Oxford Political Review Issue 8: On the Brink

On the Brink

Editor’s Welcome

The latest copy of The Economist sparked a flurry of discussion upon its release this past week. On the cover, UK Prime Minister Liz Truss stands grinning at the bow of a boat labelled “Great Britain” as it tips stern-side into the water, moments away from sinking. Similarly, last week’s Guardian cover, captioned “Free fall,” depicts a hot air balloon decorated with the Union Jack plummeting to the ground, with Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng in its basket. These images encapsulate the feelings of a nation petrified, seemingly standing on the verge of disaster. And this palpable sense of crisis is not just felt here in Britain. Whether Sri Lanka, Haiti or Argentina, people across the globe have taken to the streets protesting the skyrocketing costs of basic essentials due to rampant inflation. As the Ukraine-Russia war drags on, resulting in countless tragic casualties, the possibility of a nuclear attack becomes more terrifyingly real. Meanwhile, authoritarianism has continued to spread, tipping the global scale towards dictators rather than democracy. And just when we thought the impact of the pandemic was waning, new variants continue to emerge, putting at risk the most vulnerable in our societies. No matter where we look, there seems to be a consensus that we are living in a world that is increasingly in turmoil.

This pessimism about the future can be quantified. The graph above shows the results of a 19 country survey run by the Pew Research Center which asked individuals whether they believed their children would be better or worse off in the future. Overwhelmingly, the findings point toward widespread global despair.

For this issue, we challenged our contributors to send us pieces about this feeling of being ‘on the brink’—to ponder what it means when the world stands on a knife-edge.But

being ‘on the brink’ does not need to imply impending, unavoidable catastrophe. Armed with both determination and creative solutions, it’s possible that, just before stepping off the precipice, we may divert our current course. In other words, being at a critical turning point can instead mean being on the brink of a better world. While we may feel we are being swept along by uncontrollable forces, the power of agency means we are not condemned to being victims of determinism.The pieces in this issue reflect this need to grab the reins and direct us down a new path.

No doubt the most pressing matter of our generation is the climate crisis. Ashwin Telang debates what rich nations who have disproportionately contributed to emissions owe to poorer nations. Fonie Mitsopoulou’s piece asks whether we can build a climate-friendly urban future that is not just restricted to the rich. Ming Kit Wong’s interview with Professor Gregory Claeys pushes us to consider how a utopian political theory can compel urgently needed action on climate change.

Two authors contemplate the state of democracy. Ben

Dinsdale discusses how a new right-wing populist movement threatens Canada’s reputation as a dependable liberal democracy. Jack Porter, on the other hand, evaluates whether the use of big data in the US can help bridge the gap between political decision-makers and their constituents.

Other contributors turn towards economic matters. Justas Petrauskas argues that the expansion of the state, particularly in the economic sphere, is actually the best method of preserving individual freedom. Simon Hunt reviews the bankers bonus cap in the UK, noting it was first introduced in response to one financial crisis and how it is now being scrapped in the face of another. Parvez Alam’s piece invites us to reflect on how, even in fictional post-apocalyptic worlds, crises of capitalism remain pervasive.

Finally, our last set of writers tackle crises of international conflict. Haitong Du analyzes tensions between US and China over Taiwanese sovereignty. Prabhav Sharma and Armaan Angra dispute the conventional interpretation of India’s diplomatic stance towards China, arguing the South Asian country

has adopted a policy of strategic deniability. Jeffrey Love examines the failed use of private military corporations to counter radical Islamic extremist groups in Mozambique.We hope that these articles, although discussing some of the hardest challenges of our times, will inspire optimism and action, rather than despair.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to our contributors. It is truly a privilege to have such fantastic authors entrust us with their pieces, and I am delighted to see their hard efforts finally being released for all to read.I’m also incredibly thankful for the dedication of the editorial team. The OPR would be nothing without our editors who work tirelessly to help shape these pieces into the best they can be. Finally, I would like to thank and acknowledge the continued support of our readers. From the UK to India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, the US, Zimbabwe, Australia, Nigeria, and beyond, we are honoured to have garnered such a global readership. I am excited to see where the next year will take the OPR as it continues to grow.

Kate Schneider Managing Editor

Poll Power: Can Data Save American Democracy?

Jack Porter

page 6

Rolling Forward the Frontiers of the State: State Capacity Expansion and Preservation of Individual Agency

Justas Petrauskas

Interview

Gregory Claeys: Utopianism for a Dying Planet

Ming Kit Wong

page 14

page 8 The Strategic Impetus and Geopolitical Consequences of India's Deniability Outlook towards China

Prabhav Sharma and Armaan

Angra

page 16

Mad Max, Fury Road: Imagining Redemption in a Dystopian Representation of the Present Parvez Alam

page 11

Climate Debt: What Do Wealthy Nations Owe Their Poorer Counterparts?

Ashwin Telang

page 19

Taiwan is a Piece of Cake: US-China Relations on the Brink

Haitong Du

page 28

Freedom, not Fear; Truckers, Not Trudeau: Why RightWing Populism is Going Mainstream in Canada

Ben Dinsdale

page 24

When Private Military Operations Fail: the Case of Mozambique

Jeffrey Love

page 22

Banker Pay

Unchained: A Bonus for the British Economy?

Simon Hunt

page 31

Building Future Cities: Saving the Environment or Catering to the Wealthy?

Fonie Mitsopoulou

page 26

Poll Power: Can Data Save American Democracy?

by Jack Porter

As the United States continues to ward off rightwing populist movements, academics, researchers, and technologists attempt to use AI and big data to improve government efficiency by bridging the gap between voters and elected officials. The question to ask, however, is whether this is what the US—or perhaps other democracies—require in this time of insecurity. A prominent

technology gaining momentum in this regard is Pol.is, which is programmed and maintained by members of the Computational Democracy Project, a group of data scientists based in the US envisioning a ‘world in which governance better reflects public will.’ In its essence, Pol.is is a social networking platform that allows for a more reflective and sophisticated political dialogue. The software collects the con-

sensus after the participants have deliberated on the platform and can draft the results into an indepth report for the benefit of decision-makers. The results are quite promising. Governments like Taiwan have used this platform to connect with constituents for more substantial insights into their experiences.

Is this technology a lifeline for American democracy? Or is the

solution premised on a misdiagnosis of the issues plaguing US politics? To evaluate the merits of Pol.is, we need to first understand the influences responsible for the vulnerable state of American democracy.

What is the Problem?

The foremost threat to the sanctity of democracy is economic inequality. As Oren M. Lev-

Jack Porter is an incoming MA candidate in the ‘Political and Legal Thought’ programme at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

in-Waldman writes: ‘unequal distribution of wealth and income may adversely affect individuals’ ability to participate in the democratic process as equals.’ When one’s economic status comes to ‘adversely affect’ their political status as equal to others in society, we see a contradiction emerging between one’s economic and political status in the world. Citizens are simultaneously equal in their democratic rights and unequal in their economic conditions.

It has to be noted that democracies are capable of bringing one’s democratic and economic existence into equal alignment, bridging the gap between those democratic rights and economic conditions. Increased democratization proves to be a strong influence for implementing favourable economic policies such as higher wages and labour regulation. However, when increasingly harsh economic conditions threaten this alignment for the majority, and when democratic politics becomes ill-equipped to act as a counter-force to these economic trends, the legitimacy of democratic representation and associated government institutions come under threat. The intense economic inequality in America is an existential threat to its democracy.

In the US, factors such as income inequality and lower levels of social mobility have disconnected voters from democratic institutions, and boxed them out of the power they grant. When the electoral systems in place that connect you to the levers of power fail to service you, disillusionment concerning your standing within the governing system is inevitable.

What is the Solution?

How can Americans' data contributions to software like Pol. is get them out of this debacle? Pol.is could be highly effective in gathering the lived experiences of individuals disillusioned with American public institutions of representation and legislation. All in hopes of coming

to a more holistic understanding of how each level of their government is falling short of their obligations to the people. If the platform became widely used, it would likely succeed in incorporating more voices into political discourse in a meaningful and productive manner, which would be good for American democracy in itself.

There is clear promise in Pol.is and how it fills a need in society. To understand the potential of Pol.is, we need to look at how decision-makers in the US with authority to fix these governmental and public administrative institutions are currently harnessing data. Can dialogue concerning institutions which fail to offer actionable solutions to problems facing people help fix the institutions themselves?

In late 2020, Pew Research Center released a study that a clear majority (63%) of US adults favour a government-funded healthcare option. Yet, America remains one of the only developed nations without universal healthcare. Healthcare is not an anomalous instance of the US government neglecting public consensus—two-thirds of Americans think the government should take harsher climate action and 76% of voters support a ban on lawmakers trading stocks. Still, these issues go seemingly untouched by government policy.

With such statistically solid evidence favouring policies, it appears as if the issue is not a lack of data but a lack of accountability. The continual emphasis on solving current policy dilemmas with more astute data attacks the symptom and not the cause. The symptom is a disparaged, disunited populace; the cause is the inadequate responsiveness of the US government to administer policies favoured by the people.

Obtaining more sophisticated statistical insight into policy requests on behalf of the greater populace does not lead to the actualization of these requests, given the unfair influence of

wealth on the realization of political decisions. Trends such as the increased wealth gap and changing labour market have resulted in unequal economic opportunities that have led to the decay in both the responsiveness and legitimacy of American democracy for the majority of its citizens. The consequences of these trends are compounded by an institutional failure to properly hold the government accountable to the people’s will. Our discourse has just failed alongside it.

It is not a crumbling public discourse that is edging American democracy closer to the cliff; instead, it is the institutional failings of democracy that have poisoned the well of discourse. More specifically, the conventional methods for US

izens is false. As Robert Dahl points out in his book Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, a key characteristic of democracy is “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preference of its citizens, considered as political equals,” The reality of an unequal economic system establishes a systematic preference of government responsiveness to those elite citizens. This preference is evident through a multivariate analysis of US government responsiveness to average voters compared to the responsiveness when these same interests are aligned with economic elite preferences. With such drastic influence of economic elites, the chances for substantive political engagement of the general populace dwindle.

Americans can, with the help of projects like Pol.is, find a more accurate and more representative consensus of what they would like their government to do. Still, if we fail to acknowledge that the issue resides in the fact that the US government fails to properly align itself with the public consensus—independently of how accurately that consensus is estimated—their democratic woes will persist.

communication.

citizens to engage with their government (voting, writing to elected officials, protesting, etc.) are insufficient for addressing the array of problems posed by a changing economic landscape. This is the reason why Americans become so sensitive towards politics – and the reason why software like Pol.is starts to seem necessary.

The notion that the lack of responsiveness to these issues (wealth gap, shifting labour market, lower levels of social mobility) is a lack of communicative consensus among cit-

The current diagnosis of the problems facing contemporary American democracy overemphasizes the issue of crumbling political dialogue and spotty communication.

What we need to direct our attention to instead is the persistent failure of American political institutions to adequately respond to voters’ needs. Additionally, we should focus our attention to other factors that tend to exacerbate this institutional failure: disparities of wealth, inequities in the labour market, and economic exclusion in general. Until these issues are addressed, the impact of Pol.is will be negligible. Or, to be more hyperbolic, how Pol.is seeks to cure US politics is equivalent to putting a band-aid on a mortal wound.

"The current diagnosis of the problems facing contemporary American democracy overemphasizes the issue of crumbling political dialogue and spotty

What we need to direct our attention to instead is the persistent failure of American political institutions to adequately respond to voters’ needs."

Rolling Forward the Frontiers of the State: State Capacity Expansion and Preservation of Individual Agency

by Justas Petrauskas

In many aspects, the world of 1933 is disturbingly similar to the world of 2022. The stock market crash, worldwide economic contraction, and deflationary spiral of the 1930s match the scale of devas-

tation of the global pandemic, climate emergency, and energy crisis of the 2020s.

However, one event of 1933— small in apparent significance, yet large in symbolic value—

stands out in particular. On 30 January 1933, after several rounds of negotiations, the major political parties of Denmark reached what was later termed the Kanslergade Agreement. Set against the background of

a spiralling economic crisis, the agreement laid the foundations for reforms that eventually led to the development of the Danish welfare state and the now-famous Nordic Model.

Justas Petrauskas is a Philosophy, Politics and Economics student at Oriel College, University of Oxford.

