Does Iran Want a Confrontation?

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Does Iran Want a Confrontation? www.majalla.com

Editorial Ever since May, the relationship between the US and Iran has greatly shifted from mutual distrust to troubling escalations that have placed both states on the brink of violent confrontation. During the past two months, Iran has been attacking a number of oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, all of which belonged to US allies in the region, moreover, the regime has also gone as far as to down a US drone. Iran has also continued to use its proxies to destabilize the region, for instance, the Iran allied Houthis in Yemen have recently attacked a Saudi airport. While the US has responded to Iran’s activities, the latter has shown little signs of retracting its threats and the drums of war seem to be getting louder with each passing day. This week’s issue of Majalla focuses on Iran’s growing threats and how international and regional actors are preparing for them.

This week’s cover story by Hanin Ghaddar is on Iran’s recent threats to further reduce its commitments to the JCPOA as the regime recently announced that it increased its low uranium enrichment activities. Unlike its previous escalatory measures, this recent decision targets the European powers which have failed to persuade the US to ease its sanctions. The writer notes that this marks a shift in the regime’s strategy, as it was previously taking the Trump administrations sanctions hoping that he would be voted out by the next election cycle. But now faced with economic collapse, the regime is forced to take desperate measures.

Joseph Braude writes on the measures US and Israel are taking in case of war with Iran. The writer states that some members of the Trump administration are calling for the president to cancel the five remaining waivers its sanctions on Iran; this, in turn, would prevent European entities from trading with the regime. Meanwhile, Israel has been preparing for a possible clash with Iran and has recently attacked Iranian military sites in Syria.

This week Ali El Shamy has focused on the 30th anniversary of Omar AlBashir’s coup which ended Sudan’s brief democratic experiment. The writer analyzes how most of his policies as president has ultimately led to his demise, and how his negligence and violent tendencies left the nation underdeveloped, undereducated and enraged. The writer then lists the mistakes that Bashir did and how the future ruler of Sudan must avoid them at all costs.

Yasmine El-Geressi went to the Arab British Economic Summit this week, where she met the various UK and Middle East-based policymakers, economic experts and businesspeople. Among her interviewees are the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, Gulf Cooperation Council chief Abdullatif Al Zayani, and Haifa Fahmoum Al Kayla, Founder, and Chairman of the Arab International Women’s Forum.

Most of the interviewees said that Brexit presents a good opportunity for renewed economic relations between Britain and the Arab world, and some have observed the impact Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan can have for the region and the globe as a whole.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

26 Africa’s Democratic Moment?

Issue 1755- july - 05/07/2019

32 Hong Kong’s Muzzled Generation Cries Out

40 In Conversation with Bandar Reda, Secretary

General of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce

16 The U.S. and Iran Are Marching Toward War

14 U.S. And Israel Prepare For Intensified Conflict With Iran

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Cori “Coco” Gauff

44 Rehiring Your Business Mind 3

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Tourists take photos of hot air balloons glide over the historical Cappadocia region from their hotel's terrace, in Central Anatolia's Nevsehir province, Turkey on June 2019 ,29. Cappadocia is preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage site and is famous for its chimney rocks, hot air balloon trips, underground cities and boutique hotels carved into rocks. (Getty)

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Jockeys compete at the historical horse race Palio di Siena 2019 on July 2019 ,02 in Siena, Italy. The Palio horse race in Siena takes place annually twice a year on July 2, Palio of Provenzano, and August 16, Palio of the Assumption. (Getty)

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eekly news and civilians in the process. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Israel’s strikes killed at least 15 individuals. Israel declined to comment on the attack, but the Syrian foreign ministry filed a complaint to the UN Security Council over the attack. Syria would go on to fire anti-aircraft missiles at what they believed to be Israeli warplanes, and one of the fired rockets accidentally hit Cyprus.

Britain Seizes Tanker Headed Towards Syria

Iran Threatens to Increase Uranium Enrichment, Trump Responds Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, warns that his country will soon reduce more of its JCPOA commitments as the Islamic Republic is set to increase its uranium enrichment activities. “On July 7, our enrichment level will no longer be %3.67. We will put aside this commitment. We will increase (the enrichment level) beyond %3.67 to as much as we want, as much as is necessary, as much as we need,” Rouhani told a cabinet meeting.

The threat came as other parties (particularly those in Europe) in the JCPOA failed to provide Iran

with relief from US sanctions. Trump would go on to warn Iran over Twitter: “Be careful with the threats, Iran. They can come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before!” Some members of the Trump administration would go on to call for the cancellation the five remaining waivers on American sanctions which allow European entities to continue doing business with Iran.

Israel and Syria Participate in Airstrike Battles Israel conducted airstrikes on Iranian military sites located in Syria, killing both military personnel

Grace 1, an oil tanker that was allegedly going to Syria, was seized by British forces in Gibraltar.

Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said that local law enforcement authorities requested assistance from the British Marines to carry out the operation. The BBC reported that the UK sent 30 marines, from 42 Commando to the Mediterranean.

The tanker was allegedly filled with crude oil from Iran, which was being delivered to the Baniyas Refinery in the Syrian Mediterranean port town of Tartous. Such an action would be a breach of EU sanctions on the Assad regime which have been put in place since 2011, and a sanction on the refinery itself which has existed since 2014. The Islamic Republic then summoned the British Ambassador in Tehran to complain against what it believes was an illegal seizure on one of its tankers.

Sudan’s Transitional Government and Opposition Resume Talks A month after their talks collapsed the Transitional

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Military Council and the Forces of Freedom and Change restarted negotiations on who should lead the council that would pave the way for elections in Sudan. The opposition called off the first round of talks in response to clashes between security forces and protestors outside the Defense Ministry, but an Ethiopian led mediating party persuaded both sides to go back to the negotiating table. The opposition said that they would speak with the Council for three days and asked for the release of political prisoners, a demand that is seemingly being met as state television said that the military council had pardoned 235 detained members of the Sudan Liberation Movement, a rebel group active in the western Darfur region.

Merkel Ally Set to Succeed Juncker German Minister of Defense, Ursula von der Leyen, has been nominated by national EU leaders to replace Jean-Claude Junker as President of the European Commission. Von der Leyen is a long-

time ally of German Chancellor Angela Markel as she is the only person to serve in all her cabinets.

Before becoming Defense Minister, Von der Leyen, served as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs and Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, respectively. Von der Leyen will still need the approval of the European Parliament before she can assume her post in November; the vote is to take place in the week beginning of July 15. As a European federalist, she will likely face opposition from Eurosceptic MEPs.

colony, the UK voiced concerns over the way China has been handling the situation and fears that the People’s Republic is violating the “one country, two systems” arrangement for Hong Kong. The arrangement was agreed upon by both the UK and China which guaranteed that the port city would continue to enjoy its autonomy until 2047. China, naturally, did not respond well to the UK’s support

Hong Kongers Storm Parliament, UK Voices Concern On July 1, the 22nd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China, opposition protestors stormed into and occupied the city’s parliament. The action came following a month-long protest against the controversial extradition bill which would allow for arrested Hong Kongers to be transferred to mainland China for persecution. As a former British

for Hong Kong and has accused it of meddling in international affairs.

The Brexit Party Wreaks Havoc in the European Parliament At the opening session at the European Parliament, 29 Brexit Party MEPs turned their backs during the playing of the EU Anthem, Ode to Joy. The pro-EU Lib-Dem MEPs had their own antics that day, as they adorned shirts that said “Stop Brexit” on the front and “Bullocks to Brexit” on the back. Later that week, Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe caused more controversy as she compared Britain’s membership of the EU to slavery: “there is a pattern consistent throughout history of oppressed people turning on the oppressors. Slaves against their owners.

The peasantry against the feudal barons.

Colonies... against their empires. "And that is why Britain is leaving. It doesn't matter which language you use, we are going and we are glad to be going.

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over story

Does Iran Want a Confrontation?

Why the Regime is Setting its Sights on Europe by: Hanin Ghaddar Iran has announcement on Monday that it has surpassed the limit of low-enriched uranium it could stockpile under the 2015 nuclear agreement. Although it this is technically not a major escalation, its messaging and repercussions could be major.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that the move to amass uranium beyond the -300kilogram cap stated in the deal was a warning to Europe. He gave notice that Iran could also reduce other commitments it signed on if other parties – that is the Europeans – do not start living up to their end of the deal.

Iran – as US president Donald trump said – is

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indeed playing with fire. But it doesn’t seem that the regime has a choice in the matter. If they don’t respond to the US “maximum pressure” campaign, their economy will crumble, and when they respond, whether militarily or with decisions to violate the nuclear agreement, they risk to loose the European support, or worse, a war that might lead to their loss and the probable annihilation of their militias in the region.

WHY IS IRAN ESCALATING? Iran is mainly trying to warn the Europeans.

They desperately need Europe to take measures to ease their economic crisis, and take a more aggressive diplomatic stance to save the deal and ease sanctions. However, the Iranian regime is also trying to send a message to Washington.

Until recently, Iran’s strategy has been to accept the hits caused by sanctions and diplomatic isolation, and wait until the US presidential in year 2020, hoping that the Trump administration would leave the scene. Meanwhile, they have been trying to maintain the deal, hoping that the Europeans would begin delivering on promised economic relief.

That doesn’t seem to be working, and Iran seems to have decided to shift strategy. Europe hasn’t delivered. US sanctions have increased, and the Trump administration doesn’t seem to be reconsidering a different approach.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (R) delivers a statement, flanked

by European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne) on April 2015 ,2. (Getty)

Iran started by testing the US reactions by using its proxy in Yemen – the Houthis – to launch several attacks against Saudi Arabia, then attached the oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and finally downed a US drone. After each and every incident, many observers expected a military response from the Trump administration, especially after the downing of the drone.

However, the US still chose not to strike Iran or any of its military facilities that were involved.

Until recently, Iran’s strategy has been to accept the hits caused by sanctions and diplomatic isolation, and wait until the US presidential in year 2020, hoping that the Trump administration would leave the scene. the US public opinion and dragging Trump to a military response could had grave consequences in his candidacy.

The Trump administration declined to respond militarily but did respond in other ways. Right after the incident, more sanctions were released, including ones on the Supreme leader himself. I addition, the US launched a cyber attack against Iran.

The US targeted an intelligence group that either has ties to or was a part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. That group has apparently been connected to the attacks against the oil tankers in the region. According to media reports, the attack was crippling to Iran’s military command and control system. Other reports said that the Iranian missile control systems were also targeted.

Iran failed to drag the US into military action, but it did get a response. Meanwhile, Iran seemed to be the only player that is relying on military tactics that lead to casualties. Consequently, the regime in Tehran is making it more difficult for Europe to remain patient and committed to the nuclear agreement.

The Europeans might get to a point where they For Trump, Iran wanted to drag the US to lose the patience. All Iran’s efforts to divide a military strike, hoping it was not going to the US and its European allies will fail if Iran be major, but enough to endanger Trump’s continues to use this tactic of provocation. presidential candidacy for 2020. The Iranian The Europeans might eventually decide to join regime understood that war was not agreeable to Washington’s “extreme pressure” campaign and

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over story

take a stance against Iran.

THE WAR IS HAPPENING ELSEWHERE

As Iran is testing the US limits, and warning Europeans, Iran’s regional presence and operations are getting hit in a different way.

On the same day, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi issued a derivative to the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMFs) that they must complete their integration with the Iraqi army by then of July 2019. He said that the PMFs must close their economic offices and steer clear of interests outside the military, sever ties with political leaders, and discard their militia names.

Muqtada Al-Sadr was the first to accept the premier’s call.

This decision came after an attack on Saudi oil infrastructure in May was suspected to have originated from Iraq. In addition, there have been concerns that Kataeb Hezbollah was involved in storming the Bahraini embassy in Baghdad on June 27.

Although it is too early to see if this move is a serious step by Abdel-Mahdi, and if the rest of the PMFs are going to support this decision, the statement itself is loaded with messages.

Even if Iran’s supported militias in Iraq are not going to dismantle and join the Iraqi army, it will become more difficult for Iran to use Iraq as a base to attack US and Gulf state’s interests in the region.

Russia allowed Israel to destroy a major part of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria, and Hezbollah did not respond, leaving the Syrian army to their weak attempts.

That same night, first of July, Israel targeted ten Iranian and Hezbollah facilities in Syria, killing sixteen of their personnel. This was one of the largest Israeli attacks in recent years.

The timing is also interesting as it took place a few days after the summit in Jerusalem of national security advisors from the US, Russia and Israel. Reports about the distribution of the sites that were attacked show that Israel was after Iran’s infrastructure in Syria, which is the logistical chain that supplies advanced weapons to Hezbollah, and linking Iran to Lebanon via Syria.

This couldn’t have happened without close coordination with the Russians. The S300surface-to-air missile system that the Russians said they had delivered to the Syrian army did not operate this time. The Syrian army fired a series of S200- missiles in response to the attack, with one falling on the Turkish part of Cyprus.

Russia allowed Israel to destroy a major part of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria, and Hezbollah did not respond, leaving the Syrian army to their weak attempts. If anything, this means that even if Iran wanted to respond to the US sanctions, it

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R2-), Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev (R), Israel's National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat (L) and U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton (L2-) attend the Trilateral summit of USA - Russia - Israel in Jerusalem on June ,25 2019. (Getty)

All Iran’s efforts to divide the US and its European allies will fail if Iran continues to use this tactic of provocation. can only do very calibrated and feeble attacks, because Iran cannot afford a war with Israel or with the US. These attacks can’t change much in the status co, won’t stop the US from increasing pressure on Iran, and will only make Iran look desperate.

But more importantly, Iran will lose the European support for the nuclear deal, and will push them further into isolation. Iran’s choices are limited, and the regime’s future doesn’t look so bright.

US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton are seen during a bilateral meeting with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on June 2019 ,20. (Getty)

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U.S. And Israel Prepare For Intensified Conflict With Iran

Tensions In Region Reach Alarming Boiling Points

by Joseph Braude As elevated tensions between the U.S. and Iran enter their second consecutive month, American policymakers have been joined by their Israeli counterparts in outlining preparations for an intensified conflict. In Washington, some Republicans are calling for an end to sanction waivers that have so far granted Tehran a tenuous link to the international economy. Meanwhile in Jerusalem, senior officials are openly assessing the implications of open-ended

conflict between Iran and the West, and laying the groundwork for their response.

