Foreign Policy Blogs

On June 10, 2021, the president of France Emmanuel Macron announced the end of operation Barkhane in the Sahel region. It will be finished by the first quarter of 2022 in order to reconfigure French military engagement in Africa.

More details appeared after a virtual video summit with the leaders of the G5 Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger). In particular, France would start closing three military bases in northern Mali by year-end. Still there would be 2,500-3,000 of French soldiers, but within the so-called Takuba European task force. France, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy and Sweden are now involved in Takuba force. 

For many years France was the main external security (and political) power in the Sahel region. Africa (as well as the Sahel) is within the eyeshot of many international actors. Among them is Russia, famous for its involvement in non-stable, problematic countries. In light of the latest decisions of France one question topped. Will those new security conditions transform in a chance for Russia to strengthen its role in the Sahel?

Operation Barkhane: why now?

Active military involvement of France in the Sahel began in 2013 after Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda took control of the desert north of Mali. Firstly France announced Operation Serval, which was transformed into Barkhane a year later. It covers Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger with the involvement of 5,000 French personnel.

After all these years war against terrorism in the Sahel turned into something similar to Afghanistan for France. But its military presence has not only an altruistic goal of supporting African states. So, among main French interests in the Sahel are:

1. Natural resources. For example, uranium in Niger, which is important for French energy sphere, especially for stage-managed Orano company, oil in Mali, where one more French company Total operates.
2. Political image. In international politics this region was always seen as a France backyard, where France as an ex-colonial power defined the rules.
3. Political “benefits” of African countries. They have a significant amount of voices within international organizations. Only in the UN General Assembly African states have 25% of voices. 

Earlier this year Emmanuel Macron warned that France would end its military presence if there was one more coup in Mali. Exactly, this happened at the end of May, 2021. But a second coup in Mali definitely isn’t the main reason for withdrawing the troops. 

First of all, operation Barkhane has caused significant fatigue among both the African and French people. Sahel’s people have organized demonstrations  with the demands of withdrawal troops several times. Concerning the French, only 49% of respondents support military presence in the Sahel. Death toll (56 soldiers since 2013) and its costs (costs $708 million a year) contribute to the problem.

At last, troop’s withdrawal is the chance for France to change its policy towards Africa and find other partners, not only in the West part of the continent. Also this is the way to deal with domestic French critics who blamed Paris for replacing sovereign nations in Africa. Especially in the context of future elections, planned for 2022 in France. 

Chance for an old Russian dream

Russia has already been intensifying its relations and involvement in the Sahel, especially in Mali by coup-d’etat with Russian fingertips. Moreover, there public opinion is more positive towards Russia than France. And expesially Asian country the Sahel region sees as future ally in war against terrorism. 

Russia chose Mali as a springboard in the Sahel not accidentally. This is a big country with so-called grey areas at the periphery, poorly controlled by the government. The Kremlin promises “assistance”: peace, military and political support. At the same time, Russian main interests in Africa are:  resources, political adherence at international level, new markets for weapons, new clients for state-owned mining companies. The Kremlin interpretes involvement in Africa as a way to strengthen its image as a world strong power and implements its old desire – to become a new Soviet Union. 

Moreover, African Sahel has a direct connection to the international role of Russia. There are many grey areas, related to illegal migration and narcotraffic. All these are sensitive issues for the EU. Gaining control over these areas gives Russia a significant advantage and possibility to use this “trump” in negotiation with the EU.

As always, Russia chooses weak countries to extend its influence, using old worked out instruments. They include: supply with weapons and mercenaries (well-known Wagner Group), supporting opposition groups, maintaining coup d’etats, using controlled media resources and network of NGOs. All this Russia has successfully tried in Africa many times: in Central Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar.

It’s worth considering that the Sahel is a complex region with a lot of problems – extreme poverty, clash of religions and cultures, the struggle for resources, the institutional weakness and political fragility. All this together creates an ideal environment for terrorists, a fertile ground for their slogans, to which the poor local population responds. And this is one of the reasons why terrorism is so ingrained in the region.

The Sahel is now a frontier against spreading terrorism. The regional countries themselves will not cope with this threat – they do need external support. And ending of Barkhane operation makes perfect conditions for Russia to spread its influence.

 

The conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh appears today as frozen again. Yet it remains fundamentally unsolved. Arguably, the conflict is currently as much a time-bomb as it had been before the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. From the point of view of general post-Soviet geopolitics and generic international relations as well as law, two principal issues appear as paramount for the search for a solution of the conflict.

First, the absent or incomplete international reception of the Armenian narrative about Nagorno-Karabakh has little to do with Armenia, Karabakh, the Caucasus and post-Soviet situation. The problem of the Armenian apology for its territorial claim is not a lack of historical or/and demographic justification. Instead, its partly solid grounding in some (though not other) periods of Karabakh’s past is paradoxically the very reason why it will find only limited understanding outside Armenia.

Armenian commentators’ picking of certain historical facts in favor Karabakh’s independence or inclusion into Armenia is a strategy that can be applied by other nationalists in entirely different regions around the world. There are a number of territories across the globe which are, like Karabakh, in view of their history or/and demography politically “misplaced,” according to those or that nationalists. An international acceptance of the Armenian justification for breaking up Azerbaijan or for even enlarging Armenia could thus open a pandora box. There is little prospect for the Armenian quest of a “liberation” of Nagorno-Karabakh ever becoming broadly accepted, therefore. Instead, the Armenian government, people and diaspora need to find – together with, rather in opposition to, Azerbaijan – a solution to this dilemma via direct negotiations with their supposed enemy.

Second, on the Azerbaijani side, there may today be a time of pride and celebration regarding Karabakh. Yet, the current geopolitical constellation around the Southern Caucasus could change. The main regional actors – Russia, Turkey and Iran – all have authoritarian governments prone to abrupt leadership or even regime transitions. As a result, there may, in the future, be also radical changes in the foreign policy preferences of Moscow, Ankara and Teheran, in store.