The Danish experience was by no means original in this sphere. Current conventional wisdom predicts that states tend to increase their capacity during crises and times of uncertainty. The 1930s affirm this theory: the Great Depression was marked by efforts of governments around the world to mitigate the negative impacts of the recession by expanding the economic and regulatory capacity of the state. In Weimar Germany, the US and many other countries the state, in an allusion to Margaret Thatcher, rolled forward its frontiers by becoming increasingly interventionist.

Yet, what distinguishes the Kanslergade Agreement in Denmark and almost identical developments in other Nordic countries was the sheer scale of social progress that followed. In the years after the World War II, Denmark, Sweden and Norway ended up as some of the most resilient, prosperous and equal societies in the world. To attribute this success solely to the creation of the welfare state or a single political agreement would, undoubtably, be foolish. However, the timely and well-executed expansion of state capacity was still a significant factor. The success stories of the Nordics, therefore, hold the key to the reinvigoration of the argument for state capacity expansion in today’s world.

The Three Pillars of the Nordic Response

The development of the Nordic welfare state followed a broadly similar course in all three Scandinavian countries. What began as a series of political agreements and labour market reforms in the 1930s, progressed forward to a major expansion of social services and infrastructure in the 1940s and 50s, with state capacities reaching their peak by the 1970s.

While various factors can be seen as partially responsible for this development—from fortunate historical circumstances to the ethnic and social cohe-

sion of these countries—three are particularly relevant from the perspective of state capacity. Economists Svenja Gärtner and Svante Prado point toward equality, institutions, and trust— noting explicitly that that several causal interpretations linking these factors together are possible. Labour market agreements, which entrenched collective bargaining and reduced wage differentials, both contributed to and were sustained by social trust. The creation of social, economic, and political institutions further strengthened these changes and paved the way for their further development in the future.

In their book The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies and the Fate of Liberty, scholars Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson echo the importance of insti-

"Of all the large forces which individuals may depend upon including corporations, private organizations, and unpredictable global trends, the state is likely to be the most accountable through effective electoral policies and constitutional commitments to the upholding of individual rights."

tutions, trust, and diminishing inequality when explaining the successful response of Sweden to the crises of the 1930s. They identify three pillars of the Swedish response which are also applicable to the other Scandinavian countries. First, society and the state’s reaction to the crisis was characterized by the formation of a broad coalition of workers, farmers, and businesses. This was evident both in the political agreements as well as the social ones. The Swedish equivalent of the Kanslergade

involved a coalition between major socialist and agrarian parties. In a similar vein, the famous Saltsjöbaden Accords, which cemented the structured collective bargaining in the labour market, were a compromise between a major trade union and industry association.

Second, increases in state capacity were closely followed by increases in society’s ability to participate in politics and monitor the bureaucracy. This was achieved through the entrenchment of universal suffrage and a fair and proportionate electoral system. The Nordic states grew stronger, but so did the civil society—empowered by universal and egalitarian welfare policies and a consensus-striving culture.

Thirdly, and most importantly, short-term interventions of the state, targeted to mitigate the effects of the global recession, were followed by long-term policy and institutional changes. While fiscal interventions and redistribution policies were important, it was the structural reforms and initiatives in the spheres of education, healthcare, social security and industry regulation that created lasting improvements for the Nordic societies. Crucially, these improvements stemmed from and were implemented by the expanding Nordic state.

Expanding the State in the Age of Diminishing Human Agency

The lessons from the Nordic response to the crises of the 1930s are particularly important for the states of today, especially as governments around the world appear eager for economic interventions. To see this desire for state capacity expansion, it is enough to point toward the massive Covid relief stimulus package in the United States, the gigantic pandemic-related employment protection measures in Germany, and the costly energy price caps in the UK. Yet, what the success stories of

the Nordics highlight is that temporary fiscal intervention is not enough. To achieve a lasting improvement, it has to be followed by structural and institutional changes.

Few policy measures could be a better example of this than the US’s temporary expansion of its child tax credit. Introduced as part of a pandemic stimulus package, the measure managed to cut child poverty almost by half —only for it to surge back after the temporary package lapsed. While one possibility was to continue extending the credit indefinitely, ultimately there is a limit to what tax benefits can achieve for child poverty in a country where a comprehensive social safety net is lacking.

The same lesson, but from the opposite side, is taught by Denmark’s flagship flexicurity labour market model. Building on the foundations of the Kanslergade Agreement and emerging from the high unemployment crisis of the 1990s, their labour market model combines generous income security support for employees with flexible hiring and firing rules and extensive active labour market policies. The flexicurity model does require extensive state spending; as a share of GDP, Denmark allocates significantly more to employment measures than other OECD countries. But the results more than justify this: Danish unemployment figures are one of the lowest in the OECD and when employees do lose a job, they find new one faster than almost anyone else in the world. Crucially, the difference in outcomes is made not by the amount of money spent, but rather by the efforts of the Danish state to design and upkeep policies that generate incentives for the people to seek employment, while at the same time ensuring their income security and providing retraining where needed.

This lesson can be generalized. Temporary fiscal stimulus, furlough schemes, and price cap-

ping may be necessary in the short term. But for these measures to constitute something more than a brief state splurge, they have to be complemented by investments in more resilient energy generation capacities, efficient labour market institutions, and social services system designed with an ageing population in mind. The danger is that with governments’ willingness and energy to act being limited, the response of the world’s states to the current crises may remain at the level of temporary splurges and bailouts.

The reasons to act, however, are even greater today than they were in the 1930s. The most compelling justification for the state capacity expansion is not that this process represents some intrinsic good. Rather, this justification can be uncovered by considering diminishing individual human agency. While humanity’s collective capacity to act—whether through scientific and technological advances or global trade—has been constantly increasing, the individual’s ability to deal with the repercussions of these acts on their own has been decreasing. These collective acts of humanity are acts in the broadest sense of the word; they are often uncoordinated and unintended. In this sense, both inflation and climate change are repercussions of collective acts of humanity, and so is the massive adoption of digi-

tal technologies or the growing popularity of platform work. In all these cases, the capacity of an individual to influence the course of these developments is tiny.

Furthermore, since the crises of the 1930s, individual human agency has decreased substantially. Two core factors contribute to this. One is that the world has become more globalized. This means that as the number of connections increases between economic agents, be it individuals, companies or countries, the ability of a single agent to isolate itself from the negative effects of the collective interactions diminishes. Each depends on all, but none can exert influence or protect oneself alone.

Another contributing factor is the fact that the economic power has been concentrating in the hands of large, non-state entities. With the help of digitization and the increasing embrace of economies of scale and scope, technology corporations have been increasing the influence they cast on the lives of individuals, whether as citizens, consumers, or employees. When these factors are taken together, individuals are left more vulnerable both to the unpredictable repercussions of collective acts of humanity and to the power asymmetry between themselves and large non-state entities. Although it may seem pater-

nalistic, the preservation of the individual is a persuasive justification for the expansion of the state’s capacity to regulate the activities of large non-state entities, protect citizen’s from global uncertainties, and promote their well-being.

Comparing the UK and Denmark is a case in point. The effects of the crises of the 2020s on the average British and Danish persons are remarkably different, not merely because Denmark was dealt some lucky cards. It is also because external shocks and disturbances being equal, the effects felt by the average Danish person are to a greater magnitude mitigated by the state than those faced by the average Brit. In terms of the global pandemic, Denmark has benefited from a more robust and resilient health and social care system, led largely by the state. In terms of the energy crisis, while the country is affected, it has fared relatively better due to consistent, statebacked investments into green energy generation. In terms of costs of living and employment, it has built on collective bargaining frameworks and an extensive social safety net.

What State Capacity Expansion Is and What It Is Not

Finally, in arguing for state capacity expansion, it must be explicitly asserted what this expansion does not need to mean. Contrary to the rhetoric of Britannia Unchained, it does not inherently mean growth-restricting overregulation. As the Nordic countries have demonstrated, competition-enhancing regulation, a strong social safety net and an education system which guarantees greater equality of opportunity tend to be better engines for sustained and equitable economic growth than let-all-loose deregulation. Additionally, state capacity expansion does not need to mean cronyism and state power excesses as is sometimes, unfortunately, seen in several South American democracies, such as Brazil or Venezuela.

As for the concerns about state paternalism, it is important to acknowledge that the expansion of the state’s capacity is inevitably an expansion of its power over individuals and an increase in their dependence on it. However, it is equally crucial to recognize that, of all the large forces which individuals may depend upon including corporations, private organizations, and unpredictable global trends, the state is likely to be the most accountable through effective electoral policies and constitutional commitments to the upholding of individual rights.

State capacity expansion is not and has never in recent times been a new issue. Ninety years before the Kanslergade Agreement, in his magnum opus Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville reflected on social changes he observed in the world at that time. What worried Tocqueville the most— perhaps as much as his famous concern for the tyranny of the majority—was the rise of a highly capable, yet ultimately despotic state administration. In light of this threat, Tocqueville emphasized the need to ‘preserve for the individual the little independence, force, and originality that remain to him.'

What appears to be paradoxical is that, today, expansion of state capacity appears to be the most feasible way for the preservation of an individual. That little independence, force, and originality that is left for the are being taken away by less and less predictable global disturbances, labour market inequalities, and increasingly powerful non-state entities.

Times of crisis, whether during the 1930s or the 2020s, are times for reflecting upon the position which the frontiers of the state should take. In today’s world— even more so than in the world of the Kanslergade Agreement— the outcome of that reflection should fall firmly to the side of rolling these frontiers forwards, not backwards.

Mad Max, Fury Road: Imagining Redemption in a Dystopian Representation of the Present

by Parvez Alam

Parvez Alam is an author and researcher. He holds a Research Master's in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam.

In contemporary popular culture, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic crises are often represented as allegories of our present. Contemporary dystopian movies belonging to the cyberpunk or dieselpunk genre such as the Mad Max franchise (1979-present) are the most prominent examples of this; they often depict current crises of capitalism as persisting in a futuristic world. According to

Mark Fisher, contemporary dystopian movies generally fail to imagine a future world in which capitalism no longer exists.

In his book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Fisher named such reification of capitalist reality in our imagination and cultural productions as ‘capitalist realism.’ This is expressed precisely in the representation of crises, law, and subjectivity in

the world of Mad Max. However, in the latest installment of the franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), spectral and dispossessed subjects also play pivotal roles in revealing and negating a spectral figure of law in a way that can also be read as attempts to circumvent the threshold of capitalist realism. In other words, these are attempts at imagining redemption in a world in which capitalist realism has become the

norm in post-apocalyptic or dystopian representations.

In his famous book State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben delineated our present as an era in which the state of exception or emergency has become the dominant juridico-political paradigm. In other words, the practice of decreeing or passing special and exceptional legal measures has been normalized

to the extent that exceptions have become the norm. And in tandem with major crisis narratives of our time, the state of exceptions produces dispossessed citizens. In the state of exception, law maintains itself after its own suspension, even when it obstructs citizens from accessing their rights. For Agamben, this is the condition of the law of a world in which crises have taken a perpetual form, separated from any kind of judgment that may end it.

Such representation of crisis in a dystopian world is analogous to the representation of normalized crisis that Fisher describes as a symptom of capitalist realism. In Capitalist Realism, Fisher claims: ‘the normalization of crisis produces a situation in which the repealing of measures brought in to deal with an emergency becomes unimaginable.’ It is a situation epitomized by a phrase popularized by Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek: ‘that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.’

To Fisher, dystopian movies and novels of the past were cultural objects in which an alternative way of living could be imagined, and the crisis or disaster they represented were often a prelude to a new world and ways of living. However, in our time, capitalist realism has become so reified in our cultural imagination that even dystopian movies struggle to depict an alternative to the capitalist way of living. Such reification of capitalist realism is radically depicted in Mad Max, as in it the world ends, yet the crisis of capitalism remains – the military-industrial ideology of the possessed subject that ‘killed the world’ not only survives the death of civilization but also has taken over the remnants of post-apocalyptic religion and polity.

The crisis of resources, energy, and war ended human civilization in Mad Max, but the end of civilization did not bring an end to these crises.