CALLS GROW TO END WAIVERS FOR IRAN SANCTIONS More hawkish voices within the Trump Administration are calling on the President and State Department to cancel the five remaining waivers on American sanctions which enable some, primarily European entities to continue doing business with Iran.

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According to a recent essay in Mosaic Magazine that has been making its way through the White House and National Security Council, if President Trump “were either to revoke the remaining five cooperation waivers or to invoke the snapback in the next seventeen months, he could permanently alter the status quo, dismantling the structure that provides Iran with international legitimacy for its nuclear weapons program.”

The argument has also found an echo among Senate Republicans. On June 26, Senator Ted Cruz praised the essay as a “crucial analysis” and stated that it is “time to finally shred the deal.” After lobbying President Trump to decline renewal of the waivers when they expire in August, Senator Marco Rubio commented that his “sense of it is the administration is not in a waiver mood right now.”

More hawkish voices within the Trump Administration are calling on the President and State Department to cancel the five remaining waivers on American sanctions which enable some, primarily European entities to continue doing business with Iran.

ISRAEL PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE CLASH WITH IRAN

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order imposing new sanctions on Iran in the Oval Office at the White House on June 2019 ,24 in Washington, DC. (Getty)

Jerusalem, for its part, has accelerated preparations for the fallout of a possible clash between the U.S. and Iran. At the recent IDC conference in Herzliya, Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz told an international forum that the period of ongoing but contained conflict with Iran may be drawing to a close. In his view, “mistaken calculations by the [Iranian] regime . ..are liable to bring about a shift from the ‘gray zone’ to the ‘red zone’ — that is, a military conflagration,” and that Israel would have to “devote itself to building up its military might for the event that it will have to respond to escalation scenarios.”

At the same time, Mossad chief Yossi Cohen accused Iran of responsibility for the repeated attacks on oil tankers in the Arabian Gulf. On July 1, Cohen told those gathered at Herzliya, “I can say to you with certainty, from the best sources of Israeli and Western intelligence, that Iran is behind these attacks.” In Cohen’s assessment, “through these attacks, Iran is trying to say to the world — a world that is afraid of escalation — that if the sanctions are not lifted, it will cause serious damage to the world oil economy.”

In a possible move to prepare for a future escalation, Israeli warplanes struck several Iranian military sites in Syria overnight on July 1, killing several fighters and civilians. Among the IAF’s targets were regional headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards south of Damascus, a scientific research center believed to be employed in weapons manufacture in the countryside around the city,

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a trilateral summit between the US, Israel and Russia, in Jerusalem on June 2019 ,25. (Getty)

and a number of positions held by Hezbollah.

A HOT AUGUST IN STORE As Iran exceeds enrichment limits set by the JCPOA, and Washington girds for cutting off the last vestiges of the Iran nuclear deal, it is entirely possible that the Israeli assessments of imminent escalation are justified. Should this prove to be the case, the first test is likely to come on August 1, when the five remaining sanctions waivers which uphold the nuclear status quo come up for renewal. If President Trump, as some expect, declines to renew, a new round of escalation from Tehran is likely not far behind.

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The U.S. and Iran Are Marching Toward War Can They Find a Solution Before It’s Too Late?

by Afshon Ostovar With each passing day, the United States and Iran draw each other deeper into conflict. So far, they have stopped short of war. But the likelihood of an armed conflict increases with every additional provocation, whether it is an attack on a civilian tanker ship or another round of sanctions. President Donald Trump’s

administration has pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran built on suffocating economic sanctions and a de facto oil and gas embargo.

Iran has pursued a maximum resistance strategy, escalating into attacks on shipping lanes, downing a U.S. drone over the Persian Gulf, and rejecting out of hand all opportunities for de-escalatory talks with Washington. With both states unwilling to back down, the march toward war continues.

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Although Iran’s nuclear program had become a focal point of U.S.Iranian tensions, it was never the real source of acrimony between the two countries. The roots of those tensions lay deeper. foreign policy in the Middle East, but it created a much-needed mechanism for diplomatic engagement, which the deal’s proponents saw as necessary to avoid a war.

Trump was an outspoken critic of the deal on the campaign trail, and upon taking office, he began to ratchet up pressure on Tehran. For all its faults, the Trump administration at least seemed to grasp a crucial fact: although Iran’s nuclear program had become a focal point of U.S.-Iranian tensions, it was never the real source of acrimony between the two countries. The roots of those tensions lay deeper— in Iran’s support for militant groups at war with Israel, such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in its ties to enemies of the United States’ Gulf allies, such as the Houthis in Yemen. No less consequential was Iran’s support for Iraqi militias that killed hundreds of U.S. military personnel at the height of the Iraq war and that continue to threaten U.S. troops there.

A picture obtained by AFP from Iranian News Agency ISNA on June 2019 ,13 shows fire and smoke billowing from Norwegian owned Front Altair tanker attacked in the waters of the Gulf of Oman. (Getty)

A DEEPER SOURCE OF CONFLICT That relations could have deteriorated to this degree is remarkable. Only four years ago, Washington and Tehran signed a historic multilateral agreement that curtailed Iran’s nuclear enrichment program in exchange for U.S. sanctions relief. The deal didn’t end the mistrust between the two countries, nor did it solve long-standing disagreements about Iran’s

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Hoping to induce a change in the Islamic Republic’s behavior, Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and embarked on a sanctions-based “maximum pressure” campaign. His administration presented Tehran with a list of 12 demands, most of which concerned Iran’s regional activities, with the remainder relating to the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Taken together, Trump’s conditions essentially asked Iran to abandon its grand strategy and surrender its most valuable military deterrents. In exchange, the United States promised not only to lift sanctions on Iran but also to help restore its economy and normalize diplomatic relations.

The Islamic Republic, unsurprisingly, rejected the demands outright. Tehran then looked to Europe, Russia, and China, hoping that some or all of these actors would pressure the Trump administration to

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walk back its demands or else provide a means of bypassing the U.S. sanctions regime. Yet Iran had apparently neither amassed enough clout nor earned sufficient goodwill to secure foreign backing against the United States. The regime was effectively alone.

THE LOGIC OF ESCALATION With U.S. sanctions beginning to take their toll, Iran needed to find a way out of this bind. It had three options: It could give in to U.S. demands or at least appease Washington by seeking dialogue. It could tough it out and hope that Trump would lose his 2020 reelection bid. Or it could push back and raise the stakes by showing it was prepared to escalate.

Judging by its recent behavior, the Islamic Republic seems to have chosen the third option. Iranis widely believed to have been responsible for an attack against commercial ships in the Gulf of Oman on May 12. U.S. officials had repeatedly warned that Iran might be planning such a strike, and many observers anticipated that the incident would trigger a U.S. military response. Instead of escalating, however, the United States responded with calls for dialogue without preconditions.

Assuming that Iran was indeed behind the attack, the operation was a clear victory for Tehran. By mounting a costly but nonlethal attack on civilian shipping lanes, it had shifted U.S. policy from escalation to dialogue. Trump followed through by asking Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to deliver a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, expressing his

lasting solution to the crisis requires compromise and an end to Iran’s destabilizing foreign policy in the region. These days, it seems less and less likely that Iran will follow this path—but it’s the one the Iranian people deserve.

desire for talks. But when Abe met with Khamenei in Tehran on June 13, both the letter and the offer for dialogue were summarily dismissed. That same day, two more oil tankers, including a Japanese-flagged vessel, were attacked in the Gulf of Oman. The United States again pegged Iran as the probable culprit, and this time the U.S. Navy provided surveillance video showing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel onboard a patrol craft removing a suspected limpet mine from the hull of one of the tankers before speeding off toward the Iranian port at Bandar-e-Jask.

Iran had engineered an opportunity for dialogue and promptly squandered it. Even if the U.S.overture was insincere, as Iran’s leaders probably assumed, Iran never cared to test it. Appearing open to de-escalatory dialogue would have won Iran leverage with the United States and sympathy from the international community. Instead, Khamenei flippantly rejected the off-ramp he’d been offered, embarrassing the prime minister of a neutral foreign power and risking open war with the United States by attacking civilian targets in the Gulf of Oman.

Such behavior is counterproductive and dangerous, but not altogether unexpected, given the tight boundaries Khamenei has imposed for how to engage with the United States: Iran’s leader has demanded a complete reversal of the Trump administration’s policy but refuses to engage in talks while sanctions are still in place. Unwilling to suffer through sanctions or seek compromise, Iran has only one remaining option: to escalate and challenge the Trump administration’s resolve.

In keeping with this logic, Iran proceeded on June 20 to shoot down a U.S. Navy surveillance drone over international waters. (Iran claims the drone was over Iranian territorial waters.) The choice of an unmanned target likely signaled Tehran’s desire to escalate within limits, but its action still forced an American response. Trump reportedly ordered a series of U.S. strikes against Iranian missile and radar positions but halted the operation at the last minute. Instead, the United Statesclaimed to have carried out limited cyberattacks targeting command-and-control nodes for Iran’s missile systems. The Trump administration also announced additional sanctions on a massive financial conglomeration controlled by Khamenei and on a host of IRGC navy commanders—and

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US President Donald Trump shows an executive order on sanctions on Iran's supreme leader in the Oval Office of the White House on June 2019 ,24.

(Getty)

warned of possible future sanctions against Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Trump’s response shows that Washington has become just as boxed in as Tehran. The president’s policies have led the United States to the brink of an elective war with Iran, and his administration’s behavior—especially the threat of sanctions against Iran’s top diplomat—has undercut the sincerity of his repeated calls for talks. Sanctions seem to be the only tool the administration is comfortable with, but at this point new sanctions are almost ceremonial, since the most economically damaging ones have long ago been enacted. Even so, they make negotiations more difficult: following the latest round of sanctions, Iranian officials declared any window for diplomacy closed for good—an admittedly rich declaration given Iran’s previous refusal to engage in talks.

Over the last week, the rhetoric on both sides has sunk to the level of schoolyard taunts. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani snapped that “The White House has become stricken with mental disability.”

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Trump, perhaps responding to some news reports that rendered Rouhani’s Persian more crudely as “retarded,” shot back with what seemed like a new U.S. redline, tweeting, “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”

What remains are two states unwilling to compromise, unable to talk, and too proud to back down. Neither side seems to want a war, but both are steadily moving in that direction, boxed in by their own maximalist policies and intransigence. But peace will not come through attacking ships or shooting slow planes out of the sky. A lasting solution to the crisis requires compromise and an end to Iran’s destabilizing foreign policy in the region. These days, it seems less and less likely that Iran will follow this path—but it’s the one the Iranian people deserve.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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pinion

US-Iran Tensions: From Maximum Pressure to Maximum Leverage?

by Dennis Ross

Iran has now exceeded the amount of low enriched uranium that it can have stockpiled as part of the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal. Its Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, announced it will soon start enriching uranium above the 3.67 percent of purification that is permitted in the deal. Shia proxy attacks have continued with increasing regularity against America’s partners in the region, with Saudi Arabia experiencing missile and drone attacks by the Houthis against oil pumping facilities and civilian airports. And, of course, sabotage against shipping has taken place and even if paused for a while, we should not assume that it has ended.

What is going on? Put simply, the Iranian leadership is practicing its own version of maximum pressure in response to the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” policy. The Iranian maximum pressure is probably designed to achieve several aims: first, show President Trump that pressure is a two-way street and Iran has many options for deniable ways of applying its own pressure on American interests and friends in the region. Second, raise the oil price because the president has shown sensitivity to that but also because with Iran’s ability to export severely limited, it wants to maximize

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the revenue it can generate. Third, give America’s friends and partners a reason to urge the Administration a reason to ease off of the pressure.

On the latter point of getting the US to ease off the pressure, it is worth noting a speech that Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, gave on May 29th. In it, he said that the US was trying to pressure the Islamic Republic to come to negotiations in a weakened condition. He declared Iran would not give into the pressure and instead would apply its own “leverage.” We have been seeing the signs of Iranian leverage with the proxy attacks, the deniable acts of sabotage and now the breaching of the JCPOA—a breach that could slowly reduce the Iranian breakout time again.

President Trump may say that the Iranians “are playing with fire,” but right now, they don’t seem to believe it.

The irony is that the both sides may see their maximum pressure as a prelude to negotiations, but negotiations in which their positions have been strengthened and the other sides’ weakened. The danger, of course, is a miscalculation.

At this point, it is hard not to conclude that the Iranians believe that the Trump

Administration will only act militarily against it if American forces are killed directly by the Iranians. Proxy rocket attacks on bases in Iraq have taken place in which US forces are present; fortunately, none have been hurt.

What would happen if they were? Does Iran think that as long as they can deny that they did anything—much like the limpet mines attached to the hulls of ships—that the US won’t react? I am not sure they should believe that, but suspect that they do.

Outside of the Middle East, only the British and Germans (belatedly) were prepared to say publicly Iran was responsible for the attacks on shipping. Find out what it takes to get others to place the blame on the Iranians.

Produce a multinational naval task force in response to show there is an international coalition prepared to protect shipping from such attacks. The less ability Iran has to deny attacks and get away with it, the less likely such attacks will take place.

The question for the Administration is how does it signal that Iran is in danger of misreading what the US will do? The problem with great public pronouncements is that once you say them either you act or you face a loss of credibility. John Bolton declared on May 5th that we were sending a carrier strike force to the Gulf because we had intelligence that the Iranians were preparing attacks against US forces and our friends. He proclaimed that we would use “relentless force” if our forces, our interests or our friends were threatened.

Since that time we were have seen six ships were attacked, Saudi facilities hit by Iranian proxies, similar missile attacks against Iraqi bases and an oil facility used by Exxon, and the destruction of the American drone. I have no doubt that National Security Advisor Bolton meant what he said. But his boss, the president, does not want to get sucked into another “endless Middle Eastern war.” That is an understandable sentiment but when the gap between words and actions opens up, it weakens credibility and deterrence.