For instance, a more fundamentalist future Russian president could take a different approach vis-à-vis the Christian-Orthodox aspect of Karabakh’s history than Vladimir Putin. Or a more pro-European or introverted future Turkish president could soften Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan. The entire region is geopolitically undetermined, organizationally underdeveloped, and potentially unstable.

In the same way in which Baku was in 2020 able to exploit a peculiar geopolitical constellation for a successful military campaign, Yerevan may, in the future, be tempted to accomplish yet another territorial revision, if it believes that the situation in Ankara, Moscow and Teheran has changed to its advantage. Therefore, Azerbaijan should not repeat Armenia’s mistake of merely focusing and relying on powerful outside actors. The solution of the conflict lies in direct negotiations between Baku and Yerevan rather than in mere propping up of domestic mobilization, military capacities, and geopolitical alliances. Ideally, Armenia and Azerbaijan should become more deeply embedded in old and new multilateral international and regional organizations that would include both countries and provide more effective platforms for conflict solutions than currently such organizations as the Council of Europe or Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe do.

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/andreas-umland-why-direct-negotiations-between-baku-and-yerevan-are-the-only-way-to-go.html

 

By Stanislav Aseyev and Andreas Umland

One of the most brutal places of incarceration in the occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine – the so-called “Donetsk” and “Lugansk Peoples Republics” known by their Russian acronyms DNR/LNR – is the secret Izoliatsiia (Isolation) prison in the city of Donets’k. Since 2018, Izoliatsiia has become widely known in mass media and especially notorious for its cruelty. Among others, Stanislav Aseyev, who was held in the prison for 28 months, has published widely on Izoliatsiia.

According to Aseyev’s first-hand observations in Izoliatsiia, more than a hundred civilians went through the de facto concentration camp, in 2018-2019. Most of the captives in the Izoliatsiia prison experienced torture by electric shocks, beating, psychological torture, mock executions as well as rape. Many were forced to do hard physical labor.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR] Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 November 2019 to 15 February 2020 (pp. 38-42) collected extensive witness testimonies on, among others, the Izoliatsiia torture prison:

“One detainee told OHCHR that his cellmates told him they had been ordered by the ‘Izoliatsiia’ guards ‘to make him talk’, and therefore forced him to march in place all night long in the cell, saying ‘If you do not do it, they will hurt all of us’. Detainees told OHCHR that in ‘Izoliatsiia’, ‘press cells’ were set up, where detainees were intimidated or beaten by cellmates to make them confess. One detainee was threatened that he would be forced to perform oral sex on other detainees in a ‘press cell’ if he did not confess. […] In addition to the beatings during interrogations, ‘Izoliatsiia’ detainees told OHCHR that personnel and other detainees cooperating with the ‘administration’ would beat them to coerce them to confess or to punish them for their alleged pro-Ukraine views or for allegedly disobeying the rules or orders. One detainee was regularly beaten for a year while in ‘Izoliatsiia’ as punishment for his pro-Ukraine views. Guards stepped on his toes and used a baton to hit him on his heels and legs causing him severe pain. Another detainee said he was beaten daily to make him confess and needed help to stand or use the toilet. […] In ‘Izoliatsiia’, a separate room with a table and relevant equipment was used to administer electric shocks. For example, one detainee was tied to the table, hand cuffed and hooded. Perpetrators attached one electrode to his genitalia and inserted a metal tube with a second electrode into his anus. He was subjected to painful electric shocks for several minutes, during which he lost consciousness several times. When he screamed, they put a cloth into his mouth. Another detainee told OHCHR that he was put on the table, hooded and with his arms and legs tied. Perpetrators attached electric wires to his feet and poured water on them. Some detainees held in ‘Izoliatsiia’ could not prevent themselves from urinating and defecating during electrocution. […A]nother detainee told OHCHR that […h]is genitalia was also repeatedly hit with a metal rod. As a result of this torture and sexual violence, the skin on his genitalia turned black and peeled off over several weeks. After refusing to confess to espionage, one detainee was put in a cell where one of the cellmates took off his pants and attempted to force the victim to engage in oral sex. Another detainee said that he witnessed the head of the ‘Izoliatsiia’ detention facility come to the cell and order detainees to engage in oral sex. One detainee told OHCHR that while in ‘Izoliatsiia’, he heard guards scream at female detainees on their way to the shower: ‘Go shave your [vaginas]. You are about to go upstairs to work it off.’ […] Several detainees reported that in ‘Izoliatsiia’, a health professional was present during their interrogations and torture. The man revived those who lost consciousness, and guided the perpetrators about how to torture to inflict maximum pain without causing death. He also examined detainees before the torture and asked about their medical conditions; measured their blood pressure or pulse; and gave injections. He told one detainee during torture: ‘We can kill you anytime we want.’”

Oddly, not only pro-Ukrainian and accidental civilians, but also numerous former so-called “insurgents” (opolchentsy) – i.e. previous DNR/LNR volunteer fighters or mercenaries from both Ukraine and Russia – have been held in Izoliatsiia and other detention facilities. During his more than two years at Izoliatsiia, Aseyev personally met and talked to:

1. 1. Yurii Tchaikovskii – a Colonel of the DNR’s so-called “5th Brigade,”
   2. Andrei Bogomaz – a Major General of the DNR’s so-called “Ministry of Emergency Situations,”
   3. Vitalii Ivanienko – a Lieutenant Colonel of the DNR’s so-called “Vitiaz’ Battalion,”
   4. Andrei Ibragimov – a Russian citizen and Major of the LNR’s so-called “4th Brigade,”
   5. Evgenii Tverdovskii – a Russian citizen and Lieutenant of the Russian Federation’s navy,
   6. Sergei Stavnichnii – a Lieutenant Colonel of the LNR’s so-called “4th LNR,”
   7. Aleksei Sidorov – a Captain of the DNR’s so-called “Legion Battalion,”
   8. Aleksandr Trudnenko – a Russian citizen and Senior Lieutenant of the DNR’s so-called “Vitiaz’ Battalion,”
   9. Denis Kustov – a Russian citizen and member of the DNR’s Radio-Electronic Intelligence Battalion,
   10. Aleksandr Shestakov – a Russian citizen accused of drug trafficking.