War for energy and energy for war is the telos of this dystopian world. In the stronghold called The Citadel, Immortan Joe owns everything, including other human beings, because he owns the rarest of the resources in the post-apocalyptic desert – water. Citizenship in The Citadel means the proprietorship of Immortan Joe. It is a citizenship inscribed by dispossession—legally and literally the dispossessed bear the brand of Immortan Joe on their bodies. Yet, although this is a world in which human civilization is dead and survivors fight to the death for the bare minimum, it is not a pure state of nature. It is not that there is nothing in the world of Mad Max that resembles the law, order, government, religion,

"Mad Max: Fury Road not only reproduces capitalist realism in its representation of a dystopian future, but also attempts to confront such realism, and spectral subjects play the role of protagonist in such confrontation."

and political economy as we know; rather, we find within it their exact representatives. The dictatorship of Immortan Joe in The Citadel cannot be reduced to pure thuggery as it is a sovereign order that reproduces—and gets reproduced by—a particular political economy. The society of dispossessed citizens in The Citadel is horizontally structured by their class and also spatially located. The nameless and unaccountable population residing at the base of the mountain on which The Citadel stands lives an impoverished and short life. Only a few members of society, those most valuable to Joe, experience a "high life" at the top of the citadel. Among them are those who belong to his heavily vaulted harem, labeled as his ‘breeders ,’ whose sole purpose is to provide Joe with healthy

heirs. And it is the escape and rebellion of these dispossessed subjects that change the telos of this movie: from a predetermined supply run to the gas town and the bullet firm to a journey through the ‘fury road,’ towards redemption in a socalled ‘green place” – the utopia of this movie.

The representation of religious and political order in Fury Road reveals various forms of indeterminacy and spectrality, which also seem to be an allegorical representation of our present. The ‘V8 cult’ as the unquestioned religion and ideology of The Citadel makes it apparent that the world of Mad Max is not a world in which legal and ideological canons and apparatuses have disappeared. Immortan Joe is the prophet and God of this cult; he is the sole provider of redemption who promises a mechanical reincarnation and eternal afterlife in a paradise called ‘Valhalla’ to his followers.

What makes it difficult for us to grasp Immortan Joe’s sovereign rule as a legal order is that, within this order, we cannot differentiate law from pure violence, religious community from death-cult, leaders from thugs, and the political economy from exploitation and brutality. Apart from being both the capitalist order of property in its bare form and the religious ideology of the v8 cult, the sovereign order of Immortan Joe lies in pure human action, in a zone of anomie. Agamben, in State of Exception, delineates such a zone of anomie as a zone of exception ‘wherein lies a human action without relation to the norm— coincides with an extreme and spectral figure of the law.’ It is a condition in which nomos and anomie become undecidable, as in the body of the sovereign figure who rules through such law.

In the rule of Immortan Joe, we see such undecidability between nomos and anomie. It is a world in which nomos is shown to be a brand of anomie, sometimes as branding on human bodies.

Owing to Jacques Derrida and to its subsequent use in literary and cultural criticism, the "spectral" metaphor generally refers to entities and forms that exist in between binary poles, e.g., life and death, law and violence, real and fiction, powerful and impotent.

For Agamben, spectral law exists within the dual pole of pure applicability and pure being in force – as the force of law. In our contemporary world, the state of exception is generally given a temporary, legal, and human face. But in the world of Mad Max, the exception is given an inhuman and ghostly feature, as the spectrality of Immortan Joe is also visually represented. His skull-like breathing device, skeletal armor, and white powder-covered body give him a living-dead appearance.

Immortan Joe thus appears to be a character ambiguously representing life and death, law and lawlessness, divine and demonic. As if in the sovereignty of a deified living dead, the spectral figure of the capitalist legal order survives beyond its own collapse in a post-apocalyptic world, in symbiotic relationship with a religious order that appears to be a syncretic relic of after-life mythos and redemptive theologies of the old world. But such a post-apocalyptic condition of capitalism is not unlike that of our capitalist present, as according to Fisher: ‘Capitalism is what is left when beliefs have collapsed at the level of ritual or symbolic elaboration, and all that is left is the consumer-spectator, trudging through the ruins and the relics.’

In Fury Road, spectral metaphors and visual representations also play crucial roles in attempts at encountering and negating the spectral figure of law. Max, the protagonist of the movie, is a character who represents both spectral subjectivity and spectral law. As an ex-cop, his very existence in the post-apocalyptic desert makes him a figure of the law that dwells in a zone of its own suspension, as we hear him

narrating in the prologue, ‘I was a Cop … As the world fell, each of us in our own way, was broken.’ Through his focalization of events, we are confronted with a spectral world that exists in between reality and his lucid imagination, a spectral reality that often saturates the whole post-apocalyptic world of this movie. As a spectral figure of law, Max is not simply the spectral law that haunts, since he is also haunted by those he could not protect. He is haunted by the ghosts of characters long dead, and these spectral figures often become responsible for his actions in the real world. The most decisive of such spectral agencies can be ascribed to an epiphany of Max that provides the group of protagonists with ‘hope,’ and a chance for ‘redemption.’

Immortan Joe is the sole redeemer for his loyal followers. But for Furiosa (a rogue general from Joe’s army), her redemption lies in helping the escaped sex slaves (‘breeders’) find a sanctuary in the ‘green place.’ When the green place turns out to be non-existent, Furiosa and her group attempt to achieve ‘some kind of redemption’ by revolutionizing The Citadel. Such plays around the concept of ‘redemption’ endow it with new significance even after its previous use and promise have been repeatedly exposed as fake or fictional.

For Agamben, ‘plays’ are acts through which characters in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, attempt to study and deactivate the spectral figure of law, so that a ‘new use’ of the law can become possible. In this case, Agamben both follows and critiques Derrida’s interpretation. Derrida, in his book Before the Law (1982), argued that the figure of law represented in The Trial is also a representation of ‘différance’ (a paradigmatic cousin of the 'spectral' metaphor). But for Agamben, characters such as ‘a man from the country’ also play with such spectral law to deactivate it and to liberate it. And for him, such plays are also attempts at liberating and mak-

ing new use of things that were once sacralized and captured within juridico-political or religious spheres.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, the political agency of the dispossessed and spectral subjects often coincides with such plays. For instance, one of the escapees, Splendid, uses her vulnerability and plays with her dispossessed legal condition to protect her comrades, and gives her life in the process. The martyrdom of war boy Nux also deserves attention. The war boys are endowed with spectral subjectivity, as they are short-lived ‘half-lives’ whose appearance symbolizes their condition of being in between life and death, man and machine. They are the fanatic military core of Joe, for whom the theology of martyrdom provides a certain significance to their life. They perform a martyrdom ritual while participating in suicide attacks.

But even after Nux loses his faith in the v8 cult and attempted a coup d’état against Immortan Joe, sacrificing his life for his comrades in the process, he still participated in the martyrdom ritual. Here, the agency of Nux coincides with the transformation of the martyrdom ritual into a ‘play.’ In other words, he inscribes new meaning (death for love and camaraderie) to a ritual which had become meaningless and makes new use of it.

Mad Max: Fury Road not only reproduces capitalist realism in its representation of a dystopian future, but also attempts to confront such realism, and spectral subjects play the role of protagonist in such confrontation. However, we must not lose our faith. As Fisher concluded in Capitalist Realism, ‘The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.’

by Ming Kit Wong

Claeys: Utopianism for a Dying Planet

Utopianism is often seen as the hopeless pursuit of unrealisable ideals or unattainable goals. Indeed, some activists and radical theorists are quick to deny the charge that their projects are "utopian", perhaps fearing the accusation that their proposals are unworkable or unrealizable. You defend a theory of a realizable utopianism; is this coherent, and can you say a little about how it can help us to respond to our current climate crisis? What does it mean for you to reclaim a utopian politics?

Many of the controversies in this field result from the bewildering variety of definitions attached to "utopia" and "utopianism", and in particular a reluctance to separate out the three main components of the latter, literary utopias, intentional communities, and utopian ideas or ideologies.

While the term "utopia" means "impossible" or "futile" in common parlance, there is a long tradition of viewing it normatively and positively, which is often linked to the programmatic aspects of Thomas More's Utopia, from 1516. Typically this involves communal ownership of property, relative social equality and distribution of labour, and strong bonds of belonging and mutual respect. Such societies have existed in various forms, often as smallscale voluntary intentional communities, religious, like the Shakers, or secular, like the Fourierists or Owenites. Opponents contend that their failures, and even more the lack of success in applying similar prin-

ciples on a much larger, even national scale, the USSR, or Marxism, invalidate what I term utopian republicanism as such. This needs to be contrasted in particular to neo-Harringtonian republicanism, where property is limited by an agrarian law, utopian republicanism proposes holding it in common. Supporters at the present day view the extreme individualism typical of neoliberalism as underpinning much of the crisis in modern politics, from immense inequality of wealth to the extreme and unsustainable consumption of the earth's resources.

A utopian politics today can return to some of More's precepts, notably greater social equality, while placing sustainability at the centre of the utopian agen-

da. Crucial here is the recognition that we have only a few short decades to avoid complete environmental catastrophe, with global warming of 3°C or more, and not only the breakdown of civilization but the cruel deaths of billions of people, if not the earth's entire population. This scenario has now become alarmingly likely.

Once we concede this premise, however, it is possible to envision much more radical solutions than those usually offered under the rubric of a "green new deal". Conceptually utopia is useful here because it demands that we think in terms of long-term futures, and of ideal societies much better than our own. An inability to think beyond the short term -

Gregory Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London.

to "look up", as we would now say - is one of the greatest barriers to our ability to save the planet. The alterity function of utopia, as I term it, gives us the possibility of a radical "other"a dramatically different and not merely "better" way of living, which lifts us well beyond our everyday lives and gives us a critical standpoint on them.

Works of imagination permit us to ask the question, "what if…", by refusing to accept the status quo as embedded in stone and valid for all time. At the same time, all of the elements of any future utopia are already present in nascent form in society today. They merely need to be brought to life, and combined in the right ways, in order to function as a solution to environmental breakdown. Utopianism is unlike millenarianism in that it does not rely on a deus ex machina, or external form of intervention, to be introduced. It is purely the product of human effort and ingenuity.

There can now be no viable political theory which does not centrally offer an analysis of humanity's long-term future. And all forms of existing social and political theory which rely on ideas of an indefinite expansion of production, consumption, and population growth, which include most forms of both Liberalism and Marxism, are no longer relevant and must be superseded. So we are at a real turning-point in history.

What do you believe is the connection between utopia and action? Does utopia help motivate and mobilize in ways that other kinds of messaging do not? Should we,

with Marx, be worried that utopia can be counter-revolutionary?

The image of a vastly better future, in this case of a sustainable society, can act to motivate those who concede the terminal damage implied by our present course of action. The fact that five centuries of utopian thinking has produced such a great variety of schemes for human improvement, and a rich fictional literature in particular, inspires us to move beyond the horizons of the present, and the four to five year electoral and political cycles and short financial cycles which typically dominate our understanding of the future. We must be able to project some decades into the future, to contemplate the long-term effects of our activities. The futurological function of utopia, which first appears in earnest in the late eighteenth century, permits us to do this. The change in our behaviour which is implied by any programme which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to sustainable levels within a decade - which is what is required - is in itself revolutionary, though not in the Marxian sense. The chief sacrifices required are from the wealthiest 1% of the world's population, and they may have to be dragooned into reducing their grossly unequal consumption of our resources. Their fortunes will have to be devoted to alleviating the effects

of warming, and preventing further destruction. This will entail progressive taxation to end extreme concentration of wealth, and the abolition of tax havens and evasion, because the cost of achieving sustainability will be a substantial portion of the world's wealth - many trillions of pounds. This burden should not fall unfairly on the lowest producers of emissions in the less developed world. Indeed the latter will require substantial assistance from wealthier nations in order to avoid the worst effects of warming.

How do you respond to arguments that utopia is authoritarian or even totalitarian because it requires or enforces a certain type of participation from individuals, e.g., that their behaviour is somehow improved, that they are more community-minded, kinder to one another, etc? Do you think that there is anything to the accusation that utopia is illiberal in this sense? In the context of the climate crisis, do we have the time to be worried about this type of concern?