Secondly, so long as the Administration does not have its own direct communications with the Iranians which would allow it to make points very clearly in private, it will have to rely on others. The problem is that if the Administration uses the Omanis, the Swiss, the Iraqis, and others to send messages, it runs the risk of each messenger tailoring the message.

It makes more sense to use just one messenger and one messenger that the Iranians will take seriously. Since the president has such trust in Vladimir Putin, why not use the Russians to convey the message that the Iranians are close to provoking a serious military response by Trump. Now Putin, of course, has to believe it—indeed has to believe that the US will act militarily if these attacks continue. Putin does not mind rising tensions—especially if it increases the price of oil—but he does not want to see US power used to shape what happens in the region. A warning by Putin won’t be dismissed in Tehran.

Another irony: if deterrence is weakened, the prospect of war goes up. There are a number of things the Administration could do to restore deterrence. For starters, it needs to make it harder for the Iranians to believe they can continue to carry out deniable attacks and not be publicly blamed for them.

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Could other steps reduce the risk of miscalculation and restore deterrence? Yes, but any military actions—even limited ones like risk the tit for tat escalatory cycle that Trump clearly wanted to avoid. However, unless the Trump administration, does more to convince the Supreme Leader of the risks Iran is running, that is the very scenario we may be looking at.

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Bashir’s Coup 30 Years On

How the Leader’s Legacy of Violence and Neglect Led to His Demise

by Ali El Shamy On June 1989 ,30, a military junta led by Colonel Omar Al-Bashir removed the democratically elected Sudanese government headed by Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and President Ahmed al-Mirghani.

The coup happened as a result of the government’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the Second Sudanese Civil war, which saw the separationist faction Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), of what is now South Sudan, face-off against government forces. The

reason behind the SPLA’s rebellion was due to the government’s decision to cancel the South’s autonomy arrangements which came as a result of the Addis Ababa 1972 Peace Agreement.

With support from the National Islamic Front (NIF), Bashir’s forces ended Sudan’s short-lived democratic system overnight, as he replaced the elected government with a Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation (RCCNS), which backed Bashir to be the country’s new leader. Bashir portrayed himself as the country’s savior who would unite all the peoples living

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in Sudan; however, his legacy shows that he was anything but. More critically, his legacy has planted the seeds for the nationwide rebellion which took place 30 years after his power grab.

KEEPING SUDAN UNITED

President Omar Hassan el-Bashir speaks as Sudanese warriors participate in a rally for him February 1992 ,28 in Ed Daein, Sudan.

(Getty)

Taking the helm during the Civil War, Bashir had two goals in mind mainly ending the war and keeping Sudan united. However, the county’s new military leader failed to swiftly end the war as the struggle between his forces and the SPLA waged on for nearly two decades. During this time, Bashir systemically fought against the Southerners and prevented provisions such as education and healthcare to reach them. Furthermore, Bashir was adamant in preventing International Organizations from delivering aid to the starving and displaced South Sudanese. Bashir’s actions prompted international condemnation and sanctions, and the UN pressured the government to end its diabolical acts in the early 2000s. The pressure worked and by 2003, the Sudanese regime started negotiating a peace deal with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (the political wing of the SPLA), which was finally signed in 2005. Under the agreement, Southern Sudan would get back its autonomy, and six years later its residence would get to vote on an independence referendum. The South Sudanese did indeed vote for the future of their nation in 2011, and the overwhelming majority of the voters favored separating from the north. Despite his violent past, Bashir’s regime respected the result of the referendum and South Sudan was officially founded as a new state six months later.

In addition to his atrocities in the South, most of Bashir’s most notable war crimes were committed against civilian populations residing in the Western Sudanese region of Darfur. During the 2000s, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) started to prominently rise in Darfur; the group is a populist one and has called for a greater share of power in Sudan, and more justice and equality in the country.

JEM has long contended that the government in the Northern region has a monopoly over the country’s wealth, as a result, has left populations in other regions (particularly the South and the West) impoverished.

The group is also Islamist and has used the ideology to call for greater justice among the wider Sudanese nation. The regime’s violence in Darfur started in 2003, after an SPLA insurgency attack on El Fasher airport in North Darfur, this persuaded the government that a radical solution was needed to put an end to anti-regime groups located in the West. Government forces and its allies the Janjaweed militia subsequently carried out attacks on civilians in Darfur, particularly those belonging to the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa

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Bashir’s legacy has planted the seeds for the nationwide rebellion which took place 30 years after his power grab. ethnic groups which the regime thought had close ties with the JEM forces. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged Bashir with several crimes against humanity, as his forces have allegedly pillaged these groups’ properties, systemically murdered them, raped women living in these regions and forcibly transferred civilians out of the region. Bashir’s forces are also accused of contaminating water sources in the region and encouraging other tribes of occupying homes in which the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa previously resided in. The ICC has also gone as far as to accuse al-Bashir of genocide and has been calling for his arrest since 2009. If Bashir’s actions in the South and West indicated anything, it’s that he will not tolerate any form of rebellion and will quell any such acts with an iron fist.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE Throughout his reign, Bashir has been known to ally himself with individuals who have done more harm to him than good. For instance, he was a close ally of the National Islamic Front (which later became the National Congress) leader Hassan Abd Allah alTurabi, and during the early years of the Bashir regime al-Turabi effectively acted as the ideological wing of the regime. As a staunch Islamist, al-Turabi placed fundamentalists in important government posts and imposed Sharia law in the northern region of the country.

Al-Turabi was also instrumental in isolating Sudan in the region as more countries started viewing the regime a destabilizing force. The first major incident that vilified the regime came during the Gulf War, which saw Bashir's government support Saddam Hussein’s forces, moreover, Bashir would go on to oppose the US-Arab coalition that fought to liberate Kuwait from Hussein’s clutches. Another incident that painted the regime in a negative light was Al-Turabi’s assistance to the Egyptian Islamist militants who attempted to assassinate former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa back in 1995. Naturally, this created a rift between the two North African states which have historically shared a close alliance. The incidence was also the major reason behind the UN’s sanctions against

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the regime one year later. Bashir would eventually fall out with Al-Turabi in 1999 and since then the latter has faced a series of imprisonments due to several reasons including alleged ties with JEM.

LACK OF DEVELOPMENT It can be safely said that most of Bashir’s presidency has been confined to maintaining his grip on power which in turn consisted of increased military operations. In spite of the conflicts, Sudan has seen significant economic growth during Bashir’s presidency, as by 2010 it became the world’s 17th fastest growing economies.

Most of Sudan’s economic growth can be attributed to its oil exports; however, the abundance of oil did not work to Bashir’s advantage. As previously stated, one of Bashir’s priorities was keeping the country united, something he failed to do and unfortunately for him, 80 percent of Sudan’s oil fields were situated in the south. As a result, upon the foundation of South Sudan, the government lost access to most of those oil fields.

Despite the presence of other resources such as natural gas, gold, silver, chromite, asbestos, manganese, iron, nickel, tin and aluminum, the regime has done little to extract them for export. Moreover, the regime has failed to diversify its agricultural sector which was the main source of its GDP before the 2000s. Even before its vast oil revenue loss, Sudan’s economic growth did lead to human development since the regime focused most of its development measures on its capital, Khartoum, and has largely neglected other cities and regions. According to a 15-2014 study by the African Development Bank Group, less than 20 percent of the those living in the Northern Region and only 29 percent of those living in Khartoum fall below the

In hindsight, the Bashir regime should have predicted an eventual people’s rebellion as the rise of insurgents in impoverished regions should have served as warning against growing national dissatisfaction.

poverty line. Meanwhile, other non-northern regions were not faring better, for instance over 60 percent of those living in Central Darfur and West Darfur, respectively fell below the poverty line. As previously noted, the regime’s neglect of those regions was the major factor behind the rise of insurgents that viewed the ruling government as unjust and corrupt.

THE LAST STRAW In hindsight, the regime should have predicted an eventual people’s rebellion as the rise of insurgents in impoverished regions should have served as warning against growing national dissatisfaction. It shouldn’t then come as a surprise that the regime’s announcement of food and energy price hikes in late 2018 led to a nationwide uprising. What is surprising though is the fact that some of the major cities that started the protests were the ones that were relatively doing better, for instance, the River Nile state, one of the areas with only 20 percent poverty rate was a major protest hub. Meanwhile, poorer areas such as the Red Sea state and North Korfodan were other states that served as protest points.

The 30th anniversary of Bashir’s coup has recently

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General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan's ruling military council, addresses the crowd in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman on June 2019 ,29. (Getty)

It can be safely said that most of Bashir’s presidency has been confined to maintaining his grip on power which in turn consisted of increased military operations. passed, and to mark it protestors all over Sudan held demonstrations against the current ruling transitional government led by General Abdel Fatah Burhan. Like most of the country’s history, the months long protests have been violent as clashes between security forces and demonstrators have led to the loss of thousands of lives. If the current ruling coalition is to survive then it must do what it can to avoid the mistakes that the Bashir regime did during his tenure, namely seek ways to economically develop the country and not just the North and Khartoum, furthermore, they must seek reconciliation with opposition groups that are willing to negotiate. Finally, the transitional government must stick to its -3year timeframe of paving the way for a democratically elected government.

Sudanese protesters march with a banner during a mass demonstration against the country's ruling generals in the capital Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman on June 2019 ,30. (Getty)

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Africa’s Democratic Moment?

The Five Leaders Who Could Transform the Region

by Judd Devermont and Jon Temin In the -60plus years since the countries of sub-Saharan Africa started becoming independent, democracy there has advanced unevenly. During the Cold War, many African states turned into Soviet- or U.S.-backed dictatorships. Afterward, some nascent democracies made notable gains, but others ended up backsliding.

Even as some countries in the region have grown into success stories, most have failed to embrace true democracy, despite a deep hunger for it among their populations. Today, a mere 11 percent of Africans live in countries that Freedom House considers free.

But change is afoot. Whereas from 2010 to 2014, the region experienced nine transfers of power from one leader to another, since 2015, the region has experienced 26 of them. Some of these transitions amounted to one leader relinquishing his or her seat to a handpicked successor, but more than half featured an opposition candidate defeating a member of the incumbent party.

Of the 49 leaders in power in sub-Saharan Africa at the beginning of 2015, only 22 of them remained in power as of May 2019. Just one of the newcomers, Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe, entered office through a coup (although once someone is chosen to succeed Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, the count will grow to two).

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Gone are the decades when power regularly changed hands through coups—87 times between 1950 and 2010, according to one count.

Africa’s new set of leaders includes former military dictators turned democrats, party loyalists who steadily moved up the ranks, and a few political outsiders, among them a disc jockey, a business magnate, and a former soccer star. Five of them will prove especially pivotal: Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, João Lourenço of Angola, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria. These leaders preside over countries that make up nearly half the population of sub-Saharan Africa, include four of the region’s five largest economies, and have some of the continent’s strongest militaries. And all of them claim to reject the corruption and misrule associated with their predecessors.

Left to Right: Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, Tshisekedi, and Buhari.

(Reuters)

This is not the first time Africa has seen a wave of new leaders who inspired optimism. In the 1990s, a fresh cohort of rebels turned politicians presented themselves as democratic reformers, including Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.

But the accompanying enthusiasm proved misplaced: all made turns toward authoritarianism and, with the exception of Meles, who died in office in 2012, remain in power to this day. Whatever their lofty promises, it turns out, those who come to power through the gun rarely transform into democrats. Today’s class of new leaders seeking a break with the past entered office peacefully, through elections—however imperfect—or other constitutional processes. Their legitimacy comes not from their military prowess but from their reformist agendas.

As the leaders of five key African states, Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, Tshisekedi, and Buhari could shape the region for years to come. The choices they make when it comes to navigating domestic challenges, pursuing reforms, and wielding their influence beyond their borders will go a long way toward determining whether the region stagnates or thrives. And although revanchist forces always threaten tentative gains, there is good reason for optimism: the popular pressures that led to change in these countries, through protest and the ballot box, will press the leaders to follow through on their promises.Given its diplomatic, military, and economic weight in Africa, the United States has the power to nudge these leaders to choose transformation over stasis. For too long, however, Washington has embraced the false comfort of the status quo. Worried

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If growth rates don’t improve, it will be nearly impossible for these countries’ new leaders to sustain reforms and reduce dangerous levels of unemployment. about rocking the boat in a seemingly fragile region, it has supported trusted but flawed partners instead of pushing leaders to make real change. It’s time for a new approach. As a new cohort of leaders takes the reins of power in Africa’s most influential countries, the United States should have the courage to stand with the people calling for change.

FRESH FACE Ethiopia, a country of some 100 million people, has seen the most dramatic transformation. In 2015, the ruling party and its allies swept every seat in parliamentary elections, revealing the sorry state of the country’s ostensibly multiparty political system. The next year, tens of thousands of Ethiopians took to the streets to protest their country’s closed political space and uneven allocation of resources. Lacking the political heft to steer Ethiopia through the crisis, the prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned in February 2018, and the ruling party chose Abiy to succeed him. Abiy swiftly ushered in a series of audacious and previously unimaginable reforms. He has released thousands of political prisoners; made peace with Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea; lifted restrictions on civil society; and begun the process of privatizing the country’s telecommunications company and national airline.

Although his actions have proved wildly popular among Ethiopians, setting off a craze known as “Abiymania,” the dizzying pace of his reforms has unsettled the political elite. Many of its members are of the Tigrayan ethnic minority, a group from the country’s north that has long dominated national politics and the security sector, and they see Abiy’s reforms as coming at their expense. In October 2018, he claimed to have stared down a coup attempt by the military. Moreover, by loosening the state’s tight grip on its population, Abiy’s reforms have exacerbated communal tensions that used to be contained. Ethnic violence—often triggered by competing claims to land and resources—has escalated under his leadership, displacing nearly three million people inside the country’s borders. Abiy has called the violence “shameful” but has been unable to stop it.

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Yet he remains popular at home and abroad, and his twin goals of political pluralism and a market-based economy are exactly what have been missing from Ethiopia for the past two decades.

