grant recounts a hilarious interlude in which Bagehot stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Despite Bagehot’s express instructions that he wanted a clean race, his election agents bought votes on his behalf and then brazenly demanded repayment.

Herein lies an uncomfortable message for today’s liberals. A policy can be attractive in principle but mistaken in practice.

Consider the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq: in principle, removing a dictator and replacing him with a democratic regime might have been a good idea; in practice, it was not. Following the same logic, if Bagehot were alive today, he might favor immigration restrictions in advanced democracies. In principle, liberal immigration policies enhance individual freedom and promote economic growth. In practice, too much of a good thing can sour the public on the project of an open society.

Likewise, trade and technological progress are the drivers of prosperity, but their benefits must be weighed against the fact that citizens resent upheaval. A system that permits financiers to price and insure risk should serve economic growth, yet such a system can collapse under its own weight, with society suffering the consequences.

Liberalism, in other words, should not consist only of fealty

Herein lies an uncomfortable message for today’s liberals. A policy can be attractive in principle but mistaken in practice.

to liberty, equality, and fraternity, the seductive abstractions of the French Revolution. It should also be about outcomes. A liberal has a responsibility to ask what works, what is efficient, and what produces results. Unless a political credo improves society’s fortunes, it deserves to be discarded.

BAGEHOTIAN BANKING Bagehot’s pragmatism—his focus on what worked rather than what principle dictated—underlies his most lasting intellectual contributions. It runs through Lombard Street, Bagehot’s financial treatise, whose defense of bailouts so deeply offends Grant’s hard-money standards. Grant scolds Bagehot for “his embrace of the dubious notion, so corrosive to financial prudence, that the central bank has a special obligation to the citizens who present themselves as borrowers and lenders, investors and speculators. No other class of person enjoys access to the government’s money machinery.” Grant also has a soft spot for Bagehot’s contemporary antagonist, the justly forgotten Thomson Hankey, who worried about the moral hazard created by central banks acting as lenders of last resort.

“The most mischievous doctrine ever broached,” Hankey called it.

In principle, of course, Grant and Hankey have a point. It seems offensive that the Federal Reserve should bail out Wall Street fat cats and yet allow hard-pressed homeowners to suffer the disaster of foreclosure. It seems evident that bailouts only weaken borrowers’ incentives to restrain themselves, thus compounding the fragility of finance. But the answer to these arguments is that in practice, bailouts work: by furnishing a panicked system with money, they prevent a freeze in payments that would cause a depression. For this practical reason, governments repeatedly suspended the gold standard during

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interest rates and against good collateral. To an extent that Grant is unwilling to acknowledge, this formula has worked well. Even the Fed’s enormously openhanded 2008 bailouts were made on terms that were sufficiently Bagehotian to generate a profit for taxpayers.

GRACE NOTES OF DEMOCRACY Bagehot’s second lasting achievement was his 1867 book, The English Constitution. As he had done with central banking, he took aim at a phenomenon that had not been codified (the British having never adopted an official constitution) to explain how it actually functioned. Bagehot’s central observation was that the British government consisted of two parts: the “efficient” and the “dignified,” or “theatrical.” The efficient segment—the cabinet, administrative departments, and the committees of Parliament— did the work. The theatrical segment—the queen, the nobility, and the decorative rich—might appear, “according to abstract theory, a defect in our constitutional polity,” but these apparently superfluous adornments played the vital role of inspiring deference from the “vacant many.” The wisdom of learned statesmen—here Bagehot was no doubt thinking of himself—could be turned into government policy thanks to the narcotic properties of bejeweled duchesses.

English prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1898 - 1809) delivering his last speech in the House of Commons, London. (Getty)

financial crunches, even as the authorities, acknowledging that the likes of Grant and Hankey were correct in principle, fervently pretended that each suspension was a one-time exception. The British government made supposedly one-off exceptions in ,1847 1857, and 1866. Even in 1971, when U.S. President Richard Nixon abandoned the dollar-gold link, his administration claimed that the break was temporary.

Back in the 1870s, Bagehot’s contribution to this debate was to observe what was happening, rather than comment on what theoretically ought to be happening. In principle, a gold standard that ruled out the possibility of bailouts might be expected to deter reckless financial risk-taking. In practice, it did not: “In a great country like this,” Bagehot remarked, “there will always be some unsound banks, as well as some insolvent merchants.”

Because reckless behavior persisted, the central bank had to respond. And respond it did, even as it refused to admit that it was bound to do so—“though the practice is mended the theory is not,” as Bagehot put it. The stability of the financial system thus depended on the actions of a central bank that formally denied responsibility for it.

It would be better, Bagehot urged, to recognize reality. Banks would inevitably need bailing out, so the important question was how to do it properly. To this end, Bagehot propounded his famous formula: central banks should lend liberally but at high

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Which brings one back to the liberalism of the present. Bagehot’s ruminations on the theatrical branch point to the role of emotion in politics. The United Kingdom’s largely ornamental monarchy mattered precisely because it bypassed reason, making it devilishly potent. “So long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak,” Bagehot explained, “royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffused feeling, and republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.” If that judgment is accurate, this century’s largely postmonarchical democracies are in trouble. Today’s most potent emotional manipulation comes not from scenic royals but from online provocateurs and conspiracy theorists. Their efforts serve not to legitimize sages like Bagehot but to sow skepticism about the expert establishment.

Grant has written a gem of a book: entertaining, wry, and gloriously eccentric. Readers learn that the mud in London was 57 parts horse dung and that Bagehot played “zestful games of cup-and-ball” wearing—yes—a monocle. Along the way, they get a nasty feeling that even the greatest liberals have feet of clay and that the Victorian version of the radical center enjoyed a deference that is inconceivable today. But there is also a positive lesson to be drawn, one that is less about policies than about temperament. Liberals, as Bagehot himself put it, should be “heedless of large theories and speculations.” Their duty, above all, is to be right—not theoretically but practically.

SEBASTIAN MALLABY is Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs.

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