Utopia is often wrongly identified with "perfection", although we find crime, war, slavery and divorce in More's paradigmatic text. To my mind "perfection" is a concept inherited from theology which ought not to be identified with utopianism,

though we do occasionally encounter it in Christian utopianism. Think of John Humphrey Noyes "Perfectionism" or "Bible Communism" and the Oneida community. There are some secular equivalents: Condorcet writes of “true perfection of mankind” being achieved when all humanity had achieved a high level of civilisation. But utopias typically take human fallibility into account, and attempt to regulate behaviour without expecting that anyone can ever be "perfect". They may be "perfectibilist" in the sense of striving for much better societies. But they never end in "perfection". The psychology of the small group is central here to regulating behaviour without requiring stringent policing and physical punishment. We consent voluntarily to join groups and maintain their norms where we see benefit in so doing. We do not seek to evade the rules or become free riders where we accept that when everyone keeps to the rules the society functions much better. At the same time, our education systems must attempt to foster more co-operative behaviour. Competition has its place, but we must have a much stronger sense of communal ethos if we are to make the sacrifices necessary to creating a sustainable planet.

The best way to achieve these sacrifices - say limiting flying in the next few decades, or ceasing

to eat meat - is to acknowledge the severity of the threat, and the need for such sacrifices in principle. Our situation is analogous to a war, and we need emergency measures to ensure our survival. Then we can make democratic choices about how to implement such restraints. All forms of society involve some coercion in principle, and many "democratic" societies are ruled by parties which achieve as little as a third of the vote, especially in first-past-the-post systems, thus leaving the majority effectively coerced by a minority. More authoritarian interventions can be avoided by the common recognition of the need for such sacrifices. Of course the wealthiest 1% will resist such solutions. But the environmentalist movement must persuade the public of their necessity.

In addition, daily life in utopia ought in my view to be regulated by some variant on John Stuart Mill's "harm" principle, where all behaviour is permitted which does not explicitly harm others. While the concept is hardly uncontroversial, it allows us to imagine much greater toleration than has historically been the norm, especially where religious intolerance (one of Mill's key examples) has predominated. So utopia rightly understood also implies the expansion of our capacities for freedom, creativity and individuality.

The Strategic Impetus and Geopolitical Consequences of India's Deniability Outlook towards China

by Prabhav Sharma and Armaan Angra

Prabhav Sharma studies Politics & Government at Sciences Po. Armaan Angra studies Law & Social Sciences at the National Law School of India.

Two months ago, in August 2022, the External Affairs Minister of India Dr S Jaishankar stated that ‘the India-China relationship is going through an ex-

tremely difficult phase.’ He cited Chinese border policy towards India as the main reason for the bilateral tensions—and expressed reservations about the reality of an ‘Asian century’ (i.e. the idea

of Asia holding global hegemony in the 21st century) in case China refuses to cooperate with India.

How did the global commu-

nity react to this statement?

While tensions generated by Chinese expansionist policies on multiple border fronts have been globally criticized, there has been a relatively sombre

intra-state criticism of India’s outlook towards China. The latter has been rooted in an understanding of India’s policy as ambiguous and confused.

However, India’s policy should instead be seen as rooted in "strategic deniability," which aims to foster border deterrence. While India faces many compulsions and incentives to adopt this policy stance, it is ultimately infeasible in the long-term for how it may exacerbate regional tensions, positioning India on the brink of a confrontational future.

India’s Outlook: Ambiguous or Deniable?

In 2014, Chinese state media termed Indian foreign policy as 'ambiguous,' characterized by an unwillingness to take definitive policy stances as a function of appeasement tactics. Such a reasoning was not novel, reminiscent of the American criticism of India’s non-alignment during the Cold War. Yet, this assessment has been internally echoed among researchers and the political opposition wherein a lack of public discussion about India’s policy—towards Chinese border incursions and interferences in the maritime zone surrounding the Indian coastline—is a sign of confusion and ambiguity.

However, this perspective needs to be contested with the understanding that strategic deniability, rather than ambiguity, takes centre-stage in India’s policy outlook towards China. This can be further contextualized by understanding the difference between these two strategies.

While ambiguity implies a degree of confusion in the policy stance reflected by actionable inconsistencies (as seen in India’s response towards human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province), deniability is more concerned with the lack of public expression of a tension area or security threat, irrespective of the preventive policy meas-

ures which remain unnoticed within public discourse. This is where deterrence by denial comes into play: a strategy which is focussed on deterring the threat via robust preventive measures with a short-term vision instead of a long-term settlement.

This application of deterrence by denial is apparent, as discussed by former Indian ambassador Shyam Saran during a panel discussion moderated by Suhasini Haider on the two year anniversary of the Galwan Valley incident. He identified the lack of retrospective governmental acknowledgement and media discourse

about this specific incident as strategic denial. Nevertheless, a continuous villanizing of the Chinese threat within internal electoral discourse—by political parties and media broadcasters— without a specific focus on the threats experienced along the Indian border and the coastline demonstrates the intent to reap intra-state political benefits while being deniable towards a long term inter-state settlement.

This strategy is rather antithetical to the one towards India’s other security nemesis—Pakistan— wherein a direct and arguably confrontational approach while addressing specific tension areas has been prioritized. This

is often expressed by a vehement criticism of incidents articulated in a clear and specific manner. For instance, the accusations of state sponsored terrorisms in relation to the Uri and Pathankot attacks and an annual remembrance of these attacks, in contrast to the case of Galwan Valley and Doklam incidents.

Compulsions and Incentives behind India’s Deniability

During a time when the Indo-Pacific is being accorded the centre-stage in geopolitics—and with China rapidly expanding its presence therein—India is leaving no stone unturned in asserting itself as a decisive stakeholder in the region. INS Vikrant, its first indigenously made aircraft carrier, is the latest addition to its swiftly modernising naval fleet, as part of its ambitious expansion plan.

Diplomatically, it is taking much interest in collaborating with Southeast Asian nations and ASEAN. It has revived the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation and is steering a major revamping of its structure, mandate and functions. More so, engagement through the Quad, a security forum between Australia, India, Japan, and the US, has become central to its Indo-Pacific strategy.

Yet, it must not be overlooked how India actively projects such endeavours as not aimed at a particular nation but towards the peace, prosperity and stability of the region. In the Quad, for instance, India is quite unlike the other three players in its reluctance to mention China in press releases.

Instead, it endorses the ‘spirit of the Quad’ and the all-concerning themes of global health, infrastructure, climate change, new and emerging technologies, etc. This reflects its attempt at ensuring the absence of "alliance-like" overtones, also bringing to action its deniability policy.

India does acknowledge the security risks posed by the Belt and Road, the String of Pearls, and other Chinese expansionist ventures. But in deterring the potential threats, it is erecting the aforementioned barricades of strategic leverage—political, diplomatic, and military.

This is fundamentally different from how the US is deterring China on the Taiwan issue or how NATO and the EU deterred Russia against invading Ukraine. In fact, the Taiwan and Ukraine examples bring forth another aspect relevant for this discussion; in employing a deterrence by punishment approach, political outspokenness, public warnings, and proclamations of consequences take over the rhetoric, inevitably taking a toll on diplomatic relations.

India cannot afford this risk as the Indo-Pacific is only one of its many concerns. Certainly, among many others, Afghanistan is a major concern in Central Asia and India cannot deal with it without China—and Russia—on its side. Perhaps, this also explains its increased interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS, involving both China and Russia.

At such fora, India has been ardently advocating for common interest areas such as terrorism, radicalisation, trafficking of humans, weapons and drugs, etc. Further, India’s attempts at enhancing relations with the Central Asian nations—as seen in its convening of the India-Central Asia Summit and Delhi Regional Security Dialogue—may be frustrated if China is on the opposing side.

Ambiguity, Deniability and a Deadlock: Chinese Strategy

If two things were to characterize the Chinese policy on India, it would be the lack of consensus within its strategic circles and the co-existence of strong optimism with an equally strong pessimism. More specifically, the conflict between President Xi Jinping’s global visions of

‘Major Power Diplomacy’ and ‘Neighbourhood Strategy’ visa-vis India forms the bedrock of the dilemma. Both perspectives stem from an acknowledgement of India’s strategic advantages— namely, geography and power dynamics which position India as the dominant player in South

two things could characterise the Chinese policy on India, it would be the lack of consensus within its strategic circles and the coexistence of strong optimism with an equally strong pessimism.."

Asia. Nonetheless, ‘Major Power Diplomacy’ sees India as a potential partner in China’s expansionism while ‘Neighbourhood Strategy’ sees it as a rival in securing a China-centred and China-led regional order.

Adding to the predicament is the awareness of India’s positioning as the 'key variable' in the success of any Indo-Pacific strategy, be that of the US or China, and yet, a lack of clear knowledge over which side India intends to choose. In this context—and given the volatility of the situation—Chinese strategists have not been able to settle on a concrete, long-term policy.

What follows instead is a loosely bound, "ambiguous" and reactive approach seeking to hold India—as well as China’s relationship with India—where it currently is. Needless to say, China immensely benefits from its political, military and economic might, which provides it sufficient leeway to be able to afford such an ambiguous outlook. This Chinese ambiguity coupled with India’s deniability results in a deadlock where neither party is interested in making a move towards improving relations, but neither party wants a deterioration, either.

Deniable Policy, Undeniable Tensions

This deadlock resulting from a combination of India’s deniability strategy and China’s ambiguous policy is consequential for peace in the region. While there are a myriad of potential impacts, there are two main dimensions in particular to focus on: first, transformations in the regional developmental milieu and, second, threats to the balance of power structures in US-China bilateral tensions.

Recalling Jaishankar’s apprehensions about a potential India-China escalation, it is reasonable to wonder how it could affect the possibility of an "Asian century." Consequences relating to the regional developmental ecosystem are arguably a prominent consideration.

Though unseen, the India-China deadlock has much to do with major infrastructural advancements planned in Central and South Asia, as well as in much of the extended Indian Ocean Region. In what is conceived as the "string of pearls," competition between India and China is accelerating the pace of infrastructural projects and improving connectivity, while also effectuating a system of checks and balances.

Especially in the small island nations of Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, etc., such competition is crucial not only to prevent economic coercion but also to protect their stability and sovereignty. Interestingly, Indian involvement is implicit, if not explicit, even in projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. As much as India diplomatically denounces the Corridor, it tactically falls short of creating barriers to it.

It is meaningful, therefore, to assess the impact of ‘the deadlock breaking in favour of confrontation’ in this milieu of development. Would every pearl in the string have to inevitably side with one of the two adversaries, letting go the benefits it was

conveniently reaping before? Would India begin obstructing Chinese projects in its disputed Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir region, possibly by instigating political destabilisation?

However, the scope of consequences extends beyond the Indo-China battle over influencing development in the region. As discussed previously, the Sino-American rivalry remains central to the peace and security arrangements in the Indo-Pacific.

It is important to contextualise the relevance of India’s foreign policy to this balance of power arrangement. Currently, India has retained an interest-based, non-aligned approach, evident from a simultaneous active engagement in Quad as well as intending to revive BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Former National Security Advisor for India, Shivashankar Menon, has strongly argued in favour of a non-aligned approach akin to the strategy adopted by India during the Cold War. Yet, Lieutenant General Prakash Menon has contested this opinion due to the impossibility of ignoring Indo-Chinese border tensions.

This assessment places India in a unique limbo: inaction in the face of Chinese border ambiguity fosters a threat to territorial sovereignty, but pro-US alignment reinforces a bipolar order which threatens India’s capacity to take independent decisions on other issues such as bilateral economic exchanges with China. This positions India on the brink of a tradeoff between losing some control over sovereign decisions either way. That is, unless India decides to opt in favour of a diplomatically confrontational approach that builds on Jaishankar’s message from earlier this year: normalization in bilateral relations is not possible without normalized border deployments.

"If

Climate Debt: What Do Wealthy Nations Owe Their Poorer Counterparts?

by Ashwin Telang

Since the Industrial Revolution, when global warming was set into motion, nations have been slow to address its effects. Before 1960, the global community ignored its dangers. Even now, when carbon-consuming nations urge climate action, their solutions brush aside poorer communities and nations which endure the most severe consequences. At

a time when warming is nearly unescapable, this injustice merits international attention.

Scholarly consensus now argues that the Earth’s climate is a global common held by no nation. But this begs two questions: Should carbon-emitting nations be held accountable, and if so, how? How too should poor nations, who are the most

climate-vulnerable, seek justice?