A new leader is upending Angola’s politics, too. For nearly 40 years, the country was ruled by José Eduardo dos Santos, who stole Angola’s substantial oil revenues to enrich his family and associates. In 2016, dos Santos, 73 years old and in poor health, announced that he would step down, and the next year, he endorsed a successor from the ruling party: Lourenço, a former defense minister. In office, Lourenço quickly defied expectations that he would do the bidding of the dos Santos family, instead pursuing corruption investigations and breaking its near monopoly on the economy and politics.

In a country ruled by a formerly Marxist political party, Lourenço has broken with precedent by seeking warmer ties with the United States and even with his country’s former colonizer, Portugal. He has also broken a taboo against accepting international assistance that comes with conditions attached by welcoming an aid package from the International Monetary Fund. Although he has not turned away from China, he has promised to cease providing it with oil as collateral for credit lines, a practice that left Angola in considerable debt.

And whereas his predecessor rarely deployed troops to multilateral peacekeeping missions, he has flexed Angola’s muscle in regional crises, contributing soldiers to a South African–led peacekeeping operation in Lesotho and insisting on a political transition in Congo.

It is possible that Lourenço is merely a canny politician building a new patronage structure beholden to him. His anticorruption investigations have targeted dos Santos’ family and key allies while sparing other power brokers.

But he seems to grasp that reform is the best way for his country to end its decades of underperformance, and Angolans appear to agree. If he succeeds, then

Each of the five leaders is engaged in a high-wire act, trying to pursue reforms without triggering a backlash.

Angola—a mineral- and oil-rich country of 30 million people with an -87,000strong military—could realize its potential as a regional powerhouse.

Ramaphosa faces greater structural challenges as he seeks to move South Africa away from the corrupt legacy of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma. Zuma allowed cronies to hijack ministries and state-owned companies to line their pockets, authorized a disastrous military deployment to the Central African Republic, and entertained a shady deal with Russia for a nuclear power plant. For Africa’s most advanced economy, the anemic growth, weakening currency, and periodic rolling power outages had become a national embarrassment, and in February 2018, Zuma’s party, the storied African National Congress, forced him to resign, replacing him with Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa has pledged to attract 100$ billion in new investments over the next five years and reform the country’s decrepit state-owned corporations.

Equally important, he has established a commission to investigate corruption under his predecessor, which has already unearthed considerable abuses by former officeholders.

In May 2019, Ramaphosa won a fresh electoral mandate. To do so, however, he had to appease leftleaning constituents, signaling support for land

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Supporters of Ethiopia Prime Minister attend a rally on Meskel Square in Addis Ababa on June 2018 ,23. (Getty)

expropriation without compensation, a step that threatens to scare off foreign investors. Moreover, his party remains riddled with corruption and ideological divisions, which will constrain full-throated reform. Yet Ramaphosa still represents South Africa’s best hope for revitalization, and there is so much low-hanging fruit that even partial reforms could prove game changing.

South Africa began its two-year term as a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council in 2019 and is set to take over the chairmanship of the African Union in 2020. Ramaphosa now has an opportunity to reverse Zuma’s ignoble record of supporting autocrats and stifling human rights campaigns, and he has made some improvements on this front. Last year, he reversed his country’s vote in the UN General Assembly in order to condemn human rights abuses in Myanmar. South Africa is the only African member of the G20- and the most powerful member of the Southern African Development Community. If Ramaphosa manages to clean up his country’s politics and reform its economy, South Africa could act as an engine of growth for the whole region. And if he expands its global voice, too, the country could serve as a global champion of conflict resolution, drawing on its experience of ending apartheid 25 years ago.

Congo’s road to reform is far rockier. Even though he

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is steering his country through its first peaceful transfer of power, Tshisekedi became president in dubious circumstances. Most observers agree that another opposition candidate actually won the elections held in December 2018, even though Tshisekedi was declared the victor. The surprise result fueled speculation that Tshisekedi had struck a deal that would allow Joseph Kabila, the country’s outgoing authoritarian leader, to retain influence out of power. Any such deal will continue to constrain Tshisekedi. So will his party’s lack of a majority in parliament, which means that he has to negotiate with Kabila to appoint his prime minister and cabinet.

Yet as Lourenço has shown in Angola, sometimes new leaders can untether themselves from their patrons. So far, Tshisekedi has freed about 700 political prisoners, appointed a competent national security adviser who is not beholden to Kabila, and pledged to revive the Congolese economy. Despite Tshisekedi’s limited room for maneuver, in Congo’s ever-shifting political landscape, he may be able to pick off defectors from Kabila’s coalition and expand his own power base. He also has the benefit of strong support from the United States and other influential countries, which chose to overlook the undemocratic nature of his ascent.

The size of western Europe, Congo boasts vast stores of natural resources and the potential to generate up to 100,000 megawatts of hydropower (second only to China and Russia in this regard). If Tshisekedi earnestly tries to address Congo’s endemic insecurity, contain its devastating Ebola outbreak, and responsibly manage its immense mineral wealth, he can reap dramatic dividends that should prove popular among Congolese.

The prospect of a stable Congo—a long-standing basket case that borders nine countries—could obviate the need for the -20,000strong UN peacekeeping mission there and reduce regional tensions.

Nigeria, with a population of nearly 200 million people, has long been Africa’s would-be heavyweight, full of potential but plagued by poor leadership, corruption, and insecurity. Change was supposed to come in 2015 with the election as president of Buhari, who, even though he was a military head of state in the early 1980s, campaigned on a promise to fight corruption.

In a few ways, Buhari has made good on his promise, fighting some corruption, increasing infrastructure investment, and streamlining government finances. But he has turned out to be less dynamic than hoped. He has spent several months in London over the last four years for medical treatment and has failed to inspire Nigerians outside his base in the country’s north. Only 35 percent of Nigerians turned out for the February 2019 elections

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that gave him a second term, the lowest participation rate on record since the country’s transition to civilian rule, in 1999. The private sector is especially wary of his economic instincts and failed to respond to his win with a stock market rally—a first for Nigeria.

Crucially, however, he has opened up space for a new cadre of reformers, in the cabinet and at the state level, who are now waiting in the wings. Buhari has never fit into Nigeria’s political class. He never sought to build a patronage network, and he has consistently pressed for cleaner government and a strong work ethic among civil servants. However inconsistently, he has promoted Nigerian leaders who share these values and sidelined politicians who do not.

Nigeria’s energetic vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, exemplifies the country’s potential. During Buhari’s trips to London, Osinbajo has stepped in as acting president and showcased a pragmatic and inclusive style of leadership. Notably, he agreed to devalue the naira to narrow the gap between official exchange rates and black-market rates, and he traveled to the oil-rich Niger Delta to lower tensions there. His successful stints in power have increased his profile as a potential candidate in elections in 2023. Other up-and-comers include Peter Obi, a former governor and the opposition’s most recent vice-presidential candidate, who has won plaudits for his economic management of his state, and Kashim Shettima, a former governor who ably facilitated humanitarian assistance to war-ravaged northeastern Nigeria. Reform under Buhari will continue to be slow, but he has set the stage for the next generation of leaders to quicken the pace of change.

THE PATH TO PROGRESS Two main obstacles stand in the way of these countries’

If this cycle repeats across enough of the five countries, a broader narrative of regional reform could take hold, building pressure on other African countries to follow the same path.

democratic progress. The first is economic stagnation.

Africa’s overall GDP is forecast to grow by around three percent in 2019, dragged down by even slower growth rates in Angola, Nigeria, and South Africa, all of which have been hit hard by the recent slump in commodity prices. If growth rates don’t improve, it will be nearly impossible for these countries’ new leaders to sustain reforms and reduce dangerous levels of unemployment.

But even in a period of weak commodity prices, Lourenço, Buhari, and Ramaphosa can undertake reforms that would boost growth. Nigeria should shift to a single exchange rate to attract foreign investment; it and South Africa should reform their bloated stateowned companies; and it and Angola should reduce their reliance on oil revenues. Abiy and Tshisekedi, by contrast, have the wind at their backs, with Ethiopia’s economy growing at over seven percent (thanks largely

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa applauds during a meeting of the South African ruling Party African National Congress (ANC) "Thuma Mina" (Send Me) campaign launch at the Nelson Mandela Youth Centre in Chatsworth township outside of Durban on September ,8 2018. (Getty)

moving too slowly and providing an opening to his opponents.) Abiy has already encountered firsthand the consequences of charging ahead, with several politicians tied to the previous regime loudly opposing his reforms. Ramaphosa, for his part, presides over an African National Congress divided between factions loyal to him and those loyal to Zuma and risks the ire of the senior party officials who stand to lose from a crackdown on large-scale corruption. Tshisekedi is in the most precarious position of all. Kabila, his predecessor, is still relatively young, and his party remains dominant.

He will not go quietly into retirement, especially if his substantial wealth is threatened.

These leaders will need to discern when to press forward and when to slow down, getting the buy-in of would-be opponents without abandoning bold aspirations. Abiy, for instance, could build more internal consensus before rushing to announce his next big idea, a step that would preempt political pushback and pave the way for swifter implementation. Ramaphosa will need to respond delicately to demands for land expropriation, addressing the legitimate concerns of his base without scaring off investors and threatening commercial agriculture.

If the five leaders get the economics and politics right, then they could set off a virtuous cycle of reform.

First, economic prospects improve, the result of a combination of economic diversification, increased foreign investment, and reduced corruption. That, in turn, strengthens their hand and helps them navigate political obstacles. As their popularity increases, they have more incentive to double down on existing reforms and build support for new ones. Investor confidence increases, economic growth accelerates, and the old guard becomes further marginalized. to a more attractive climate for investors) and Congo’s growing at over five percent (in part due to public investments in infrastructure). All five leaders have pledged to diversify their economies, reduce corruption, and attract foreign investment. Their predecessors said the same things, but unlike them, these leaders face real pressure to deliver on these promises or face the wrath of their people.

The second obstacle is political. Each of the five leaders is engaged in a high-wire act, trying to pursue reforms without triggering a backlash. Abiy, Lourenço, Ramaphosa, and Tshisekedi are mindful of the still powerful reactionary forces within their coalitions that are associated with the ancien régime. If these leaders move too fast, rivals may clip their wings or lead a party revolt. (Buhari, by contrast, is at risk of

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If this cycle repeats across enough of the five countries, a broader narrative of regional reform could take hold, building pressure on other African countries to follow the same path. Ethiopia’s profound improvements in individual rights, for example, could have a spillover effect across East Africa, emboldening antigovernment protesters in Uganda and elsewhere and convincing the military dictatorship in Eritrea to open up. In Congo, Tshisekedi has denounced his predecessor’s human rights record and promised that he “will be making a clean break with everything.” If he really does, the new standard he will be setting for governance in central Africa could increase the pressure on neighboring leaders, most of whom have been in power for two or more decades, to walk back some of their most egregious abuses of power.

This article was originally published in Foreign Affairs.

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Hong Kong’s Muzzled Generation Cries Out How China Silenced a Movement for Democracy - Until It Couldn’t Anymore

by Suzanne Sataline As cars idled bumper to bumper on one of Hong Kong’s busiest highways, a gaggle of young people clad in black darted into traffic. Cars swerved. Buses braked. Hundreds, then thousands,

of teens and -20somethings flooded the streets, their yellow construction helmets bobbing past red Toyota taxis. Like nimble spiders, a few dozen men used plastic ties to knit metal stanchions into road barriers. On nearby roads, other crews did the same. In roughly 20 minutes, demonstrators had choked off Hong Kong’s

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Legislative Council, the city’s quasi-parliament, and ignited one of the largest protests since Britain returned this former colony to China in 1997.

On June 12, lawmakers were poised to debate a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong to extradite suspected criminals to mainland China. The city’s Beijing-backed chief executive, Carrie Lam, said the law would prevent fugitives from taking refuge in the territory. Her critics feared it would erode Hong Kong’s autonomy, enabling greater interference from Beijing.

Under the draft version of the bill, virtually anyone in Hong Kong—business owners, religious figures, members of the political opposition—could be transferred to the People’s Republic, where they would face an opaque and politicized legal system notoriously heedless of due process. Chinese prosecutors, many Hong Kongers feared, could easily dredge up past infractions or craft new charges to ensnare businesspeople or dissidents.

For months, opposition to the bill had mounted. Its potential sweep galvanized lawyers, students, civil rights groups, and even businesses and some foreign governments. In April, an estimated 130,000 people marched against the draft law. By early June, when a vote seemed imminent, protest organizers claimed that more than a million people had mobilized. But June 12 was a turning point. In an afternoon that shocked the city, thousands of police officers in black riot helmets fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds into the crowd. More than 80 people reported injuries; many of those who sought medical care were arrested at hospitals.

A protester makes a gesture during a protest on June 2019 ,12 in Hong Kong China.

(Getty)

The brutal display hardened public opinion against Lam, eventually pushing her to offer a vaguely worded apology and indefinitely suspend the law. The following day, on June 16, an estimated two million protesters poured into the streets to demand that Lam permanently withdraw the bill. It was a stunning rebuke of Beijing and its acolytes in Hong Kong, but Lam and her backers stood firm. Although she promised not to reintroduce the bill until certain conflicts and concerns are addressed, she refused to kill it permanently.

Protests have continued since then, most recently on July 1, when thousands of demonstrators breached the legislature, smashing windows and destroying part of the building’s façade. At the forefront are angry and frightened young people, who in recent years have weathered an assault on their civil and political rights.

For them, the extradition bill has become a symbol, not just of Beijing’s creeping authoritarianism but of a sustained, yearslong campaign to silence their generation. “We know if the bill passed, that means our generation and the next generation will be affected,” said Simon, a -22year-old undergraduate who joined hundreds of sweaty protesters outside the Legislative Council on June 12. His friend Alex, a recent graduate of Polytechnic University, added later by text: “I think the extradition bill is a war against the whole young generation.”

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While protesters have done their best to keep the pressure on the government, many quietly admit that they are grasping for ways to sustain the momentum.