There were additional pro-Russian Ukrainian or Russian inmates during Aseyev’s term held in Izoliatsiia. These fighters not only sat in the same cells as those Ukrainians accused and sentenced because of their real or alleged pro-Ukrainian activities. The pro-Russian prisoners at Izoliatsiia went through similarly brutal torture often designed to extract preformulated confessions on, for instance, spying for Kyiv. The brutal persecution of “one’s own people” is a practice reminiscent of the Stalinist purges of the Bolshevik party and Soviet regime of the 1930s.

Stanislav Aseyev is an Expert on the Donbas with the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and author of, among other books, “A ‘Light Path’: The History of a Concentration Camp” (L’viv: Old Lion Press, 2020).

Andreas Umland is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, and editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart.

https://khpg.org/en/1608809257 

A larger report on prisoners in the occupied Donbas has been published in April 2021 by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs here: https://www.ui.se/butiken/uis-publikationer/ui-report/2021/prisoners-as-political-commodities-in-the-occupied-areas-of-the-donbas/.

 

Pictured– Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the Taliban’s new Prime Minister

 

In early September, the Taliban began to fill cabinet positions for the new, “provisional government” that will attempt to stabilize Afghanistan following America’s military occupation and disorderly withdrawal from the nation. While it is true that the makeup of this cabinet is expected to evolve over time, the initial round of appointments includes some very unsavory individuals. 

The government will be led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was a prominent political official while the Taliban governed Afghanistan from 1996-2001- given his close ties to the prior Taliban government, he is viewed as a sign of continuity with the pre-2001 Taliban by many in the international community. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the new acting interior minister, is the head of a militant group associated with the Taliban known as the Haqqani and is considered a wanted terrorist by the FBI.

These are not the early returns that most of us were hoping for, and the results fall well short of international expectations. Both the American State Department and the European Union have expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of women and non-Taliban members from governing positions, and the lack of ethnic diversity of a government that will oversee a very diverse nation. Afghan women have taken to the street to protest their lack of representation in government, and were allegedly beaten as a result.

These sorts of actions will not bring the Taliban closer to earning recognition from the United States or its global partners, nor will it ingratiate the Taliban with other global powers like China and Russia. The American State Department has said that the United States is in “no rush” to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, and it seems that the international community generally holds to that line.

At this time it is important to step back, and ask ourselves the following question- as the Taliban is not, at this moment, working to earn legitimacy from the international community, then strategically, what is the Taliban hoping to achieve during its first few days in power?

From my perspective, there are two possible scenarios. 

First, there is the possibility that the Taliban is truly irredeemable, and that this new era of Taliban rule in Afghanistan will be just as brutal as the first. This perspective allows for an easy explanation of events so far – the Taliban has not disavowed its violent associations or appointed women to governing positions “yet” because it never had the intention of doing so. From this point of view, America was foolish to negotiate with the Taliban at all, and if the Taliban cannot be trusted under any condition, a military withdrawal from Afghanistan might prove to be a mistake. 

The second possibility is that the Taliban is delaying pursuing legitimacy with the international community in favor of shoring up its domestic flank. From this perspective, the Taliban is caught fighting to earn legitimacy on two opposite fronts: first at home, and second in the international community. Taking this perspective forces a somewhat more nuanced explanation of the Taliban’s early antagonism – the Taliban cannot offer the United States an ideal cabinet, nor can they appear to have their ideology tainted by their newfound relationship with the United States because doing so would leave them vulnerable to militants and terrorist groups that are even more extreme than the Taliban. Terrorist groups and militant organizations often compete with each other in order to earn legitimacy and support from individual fighters, which explains the turbulence that we have been seeing over the last few days. From this point of view, the Taliban’s initial signaling is not a threat to American interests, but an inevitable part of the process through which the Taliban can address its most pressing security needs before (potentially) working to compromise with the international community. Like it or not, a stable, internally secure Afghanistan will, likely, only come about if the Taliban is able to earn legitimacy both domestically and internationally. Without that stability, the prospects for sustained protection of human rights in Afghanistan are fleeting.

Now, here comes the tricky part. Rand conducted a study reviewing how terrorist conflicts end, and unless the United States is willing to return to war in Afghanistan, history suggests that the most likely path forward for the Taliban is political integration. In fact, the most common way that terrorist groups have been dissolved since 1968 is through integration with the political process. With any luck, the Taliban will drop its military ambitions and adopt a fully political approach – albeit one that would not mirror those that exist in the United States and Europe. More likely than not, full political integration of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then of Afghanistan in the international community, entails the United States and its partners around the world gradually working toward recognizing the legitimacy of the Taliban government. 

Of course, this is not to say that the United States should be in a rush to legitimize the Taliban, but diplomatic recognition should be dangled as a carrot for (relatively) good behavior. Consequently, there is a UN resolution pressing the Taliban to allow for free movement of people out of Afghanistan, and the State Department’s desire to see women serving in Afghanistan’s government is echoed by other members of the international community. These sorts of measures are effective only to the extent that the United States is willing to use its diplomatic tools. Not only is maintaining cordial relations important to the long term prospect of peace, but productive interactions with the Taliban are important in order for the United States to continue to extract the Americans and friendly Afghans who remain in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, a full scale refusal to recognize the Taliban government over the long term equates to trying to walk through a porcelain shop with narrow shelves with one hand tied behind your back. Should the Taliban compromise on the issues most important the the United States and the international community (namely- the proper treatment of women and girls, the free movement of people into and out of Afghanistan, and the humane treatment of foreign aid workers), we would be foolish to turn away the Taliban’s attempt at compromise. Allowing for the best, while preparing for the worst, means that formal diplomatic recognition needs to be put on the table as a bargaining chip that the Taliban can earn through good behavior.