Since 2015, rich nations have spent nearly $3.3 trillion on fossil fuel industries but only $1.5 billion on the poorest nations. Wealthy states bear an inherent responsibility to maintain a healthy climate. Yet, historically, they’ve exploited poor lands for fossil fuels and labour, using them to pollute Earth. But that’s

only half of the story. As industrial nations enjoy fossil fuels, poorer nations face the greatest consequences today—floods, heatwaves, droughts, etc.

Climate change should be considered an issue of imbalanced power. The three main conditions of distributive justice show why rich nations owe poor nations for their climate miscon-

Ashwin Telang is a writing intern at the Borgen Project, an organization which aims to make international poverty a focus of U.S. policy.

duct. Furthermore, a crop of international legislation obligates rich nations to pay climate debt. Nonetheless, few, if any, rich nations have taken accountability for their exorbitant carbon emissions.

Distributive Justice

The broader principles of international distributive justice can guide a discussion of why rich nations owe poor nations. All three speak to why rich nations must pay off their debt.

The most basic is reasoned in Mallard’s Politics of Reparations. Typically, rich countries owe reparations to poor nations for their past misdeeds. Second, political theorist David A. Richards argues that nations have a ‘natural duty of mutual aid.’ For example, if a poor nation suffers from deprivation (e.g. starvation) or faces disproportionate effects from a tragedy, rich nations are obligated to provide aid. Third, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature suggests that when unfair trades or one-sided reciprocity occur between nations, wealth redistribution is necessary. In other words, if one nation doesn’t engage in fair play, they owe the other.

Reparations are triggered by injustice. Throughout history, wealthy industrialized nations have released over three times more greenhouse gasses than developing countries. One glaring example: the US has produced 20% of historical emissions while Sub-Saharan Africa, home to a billion people, has produced a mere 1% of emissions. In fact, according to David Wallace-Wells, ‘the average Ugandan produces less carbon than the average American refrigerator.’

Wealthy countries have conceded that these ongoing emissions are a danger to the global climate. Nonetheless, no sturdy reparations have been made. Poor countries that suffer acutely from climate change are also those who are the least responsible. This fits Mallard’s definition of a misdeed that requires rich nations to make reparations to the poor. It also exemplifies climate privilege. Wealthy nations can use the global ecosphere—a common for poor and rich nations—as a carbon dump without repercussions.

In a climate context, Richard’s theory of mutual aid applies when one country is disproportionately affected by warming. Because poorer countries are typically located around the equator and in the Global South, they are more suscepti-

ble to warming. An S&P study found that poorer countries will be ‘four times more exposed to the risks of climate change than their rich peers by 2050.’ Already, sub-Saharan Africa has been made 10% poorer by climate change. Meanwhile, India is 31% poorer, thanks to climate change.

Geography doesn’t only inflate the risks. In itself, extreme poverty in countries exacerbates the effects of climate change. Developing nations with less diversified economies, a lack of infrastructure, and weaker institutions cannot combat rising sea levels, dwindling crops, and destructive storms. Therefore, there is a clear climate bias towards poor nations on two fronts: geography and capacity. Regardless of whether rich nations caused climate change, the theory of mutual aid mandates that they help poor nations, who disproportionately endure the most damage.

The causation of climate change is a story of one-sided trades, unrestrained power, investment, and land-grabbing. Hume's theory posits that richer nations who create these unfair trades owe the disadvantaged, poorer nations. Throughout the European colonial era, rich nations used violence and exploitation to conduct deeply unfair trades with poor nations. Looted land, labour, and natural resources were used to stoke European industrial revolutions—the cause of global warming.

Maxine Burkett finds that current investment agreements provide rich nations ‘with unfettered access to natural resources by restricting the ability of [poor] states to adopt health, safety, labor, and human rights standards.’ In effect, this prevents a poor nation from adapting to climate change and facilitates a rich nation’s overconsumption of carbon.

The most modern iteration of such unfair trades places a further burden on poorer, oil-rich nations. To avoid pollution do-

mestically, rich nations finance "dirty business overseas" and build "smokestack industries" in poorer countries. Such smokestacks directly contaminate air quality and cause lung damage in poor nations. To that end, these single-sided and unjust trades require rich nations to compensate the poor, according to Humean theory.

Ultimately, poor nations experience structural violence from rich nations and climate change. Structural violence refers to an unfair distribution of privilege, power, or necessity that harms a group of people. In this case, rich nations have exercised their

power to exploit poor nations and pollute the climate. This privilege engineers the systematic subordination of poor nations, pushing them into dire conditions. Using structural violence and the three pillars of distributive justice, Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda’s Climate-Debt theory concludes that ‘the costs of adapting to climate change and mitigating it are the responsibility of the rich countries that created the crisis and [have the resources to end it].’

Legislative Obligations

Scholars have come to accept two legislative frameworks for holding rich nations accountable for climate wrongdoings: cus-

"It is well past time that rich nations start acknowledging their climate wrongs and acting on them. Redistributive mechanisms must be built in this spirit of mea culpa. The smoke that fuelled the British Empire now drowns the marshlands of Bangladesh."

tomary international law and environmental legislation.

As stated in the Harvard Law Review, the No Harm principle of international law holds that ‘no state may, in exploiting its territory, cause injury to the territory, property, or persons of another.’ Under this principle, wealthy states cannot disruptively consume carbon. Some scholars of customary international legislation also argue that the atmosphere falls under a "common concern of mankind." Through the doctrine of state responsibility, each nation is liable for its own affairs with the climate. Simply put, the polluter must pay.

Environmental treaties also obligate rich nations to pay off their climate debt. The Paris Agreement finds that rich nations are responsible for the damage climate change inflicts on poor nations. Article 3 of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) requires rich nations to lead efforts to combat climate change and compensate poorer nations—yet, few nations have followed this decree. The UNFCCC has also defined loss and damage as ‘the potential…impacts associated with climate change in developing countries.’

Despite all these legislative obligations, few, if any, rich nations have taken accountability and repaid suffering poor nations. Perhaps a new, more direct mechanism will be needed to catalyze redistributive justice.

Compensating Poorer Nations

Because the effects of climate change are so extensive and injustice runs deep, rich nations owe many things. A one-time payment does not encompass a permanent solution or redress. Wealthy nations must steward their economic power toward poor nations in four ways: emission-based compensation, infrastructure, providing a safe

haven, and reparation.

Rich nations owe it to poor nations to limit carbon emissions as much as possible since developing nations disproportionately suffer the effects of global warming. But since this hasn’t happened, rich nations should proportionally pay poorer nations according to their own per capita carbon footprint. That way, poor nations that are most affected are served justice while rich nations are held accountable according to their emissions, not population.

Several scholars, including climate scientist Jon Rosales, have concluded that emission-based compensation would ‘implement the ethical maxim that all people should have equal rights to use the global commons.’ In the broader scheme, this protocol should encourage rich nations to decrease their emissions by setting caps, investing in clean energy, and creating carbon tariffs.

Quite simply, emission-based compensation is an impetus for climate action. Rich nations also owe poor nations a contribution to the UN’s ‘Green Climate Fund,‘ which provides ‘economic assistance to low-income countries detrimentally affected by climate change.’

Reduced emissions and compensation, though, will not entirely alleviate the gaping burden low-income nations bear. Wealthy nations owe technological and climate infrastructure to poorer nations. By deploying the resources for climate change adaptation— such as air purification, water management, flood prevention, storm preparation, and agricultural maintenance—rich nations can ease the dire conditions in poor nations they’ve created. Wealthy nations should also work towards decarbonization and climate mitigation in gas-dependent developing nations. They owe renewable energy and clean infrastructure, especially to the oil-pipeline nations that they financed.

In the past 30 years, the number of people living in coastal, poor countries has increased to 260 million. But due to climate change, many will be displaced by violent weather hazards. These climate refugees are likely to increase, and the Institute for Economics & Peace predicts that by 2050 they will amount to around 1.2 billion people. So far, rich nations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have refused to grant refugee status to those displaced by global warming. Rich nations owe the citizens of their poorer counterparts a safe haven. In other words, rich nations have wreaked climate havoc on poorer nations, and the 24 million people that have fled such environmental disasters, at the very least, deserve refuge. Large, rich nations can pay off their climate debt by reforming their immigration policies to house climate refugees permanently.

By virtue of historical climate injustice, poor nations have recently called for reparations. Maxine Burkett articulates that ‘a reparations framework for the climate vulnerable [is] a means of truly grappling with the profound moral problems that anthropogenic climate change has introduced.’ A reparatory framework would address the various factors that prompted climate change—slavery, colonialism, and imperialism—for which many poor countries have yet to receive the reparations they have long deserved. Fully reimbursing poorer nations would finally balance a history of an unrestrained imbalance of power. Citizens of wealthy nations argue that they shouldn’t be responsible for their ancestors' wrongdoings. However, such wrongdoings give them the resources to thrive at the expense of poorer nations. Reparations, according to political strategist Tamara T. O’laughin, ‘respond to the ethical, financial, and civic necessity to wrestle with what the past has brought us.’

It is well past time that rich nations start acknowledging their climate wrongs and acting

on them. Redistributive mechanisms must be built in this spirit of mea culpa. The smoke that fuelled the British Empire now drowns the marshlands of Bangladesh. And thanks to the United States, the Middle East is now composed of oil-pipeline nations—scorched every year by unbearable temperatures. As the effects of climate change become more severe, climate compensation becomes ever more important.

When Private Military Operations Fail: the Case of Mozambique

by Jeffrey Love

In spite of their clear defeat in Iraq and Syria, radical extremist militias in Sub-Saharan Africa are waging an increasingly potent insurgency against local states. These conflicts are taking place across the region, in countries such as Mali, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Mozambique. What started as raids against small

villages and police installations in Northeastern Mozambique quickly became a terrorist insurgency linked to the Islamic State’s Central African Province (ISCAP), characterized by brutal violence against civilians and devastation to the region. To respond to the threat posed by radical extremists in its Cabo Delgado province, the Maputo government turned to the Wag-

ner Group and Dyck Advisory Group, two Private Military Corporations that have seen extensive combat against nonstate actors in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. What resulted was a decisive failure of the two corporations to combat the growing insurgency, which managed to capture the cities of Palma and Mocimboa da Praia. Both corporations suffered

extensive casualties and were ultimately withdrawn from the region. A lack of understanding of the local culture and unfamiliarity with the dense jungle conditions were the main causes of their lack of success.

The Wagner Group was initially employed by the Mozambican government at a discounted rate to provide security for upcoming

Jeffrey Love is a third year BSc International Relations student at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

elections. In exchange, certain Russian companies were granted exclusive rights over sections of Mozambique’s expansive natural gas fields. The Wagner Group is a paramilitary company which cut its teeth in the 2014 invasion of Crimea and has seen combat in Syria, the Central African Republic, Mali, and elsewhere. The Wagner Group has also faced severe criticism for its cruel methods, which have included the killing of civilians, rape, looting, and other war crimes.

Once it became clear that Mozambique’s security forces would not be able to stop attacks by radical extremists calling themselves Al-Shabab (not to be confused with Somalia’s Al-Shabaab), the government of Mozambique directed the Wagner Group to aid in counter-insurgency operations. In September of 2019, 200 mercenaries, multiple Russian helicopters, including a Hind gunship, and drones were deployed to the Cabo Delgado province. The Wagner Group was also tasked with training and leading local Mozambiquan military forces in countering Al-Shabab’s increasingly ambitious attacks. But within weeks, at least seven mercenaries had been killed, with the death toll rising to twelve over the course of the next couple of months. In November, the Wagner Group was pulled out of the operation and sent back to Nacala, 250 miles South of Cabo Delgado.

So what led to this decisive failure? The Wagner Group faced tensions between its forces and local Mozambican military forces. The mercenaries regarded local forces as being underprepared and 'too undisciplined' while Mozambiquan forces criticized the group for acting overconfidently and "bullying" their ranks. Poor integration with local forces was an issue that Soviet forces faced in aiding liberation movements in the 20th century, and the reason why the United States runs Robin Sage exercises for its Green Berets. With poor cooperation from local forces, the

Wagner Group was not able to train nor carry out coordinated operations against Al-Shabab.

The Wagner Group's overconfidence in its approach to the situation meant that it expected Al-Shabab militants to be intimidated by their presence and increased firepower. However, in anticipation of the Wagner Group’s arrival, AlShabab reinforced its Northern positions, calling in thousands of fighters from other regions in the ISCAP and neighboring countries. Overconfidence and poor coordination between forces meant that mercenaries from the Wagner Group were very vulnerable to ambushes by Al-Shabab. These proved to be highly effective, killing just under a dozen mercenaries.