A WAR ON THE YOUTH Hong Kong dangles off the southern coast of the world’s largest and mightiest one-party state. Through an arrangement known as “one country, two systems,” brokered between the United Kingdom and China as part of the territory’s transfer in 1997, Hong Kong is supposed to manage most of its internal affairs until 2047. The city has never been a democracy, but its miniconstitution enshrines expansive civil liberties—to congregate and publish, to seek office and speak out—that residents celebrate with zeal. In 2003, massive protests thwarted a national security law that would have introduced heavy penalties for subversion, treason, and sedition. Then in 2012, students boycotted classes to protest a so-called “patriotic and moral curriculum,” which critics said whitewashed the history of the Chinese Communist Party. The plan was eventually shelved. Every year on July 1, the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, residents celebrate their right to complain and seek change by marching for all manner of causes and concerns—political, social, and environmental. The day is a cacophonous carnival of objections and pleas, a din heard rarely in Asiaand nowhere else in China.

Still, Beijing enjoys outsized influence in Hong Kong. The majority of Legislative Councilmembers side with the authoritarian state, and while the city’s chief executive is formally selected through a complex electoral college, informally, he or she is handpicked

by Beijing. Over the years, China has repeatedly rebuffed Hong Kongers’ requests for universal suffrage and for an end to mainland meddling, most recently in 2014. That September, what started as a brief sit-in to demand full suffrage blossomed into a vast street occupation led by university students. By some estimates, the Umbrella Movement, so named for the protesters’ preferred defense against police pepper spray, drew hundreds of thousands of people. But the Hong Kong and Beijing governments conceded nothing.

Since then, Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong have waged an effective campaign to intimidate young protest leaders. Young people have been denied their rights to operate political parties and seek elective office. They have been targeted in political

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prosecutions, hounded by pro-Beijingmedia, and subjected to online hacks and other harassment. As a result, the number of young people who participated in politics, or even civic causes, dwindled in 2017 and 2018.

Many of those who remained engaged in politics grew more radicalized as a result. Out of the failed 2014 protests a new prodemocracy movement was born. Some of its followers called for complete independence from China and greater pride in Hong Kong’s culture and history. Many also denigrated mainland Chinese visitors and recent Hong Kong transplants who spoke Mandarin, giving the movement a populist tinge. Mainland officials and newspapers denounced the movement’s leaders as secessionists and accused them of committing treason.

Hong Kong’s government has worked hard to keep the independence idea out of the Legislative Council, where the public chooses half of the members. In 2016, the election bureau barred several young candidates from seeking office because of their pro-independence views. One was Edward Leung, a -25year-old rising star who had won more than 66,000 votes in a previous by-election, making him the favorite in the general election. Like all prospective candidates that year, Leung was required to sign an official form—never before required—that called Hong Kong an “inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China.” The election officer doubted Leung’s sincerity, citing his posts on Facebook promoting self-rule, and disqualified him.

Two other candidates from another pro-independence party, Baggio Leung and Yau Wei-ching, were permitted to run. But after they insulted China during the swearing-in ceremony, a judge barred them from taking their seats.

As the independence movement grew, and more young people identified themselves as Hong Kongers rather than Chinese, according to polls taken by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Program, Beijing took note. On a visit to Hong Kong on July 2017 ,1, marking the 20th anniversary of the handover, President Xi Jinping ordered the city to hew to the nation’s interests. “Any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government … or use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage activities against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line, and is absolutely impermissible,” he said.

Not long after, a Hong Kong judge expelled four more prodemocracy lawmakers from office on the pretense that the oaths they had sworn were insincere. In almost every case, the disqualified candidates were under 40. All had been harsh critics of Beijing. The following year, the government for the first time

banned a political group, the Hong Kong National Party, whose central tenet was to work toward Hong Kong’s independence.

The campaign against young political activists continued in the courts. Since 2016, judges have convicted dozens of young people for protesting, rioting, and causing disorder. Justices on the Court of Final Appeals, Hong Kong’s highest court, ruled that any protest that results in injuries would not be considered an act of civil disobedience but, rather, a violent gathering whose organizers could be subject to prosecution. Edward Leung, the thwarted legislative nominee, was convicted in 2018 of rioting and hitting a police officer. He was sentenced to six years in a maximum-security prison. What seemed like a routine prosecution to discourage street brawls had morphed into a war on the next generation of leaders.

BACK TO THE STREETS The pall of those depressing summers of 2017 and 2018 lasted well into this year. Most young people stopped attending large civic events. The student unions at several universities, long catalysts for local and anti-Beijing-related activism, couldn’t form cabinets because so few people were willing to lead. Many activists involved in previous campaigns worried that they might

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Protesters hold placards as they take part in a rally against the extradition bill ahead of 2019 G20 Osaka summit at Edinburgh Place in Central district on June 2019 ,26 in Hong Kong, China.

(Getty)

For them, the extradition bill has become a symbol, not just of Beijing’s creeping authoritarianism but of a sustained, years-long campaign to silence their generation.

Once the protests began in April, Hong Kong police seemed to focus primarily on stopping the city’s youngest strikers. After a mass march on June 9, officers singled out young people to search them for masks, goggles, and knives. The night before the June 12 protest at the legislature, police charged the administrator of a Telegram chat group with 20,000 members with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. “I never thought that just speaking on the internet, just sharing information, could be regarded as a speech crime,” the channel’s -22year-old administrator, Ivan Ip, told The New York Times.

be arrested; some chose to enroll in graduate school overseas.

Two of Leung’s party colleagues were granted refugee status in Germany, likely the first time that Hong Kong residents had ever been granted protection from their own government.

In this fragile, feeble moment for the pro-democracy movement Lam pushed the rendition bill. A quick, clean vote of approval would signal to Xi that she had Hong Kong under control. When the business sector objected to the bill’s lack of human rights guarantees and long list of offenses, Lam tweaked the language and promised that only people accused of serious crimes would be extradited. Passage looked all but certain.

Then something unexpected happened. After a group of lawyers launched a campaign to delay the bill, the Internet suddenly blossomed with hundreds of online petitions. Everyone from alumni associations to mothers’ groups demanded that the bill be stopped. All at once, it seemed, young people were engaged again. Political parties led by -20somethings posted graphics explaining why the extradition law could be dangerous. Activists shared details about marches, tips on protective gear, and even hand gestures for communicating during standoffs with police.

Leung’s former party, Hong Kong Indigenous, published an online booklet with tips in case of arrest.

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Democracy advocates in Hong Kong have long despised the Beijing government. But Lam and her administration have ensured that many residents now hate the city government as well. Since her halfhearted apology, young people have coalesced around four key demands: formally withdraw the extradition bill; retract the “riot” designation of the June 12 protest, which opened the door to more serious criminal prosecutions; release and drop all charges against those who were arrested, and establish an independent inquiry to probe the excessive force by police on June 12. A fifth demand—cited by some, but not all groups—is that Lam step down.

So far, all five demands remain unmet. While protesters have done their best to keep the pressure on the government, many quietly admit that they are grasping for ways to sustain the momentum. Without a clear leader, and with crowds destined to shrink, many worry that this protest movement could fizzle like many previous ones. The young people who continue to stage sudden, short-term occupations of government buildings are taking a significant risk. The fewer the protesters are in number, the more vulnerable they are to criminal prosecution. And yet the most energized among them don’t plan to back down. “Many of us are thinking that continuing the protest in Hong Kong will create a certain level of pressure on the Chinese government,” said Simon, the undergraduate. “If you’re not going to respond to us, we’ll try to stop the government from working.”

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Secretary-General of the Arab League to Majalla: Brexit is a Good Opportunity for the UK-Arab Economic Relationship A Wave of Optimism at the British-Arab Economic Summit for Post-Brexit UK-Saudi Trade

by Yasmine El-Geressi The Arab region needs to harness the huge, untapped potential of the region’s youth and meet the “strong demand for employment” in order to develop and prosper, the SecretaryGeneral of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit said at the Arab-British Economic Summit 2019: A Share Vision in London on 3 July in London.

“The importance of the summit is to find solutions to revive the economies in these countries, to empower youth and provide sustainable development. This joint work is the essence of making this summit successful. Our mutual future is full of opportunities in all sectors including trade, finance, energy, and infrastructure in the Arab world,” he said during his opening speech.

The summit succeeded in bringing together business representatives from all over the Arab World and across the regions of the UK to discuss their shared vision of working together to achieve common prosperity and to seize on the enormous opportunities that are opening up in key sectors.

It was organised by the Arab British Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) whose Secretary-General and CEO Mr Bandar Ali Reda was praised by ABCC Chairman, Rt Hon Baroness Symons in her opening statement for his vision and for having made a huge impact since he took up his post at the Chamber only a few months ago.

In an interview with Majalla on the sidelines of the summit, Mr Aboul Gheit said that as Britain departs from the European Union, it will seek to enhance its global position by developing closer relationships with non-EU states.

"Britain is one of the big economies and is a member of the G7 and G20. Britain is a very advanced economy. Britain witnessed the First and Second Industrial Revolutions and contributed to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in communication technology and thus has very high investment potential,” he said.

“On the other hand, this is an important time for Britain in terms of its relations with the world as it departs the European Union. If Britain leaves, it will need to open up to many parties and international economic groups as it seeks to build deeper relationships with the United States, Asia,

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Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit at the Arab-British Economic Summit 2019: A Share Vision in London on 3 July in London. (Majalla)

Latin America, and Africa.”

The Secretary-General of the Arab League said that the post-Brexit environment will also open the way for closer British-Arab economic relations and will uncover trading and economic opportunities that can enhance the prosperity of the two regions and spur sustainable growth.

“The Arab region is a strong economic zone. The Arab world has a total output exceeding 2.5 trillion dollars per year and thus the Arabs have the economic capacity and want sustainable development either through investments in Britain or through British investments in their countries,” he said.

The Arab region records the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. Mr Aboul Gheit told Majalla that the UK-Arab economic relationship could help create new job opportunities and support the region in it’s transition to the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies.

“They need jobs for their youth, the transfer of scientific and communication technology, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and thus there is a good opportunity for both parties to work together and it important that they have the will to achieve this goal,” he said.

During his opening speech, the Secretary-General of Gulf

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Secretary-General of Arab League: “The Arab world has a total output exceeding 2.5 trillion dollars per year and thus the Arabs have the economic capacity and want sustainable development either through investments in Britain or through British investments in their countries” Cooperation Council (GCC) HE Abdullatif Al Zayani said that he believed the “young and growing population” in the region are an asset and that technological advancements among the youth meant they were best placed to reap the benefits.

“If our societies can harness the energy and resourcefulness of our young people then they can lead us into a vibrant new world with technologies and possibilities we could not have dreamed of a few years ago, but which to them are second

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nature,” he said.

Mr Zayani said it was important to instill in young men and women the spirit of innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership, and the knowledge of science and emerging technologies. “Only then will our nations be able to compete globally in this new era,” he added.

On the sidelines of the summit, the UK’s Trade Commissioner for the Middle East HM Simon Penney, told Majalla that the UK is focused on expanding its technological footprint in Saudi Arabia and GCC. “In the areas of new technology and innovation, in which the UK leads globally, and particularly in areas like FinTech, EdTech, and MedTech, we are very keen to partner with companies in Saudi Arabia and across the broader region in developing those further,” he said.

Mr Penney said that Brexit and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 - which introduced visionary new reforms to reduce its dependence on oil and diversify its economy - have opened a big agenda for furthering trade and economic cooperation.

“Brexit offers us many opportunities in the region and we are already seeing an increase in interest from UK firms wanting to be involved with export in the region, particularly around Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030,” he said.

Secretary-General of Arab League: “They need jobs for their youth, the transfer of scientific and communication technology, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and thus there is a good opportunity for both parties to work together and it important that they have the will to achieve this goal”

“We will be visiting Riyadh on Sunday for ministerial meetings which are a follow up on our obligations and commitments that we made around vision 2030. We are focused on how we and UK companies can help realise the ambitions set out by the Crown Prince in Vision 2030.”

These sentiments were echoed by Rt Hon Baroness Symons, who previously served as Minister of State for the Middle East and Minister of State for Trade and Investment. She told Majalla that the UK is committed to supporting the implementation of Vision 2030 across a range of sectors.

“I attended the roundtable when His Royal Highness was here and he explained Vision 2030 to us and there was a great deal of enthusiasm for it. I very much hope that it will be part of the dialogue that we will be continuing with Saudi Arabia. We are going to be looking at a roundtable discussion over the next few days concentrating on Saudi and I am sure that there will be a great deal more that people want to discuss about young people, the future, IT, and the whole range of issues that are of mutual interest to us,” she said.

On a broader note, the Baroness said that there are huge opportunities for trade and investment in a wide range of sectors including new technology, sustainable development, renewable energy, education, infrastructure, and healthcare across the region where there are many young men and women in need of jobs.

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Secretary-General of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) HE Abdullatif Al Zayani speaking at the ArabBritish Economic Summit 2019: A Share Vision in London on 3 July in London.

(Majalla)

UK’s Trade Commissioner for the Middle East: “We are focused on how we and UK companies can help realise the ambitions set out by the Crown Prince in Vision 2030.” play an important role in supporting the region to address its most urgent needs.

“The UK is at the cutting edge of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as a tech hub for entrepreneurs as well as leading in its research in the fields of agriculture and so many other fields. There is a lot of valuable exchange and mutual learning between the UK and Arab region where we can enhance and strengthen these ties for the benefit of all parties,” she said.

The air of optimism about the impact of Brexit on the BritishArab economic relationship was also shared by the President of the Union of Arab Chambers H.E Mr Mohamed Abdo Saeed and the Chairman of the Council of Saudi Chambers H.E Dr Sami Al. Alabidi.

“I think that the UK’s exit from the EU will be a positive opportunity for the Arab world and Britain to broaden their bilateral trading and investment relationship,” Mr Saeed told Majalla, adding that the “special” and “historic” relationship between the UK and Saudi Arabia, in particular, would benefit greatly.

Mr Alabidi, who participated in a session on infrastructure investment and sustainable development by sharing lessons learned from Saudi Arabia’s experience and recommendations for other countries in the region, told Majalla that there are many opportunities for investment with the UK post-Brexit and a closer commercial relationship with some of the Arab countries will be the UK’s “best alternative” to its trading relationship with the EU. Haifa Fahmoum Al Kayla, Founder and Chairman of the Arab International Women’s Forum told Majalla that the ArabBritish Economic Summit addresses the most pressing issues in the region such as renewable energy, economic security, water scarcity, infrastructure, and youth and that the UK could

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Thirteen of the 15 countries with the lowest rates of women participating in their labour force are in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the 2015 Global Gender Gap Report. Ms Al Kayan says that getting more women into work and having their work recognised is key to economic sustainable growth in the region. “I speak not as a feminist, I speak as an economist if we do not utilise 50 percent of the population how can we move forward?” she said.