Sometimes there are no easy answers to complicated problems – an outright refusal to recognize the Taliban under any circumstances puts an unnecessary chill on relations and paves the way back to a military conflict in Afghanistan. 

 

–

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

 

Ever since the African Union (AU) granted Israel an ‘observer status’, the organization has found itself entangled in a pitiful  web of political maneuvering and controversy. Only two months earlier, this same organization has joined rest of the world in condemning Israel for violating the international law with its reckless bombardment of Gaza, targeting civilians, and violent attacks inside the Al-Aqsa holy mosque.  

This latest decision is perhaps the worst and most dangerous in the organization’s history since it puts its political and ethical values into question. 

In July 2016, then Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited four influential African countries—Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia—to showcase or dangle a security and trade carrot and take his country’s relentless lobbying effort to gain AU oberver status since it lost such status with the Organization of African Unity in 2002.

As a country with the longest bilateral relationship with Israel and the one that was in desperate need to get air defense missiles to protect the GERD from potential attacks, Ethiopia was set to lead that quartet. And the quartet finally delivered and secured—at least for now—a priceless moral disinformation that Israel was hustling for a long time:

‘If the African Union does not consider the Jewish state a colonialist apartheid regime, who else might have the moral right to do so?’  

Headlines Matter

As international media interest in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank, the espionage gate turned the spotlight back on it.   

The AU decision came at a time when Israel’s rogue attitude and relentless engagement on criminalities that endanger all others except Israel are at the center stage of international political and security debate.

Though the Israeli intelligence has a dreadful record of violating international law in terms of espionage, abducting people from foreign countries, and carrying out assassinations, the following revelation confirms that it has been franchising and enabling ruthless dictators and other rogue actors to commit same crimes with ease:  

According to an investigation conducted by an international consortium of media and human rights groups, Pegasus is a “Military-grade spyware…for tracking terrorists and criminals”.  So far, those governments that the Israeli firm supplied used the software “in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” Moreover, a leaked list containing more than 50,000 phone numbers that Pegasus owners have sought or spied on includes heads of states such as France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

Pegasus is a malicious spook-ware used by the Israeli intelligence to silence critics and to corrupt or blackmail world leaders and other influencers. Furthermore, Israel sold that dangerous software to many tyrants around the world such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed to hack cellphones of human rights activists, opposition leaders, journalists and others.

Collusion To Sustain Apartheid  

Wittingly or unwittingly, enticed with trade and technology or blackmailed through dirty intelligence gathered by Israel’s spook-ware , the African Union took an action that is tantamount to being in collusion with Israel to bulwark that apartheid regime against a groundswell of international calls for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).

The founders of Ben & Jerry are Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They are “proud Jews” who were ultimately fed up with Israel’s ever-expanding land theft in the occupied territories, the apartheid system, and the systematic ethnic-cleansing against the Palestinian people. They also reject the notion that scrutinizing or condemning Israel’s oppressive policies is anti-Semitic.

Though they avoided openly supporting the international BDS movement, the values they expressed in their New York Times OpEd clearly endorses it. “We believe business is among the most powerful entities in society. We believe that companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good,” they opined. This is likely to encourage other international corporations to follow their conscience or try to get on “the right side of history”.

Israel is well aware of the detrimental effect that the international BDS movement had on South Africa’s apartheid system and that is why its leadership went berserk in seeking vengeance against Ben & Jerry. 

No Moral Equivalence

Though some media groups portrayed this issue as an attempt to balance the scale since Palestine was granted such status in 2013, the truth of the matter is this: Inclusion of Palestine as an observer was more of a symbolic expression of solidarity with their cause against a colonial power that was bent on committing systematic ethnic-cleansing against the indigenous people of the land. 

Contrary to the decision to include Palestine, inclusion of Israel was done without any consultations with all member states or any opportunities to debate. And as Algeria’s Foreign Minister said “this decision has neither the vocation nor the capacity to legitimize the practices and behaviors of the said new observer which are totally incompatible with the values, principles, and objectives enshrined in the ‘Constitutive Act of the African Union.”

Inclusion of Israel would not only give it a freehand on spying and browbeating African leaders, torpedo any symbolic or substantive support to the Palestinian liberation cause; it will poison the continental spirit of unity and anti-colonialism.

Mutiny of Conscience

 In a strongly worded protest letter, the South African government described this divisive decision as an “unjust and unwarranted” that was taken “unilaterally without consultations with (AU) members”. The timing of the decision was even more offensive, or as underlined in the statement “…more shocking (as it came) in a year in which the oppressed people of Palestine were hounded by destructive bombardments and continued illegal settlements of the land”.

Lead by Algeria, 14 AU member states that include some with significant political clout such as South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, and Tunisia have formed what could be called ‘coalition of the unwilling’ to pressure the AU to revoke Israel’s status. The AU must take heed or risk abolishing its continental unity when it was needed the most. Sadly, the list only included two Arab member states out of ten. Prominently missing in action were countries that historically opposed Israel’s role such as Egypt, Somalia, and Libya. This may indicate that Israel would soon get a full membership of the Arab League.

Shortly after the list became public, a second-tier group that includes countries such as Egypt, Libya, and Djibouti has issued a joint statement questioning the decision based on technicality- the AU Chairman made a unilateral decision. Still shamefully missing are countries such as mine- Somalia. Here is the painful irony: there was a time when the Somali passport had a prominent warning against traveling to the two apartheid regimes (South Africa and Israel).      

Granting the last apartheid regime in the world the privilege of an observer at the African Union is a betrayal to the anti-colonialism and anti-racism principles that the organization was founded on, and indeed an insult to the legacy of Africa’s most principled son- Nelson Mandela whose pro Palestine stance was unwavering under all pressures.