The Wagner Group also struggled to perform counter-insurgency operations because combat took place in both thick jungles and tight urban settings for which the group was not prepared. The bulk of the Wagner Group’s experience before Mozambique was in Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and Syria. The dense jungle that the mercenaries faced in the Cabo Delgado province was unlike the conditions they had experienced before. They

were unfamiliar with jungle combat and survival tactics, preferring to travel by helicopter than by foot. Moreover, while the urban combat the Wagner Group faced was more reminiscent of that faced in Syria, the Group was at a disadvantage as Al-Shabab militants were more familiar with the specific architecture of cities and exploited this information asymmetry to their advantage. Brigadier Ben Barry from the International Institute for Strategic Studies stated that IS militants like AlShabab have a ‘proven ability in fighting in built-up areas.’ The Wagner Group was not able to match Al-Shabab’s ability to fight in urban contexts and thus its counter-insurgency operations were unsuccessful. In fact, during the course of the Wagner Group’s operations, Al-Shabab was able to capture more territory and even began mounting attacks on neighbouring Tanzania.

While the Wagner Group’s subsequent endeavors in other African states have been more successful, its failure in Mozambique speaks to its lack of preparation for the vastly different battlefields present in Africa. Al-Shabab was far more brutal of an enemy than the Syrian

rebels and even ISIS, seemingly not caring about winning the approval of the local population, instead decapitating and dismembering many civilians in the villages it raided. Moreover, the Wagner Group failed to secure the cooperation of local forces and was not prepared for the jungle that it faced.

The Al-Shabab threat still exists to this day. Following the withdrawal of the Wagner Group from Cabo Delgado, Maputo pursued a coalition composed of forces from the Southern African Development Community and Rwanda, numbering in the thousands. This force effectively stopped Al-Shabab’s advance and even pushed it out of certain strategic cities such as Mocimboa da Praia. The Wagner Group is still active in Mozambique; however, the scope of its operations has been limited to information warfare. It was not deterred by its failure in the country; instead, the Wagner Group has recently replaced French troops as a component of Mali’s security forces in the fight against the Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP) and has expanded its operations in Ukraine.

Freedom, not Fear; Truckers, Not Trudeau: Why Right-Wing Populism is Going Mainstream in Canada

by Ben Dinsdale

Ben Dinsdale is a Master's Student in Comparative Government at Green Templeton College, Oxford.

InJanuary and February 2022, thousands of transport truckers flooded the streets of Canada’s capital and the country’s boarder crossing, occupying both for weeks. Anger at vaccine mandates for crossborder truckers sparked the protest, but it quickly spiraled into an anti-mask, anti-government, and staunchly anti-Justin Trudeau movement.

As the protests became increasingly violent and its ties to white nationalism and right- wing conspiracy theories were revealed, political leaders across the political spectrum rushed to express their condemnation.

However, one Member of Parliament refused to do so. Instead, MP Pierre Poilievre went down to a highway overpass to greet the truckers as they rolled into Ottawa. With the horns that would soon echo through the streets of Ottawa for weeks blaring behind him, Poilievre declared ‘Freedom, not fear. Truckers, not Trudeau.’ Poilievre said that he stood for all Canadians hurt by mandates: those who had lost their jobs and businesses, who had children who now felt lonely and depressed, and who felt aban- doned by the country’s political system.

He told his supporters that Trudeau, his Liberal Government, and the media were the enemy, and that he was ready to take them on. Using this populist rhetoric, Poilievre gained more power and support. In September 2022, he won Canada’s Conservative Party leadership race, becoming the official Leader of the Opposition and the man positioned to challenge Justin Trudeau in the next election.

In the late 2010s, Canada was seen as one of the last bastions of liberal democracy, seem- ingly immune to the wave of

right-wing, anti-establishment populism that carried America’s Trump, Hungary’s Orbán, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, and the UK’s Brexit movement to the forefront of global politics. In contrast, Canada was lauded for its openness to immigration and multiculturalism. In 2015, when then Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper mentioned the possibility of a niqab ban for federal employees, he was roundly condemned and— although also due to several other factors—his party was routed in that year’s election . Since being elected, Justin Trudeau has maintained Canada’s anti-popu-

list position, pushing for a gender-equal cabinet, promoting multiculturalism, and actively criticizing populism itself. However, Canada’s position as the darling child of liberal democracy is facing its greatest challenge yet. Although not as extreme as his European or American counterparts, Pierre Poilievre is folding right-wing populism into the mainstream of Canadian politics.

Canada’s Newest Populist

Poilievre, by all widely-ac- cepted definitions, is a populist. Populism, understood as an ideology that pits a ‘pure people’ against a ‘corrupt elite’ using an us-versus-them discourse, has been on the rise in the last 20 years and is increasingly being used in tandem with far-right and/or nationalist rhetoric. The 64-second clip in which Poil- ievre declares ‘Freedom, not fear’ is a textbook example of populism.

In his speech, Poilievre identifies the corrupt elite as Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party, as well as the ‘media’. He fires off a list of regular Canadians who have been harmed by Trudeau’s vaccine mandates and limits on individual freedom, and identifies himself as the voice of those people.

In subsequent statements, Poilievre has added the independent Bank of Canada to his list of enemies, as well as Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, while drafting alienated Western Canadian voters to his chorus of victims of the Trudeau Liberals . He has flirted with conspiracy theories, pushing some questionable views about vaccinations and the ‘globalist’ World Economic Forum. Poilievre has gathered his ‘people’, lined up the ‘elite’, and positioned himself as the man to take them down.

Why Populism Now?

Poilievre’s successful election as leader of the Conservative Party gives rise to the question: 'Why now?' Canada possesses many of the same features that have been key indicators to mark a county primed for populism, but has largely avoided this side of politics until recently. What has caused this change?

Although populism had not gone mainstream in Canada be-

fore Poilievre, populist support has been growing across the country. In the last three Conservative leadership campaigns, there was always a right-wing candidate who employed pop- ulist rhetoric, raising concerns about immigration and questioning Canada’s position on multiculturalism.

One of those leadership hope- fuls was a man named Maxime Bernier who, after losing his Conservative leadership bid, started the more explicitly populist, far-right People’s Party of Canada (PPC). Although the PPC has failed to win a seat in Canada’s parliamentaryfirst-past-the-post system, they garnered 1.6% of the vote in their inaugural 2019 election and increased their support to 4.9% in their campaign in 2021. Canada’s West—a term used to describe the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba—historically has had a cozier relationship with the populist right. A common source of populist anger in these provinces is ‘Western Alienation,’ a concept advocating that Canada’s central provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have significant control over federal politics at the expense of the Western provinces.

Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who served as Prime Minister in the 70s and 80s, was one of the most consistent targets of anger from Canada’s western provinces, as his poli- cies of increased energy-sector nationalization redistributed oil industry-derived wealth from mainly Alberta and Saskatchewan to the rest of the country. Canada’s original modern populist movement, the Reform Party, was born from Western Alienation. It was founded by a man named Preston Manning, who coincidentally represent- ed Poilievre’s childhood riding. During its existence from 1987- 2000, the party was able to become the Official Opposition in Parliament by capturing feelings of Western Alienation and anti-Ottawa sentiment, placing the blame for this perceived exclusion and the prioritization of Quebec over the rest of the country at the feet of both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives in Ottawa.

Poilievre has picked up on this phenomenon, taking advantage of it during his leadership campaign, and continued to emphasize the country’s regional divisions as the new leader of

the Conservatives. But a history of populism, especially in Canada’s West, does not explain why it has emerged into mainstream federal politics now. The somewhat boring but accurate answer to this question is that there is no one answer in particular; rather, a number of factors have contributed to an environment ripe for populist support.

Covid, Conspiracy Theories, and Anti-Trudeau Anger

The first contributing factor is the impact of the coronavi- rus pandemic. In an attempt to respond to the virus, the Canadian government and its provincial peers imposed some of the strictest policies and longest lockdowns in the world. These health measures were effective in ensuring hospitals were able to function, but came with restrictions on individual liberties and negative impacts on mental health.

These negative consequences contributed to a general anger many Canadians hold against the impact the pandemic had on their lives. It has also provided the opportunity for a populist to place the blame at the hands of government actors who were influential in making those decisions.

The pandemic was also a breed- ing ground for conspiracy theories. As people were isolated, looking for any sources of information they could find about, initially, the virus and, later, the vaccines, websites and groups promoting conspiracy theories gained prominence. There is a close relationship between conspiracy theories—especially those that target the government—and populist support. As these conspiracy theories grew in the darker days of the pan- demic, so did the opportunities for populist politicians to take advantage of them.

Finally, Justin Trudeau is the prime target for populist anger. He has already cracked the top- ten list of longest serving Canadian prime ministers and his progressive, "woke" politics represent the exact values and issues that right-wing populist supporters tend to loathe. Trudeau has also faced a number of patronage and political scandals from which he emerged generally scratch-free, but these have created a perception amongst some voters that he is above the law.

He is also the son of a divisive Canadian prime minister, having grown up surrounded by the political establishment and attending an elite high-school and university for his education. He has a polished style of public speaking and generally stays very committed to the par- ty line. He is the exact kind of political elite who populists hate and no one has taken advantage of that more than Pierre Poilievre.

There is no one reason why Canadians' immunity to right- wing populism appears to be waning. But the combination of a underlying history of populist support, especially in Canada’s West, the impact of the pandemic and conspiracy theories, as well as anger directed at Justin Trudeau have all provided the perfect toolkit for Pierre Poilievre to put pressure on the Liberal Government and challenge them in the next election.

What Does This Mean for Canada?

What this means for the future of Canada is unclear. Poilievre may moderate his positions somewhat, or perhaps push aside some of his more controversial statements, but he is unlikely to forgo much of his rhetorical style or core populist messaging. Recent Conservative leaders have tried and failed to move closer towards the centre to take votes from the Liberal Party. Poilievre looks ready to attempt the opposite, focusing on support amongst the far- right and increasing general right-wing voter turnout. This may be a successful approach, but Poilievre already has high unfavourability scores within the broader population for a brand new party leader. His ties to the trucker protest, which was widely unpopular amongst Canadians, may also dog him as his career continues.

What the election of Pierre Poilievre does mean is that pop- ulism has come to Canada and it has gone mainstream. This will impact the norms and rules of Canadian politics, changing the line of what is deemed accept- able and appropriate for federal politicians. How severe those changes will be is hard to guess, but fans of liberal democracy and students of populism should keep a close eye on Pierre Poil- ievre and Canadian politics over the next few years.

Building Future Cities: Saving the Environment or Catering to the Wealthy?

by Fonie Mitsopoulou

Fonie Mitsopoulou is a writer currently based in Cairo and a recent History and Politics graduate from Balliol College, Oxford.

New wonders for the world.' The vague promise emblazoned on the top of the NEOM website is not elaborated upon in the equally nebulous subheading: 'A revolution in civilization.’ It is not clear from the promotional material what NEOM, a high tech, ‘smart city’ region being built in Saudi

Arabia, will ultimately look like. The sleek design of the website for The Line (NEOM’s main city) says more than the website itself; the Saudi Prince’s project constitutes a very expensive attempt at soft power, allowing the Prince to appear progressive and benevolent, both to his citizens and abroad. Even the name, a portmanteau of 'neo'

(the Greek word for new) and mustaqbal (the Arabic word for 'future'), suggests something fresh, exciting, and innovative— a transparent display of the regime’s motivations.

This is ideal for a country trying to outgrow its reputation as conservative defenders of anachronistic social ideals. The

endeavours of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to ‘liberalise’ Saudi Arabia (a favourite term of western media on the topic) include lifting the ban on women driving, as well as his ‘revolutionary’ Vision 2030. Counterproductively, these reforms are matched by moves such as the arrest and torture of several women’s rights activists.

NEOM is consistent with this pattern; it is not a gift that always gives as it has come with multiple PR pitfalls. Its developing company has outsourced their public relations to multiple foreign firms, including Edelman and Teneo. This protective measure preempted as well as countered publicity crises including when the Huwaitat tribe took to social media in 2020 to bring attention to their forced eviction by Saudi security forces in order to make way for the project.