Al Kayan pointed to the momentous changes underway for women in Saudi Arabia as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has lifted a number of key restrictions on their rights as part of the wide-ranging social and economic Vision 2030 reform initiative. She told Majalla under the “outstanding vision” there have been “impressive, outstanding highlevel appointments and the women are there to take these responsibilities and lead with them. We are very proud of the role of women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Saudi youth in helping implement the vision of Saudi 2030.”

She also highlighted that the “good story of the Saudi woman started a long time ago through education” and that Saudi women have held important positions in business and various sectors.

“Since the inception of the Arab International Women’s Forum 18 or 19 years ago we have always amazing Saudi women leaders on our board as well as in our memberships,” she added.

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In Conversation with Bandar Reda, Secretary General of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce

by Yasmine El-Geressi Bandar Reda has served as the Secretary-General and CEO of the ArabBritish Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) since March 2019. He was nominated for the position by the Board of Directors of the Union of Arab Chambers and approved by the Board of Directors of the ABCC. Mr Reda enjoys high diplomatic relations given his position as commercial attaché to the UK at the Ministry of Commerce and Investment from August 2017 to March 2019 and to Italy from 2013 to 2017. He also worked for the Saudi British Bank (SABB) from 2005 to 2013 where held several positions including Senior Business Banking Development Manager.

Majalla had the pleasure of interviewing Mr Reda ahead of the ArabBritish Economic Summit: A Shared Vision to discuss the ways in which the ABCC helps promote trade and investment between Britain and Arab countries and his vision for the chamber to ensure that it remains relevant and prominent in how it serves countries undergoing transformative changes.

Q - Introduce us to yourself.

I am a husband and father of two children. I am from Saudi Arabia; born in Makkah and brought up in Jeddah. I graduated in the US and worked in various sectors including banking. Most recently I was assigned as commercial attaché in the Saudi Embassies in Italy and the UK. I began my position as Secretary-General and Chief Executive Officer of the ArabBritsh Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) in March of this year.

Q - Can you introduce the ABCC to our readers and what it does to help trade and investment between Britain and Arab countries?

The Arab-British Chamber of Commerce is a not-for profit membership organisation established in 1975 under the General Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture for the Arab Countries. The Chamber has a unique role in promoting bilateral trade and investment between Britain and Arab countries. To do this, it works closely with government ministries, official trade and investment bodies and Arab diplomatic missions in London, and works closely with British Chambers of Commerce, the League of Arab States, leading trading businesses and Chambers of Commerce in the Arab world.

Q - Tell us about your first few months as the Secretary-General and Chief Executive Officer of the ABCC. I have served as Secretary-General for almost 4 months, and despite the short period, it has been filled with many occasions and work meetings.

I pay tribute to the high morale and experience of my colleagues at the Chamber of Commerce.

Q - Which sectors are your priorities currently?

We focus on supporting entrepreneurs, and the technology, entertainment, sports, training, education, and health sectors. This stems from the efforts underway by many Arab countries to diversify their economies.

Q - Getting a greater number of British firms to do business outside the EU forms a significant part of the government’s aim of increasing trade’s contribution to GDP from 30 to 35 percent. What are you doing to draw the attention of UK businesses to opportunities in the GCC? The Chamber of Commerce offers many exceptional opportunities to involve British and Arab business leaders, corporate executives and the business sector through meetings, workshops, and events. The Chamber's events represent an exceptional platform for communicating with people interested in trade exchange in all major sectors between Britain and Arab countries.

It is noteworthy to address the British Arab Economic Summit 2019 - A Shared Vision [which was held on July 3]. The Summit will showcase the broad range of projects emerging and under development within the Arab world and the huge scope for British involvement. It will offer invaluable opportunities for investors, exporters, experts, consultants and providers of services to engage in dialogue with project leaders and decision makers.

The summit will also address several important topics on the economic scene through the following panel discussions: Investment in infrastructure and sustainable development, Renewable energy versus non-renewable energy, The Middle East and North Africa region is a hub for global markets, Agriculture and Water Security, Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment and Banking and Finance.

Q- Has Brexit uncertainty disputed trade relations?

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The Chamber is exerting its efforts to assist the foreign investor in reaching investment opportunities in the Arab countries. The Chamber is introducing the best products and industries in the Arab region to raise the value of the British import in cooperation with parties on both sides.

For the British side, there needs to be a review the investment opportunities available to the Arab investor, especially in small industries, and offer facilities to be one of the first destinations for Arab investors in this field.

Q - Which countries outside of the GCC could increase in importance most significantly as potential export markets?

All Arab countries have different export potentials and opportunities, for example, North Africa, which has been a desirable market in recent years, and the volume of foreign investment there is growing year after year.

Q - Looking ahead, how do you see the bilateral trade and commercial relationship between the UK and Saudi Arabia evolving over the next 5 to 10 years?

Bandar Reda

The outlook is always positive as there is interest from many executives, investors, and politicians in the Arab markets, and this was observed at the recent events held by the Chamber.

Q - How is the UK looking to develop trade with countries of the GCC in the post-Brexit environment and which industries do you see benefiting most?

Britain is at a critical juncture in terms of its separation from the European Union. It is expected to seek strategic relations with the GCC countries. We are working to keep abreast of developments in the Arab and British arenas. We also investigate the accuracy of the information declared. Britain's exit from the European Union is still in unclear, and there are still many question marks about the many files that will be affected and the repercussions that could have an impact on the private, commercial and financial sectors. The Chamber was previously hosted by the British Trade Minister at the second GCC-British Economic Forum. In light of this, the forum devoted the final session to discuss this subject in the presence of specialists from both sides.

But British efforts to engage in strategic partnerships with the Gulf states, in particular, and some Arab countries in general, can not be hidden. This would contribute to raising the trade balance between Britain and Arab countries.

Q - In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, how can bilateral policy be developed in terms of streamlining investment and market access?

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The Kingdom is a strategic economic partner of Britain in the Middle East, and the British side has shown interest in entering into strategic partnerships with the Kingdom since the announcement of Vision 2030. Several roundtable meetings were held in the presence of major UK companies to review the Ministry of Trade’s plan within the framework of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

We recently organised several events that support the vision, including a conference on investment opportunities in Saudi Arabia - which was organised in partnership with the General Investment Authority (SAGIA) - where we received the commercial delegation from the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

We look forward to further cooperation and we are ready to keep up with this ambitious vision to achieve its objectives. At these meetings and events, we invite decision-makers, entrepreneurs, and investors from the British side interested in investing in Saudi Arabia to introduce them to the opportunities available in Kingdom.

Q - What is your vision for the ABCC to ensure that it remains relevant and prominent in how it serves countries undergoing transformative changes?

We plan to communicate and cooperate with the Saudi Embassy in the UK to keep abreast of economic developments and implement programs and events that serve a successful trade exchange between the two countries in the future. We also plan to establish forums and economic events that give the British investor opportunities to trade and invest in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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Issue 1755- july - 05/07/2019

The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be www.majalla.com

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Rehiring Your Business Mind The Three Ms - Mindfulness, Meditation, and Mantras Sharpen Work - Related Soft Skills Harvard Health Think back to how your mind operated during your work career.

Your mental skills were divided into two types: hard and soft.

Hard skills related to the technical knowledge you needed to perform a specific job. Soft skills consisted of everyday thinking, like making decisions, being a good listener, and having a

positive attitude.

You might not need hard skills as much now, but maintaining soft skills will always be valuable. “Soft skills are essential to continue practicing and developing as you age, as they help with so many everyday mental activities, like how you interact with people, perform simple tasks, follow directions, and solve problems,� says Dr. Joel Salinas,

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a neurologist who specializes in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

One way to improve soft skills is to practice the three Ms: mindfulness, meditation, and mantras. “These can help strengthen the weaker parts of your soft skills and in the process improve your everyday memory,” says Dr. Salinas. Here’s a look at these practices, along with strategies for incorporating them into your daily life.

MINDFULNESS An important part of mindfulness is being actively aware and giving focused attention to what you do, while you do it.

You can improve mindfulness through active listening.

When you listen fully to people’s words and voice, you keep your brain in the present, which helps it gather and retain information.

This skill comes in handy during important conversations, like when you hear advice from your doctor or are given directions. Here is how to practice active listening: Focus on eye contact. When you look at someone as he or she speaks, you stay connected, which can increase your concentration. The action also gives you a central focus to keep your mind from wandering. Block any potential distractions, like your phone or reading materials.

Don’t interrupt. Let people finish speaking before you respond. If you focus only on what you want to say, you won’t be fully listening.

“Instead, focus on what they’re trying to convey and build off of it by summarizing what you think they just said before moving onto a new thought,” says Salinas.

MEDITATION When you struggle with scattered thinking, you have what is called “monkey mind” — that is, your thoughts aimlessly jump around like swinging monkeys. This can interfere with completing the simplest tasks and making smart decisions.

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Studies show that older adults often do worse on memory tests after they’re exposed to negative stereotypes and criticism about aging.

Science has found that meditation helps prevent monkey mind by changing certain brain regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (which is linked with negative thoughts), and the amygdala (where your fight-or-flight response lies).

A simple and brief meditation can calm your monkey mind when it runs rampant: < Sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes, or if you prefer, keep a dull gaze with your eyes open. < Slow your breathing enough so a full cycle of breathing in and out lasts six seconds. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. < Let go of your thoughts as best as you can. “It’s okay if you find yourself thinking about your to-do list,” says Salina. “That’s what your mind does naturally.” Whenever you become aware that your mind is filling with distracting thoughts, simply bring yourself back to focusing on your breathing. < When ready, take a full inhalation and count “one” to yourself, and then exhale and count “two.” < Continue until you reach 10, and then count backward back to one. Keep repeating this counting cycle for two to five minutes.

MANTRAS Lack of confidence can have a profound effect on your thinking skills. For instance, studies show that older adults often do worse on memory tests after they’re exposed to negative stereotypes and criticism about aging.

“You can offset our common tendency to speak negatively, critically, or disrespectfully to ourselves by talking to yourself as you would talk to someone you care about with deep tenderness, like a grandchild or a loving pet,” says Salinas.

Reciting positive mantras is one way to do this. This type of mantra is a motivating and inspirational message that reminds you of your many capabilities. Make a list of your favorite messages.

Keep them short and simple, so they are easy to remember. When you need a quick confidence boost, repeat a mantra in your head, or read it aloud.

Another option is to write mantras on sticky notes and place them where you can see them every day, like on the bathroom mirror, refrigerator, and computer screen.

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Part One

The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be

Perhaps the reason we’re no longer able to see into the future like the great writers of the twentieth century, is that we’re in our own version of what they predicted.

Bryn Haworth Given the title of my previous article – ‘Fascism ain’t what it used to be’ (published in the June 2019 ,21 issue of Majalla) – readers may think I have embarked on an unending meditation on the declining standards of our times, with a potentially infinite supply of titles along the lines of ‘such-and-such ain’t what it used to be’. Actually, a finite supply, since I will never come clean and start with the word ‘nostalgia’. These same readers could be forgiven for picturing me as some cantankerous dotard in his slippers, for whom nothing is left but to inveigh against the modern world between extended naps. If only they knew how close to the truth they were. As someone sneers in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: Work, play – at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking – thinking!’ (p. 47) By that time (i.e., the year 2540), one shudders to contemplate what old men will be doing, though no senior railcard holder with the tastes of a seventeen-year-old is likely to be a pretty sight (Warning – some readers of a nervous disposition may find what follows disturbing. Is it any wonder Huxley was banned in Ireland?): Now – such is progress – the old men work, the old men copulate,

the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think […] scampering […] from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electro-magnetic Golf Course to…

I admit, it’s a fair while since I scampered. The last time, ironically, was to avoid being hit while crossing a golf course.

None of us, but for the mega-rich, can attest to the truth of these predictions. For lesser mortals, Huxley’s future is yet to arrive.

However, my first answer would be to assure everyone that I do not take naps; I am far too continually incensed by the modern world to find repose of any kind. It’s true, I read, though only so you don’t have to. I also think; but, although these are wildly unorthodox and archaic forms of inactivity, I consider myself a harmless eccentric.

My second line of defence for the projected series of ‘Suchand-such ain’t’ essays would actually be a question: does anyone seriously believe things are about to get any better? It would seem, on the contrary, that we are poised on the threshold of another ‘low, dishonest decade’, one of a kind Auden himself would not have thought possible, where the next leader of the country has had the finest education money can buy – well, the most expensive on the market – yet displays childlike buffoonery whenever asked a question. It’s a sign of the infantilising of politics (another Huxley idea), the way the ‘populists’ cultivate their anti-intellectual credentials. In fact, it’s so low and deeply dishonest that any self-respecting demagogue from the Thirties would look like an intellectual snob in comparison.

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Gadgets will get better, obviously, and there’s every likelihood more will get done by robots. There will be life on Mars, or death if you’re Elon Musk. However, none of this represents a big, paradigmatic change, since we’ve already done that sort of thing on the moon.

Aldous Huxley

But I shan’t let myself get carried away by indignation again. In that earlier article, I have already shown that today’s fascists (alright, ‘populists’) are not sufficiently imaginative or intellectual. I have amply demonstrated how they lack a proper grounding in the basics of twentieth-century fascism. And so, once again, I call on Steve Bannon’s monks to do something about it. The gauntlet is now well and truly in your court.

In this article, I hope to prove that today’s futurists are also insufficiently intellectual. In fact, they seem to think the future is a simple extension of the awful present, except worse.

YEARS AND YEARS Take the series that aired recently on the BBC. Written by Russell T. Davies, who has also penned episodes of Dr Who, Years and Years took us just fifteen years into the future, so perhaps it was not the boldest attempt at time travel. The family in the story are pretty hard to like. They come across as arch and knowing, right-on and emotionally null. Maybe that’s a representative sample of the modern British family, but if so, we should be worried.