 

 

With Andrian Prokip 

First published in:

Since 1991, energy delivery and gas supplies have been an important factor in post-Soviet Ukraine’s relations with both Russia and the European Union (EU). Russia was and still is partially dependent on the Ukrainian gas transportation system (GTS) and has not been able to take full control of its energy relations with the EU. Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, geopolitical considerations rather than economic needs have motivated Moscow to build new pipelines specifically designed to bypass Ukraine, and thereby to get a freer hand in its dealings with its westernizing “brother nation.”

The completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany in late 2012 lowered the role of the Ukrainian GTS for Russian energy exports to the EU. It provided a necessary pre-condition for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert intervention in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The forthcoming possible launch of the Nord Stream II pipeline would erase any remaining Russian dependency on Ukraine as a transit country and could be a prelude to new military escalation between Moscow and Kyiv.

For many years, the Ukrainian transit corridor was crucial to Europe’s gas supply. The routes that pass through Ukraine to Russia and the EU have always been more than sufficient to deliver as much gas volume as has been necessary for Europe. The EU’s and Russia’s reliance on the Ukrainian GTS has provoked international geoeconomic interest in Ukraine since its emergence as an independent state in 1991.

Today, the eventual completion of the Nord Stream 2 via the Baltic Sea looks increasingly likely. If this pipeline were to start operating, the Ukrainian GTS would become largely unnecessary. A loss of most or even all Russian-EU transit could call the future of the entire Ukrainian gas infrastructure into question.  Without the income from levies on the transit of Russian and Central Asian gas flowing through Ukraine to the EU, Ukraine may find that its gas transportation system is no longer economical.

If the Ukrainian GTS went out of business, this would have far-reaching implications for the EU’s energy supply, Ukraine’s relations with Russia, and larger European security issues. Many in Ukraine fear that the elimination of Russia and the EU’s dependence on Ukrainian gas transit will allow the Kremlin to provoke further instability in Ukraine.  The Kremlin would feel more comfortable to intensifying its hybrid war with Ukraine once Russia is no longer dependent on Ukrainian gas transportation. This could escalate into a full-scale as well as open (and not merely covert, proxy, and paramilitary) interstate war against its Slavic neighbor.

At the same time, it is increasingly obvious that the role of Russian and Central Asian pipeline gas in the EU’s energy market will gradually decline. Alternative energy sources are becoming more widely used. Remaining gas demand will increasingly be met via diversified supply mechanisms, including Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tankers. These factors will decrease the EU’s dependency on both the gas supply from Russia  and the Ukrainian GTS. Recently, the adoption of the European Green Deal and a resulting acceleration of decarbonization have made this outcome more likely

However, Europe’s decarbonization plans may also be opening a new window of opportunity for Ukraine. In the best case scenario, an increasing demand for a variety of low carbon gases–such as biogas, biomethane, and hydrogen–could result in more energy collaboration between the EU and Ukraine. New joint projects for the generation and transportation of low carbon gas could become part and parcel of Ukraine’s future integration into European energy markets.

Ukraine has the potential to produce per year 7.5 to 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of biogas and biomethane, which is approximately 25 to 30 percent of its own yearly natural gas consumption. As the production costs of such gas are relatively high, demand for this energy source may currently be low in Ukraine. Yet, it could be attractive for European customers today. The prices of these energy sources may be more acceptable in, and the nature of these gases will be more relevant, to the EU than they are currently for Ukrainian customers. Technically, these types of gas can be delivered through existing pipelines without much modernization, following a few legislative amendments that are expected to pass soon.

While exporting biogas is a short-term option, a promising long-term prospect is the generation and export of Ukrainian hydrogen. The European Hydrogen Strategy, as part of last year’s European Green Deal, stipulates that “the Eastern Neighborhood, in particular Ukraine, and the Southern Neighborhood countries should be priority partners.” The Strategy calls for the installation, within the EU by 2030, of 40 gigawatts (GW) of electrolyzers – specialized installations generating hydrogen – that, in their turn, need to use renewable or other low-carbon energy for their operation. (Such provisions are necessary to guarantee that, in the end, the exploitation of new energy sources is indeed contributing to environmental protection.) More electrolyzers producing another 40 GW are envisaged for the EU’s neighbor countries from which the EU could then import this green energy. It is planned that electrolyzers producing 10 GW out of the planned new 40 GW capacity will be located in Ukraine.

Despite the positive outlook for the development of Ukrainian hydrogen production for Europe, this plan is facing some challenges in Ukraine. First, the Ukrainian natural gas pipelines are so far not suitable to transport hydrogen. They would need modernization to be used for such a novel export function.

Some Ukrainian gas transportation companies are, in cooperation with various technical universities and other academic institutions, already investigating the possibility of transmitting hydrogen through the existing distribution grids. These Ukrainian investigations may be also of interest to other countries with similar gas transportation systems, especially those in post-communist Eastern Europe. However, significant investment in new hydrogen production and transit infrastructure will be needed soon in order to create and take advantage of  a modernized energy transportation network.

Moreover, the general organization of Ukraine’s entire gas system needs to be rethought and redesigned. The current volumes of gas consumption and transit are much lower than the previously installed capacities allow – a misbalance that raises the generic fix-costs and final price of the transportation and distribution services. For instance, overall gas transit in Ukraine amounted to 141 bcm during the year 1998, but was at only 55.8 bcm by 2020, meaning that much of the GTS remains unused. Based on existing contracts, the amount of gas transit may decrease further to 40 bcm annually by 2024. There is a similarly radical change in Ukraine’s own gas consumption. While Ukraine’s gas consumption had been 118 bcm during its first year of independence of 1991, this number declined to 50.4 bcm in 2013, and went further down to 31 bcm in 2020. However, it’s important to note that the latter number does not include gas consumption in the non-government-controlled parts of the Donets Basin and in occupied Crimea.

A second major challenge for Kyiv will be determining how to raise enough domestic and foreign investments to take full advantage of Ukraine’s high green gas generation and transportation potential. Above all, funding is needed to redesign and reconstruct the existing natural gas grids and prepare for the transmission of hydrogen. The  production of hydrogen  requires the construction of new facilities to produce it, preferably by using renewable energy sources to run the electrolyzing process.