Adjacent to The Line is the Oxagon, an industrial floating city. While the website touts terms like 'paradigm' and 'harmony,' rising sea levels puts such islands at risk and leaves many wondering why an artificial island is being created when Saudi Arabia arguably has enough space on the mainland. Perhaps the answer lies in the common critique of its government’s bloated administration being rife with bureaucratic inefficiency.

Many Middle Eastern nations contain swathes of hardly-occupied land available for construction. This unique political geography can be traced back to before the region discovered oil in the 20th century—back when nomadic structures prevailed. As government coffers rapidly and suddenly filled with oil wealth, cities could (and often had to) grow.

These projects are an urban planner’s dream: what if you had the space and funding to design the perfect city? Most cities across the globe originated as towns which grew, haphazardly, without much planning. This organic development has given rise to a slew of inconveniences, such as poor public transport systems and other counterintuitive infrastructure which were built into, rather than in conjunction with, the city. Poor planning (and execution) has often resulted in high levels of traffic in overpopulated areas where the pollution is palpable. In 2017, transportation produced 29% of the United

States’ total emissions of carbon dioxide equivalent. In a city like Cairo, taking the metro can take as long as walking. The same issue can be found in neighbourhoods outside central Chicago or Philadelphia. When you venture outside the city centre, public transport becomes sparse, or entirely nonexistent, even.

Many of these new cities being built from scratch promise transport-oriented development, meaning they are being built for pedestrians, cyclists, or public transport use. The Line would have no streets for cars to get stuck in traffic. In contrast, it is very difficult to convert existing cities to such models. In Oxford and other similar cities in the United Kingdom, one can spend three years on foot, but only if they live in the centre—something which can be prohibitively expensive. In Cairo, to even consider straddling a bike is to invite death.

However, despite the ambitions of these new city builders, a perfect city still eludes us. New Cairo, a satellite city built to alleviate congestion in central Cairo, currently houses a wealthier population, who can afford to remove themselves from the incessant honking sounds and near-misses with cars that one experiences in central Cairo. Stamford, Connecticut similarly acts as a satellite city for New York.

In 2013, their local newspaper boasted of having the ‘highest concentration of super-rich in [the] US,’ which is reflected in the local cost of living this year being 37% higher than the national average. Many of these future developments are funded through off-plan sales, a financial decision which is unthinkable for most in countries with high wealth disparities.

The example of urban transportation raises a critical question: is it a necessary corollary that only the affluent can afford

to be environmentally friendly through acts like buying Teslas, purchasing solar panels for their houses, or shopping for more expensive (but ethically-produced) groceries? The 2018 Gilet Jeunes movement in

ages or extreme heat, as seen in the dwindling green spaces of London, for example. These cities could also prove to be an answer to the housing crises occupying the minds of renters vying for space in Toronto, Amsterdam, or Hong Kong, by building habitable centres designed for large populations to live in comfort.

Malaysia’s plans for 'BiodiverCity,' as part of Panang2030, include 'urban lilypads' in which 'people and nature can coexist.'

France would suggest this is the case, as the eco-tax levied on the French population was protested for disproportionately hurting rural, poorer populations.

As Margaret Atwood’s The City Planner foreshadows in 'the smell of spilled oil,' some of these cities are not funded exclusively through advance sales or external investment but, rather, with wealth derived from oil or mass industrial production, either directly or indirectly. In which case, can they claim to have a net-environmentally sustainable effect? The NEOM project aims to revolutionise food, for one, by discovering how to become self-sustainable in the desert, in order to anticipate regular future water shortages. This invokes the question: how do the Saudis consolidate the existence of such a project with their recent increase in oil production?

It is difficult not to feel disillusioned with such projects. However, the technology developed in NEOM can be invaluable for the increasing numbers of cities experiencing or expecting to experience severe water short-

India’s Amaravati and Mexico’s Smart Forest City (an undeniably straightforward name) are also geared towards sustainability and creating or embracing green spaces. While these cities still have a long way to go and as the environment continues to steadily deteriorate, these futuristic 'hubs' might be promising signs of shifting attitudes by governments and major companies towards the climate, albeit at times superficial.

In these aforementioned cities, one might find components with which to create a new, perfect metropolis. However, the principles these projects proudly proclaim must also be supported by environmental commitments by governments in all areas, even those less visible, which might not warrant a glossy website of taglines to match. These cities claim to cater to the planet as a whole but, in reality, the only people who have access to these urban oases are those who can afford it. The building of future cities must have inclusion at their core and consider social issues such as economic inequality and housing segregation. It matters little to the rest of the world if a country constructs an eco-haven; unless it is matched by a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, only a handful of people will the privilege of living in a green city which maintains some a semblance of normalcy in a global ecosystem that has gone entirely, and irreparably, off-balance.

"Is it a necessary corollary that only the affluent can afford to be environmentally friendly through acts like buying Teslas, purchasing solar panels for their houses, or shopping for more expensive ethicallyproduced groceries?

Taiwan is a Piece of Cake: US-China Relations on the Brink

by Haitong Du

Haitong Du studies

International Relations at Pembroke College, Oxford. He holds a BA in International Relations from Tufts University.

In Paris Spleen, Charles Baudelaire describes a picnic he goes to in the French countryside. As he offers a slice of bread to a local child who is begging for it thinking it to be a cake, another child appears and disputes the precious acquisition. Baudelaire is astonished as he observes a hideous fistfight between the two farm boys and, upon the battle coming to an end, neither of the panting and bloody children manage to have a bite off the ‘cake,’ now scattered in crumbs among the sand. ‘So there is a superb country where bread is

called cake,’ writes Baudelaire, ‘a delicacy rare enough to generate a perfectly fratricidal war!’

A looming military confrontation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China over the status of Taiwan endangers the future of both superpowers and the rest of the world. Trade decoupling eliminates the economic welfare to which we have grown accustomed; severance of dialogues exacerbates the risks of climate change and other global issues; most importantly, a deadly showdown, regardless of the

outcome, would lead to overwhelming loss of life among on all sides—particularly that of civilians situated in Taiwan, the ‘cake’ in this nightmare scenario.

The clash of US and Chinese political narratives is the direct cause of our sleepwalking into what some experts dub as the ‘Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis.’ Beijing and Washington, through generations of politicization, have inflated Taiwan-related security issues to a non-substantive level. This problem of ‘over-perception,’

in turn, exaggerates Taiwan’s ideological and security significance and reinforces the rhetoric otherwise only intended for domestic consumption. Finally, the creation and sustainment of an incorrigible enemy image rewards opportunists within domestic politics—notably ‘China hawks’ in the US and ‘Wolf Warriors’ in China—at the expense of those who are trying to maintain peaceful coexistence despite tremendous internal pressure.

The narratives of threat amplification become a self-fulfilling

prophecy and geopolitical instability looms larger.

The Making of the Cake

Despite the tremendous social, economic, and political transformations Taiwan has endured since the retreat of Chiang Kaishek’s forces from the mainland, policymakers in Beijing and Washington, from 1949 onwards, have attached objectifying labels to Taiwan’s people and their government. Taiwan was Douglass MacArthur’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ and has become Nancy Pelosi’s ‘democratic partner’ against the Communist Party of China’s ‘accelerating aggression.’ In the Mao Zedong era, US military bases in Taiwan were ‘the noose around the neck of American imperialism,’ and Xi Jinping recently proclaimed Taiwan reunification as ‘the cause of supreme glory of great national rejuvenation.’ As a consequence of this rhetoric, Taiwan has come to represent ambiguous security aims, or, more accurately, ambiguous ideologies.

In August 2022, Nancy Pelosi, the incumbent US House Speaker, led a congressional delegation to Taiwan. According to the Speaker, the visit aimed to ‘stand by’ the ‘island of resilience,’ a symbol of ‘democracy itself’ which the Communist Party of China (CPC) now ‘threaten[s].’

As Pelosi’s Democratic Party anticipates defeat in the upcoming midterm elections, her ‘utterly reckless’ Taiwan trip was echoed by waves of affirmation from the Republican Party. By the night of her visit, a total of 26 Senate Republicans had said they supported the House Speaker. ‘Nancy, I’ll go with you.’ tweeted Trump-era Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ‘I’m banned in China, but not freedom-loving Taiwan.’ In an age of extreme partisanship and polarization, the GOP’s approval of a Democrat leader was a highly unusual, if not bizarre occurrence. The Biden White House was certainly aware of China’s potentially disastrous retaliations, yet the President stayed quiet as he

could not afford to look feeble vis-à-vis Beijing.

Pelosi’s visit created an uproar in China, too. Officially, the Chinese Ambassador to the US, Chinese Foreign and Defense ministries, and even Xi Jinping himself have voiced their strong opposition to Washington’s ‘salami strategy.’ The separation of powers is not a concept familiar to the Chinese public, and many Chinese netizens were under the impression that Biden could easily stop Pelosi if he really wanted to. Semi-officially, Hu Xijin, a mainstream nationalist pundit, suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should shoot down Pelosi’s fighter escorts to deter America’s ‘military confrontation’ against ‘China’s sovereignty.’ Hu’s war-provoking suggestion led to heightened public sentiments, as 708,000 spectators obsessively followed Pelosi’s flight to Taiwan and overloaded the website of Flightradar24, an online flight tracking service. When the news broke out that Pelosi landed at Taipei’s Taoyuan Airport, tens of thousands expressed their frustration on the Chinese internet, questioning how Beijing would even allow such an act of humiliation to happen.

The firestorms surrounding Pelosi’s visit to what Beijing’s narratives frame as a renegade province demonstrate Taiwan’s inflated symbolic significance on both sides. Taiwan is now perceived as vital to both Chinese and American interests. Neither the CPC nor the Democratic Party establishment wanted to look weak against their rivals and both saw the accelerator pedal as the only option in this deadly game of chicken. Baudelaire knew that the ‘cake’ in the children’s eyes was, in fact, bread. But an accurate valuation of the delicacy in question is no longer relevant when the fight has commenced.

A Hideous Fight

The over-investment in rhetoric surrounding Taiwan reduce the island to an abstract: a ves-

sel to launch bombers, a liberal democratic bunker to arm, and a ‘cake’ over which a fistfight is deemed inevitable. The people of Taiwan therefore constitute a secondary concern. In this sense, Beijing and Washington are not so different; they share a blatant disregard for potential civilian casualties in their escalatory marches. By creating an incorrigible image out of their strategic rival, both superpowers have ensured that the people in conflict zones will pay the greatest price. For both nations, the deviation from the currently maintained position on Taiwan and on each other would indicate only capitulation and cowardice.

On the American side, as Professor Jessica Chen Weiss recently wrote on Foreign Policy, ‘ever more vehement opposition to China’ seems to be the sole political consensus. In 2019, a prodigious list of US military and intelligence officials, academics, and private-sector executives published an open letter, proclaiming that China intrinsically endangers ‘Pax Americana’ with its ‘grand strategy’ to ‘[corrupt] everything it touches.’ In 2021, professors Hal Brands and Michael Beckley concluded that China’s domestic decline would make its foreign policy strategy increasingly volatile. Under this backdrop, tariffs, investment restrictions, and the list of export controls Biden inherited from Trump has even expanded. Strengthening Taiwan by symbolic or substantive means constitutes a major component of America’s China strategy today. Whether China’s is rising or falling, a large number of American policymakers no longer believe in a peaceful US-China relationship. China’s atrocious human rights record, expanding economic investment worldwide, and an assertive military posture within the Indo-Pacific have further deteriorated the reputation of ‘China doves’ in Washington. Most recently, President Biden spoke to 60 Minutes that U.S. troops would defend Taiwan ‘if in fact there was an unprecedented attack’, further complicating the American

policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ he used to support as a Senator.

It takes two to tango, or, as the Chinese say, clapping is impossible with a single hand. ‘America hawks’ have become more influential in China over the past few years. Dubbed as ‘Wolf Warriors’ due to a popular movie, nationalists on all platforms seek to discredit the very legitimacy of ‘Pax Americana’ which many ‘China hawks’ in America want to uphold. Often recycling debates on US domestic politics, Chinese media outlets attack the American right for its tolerance of police brutality and gun violence, while assailing the American left for its seemingly bourgeois concerns, ranging from LGBT rights to green infrastructure. Mainstream voices have repeatedly reminded the public of America’s genocidal, settler colonialism past, thus portraying Washington as a hypocritical ‘world police’ careless of its own moral degeneration. ‘The United States is now the Disunited States,’ declared a People’s Daily editorial, stressing that ‘the world is seeing America going down the tubes and heading towards fractionalization.’ The rhetoric further reflects how emotion is supplanting reason when Chinese opinion leaders discuss Washington.