Emma Thompson, who struggles to maintain a Northern accent for any sustained period of time, plays Vivienne Rook, a sort of monstrous hybrid of Katie Hopkins and Nigel Farage, who wears red dresses and emotes a lot.

Viv Rook rises to power on the basis of ‘telling it like it is’.

The programme does not dwell too much on her politics, since it is assumed that we’re familiar with the type. In a nice moment, Rook names her organisation the Four Star Party, thus evoking some Italian jokers with a similar name, but more specifically in reference to her use of the word ‘f***’ in a panel discussion.

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Even this rare flash of wit, however, doesn’t really work, as it would be ‘f’ followed by three stars. But hey, one mustn’t cavil.

I confess I did not sit through the first four episodes. Like everybody these days, I have a small attention span to think of. Things got a lot more interesting by the fifth episode, so I watched quite a lot of that. After a run on the banks resembling the failure of Northern Rock, the character of Stephen Lyons (played by Rory Kinnear) finds himself short of a million quid and is forced to seek work with a very dubious old schoolmate, Woody (played by Kieran O’Brien), who is trying to land a major contract with the government and needs to employ ‘monkeys’ to help him. It’s complicated, but Woody is one of those irritating and vexatious spirits who question what they are told on the news and then exercise selective gullibility, i.e. believe whatever rubbish they are told by the people they choose to listen to.

Stephen, in contrast, is a man of reason, and thus sadly at odds with the times. When he demonstrates a stubborn attachment to facts, his old school friend becomes impatient and very nearly loses faith in his employability: Woody: What I need in the office is someone who says yes. What do you say?

Stephen (nodding): Well, um, I suppose [the disputed fact] was debatable.

Woody: Is that a yes though, mate, because I really need to hear it.

Stephen: Oh, I can say yes. It’s all I ever do. You okay? Yes. You alright? Yes. [He enumerates all the ways in which he has compromised himself lately], but yes, I’m fine, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, I can say yes, Woody.

Woody (laughing): I think I found myself a monkey.

This compliance leads to Stephen attending a secret conference at Chequers where he bumps into the rabid Rook, still wearing her distinctive red, in an otherwise empty committee room. She is somewhat abrupt, but intimates that she would gladly leave the country if given half a chance. When Stephen innocently reminds her that, as the Prime Minister, no one could stop her, she contradicts him ominously saying “They’d kill me. They would have me killed.” We are left to imagine who ‘they’ might

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be. Deep state, most likely.

In the following scene, as the camera zooms slowly in over the heads of an attentive audience that includes Stephen and his old school chum, a young woman is explaining the kind of work the government intends to initiate. There is talk of camps. Rook then suddenly explodes into the lecture. She has recovered her poise and is every inch the demagogue. She explains that the word ‘camps’ has all the wrong connotations, and these places will in fact be known as ‘erstwhiles’, as they are erstwhile facilities, such as military bases or hospitals. The idea is to deal with the vast influx of refugees. There follows a chilling explanation from Rook for the use of such places. “Let’s look at the words,” she says, “let’s stare them down. The word concentration.” Her policy is based on the British methods for dealing with the Boers: Rook: They [the detention centres] will never stop filling up, never. These problems will never go away. […] So, the British found a way to empty those camps in South Africa. They simply let nature take its course. The camps were pestilent […] rife with disease, which on the one hand was regrettable, on the other hand fitting […] The population of the camps controlled itself.

You might call it neglect. You might call it efficient […] Some people called this genocide, but have you ever heard of it? The camps, the Boers, the result. Have you? Have you read about it?

Were you taught it? Do we remember it? We forget it, because it worked.

This history lesson would have more shock value if one was indeed hearing about the treatment of the Boers for the very first time. Somehow the ignorance of the audience in Chequers, upon which the whole point depends, reflects more on the modern curriculum than on our morality. The problem with this kind of simulated nastiness is that it doesn’t look like our future – it looks like our nauseating present, but written in very big capitals, like a shouty tweet.

There’s a lot of this short-sighted prognostication about.

There’s a new game called Watch Dogs Legion, for instance, a sci-fi open world adventure by Ubisoft Montreal. Set in a postBrexit, post-Scottish independence and post-democracy London, it depicts a dystopia where the pound has been routed, the citizenry has switched to cryptocurrencies and the government has been bankrupted by the resulting fall in tax revenues.

Meantime, a wave of inward migration has sparked a political crisis, leading to more people than ever before being rounded up, placed in multiplying deportation centres and...

TEMPUS NULLIUS It’s more than a little disappointing that Russell T. Davies, despite having a Tardis at his disposal, could only come up with a vision of the future as subtle as a video game.

Mind you, perhaps it’s a sign of how little future he thinks

we have left. He would hardly be alone in that presentiment.

Recent events have seen a huge surge in anxiety about the future.

Children have bunked off school to protest about it, and been duly scolded by the Prime Minister (the real one) for doing so.

I’m not sure the next Prime Minister will have the same moral authority, given that Boris Johnson is a living and breathing argument against having any education at all.

A teenager from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, has been part of the inspiration for these mass truancies. She is an eloquent opponent of carbon emissions and can see the dangers of our preoccupation with the economic demands of the present. Thunberg has spoken of the need for ‘cathedral thinking’ instead, to extend our imaginations beyond the immediate moment. Our ancestors in Europe often began building cathedral they knew would not be completed in their lifetime.

It is a compelling analogy. One thinks of the first millennium of the Christian era when, according to Christopher Frayling, most people had ‘expected the end of the world’. The relief that followed led to a huge boom in cathedral-building: the passing of the year 1000 demonstrated that Armageddon was not worth holding one’s breath for. A monk at Cluny, writing three years after the great non-event, said: ‘It was as if the whole world, having cast off its age by shaking itself, were clothing itself everywhere in a white robe of churches (Independent, 28 May 1995).

Time, perhaps, for a rather less aesthetically pleasing robe, this time of wind turbines, to cover the earth. They are already

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Emma Thompson as a demagogue with a lectern

here, across swathes of the earth’s surface. Even in China they advance in serried ranks across vast expanses, placidly rotating.

Sadly, they still cannot supply half the country’s energy needs, hence its continuing dependence on coal. But if something is afoot in China, something that could potentially spur the rest of the world into abandoning fossil fuels, maybe there is an unexpected advantage to the centralised nature of their system.

Opaque, definitely, and undemocratic, the one thing you can be sure of getting with Communism is a plan, and we shouldn’t be surprised if big ideas and forward thinking come more naturally to totalitarians. In contrast, we have witnessed recently how little forward thinking is inherent to parliamentary democracy.

For Roman Krznaric, a social critic speaking at this year’s Hay Festival, the fixation of liberal democracy with the shortterm future is an affliction of the electoral cycle, a ‘design flaw that produces short political time horizons.’ The media aid and abet this short-termism, dwelling on trivia and ephemera at the expense of the bigger picture issues, and too many ordinary people are bewitched by the news cycle. …representative democracy systematically ignores the interests of future people. The citizens of tomorrow are granted no rights, nor – in the vast majority of countries – are there any bodies to represent their concerns or potential views on decisions today that will undoubtedly affect their lives. It’s a blind spot so enormous that we barely notice it: in the decade I spent as a political scientist specialising in democratic governance, it simply never occurred to me that future generations are disenfranchised in the same way that slaves or women were in the past (BBC, 19 March 2019).

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Could it be that our epoch is oblivious to the future? As I shall argue, the old futurists had a helpful zeitgeist. They lived at a time when plans for the future, big utopian plans of huge ambition, were considered normal. People (even artists) wrote breathless manifestoes. They argued about ideal forms of society and expended vast amounts of energy trying to lay the foundations. It is hard now to imagine the eagerness with which those previous generations beheld the future. Instead, we prefer to look away as we pillage what’s left of it. Here’s Krznaric again: …modern democracy – especially in wealthy countries – has enabled us to colonise the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.

When Britain colonised Australia in the 18th and 19th Century, it drew on the legal doctrine now known as terra nullius – nobody’s land – to justify its conquest and treat the indigenous population as if they didn’t exist or have any claims on the land. Today our attitude is one of tempus nullius. The future is an “empty time”, an unclaimed territory that is similarly devoid of inhabitants.

Like the distant realms of empire, it is ours for the taking.

We are already busily trashing the place, exploiting its resources, despising its indigenous inhabitants – in the case of tempus nullius, the conveniently unborn. Surely the future was treated better than this back in the past, when writers such as H. G. Wells could write Men Like Gods and visualise a perfectly ordered and happy society. No matter how deluded they might have been, they meant well. Now, so indifferent have we become to the inhabitants of the future, we treat them like aliens from a foreign land. We, the ones alive at this moment, are entitled to their resources. It’s as if we’ve democratised the words of King Louis XV so we can all cry “Après nous, le deluge!” in unison.

There may not be a land of opportunity out there, but tempus nullius is up for grabs, and you don’t have to be a time traveller to exploit it. On the contrary, the best thing is not to go there, not even in your head.

THE PAST CARED I suppose it has always been possible to get space and time mixed up in this way. One can see it in L. P. Hartley’s phrase about the past being ‘a foreign country; they do things differently there’.

The phrase took root in the collective imagination and became proverbial because, with a simple verbal trick, he represented the past spatially, as if it still existed as a remote place with very odd customs – customs such as the use of sundials, for instance.

In the past, people depended on sundials to tell the time and they worked tolerably well in sunny climates, but in England they were very inefficient, verging on pointless. They had to write ‘tempus fugit’ (time flies) underneath so people didn’t think time had stopped for weeks on end. It’s possible, of course, that the meaning of the Latin phrase was lost on a lot of people, and that they took it for granted that the world was ending, just as we do today.

But sundials are just one example of how strange the past can

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be. You only have to consider the sheer profusion of horses back then. The whole past stinks of horse.

For Hartley, it was as if the people there were still getting on with the things people in the past were wont to do. They still spent every working day painting pious frescoes on church walls, only to relax by watching heretics being burnt on the sabbath. But the past is a rich feast. It’s a veritable eat-as-much-as-you-like buffet. There are lots of different foreign countries, not just the one called Medieval. In another country known as Enlightenment, for instance, people take little interest in frescoes and are quite relaxed about heretics. Elegantly dressed and bewigged, they snort snuff and ponder the implications of deism, before settling down to hear the latest Haydn symphony.

These past countries, for all their inaccessibility, are vividly imaginable. We have so much information we can make effortlessly convincing costume dramas. The future, being another kind of foreign country, is far harder to describe. People have tried to write about it, of course, but they struggle when it comes to the inhabitants, for the simple reason that the inhabitants have yet to be born.

It’s a pity, in a way, since we all inhabit the future vis-àvis the inhabitants of the past, and they could not have dreamt of the lives we live, but then they would undoubtedly have said the same about their own ancestors. At any one time, people have always lived in the unforeseeable future of their forebears.

The difference is that, at certain points in history, those same forebears made more of an effort to imagine us. I mean, they really cared, apparently. They imagined our mores and our laws, our social structures and our modes of transport. They even pictured to themselves our clothes and our haircuts. You name it, they strained to imagine it. No one can say it was easy for Mother Shipton (1561-1488) to predict EasyJet, but she did, and in a rhymed couplet too, bless her!

Whereas we barely take any interest. Gadgets will get better, obviously, and there’s every likelihood more will get done by robots. There will be life on Mars, or death if you’re Elon Musk.

However, none of this represents a big, paradigmatic change, since we’ve already done that sort of thing on the moon. We think nothing of conversing with machinery. To all intents and purposes, we are the future.

PROPHET OF THE NEW STUPID Little wonder that even the far-sighted among us are unable to see further than our own noses; that counts as far-seeing these days. The whole job of seers is to see. Not literally of course; seers (and Huxley was no exception) are often cursed with very poor eyesight. The inner eye is what they have always depended on. If the inner eye is failing now, maybe it’s because we have so little time left. Or is it rather that we hardly believe what we see, whether with the inner or the outer eye? If we cannot believe our fleshly eyes, how much harder it is to trust our intuitive ones.

Yet this is not a unique period of confusion. As I said, it has the very hallmark of the ‘low, dishonest’ decade, with the same turmoil that our greatest visionaries lived through. Take the section called Guatemala City in Huxley’s Beyond the Mexique Bay. It was written in 1934, two years after Brave New World was published, and shares a lot of the concerns of that book, not least the needs of a consumer society and what he calls ‘our orgy-system’, which makes more sense when compared with the passage in the novel describing a ‘Solidarity Service’. But he is angriest about the growth of nationalism. It’s an oddly familiar theme. Consider the freshness of this passage in particular: Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty, yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalisations […] in place of the dogma of religion they have accepted (with what gratitude!) the pseudo-religious dogmas of nationalism.

Mass literacy, mass education and popular newspapers were to blame. It’s fair to say that Huxley was what our current newly (and proudly) stupid like to call ‘elitist’. To quote another arch elitist, Alexander Pope, in his Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing.

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

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In case, like me, you haven’t been drinking deeply enough, that was the spring in Macedonia sacred to the muses.

People could read these days, but they didn’t know how to criticise what they read. They rejected dogma from the church, but accepted dogma handed down by chauvinists. Because the New Stupid had what Huxley calls ‘positivistic tendencies,’ they preferred nationalism over the intangible nature of God. Truth value did not come into it: ‘What matters to the New Stupid is that the subject of the theory is real.’

It is almost a hundred years since these words were written, yet they could have been written yesterday. Sometimes Huxley refers to the New Stupidity, but whenever he abbreviates this to the New Stupid there is a genuine twenty-first century ring about the phrase.

It seems to belong to the era of alternative facts, post-truth and fake news. One suspects Huxley would have had no trouble getting his head round any of these phenomena.

And as nationalism is on the rise again, stupidity is becoming a mode of doing politics. The quantity of stupid utterances has increased exponentially with the invention of social media. On the right, we have English nationalists offended by the charge of being stupid, while voting for leaders of ever-deepening mindlessness. On the left we glimpse a similar trend. The prominent Corbyn supporter and union boss, Len McCluskey, recently told the BBC’s Pienaar’s Politics: “Tom Watson’s already out, surprise surprise, trying to take on the role of Prince Machiavelli, but I’ve got news for Tom. Machiavelli was effective. He’s a poor imitation of that.”