A third challenge of Ukraine’s entry into EU’s emerging green gas market will be Kyiv’s energy relations and competition with Moscow. Presumably, the Kremlin will not wait for the EU’s demand for fossil fuels to decrease and for income from current Russian energy exports to the EU to shrink. Russia will also try to become a green gas and hydrogen exporter to the EU. There is a risk that Russia will draw on its experience conducting trade and (mis)information wars to limit Ukraine’s ability to supply hydrogen to Europe through defamation, subversion and intervention. This threat will become especially pertinent if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is indeed launched, and the EU becomes entirely independent from the Ukrainian GTS. Russia cannot be expected to engage in fair competition with Ukraine and could even employ para- or regular military means – as it, in some ways, partly already does – to improve its position in the European energy market.

Still, trying to meet these three challenges could contribute to Ukraine’s energy transition and its emergence as a new green economy. Independent from geopolitical developments, the prevailing ecological, industrial, and technological trends are already dictating such a transformation. In particular, Ukraine’s energy transition could help to compensate for the already predictable losses that Ukraine will incur from the decreasing importance of traditional natural gas transit. Helping Ukraine to adapt its GTS and production facilities to the demands of the European Green Deal is an opportunity for the EU to support Ukraine in the face of the Nord Stream 2. Kyiv will need outside support to redesign its gas transportation and distribution systems and to modernize existing gas production facilities and build new ones. Finally, Ukraine will need new transit and export agreements on supplying green gas to the EU, and possibly to other countries in non-EU Europe, North America, or elsewhere.

Strategic investment into Ukraine’s energy industry, including its low-carbon gas generation and transportation system would not only have narrowly geoeconomic, but also wider geopolitical implications. Assistance to Ukraine would help Kyiv contain the Kremlin’s ongoing attempts to unleash further socioeconomic instability in Ukraine. Moreover, Washington and London would be supporting the sovereignty and independence of a country that once possessed the world’s third largest arsenal of atomic weapons. Thereby, the two Western signatory states of the famous 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States and United Kingdom, would indirectly strengthen the world-wide nuclear non-proliferation regime.

A similar story goes for two other countries that, in the 1990s, had inherited as well as given up Soviet atomic weapons, and also received Budapest Memoranda. Belarus and Kazakhstan too have been subject to Russian – so far only verbal – irredentist claims. Support for Belarus and Kazakhstan’s sovereignties would, like in the case of strengthening Ukraine’s resilience, be beneficial to the functioning of the worldwide non-proliferation regime. Such an approach further applies to two additional official nuclear-weapons states, France and China, that also provided Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan with their own governmental security assurances in December 1994. Any support that Paris and Beijing provide to former nuclear-weapons states that gave up all of their atomic war heads voluntarily would be a sign of support for the geopolitical logic behind the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, one of humanity’s most important agreements.

However, the main issue is here the future relationship between the EU and Kyiv. By supporting Ukraine’s energy transition, Brussels could strengthen a country in which an entire revolution, the Euromaidan uprising of 2013-2014, was conducted under European flags. While the three-month Euromaidan protests were not exclusively about Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation, they began in November 2013 to secure Kyiv’s signing of an Association Agreement with the EU. Ukraine’s Western integration, in turn, was the pretext of Russia’s military aggression in Southern and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The Kremlin has since been conducting its hybrid war against Ukraine as a form of punishment for Kyiv’s decision to adopt EU norms and values.

Finally, Germany could support Ukraine’s energy system to partially atone itself for the damage that it has done to the geopolitics of Eastern Europe with its two Nord Stream pipeline projects. Arguably, the full opening of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in October 2012 was a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, one-and-a-half years later. Until 2012, Ukraine had, through its control over a large part of Gazprom’s pipeline connections to the EU, considerable economic leverage vis-à-vis Russia which will be further reduced should Nord Stream 2 also go online. The United States, United Kingdom and Germany would do themselves and the world a service by taking advantage of Ukraine’s considerable potential to become a major low-carbon gas supplier for Europe and beyond.

Andrian Prokip is an Energy Analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Senior Associate at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Andreas Umland is Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraines-low-carbon-gas-potential-and-the-eu/

 

 

 

May 12, 2018 marked NORAD’s 60th anniversary.

Pursuant to last February’s Biden–Trudeau virtual summit, defense heads from the US and Canada reaffirmed on August 14th that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) modernization is an integral part of North American homeland defense. In coping against the growly complex security threats posed by strategic competitors’ technologically advanced weapons, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, the two neighboring nations put forward stronger “coordinated investments” in upgrading the early warning and surveillance capabilities of the North Warning System (NWS). In particular, the upgrade plan prioritizes the installation of next-generation over-the-horizon radar and an all-domain multi-layered sensor network for enhanced “situational awareness.” These priorities will essentially be accompanied by the installation of efficient data-processing tools and a resilient communication network system, paving the path for “modernized joint command and control systems.” The two neighboring nations’ commitment to NORAD modernization promises a brighter future of “maintaining North America as a secure base for active engagement around the world,” especially in the upcoming era of constructively inevitable great power competition.