Let Them Eat Cake?

Poisoning the well only works as a political tactic when the general public perceives the ‘poison’ as irredeemably evil. Under this unfortunate political reality, young radicals and establishment elites in Washington and Beijing alike have chosen to exploit this geopolitical crisis. Being tough against China has mitigated the seemingly irreconcilable enmity between Republicans and Democrats. As the 2022 midterm elections approach, candidates from both major parties have seen rising approval rates from being China hawks. Offering superficial and purely symbolic support to those oppressed by China has become a prerequisite for both progressives and conservatives.

Across the Pacific Ocean, a generation of ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomats have cultivated a set of idiosyncratic and often idiomatic rhetoric, the poor translations of which frequently occupy foreign and domestic news headlines. In the meantime, online witch hunts have commenced to ‘cancel’ businesses and individuals perceived as unpatriotic. ‘I stick to my view but am now more careful in talking positively about the United States,’ writes Professor Wang Wen of Renmin University, ‘When I do, I preface it with a criticism.’ As a result of Pelosi’s visit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced eight countermeasures, including canceling China-US military dialogues, suspending counternarcotics cooperation, and shutting down talks on climate change. Days later, another Democrat-led congressional delegation landed in Taipei, and the vicious cycle of escalation worsened.

Pursuing domestic agendas while risking a war between superpowers exemplifies political opportunism. Political opportunism, in turn, benefits the Machiavellians at the expense of everyone else. ‘Playing with fire’ is a term used by Chinese Foreign Ministry’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who has actively delivered threats. Being a pyromaniac makes no one safer—neither the PRC, the USA, nor Taiwan—but it does attract a crowd. A visit to Taiwan, such as the recent ones taken by congressional delegations, is myopic.

Whilst the Democrats have returned unscathed and may see some rewards in 2022, their Republican counterparts are incentivised to adopt a tougher position in 2024, such as recognising Taiwan, according to foreign policy hawk John Bolton. Meanwhile, the PLA, having decided to cut off communication channels with American commanders, now regularly conducts military exercises to reinforce Taiwan’s de jure status as a Chinese province. Under such circumstances,

distrust and miscalculation can push China and the United States even closer to the brink of war.

Preventing Full-Scale Conflict

US-China relations are now anchored in symbolic terms such as ‘Taiwanese democracy’ and ‘national rejuvenation.’ Through exchanges of threats, ‘China hawks’ in Washington are trivializing actual concerns on East Asia’s human rights, whilst Beijing’s ‘Wolf Warriors’ are abating China’s momentum to become a responsible global power. Most importantly, a full-scale physical US-China conflict over a piece of ‘cake’ would inflict an unimaginable degree of damage in the region. Letting a war break out when peaceful alternatives are clearly unexhausted indicates policy failures in both the White House and Zhongnanhai, and neither power will emerge in a better condition than the parochial children in Baudelaire’s prose.

Conversely, the world would be made safer with some introspection within Washington and Beijing. Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic establishment need to realize the danger of sanctimonious complacency and self-righteous indignation towards China, particularly in the domestic context. Capitalizing on imprudent foreign policies to out-Trump Trump and out-China China ahead of election cycles will continue to disorientate and consume the Democratic Party, as well as the United States, well after 2022. For the CPC, no decision-maker should be blissfully unaware of the threats of real ruling challenges, namely, the economic slowdown. Putin’s war in Ukraine might also help them to foresee some of the consequences of a potentially failing armed reunification campaign. The CPC would have quite a lot to gain by keeping the ‘Wolf Warriors’ and their self-devouring nationalism on a tighter leash.

Banker Pay Unchained: A Bonus for the British Economy?

by Simon Hunt

Simon Hunt is editor of the Oxford Political Review.

Four days before Christmas in 2015, a hefty 173page document landed on my desk at work. It was filled with big, bewildering words like ‘prudential consolidation,’

‘solvency buffer,’ and ‘ex post risk adjustment mechanisms,’ and it was about to wreak havoc on Europe’s big financial institutions.

The document was pithily entitled: Guidelines on sound remuneration policies under Articles 74(3) and 75(2) of Directive 2013/36/EU and disclosures under Article 450 of Regulation

(EU) No 575/2013.

It was the culmination of years of discussion, research, and consultation on how to reign in the excesses of the global banking

industry in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. Across 326 separate paragraphs of rules, it spelled out how to implement the EU’s new ‘bonus cap’ – a policy which set restrictions on banker bonuses, and would shine a spotlight on the internal operations of Europe’s big banks, who had never experienced this degree of scrutiny and interference with how they paid their staff.

The document had been produced by the European Banking Authority, the EU’s financial services rule-maker, then based on the 46th floor of One Canada Square, the tallest building in London’s banking district, Canary Wharf. It was an early Christmas present to bankers, financial regulators, and consultancy firms across Europe who would have to spend most of the next year working out what on earth any of it meant.

In truth, most banks didn’t have a clue how to handle it. Administering pay was the responsibility of a firm’s HR department, not usually famed for employing the sharpest minds in the business, and they struggled to figure out how to organise their existing work around hundreds of new rules. They ended up turning to big consulting firms, such as the one I worked at, and signing six-figure contracts with them to figure out what it all meant on their behalf (we weren’t all that sure either, but we took the money and gave it our best shot).

The cap set limits on the ratio of fixed pay to variable pay: a banker’s bonus couldn’t be more than double the size of their salary. The cap only applied to “MRTs” or ‘material risk takers’: those who had a say in where large parts of a bank’s capital were deployed.

The rationale was that bankers had got bigger bonuses by investing in evermore risky classes of assets in order to muster larger returns – a key contributor to events leading up to the financial crash. A smaller bonus meant ‘material risk takers’ would avoid

taking material risks, and banks would gently plod along making moderate profits, investing in nice stable things without collapsing the economy.

But the banker bonus cap was met with staunch opposition the moment City financiers in London caught wind of it. George Osborne, then the chancellor, quickly picked up the mantle and battled the EU to scrap it -or at the very least, find some exemption for London. Osbourne went as far as to insinuate the cap was illegal. He complained of ‘badly designed rules’ that ‘are entirely self-defeating’

referendum. Even after Britain voted to leave, successive Conservative governments – and successive chancellors -- didn’t bother to disinter old arguments about banker bonuses.

I wrote to the UK’s financial services watchdog, the Prudential Regulatory Authority, as recently as 2020 to see if there had been any movement on changing the rules on the cap. The reply was a firm ‘no’: the PRA wouldn’t do anything to hamper London’s chances of being given “equivalence” – a regulatory status afforded by the EU which would ease restrictions on financial services trade with Europe post-Brexit. Even if they wanted to, the government was too busy managing the aftermath of Britain’s divorce with the EU to devote time to the minutiae of remuneration in financial services.

Ukraine, inflation at a 40-year high and recession on the horizon, Britain’s latest chancellor thought it was high time to dredge up old arguments over bank pay."

and ‘are pushing up bankers’ pay not reducing it.’ Osbourne’s arguments were readi ly rebutted by an adviser to the European Court of Justice, after which the chancellor swiftly relented, and the new rules became law. Compliance with them would cost millions of pounds and thousands of manhours in restructuring banks’ internal operations (I played my part), but once the work was done, the industry moved on.

Despite his strong rhetoric, Osbourne would later campaign for the UK to stay in the European Union during the 2016 Brexit

The Cap Debate Makes a Return

So it came as a bit of a surprise when last month, with war waging in Ukraine, inflation at a 40-year high and recession on the horizon, Britain’s latest chancellor thought it was high time to dredge up old arguments over bank pay.

But dredge them up he did. Just days into his new job, Kwasi Kwarteng stood at the dispatch box in the House of Commons and proclaimed the cap was for the can. ‘We need global banks to create jobs here, invest here, and pay taxes here in London, not Paris, not Frankfurt, not New York,’ he bellowed, to a somewhat indifferent audience.

‘All the bonus cap did was to push up the basic salaries of bankers, or drive activity outside Europe. It never capped total remuneration, so let’s not sit here and pretend otherwise. We’re going to get rid of it.’

Kwarteng’s opposition to the bonus cap is based on a few different premises. First, the conservative instinct to avoid meddling with the way a boss

chooses to manage his business. Second, he holds the view that regulation is burdensome: fewer rules lead to greater innovation and more rapid growth. Third: scrapping the cap wouldn’t change levels of banker pay anyway.

One the first argument, he may have a point. No other industry faces such a mountain of regulation every time they choose to reward a member of staff for doing a good job. In no other industry must someone consult a 170-page rulebook every time they hold a performance review. Of course, the intention of the rules is to pre-empt dangerous decision-making, but it’s difficult to establish if they’ve made any contribution to that end, and thus, quite hard to justify their existence.

Kwarteng may have a point on the second argument too. The growth of European banks over the past decade compared to their American counterparts is paltry. Between 2008 and 2018, “return on equity”, a key metric of a finance firm’s success, was about double the size in the US relative to Europe – and European regulations are unlikely to have helped close the gap. But outside the economic burdens of regulation, there are human ones.

A bank with a handful of material risk-takers now requires an army of compliance officers to ensure their pay cheques don’t fall foul of the law. Something about this feels quite insane. It is not just a waste of time on the part of those officers – bluntly, it is a tragic waste of their lives, which could have been better spent doing more fulfilling things like baking or gardening (this sounds churlish, but having spent time with compliance offers who despaired at the monotony of their work, I feel impelled to at least mention it in passing).

Kwarteng is almost certainly right on the third argument. The EU never set an upper limit on how much anyone in the

" It came as a bit of a surprise when last month, with war waging in

financial services sector could earn – in that respect to speak of a ‘bonus cap’ is something of a misnomer. And levels of bank pay haven’t changed much since. At Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s biggest banks, average compensation costs per employee in 2021 were some 25% higher than in 2009 – indeed, compensation levels leaped 10% year-on-year in 2016, the first year the cap was introduced.

So there is quite a strong case, at least in theory, for scrapping the banker bonus cap in its current form. But the problem with Kwarteng’s decision is the timing. It’s one thing to be so tone-deaf as to lift a cap on bank pay when millions in the UK have gone on strike, protesting at a real-terms drop in their wages -- that is ultimately a political gamble. It’s another thing, though, to re-introduce an incentive on risk-taking at a time when the economy is in such a precarious state -- that is an enormous economic gamble.

European regulators may have been totally misguided when they thought bonuses tipped over the first domino in a path to the near-collapse of the financial system. But is now the time to put their views to the test? It defies common sense that Kwarteng thinks the risk is worth the reward.

In the current climate, deregulating bank pay hasn’t been widely advocated as a policy lever to escape recession – not in the UK, nor in Europe or elsewhere. It isn’t something, as far as I can tell, that banks themselves are keen on. It is a complete mistake.

As I write, Kwarteng has already rowed bank on another policy to lift restrictions on the well-paid: a cut in the top rate of income tax. It’s time to put a line through the banker bonus changes too. A cap on the remit of chancellors, though, might serve us all better.

The Team

Editor-in-Chief: Simon Hunt

Managing Editor: Kate Schneider

Executive Editor: Mats Licht

Deputy Editor: Fonie Mitsopoulou

Deputy Editor: Henrik Tiemroth

Global Politics Editor: John Helferich

Global Politics Editor: Sobha Gadi

Global Politics Deputy Editor: Justas Petrauskas

Culture & Ideas Editor: Jack Sagar

Law Editor: Mannat Malhi

Law Deputy Editor: Jason Chau

Interviews Editor: Ming Kit Wong

Interviews Deputy Editor: Andrew Wang

Issue Design: Simon Hunt

Director: Brian Wong

Director: Chang Che

Director: Nick Leah

Director: Michael Shao

Acknowledgements

Cover photography graciously provided by Alisa Musatova. Photograph for Haitong Du's article courtesy of the United States National Archives.

All other images contained in the issue are courtesy of unsplash.com

Thanks to all those who made submissions to this issue. All articles that appear in this issue will also be made available online, with notes and references, in due course.