The Age of Prince Machiavelli has dawned. No longer just the title of a book, The Prince is now incarnated in a form that once seemed harmless and rather jolly: Personally, I blame his subsequent loss of weight. Actually, no, I’m just jealous.

Aside from the deputy leader of the Labour Party, there are certainly some scheming ‘princes’ about, though oddly enough not our actual princes, whose public demeanour is unimpeachably nice.

In Huxley’s day, of course, there were what he calls ‘Duces and Fuehrers’, heroes of the masses who would always arise to feed the baser appetites of the stupid. In ‘Ends and Means’ (1937) he says that the proper attitude towards the hero was not Carlyle’s, but Bacon’s attitude to the tyrant: ‘He doth like the ape that, the higher he clymbes, the more he shewes his ars’. The hero’s qualities are brilliant, adds Huxley, ‘but so is the mandrill’s rump.’

For Huxley, nationalism depends on the wrong kind of emotion.

While desire of a sexual nature can be sated and thus brought to an end, at least temporarily, hate is unending. Only while the ‘objects of mass detestation’ were a long way off could nationalism be enjoyed ‘platonically’. As soon as these hate objects were close at hand, violence broke out. He thought the only possible cure for the rampant growth of nationalism would be a World Psychological Conference, to which the delegates would be ‘propaganda experts.’ Here he goes with the elitism again. Experts! But these are experts among whom Goebbels might be considered a shining example, because only propaganda experts could determine ‘how much emotional excitement, how many orgies, people need to keep them contented and in health.’ What was needed was a well-intentioned Goebbels, a brilliant manipulator of public opinion, who could supply those who

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And as nationalism is on the rise again, stupidity is becoming a mode of doing politics. had not drunk deep enough from the spring in Macedonia with the right kind of refreshments.

Fortunately, Huxley didn’t need to elaborate further on this.

He’d already written the book which would make the achievement of social stability by such means akin to common knowledge. The answer could be summed up in one word: soma. So confident of the benign power of drugs was Huxley that he tried lots of them and even asked for an injection of LSD on his death bed. Soma, then, a kind of ideal drug of his own invention, would keep the people somnolent and content. And then there was genetic conditioning, of course, and telling people stuff while they were asleep. That was where the propaganda came in.

At the time of writing this chapter that had so little to do with Guatemala City – I take that back, having been to Guatemala City, it’s a living dystopia – Huxley was a card-carrying eugenicist. Obviously, Hitler would go on to trash that brand, but before the war people of all political confessions were proud eugenicists. This means that we read Brave New World with an assumption that the author dislikes the whole world order he has predicted as much as we do. Well, that is true inasmuch as his brave new world was the New World. Huxley was definitely not enamoured of the American system. Nonetheless, he was at that time a definite fan of stability, and even expressed (in 1931) his dismay at the chaos of the parliamentary system: we must abandon democracy and allow ourselves to be ruled dictatorially by men who will compel us to do and suffer what a rational foresight demands […] dictatorship and scientific propaganda may provide the only means of saving humanity from the misery of anarchy.

It’s odd that one feels inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

These words, from a newspaper article written at the same time as he was writing the novel, suggest that he really meant it: the world would need to sort things out and parliament was almost uniquely illequipped to do so. Bring on the propaganda experts.

Huxley is nothing if not complex, and his prescient book, weird and witty and wry and scarily apocalyptic by turns, is probably all the better for his confusion.

BRAVE (MEANING SPLENDID) NEW (MEANING NOT ALL THAT NEW) WORLD (MEANING THE GOOD OLD US of A) Before continuing, it is as well to note that the title is misleading.

Brave had nothing to do with courage in the context of The Tempest,

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but rather meant splendid or handsome. It is uttered by Miranda, a young girl who has lived a sheltered life thus far and has stars in her eyes on seeing so many men, three of whom are of very dubious moral character: Oh wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t.

Her father’s reply – ’Tis new to thee – is withering. Prospero instantly deflates her enthusiasm. That’s the way with the real world, there’s always somebody hovering at your elbow, ready to administer the wet blanket.

Thus, ‘brave’ does not mean courageous, ‘new’ falls well short of novelty, and far from being a shiny modern future, much of the book was intended as a satire on the tacky American present.

SO, WHO GETS TO PLAY MIRANDA? In the forthcoming second part of this meditation on The Future, I shall look in more detail at the way Huxley described the dystopian aspects of his dystopia and compare them to Orwell’s equally famous prophecy, 1984.

For the moment, though, I want to dwell on what Huxley might well have considered the redeeming utopian aspects. We have seen he was not averse to the occasional psychotropic substance, nor did he think there was any chance of civilisation persisting without a means of keeping people happy. It’s true that his insistence on consumption might have been intended as a side-swipe at Keynes’ economic nostrums. Huxley was very partial to taking side-swipes. However, as a dabbler in drugs he could imagine the likely comforts of what he called soma. In the Doors of Perception, he described how, released from time, mescaline takers could enter a Shangri-La where ‘there is neither work nor monotony’ but only ‘a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse.’ He was probably thinking

We are used to fluid gender in the plays, but with John the Savage it’s a case of fluid identity, fluid morality, fluid the lot really. He is Caliban turning into Miranda. Then back into Caliban.

of the word as equivalent to revelation. In this state, the ‘divine source of all existence’ could be glimpsed in a flower – there are times when Huxley sounds uncannily like the forefather of all hippies – or even, he says, in the creases of one’s trousers.

Here, again, we have the idea of a future without future, the end of time from which one does not see the future anymore, because one has entered it. This is the future that most of the characters in Brave New World inhabit. Tellingly, no one speaks much about the future – in the future. Like history (which Ford, true founder of the book’s civilisation, famously dismissed as ‘bunk’), the future has no currency. Even death is something people are conditioned into accepting. These received ideas are universal unless you come from outside the perpetual present.

This is where the so-called ‘savage’ comes in.

Now we know that Huxley was somewhat preoccupied with Shakespeare. It was a habit that probably dated back to Eng. Lit. at Oxford and beyond. Even when he wrote an essay on the future, he entitled it ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’.

The extent of this preoccupation would be more obvious if it wasn’t shared by the entire Anglosphere. But in Brave New World, despite its setting in London, no one is preoccupied with old writers. Indeed, they may not even have heard of the Bard, any more than the people in Danny Boyle’s latest film have heard of The Beatles. Only John, ‘The Savage,’ is haunted by the dead poet’s shade, and particularly by his language, having learnt to read with a copy of the collected works. The result is occasionally comic. I shall come to that in a moment.

There are characters in the book – like the main one, Bernard Marx, or the writer, Helmholtz Watson, not to mention Mustapha Mond himself, benign Controller of the World State – who are able to see the flaws in the perfections of Utopia. There is, however, one character who really struggles to see them. Her name is Lenina Crowne.

Lenina is popular. It would be a real joy to know who Huxley was visualising when he wrote her story. Almost certainly a starlet, perhaps a ‘pneumatic’ one. He was well-acquainted with the star system and eventually moved to Hollywood to write screenplays. The following lines not only demonstrate Lenina’s popularity, but offer a glimpse of the weird world and language Huxley patented: Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller’s Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief Justice, and another with Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of the Industrial and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone… (p. 144) Busy girl.

Judging by her conversation, however, they do not admire Lenina for her mind. She has a habit of repeating phrases like ‘One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments’ and ‘A gram

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sweep the floor if you wanted.’

But we’ve got vacuum cleaners here,’ said Lenina in bewilderment. ‘It isn’t necessary.’

‘No of course it isn’t necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I’d like to undergo something nobly. Don’t you see?’

‘But if there are vacuum cleaners…’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them…’ (p. 167)

Tom Watson, before he read ‘The Prince’

is always better than a damn.’ These were the things all her class were taught in their sleep. She basically speaks as if she were asleep, like a true soma-head.

Into Ms Crowne’s humdrum life of frivolous pleasure comes John the Savage. Predictably, he falls head over heels in love with her, virtually at first sight, but coming from a culture where men still have to impress women and woo them with compliments, he feels unworthy of her affections. The problem is how to demonstrate his devotion. Eventually, out of pure gallantry, he offers to sweep her floor, no doubt in the hope of sweeping her off her feet.

Sadly, for all her undoubted charms, Lenina is no romantic.

She is bewildered by the old-world charm of her far too noble savage and rapidly loses patience with his verbosity. She’d be far more at ease getting down to the carnal matter in hand. A woman has needs. John perseveres: He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, ‘I’ll do anything,’ he went on, more and more incoherently. ‘Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful – you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That’s what I feel. I mean I’d

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‘Their labour delight in them sets off’ – John is quoting Act 3 Scene 1 of The Tempest. In the play, Ferdinand is compelled to move heavy logs about and Miranda, witnessing his exertions, becomes very upset. For Lenina, however, it is incomprehensible why such chores should not be done by lower beings. What on earth do we rear them for, if not to sing while they slave?

The brave new woman, never having swept a floor in her life, is motivated entirely by her sexual needs. That is how it should be. It’s true, at one point her good friend Fanny thinks Lenina is taking a little bit too much interest in Bernard Marx. Love interest. ‘I hadn’t been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately,’ Lenina admits. ‘There are times when one doesn’t.’ Fanny gently reminds her how everyone belongs to everyone else and monogamy is out of the question. ‘You’re quite right Fanny. As usual. I’ll make the effort.’

So, we know Lenina has a heart. Nonetheless, if anyone is playing Miranda in this novel, it is definitely not Lenina. When her exasperation with John’s wordiness finally reaches the point of no return, she does what comes naturally to her and, after unzipping a few zips, stands before him in nothing but her shoes, socks and ‘rakishly tilted round white cap’. The sudden nudity does not have the desired effect: …he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Whore!’ he shouted. ‘Whore! impudent strumpet!’

‘Oh, don’t, do-on’t,’ she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

‘Whore!’

‘Ple-ease.’

‘Damned whore!’

‘A gra-am is better…’ she began.

It’s a language barrier that stands between them, as much as cultural conditioning. The Savage has been conditioned to speak fluent Shakespeare, after all. Lenina cannot possibly compete.

Only having the good sense to take refuge in the bathroom saves her from further discord.

We are used to fluid gender in the plays, but with John it’s a case of fluid identity, fluid morality, fluid the lot really. He is Caliban turning into Miranda. Then back into Caliban.

Later, he manages to cause a full-scale riot. The police arrive and squirt soma over the rioters to pacify them. Dystopia definitely has its good points. I reckon we could all get behind that particular method of crowd control.

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Cori “Coco” Gauff

Teenage Sensation Defeats Veterans at Wimbledon

by: Ali El Shamy 1. Athleticism Runs in the Family Cori “Coco” Gauff was born on March 15, 2004, in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Her parents were athletes during their youth, as her mother, Candi, was a former gymnast and ran track and field at Florida State University, while her father, Corey, was a basketball player at Georgia State University.

Cori inherited her parents’ love for sports at a young age and her first signs of athletic potential came when she was 3-yearsold and she jumped off her stroller to run down a track.

2. Inspiration from the Williams Sisters Her father noted that one time when Cori was about four or five, they both watched tennis star Serena Williams win the Australian Open. Williams' win caused her father to jump and cheer in joy, and the young Cori would go on to tell him: "Daddy you like that? I'm going to do the same thing too" and thus her passion for tennis was born. Her mother stated that both Serena and Venus Williams are Cori’s idols and she even has a poster of the former in her bedroom.

3. Parental Coaching and Sacrifices Cori started tennis training when she was in the second grade with her father as her coach, while her mother took care of her homeschooling. The family would then move from Georgia to Florida to improve her prospects of becoming a professional tennis player and her father even resigned from his job at a pharmaceutical company

to dedicate more time to his daughter, a decision he never looked back on. Cori’s parents also took her to Southern France so she could train at Patrick Mouratoglou’s academy. Mouratoglou is, of course, Serena Williams’ long-time coach, and when he met the then 10-year-old Cori, he noticed her determination, athleticism, and competitive spirit.

4. Professional Debut and Youth Championships In May 2018, Cori made her International Tennis Federation debut which she went on to win. A month later she competed in the 2018 French Open, where she competed in the Girls Singles Competition, she made it all the way to the final where she beat fellow American Caty McNally. She later teamed up with McNally in the US Open Girls Doubles competition which they won together. Cori then won the Girls18 and Under Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships. Having ended the year in winning fashion, her mother posted this New Year’s message on Facebook: “Looking forward to 2019.

My theme for 2019 is…Purge, Praise, and Prosper.” Needless to say, her daughter is following her mother’s theme and hopes for the year.

5. Thundering Through Her Idol at Wimbledon Since she wasn’t ranked high enough to qualify for 2019’s edition of Wimbledon, she had to go through via the competition’s wild-card system and had to win three qualifying matches at Roe-

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hampton before making it to the main tournament. Having entered the competition at the young age of 15, she became the youngest player to qualify for Wimbledon. After qualifying, she was drawn in the first round against Venus Williams, five-time Wimbledon winner and one her idols. Cori did not let the gravity of the situation go to her head, as she confidently defeated Venus in straight sets to go through to the second round and become the youngest woman to win a Wimbledon match since 1991. Naturally, the veteran’s defeat at the hands of the debutant teenager made a stir in the sporting world and Cori became an overnight sensation. Cori repeated her winning fashion against 2017 Wimbledon semi-finalist Magdalena Rybarikova, as she beat her 6-3, 6-3. Cori is now a rising star in tennis and is slated to become Wimbledon champion in the near future.

6. Teenage Responsibilities Despite her Grand Slam sensations, Cori’s mother is still adamant in keeping her daughter grounded to the regular life of a teenager. In many interviews, Candi reminded her daughter of the chores she still has to do back home, especially keeping her bedroom tidy. Furthermore, Cori is still balancing her athletic life with her education, as a matter of fact just one day before her Wimbledon qualifying matches; she had to take a late night science test, but if she takes her studies as seriously as her tennis then I don’t think we need to worry about her passing that test.