Bolstering U.S.–Canada security cooperation through NORAD modernization was one of the cornerstone agendas discussed in the Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.–Canada Partnership, which was the fruitful product of the Biden–Trudeau virtual bilateral summit last February. What lies at the crux of the revitalization of the 63-year-old defense pact in a timely manner is the operational concepts of SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Integrated Ecosystem for Layered Defense). The strategic initiative focuses on cultivating a new generation defense ‘ecosystem’ of continental defense in areas of ‘domain awareness,’ ‘Joint All-Domain Command and Control(JADC2),’ and ‘defeat mechanism.’ Domain awareness proposes to integrate data from both existing NSW/maritime sensors and new sensors into a central repository of a multi-layered sensor network, instead of letting each sensor type gather data in a single platform. The multi-layered aspect of the system allows the augmentation of its detection and surveillance capabilities by adding layers of a globally operating sensor network, such as a space-based radar sensor network. Through ‘JADC2,’ integrated data are then processed with boosted global interconnection and interoperability among all military domain (Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Space Force and Cyber Command) in the form of a cloud-connected platform, providing real-time cloud-based/AI-powered data analytics critical to key decision-makers’ optimal decision-making capability, or ‘decision superiority.’ Finally, the defeat mechanism takes a cost-effective approach to prevent the unnecessary field allocation of global forces by focusing on key areas of North American continental defense. Simply put, hardening the SHIELD means strengthening detection, deterrence, and defeat capabilities by equipping key decision-makers with cutting-edge threat/risk assessment capacities through a globally interconnected/interoperable all domain ‘single pane of glass.’ In this way, key decision makers can strategically think of situationally feasible deterrence/de-escalation/defeat options ahead of their adversaries. SHIELD aligns with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recent call for the Department of Defense’s renewed concept of deterrence, ‘Integrated Deterrence,’ which aims to enhance the security readiness and resiliency of the Alliance in coping against systematic security challenges posed by strategic competitors. The basic logic of integrated deterrence is to elevate cold-war era ‘deterrence by denial’ to a new level by “denying adversaries the ability to threaten the global connectivity on which we all rely on.”

NORAD Modernization Means a Vast Array of New Opportunities for Canada

Despite its costly price tag, if met with the right, and futuristic, PPP (Public Private Partnership) solutions, NORAD modernization can provide Canada with a vast array of new opportunities. It will not only nourish related defense technologies, notably quantum computing, machine learning, data analytics, and AI, in which Canada is already one of the global leaders. But its side-benefits will also politico-economically leverage Canada’s global engagement practices, especially in the Arctic. Indeed, it was mentioned in the defense head joint agreement that NORAD modernization includes “investments to upgrade and modernize the infrastructure required to support robust NORAD operations, including in our Arctic and northern regions.” When it come to the Arctic in the upcoming era of great power competition, Canada needs stronger North American Arctic leadership to facilitate incrementally sustainable development of the Arctic (which meets the indigenous populations’ and locals’ politico-economic demands). Under the current political climate, it could probably start from rare earth mineral development and accrued Artic fleets to secure the supply chain routes.

On 30 May 2021, Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter, on the pages of The National Interest, published an article under the title “Ukraine’s Accelerating Slide into Authoritarianism.” In his outspoken statement, the author painted a dark picture of Ukrainian politics allegedly beset by deeply anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist tendencies. These putative features, Carpenter argued, makes this post-Soviet state unfit for US support. Why the Cato Institute’s fellow – who seems to have neither much interest for, nor ever published any research on, Ukraine – came out with a categorical judgement on this country remains a mystery.

Carpenter’s assessment of Ukraine’s recent history and call for an end to Washington’s backing for Kyiv triggered reactions within the US and outside. The first came from Moscow although Russia was only mentioned en passant in Carpenter’s text. One day after the text had appeared in the United States, the influential Russian state-owned online resource inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) published a Russian translation of Carpenter’s article, on 31 May 2021. The inoSMI editor introduced Carpenter’s article: “U.S. officials love to portray Ukraine as ‘a courageous democracy that reflects the threat of aggression from an authoritarian Russia’. But the idealized picture created by Washington has never really matched the darker reality, and the gap between the two, with Ukraine sliding increasingly toward authoritarianism, has now become a real chasm, the article notes.”

During June 2021, an interactive debate regarding Carpenter’s attack on Ukraine developed. On the pages of the The National Interest, a response to Carpenter’s initial article was published by Doug Klain of the Atlantic Council. Somewhat later, I published a second rebuttal to Carpenter with the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert. In Ukraine, this text was translated into Russian as well as Ukrainian and republished by the Kyiv website Gazeta.ua. Further responses to Carpenter appeared on the Kyiv resource Khvylia (Wave) in Russian language, and on Berlin’s Center for Liberal Modernity website Ukraine verstehen (Understanding Ukraine) in German language. On 28 June 2021, Carpenter responded to Klain’s and my critique of his initial text with a second article titled “Why Ukraine Is a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally,” again published in the web version of The National Interest, and subsequently reposted on the Cato Institute’s website.

While none of the responses to Carpenter was re-published in Russia, his rebuttal to them was again, within one day, translated by the Kremlin-controlled inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) website. Carpenter’s new article was reposted in Russian, on 29 June 2021, and introduced by an inoSMI editor: “In May [2021], an author of The National Interest took the liberty of criticizing the Zelensky regime for its authoritarian tendencies. In response, the German ‘Ukrainianist’ Andreas Umland and similar ‘Maidanists’ [a term referring to Kyiv’s Independence Square] criticized Carpenter so much that he decided to get even with them in this article. One cannot remain silent: accusations of ‘Russian disinformation’ are reminiscent of McCarthyism. The defenders of the Kyiv regime have a powerful lobbying organization behind them, the Atlantic Council.”

Also on 29 June 2021, a number of Russian-language outlets published sympathetic reviews of Carpenter’s article, for instance, the major daily Izvestiia (Messages) as well as popular internet resources Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. Among other Kremlin-controlled outlets, the website of the Crimean TV channel Pervyi sevastopol’skii (“Sevastopol’s First”) not only briefly reviewed Carpenter’s June article. It had already earlier introduced his May 2021 initial attack on Ukraine, in The National Interest. Among other Russian-language video resources, the Youtube channels “Oleg Kalugin” and “Kognitive Dissonanz” published Russian audio reviews of Carpenter under the titles “On Ukraine’s Lobbyists in the US” (29 June 2021), and “Senior Research Fellow of the Cato Institute […] Ted Carpenter on Ukraine…” (1 July 2021). Carpenter’s two TNI articles on Ukraine were introduced by numerous Russian outlets including Yandex.ru, RIA.ru, MK.ru, Sputniknews.ru, Regnum.ru, News.ru, Tsargrad.TV, KP.ru, PolitRos.com, Life.ru, Argumenti.ru, Actualcomment.ru, RUnews24.ru, PolitExpert.net, Versia.ru, Ridus.ru, 360TV.ru, Riasev.com, Inforeactor.ru, Glas.ru, Riafan.ru, Newinform.com, SMI2.ru, Iarex.ru, TopCor.ru, InfoRuss.info, Profinews.ru, Rusevik.ru, Alternatio.org, News2.ru, News22.ru, and others.

In English, the debate around Ukraine was, on 28 June 2021, reviewed by Jon Lerner of the Hudson Institute, in The National Interest. The English versions of the Russian websites TopWar.ru and Oreanda.ru, published brief reviews of Carpenter’s arguments under the titles “Strategically, Ukraine is a ‘trap’ for the United States” and “American Political Scientist Called Ukraine a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally.” Oreanda.ru remarked that, in Ukraine, “a coup in 2014 was carried out with the help of ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. Carpenter noted that these organizations with their ‘ugly values,’ continue to influence Kiev’s [sic] politics. Supporters of an alliance with Ukraine try not to notice these facts, the article says. The author of the material noted the deplorable situation with human rights and freedoms in this country.”

The Ukrainian news agencies UAzmi.org and UAinfo.org quoted, on 1 July 2021, an ironic comment by the prominent Odesa blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko who had written on 30 June 2021 about Carpenter’s writings for The National Interest: “Interestingly, he used as arguments what we have regularly heard from Russian propagandists since 2014, namely that neo-Nazism is rampant in Ukraine, rights and freedoms of citizens are trampled in Ukraine, there is no freedom of speech in Ukraine, wild monkeys and crocodiles are in Ukraine… In fact, a full set of Kremlin fakes about Ukraine is heard from the mouth of an American expert on the pages of a respected and influential publication in the midst of the international exercise SeaBreeze-2021.” Ukraine’s leading English-language newspaper Kyiv Post, on 2 July 2021, declared Carpenter – with reference to his articles in The National Interest – Ukraine’s “Foe of the Week.”

The varying responses in Russia, the US, Ukraine and elsewhere indicate the problem with Carpenter’s arguments. What raises eyebrows about his statements on Ukraine is less their critical tone. Rather, it is surprising that Carpenter chose to remark certain sensitive political topics that have been also popular in Russia’s state-controlled mass media during the last seven years, if not before. There are good reasons to criticize, for instance, Ukraine’s dysfunctional presidentialism, underdeveloped party-system, or incomplete cooperation with the International Criminal Court (a topic dealt with on the pages of The National Interest). Yet, these are neither prominent themes in Russian propaganda nor are they issues that Carpenter raises. The Kremlin rarely speaks about such problems as they often also apply to Russia. Carpenter, one suspects, does not mention these and similar topics because he does not read Ukrainian. Judging from the contents of his two articles, he may not have even read much of the freely available English-language scholarly literature on post-Euromaidan Ukraine.  

Rather, the Cato Institute’s researcher makes far-reaching claims about an alleged prevalence of ultra-nationalism and putative slide to authoritarianism in today Ukraine – claims also pushed daily in Russian state media and by pro-Kremlin public figures for many years. No wonder that Kremlin-guided newspapers, TV channels and websites have eagerly quoted and reviewed Carpenter’s two articles in The National Interest. Here comes a senior American commentator working at a leading Washington think-tank, publishing in one of the most influential US political magazines, and repeating exactly those talking points that the Kremlin has been spreading to justify its thinly veiled hybrid war against Ukraine for seven years now. This not enough, Carpenter uses the Kremlin’s favorite narratives to unapologetically call for an end of US support for Ukraine. What more could Moscow hope for?

Carpenter’s insistence on the large role of ultra-nationalism in Ukraine is absurd. Unlike various other European parliaments elected via a proportional representation system, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) does not have a far-right faction any more since late 2014. It had such a faction only for two years from 2012 to 2014. In 2019, Ukraine’s far right – for the first time in its history and unlike many other nationalists around the world – went with a united list into parliamentary elections. Despite such rare harmony, the list of the right-wing Freedom Party which also included representatives of the other two major ultra-nationalist groups, the Right Sector and National Corps, received 2.15% – a result roughly equal to, or even below of, what many single far right parties in European countries receive in national elections. In the 2019 presidential elections, the candidate of the united far right gained 1.62%. Whoever has followed European elections during the last years may note that radical nationalists, in a number of NATO member countries including some older democracies, have received larger or significantly larger support than the Ukrainian united far right.

During its entire post-Soviet history, Ukraine has indeed – as Carpenter indicates – been exceptional in terms of support for ultra-nationalism. However, it has been distinct not for the political strength, but for the electoral weakness of the far right, as the tabled results of various far right presidential candidates and parties, since the introduction of proportional representation in 1998, show. The only period during which the far right was able to gain notable nation-wide support was during the notorious presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014. Yanukovych both triggered nationalist mobilization with his pro-Russian policies and promoted Ukraine’s extreme right, as a convenient sparring partner during elections.  

Vote shares of major Ukrainian far-right parties in presidential elections and the proportional-representation parts of parliamentary elections, 1998–2019 (in percent)

Party or alliance Bloc “Natsionalnyy front” [National Front] (KUN, UKRP & URP) / URP / KUN UNA / Pravyi sektor [Right Sector] Bloc “Menshe sliv” [Fewer Words] (VPO-DSU & SNPU) / VOS National election   1998 (parliamentary) 2.71 (NF) 0.39 (UNA) 0.16 (MS) 1999 (presidential)       2002 (parliamentary)   0.04 (UNA)   2004 (presidential) 0.02 (Kozak, OUN) 0.17 (Korchyns’kyy)   2006 (parliamentary)   0.06 (UNA) 0.36 (VOS) 2007 (parliamentary)     0.76 (VOS) 2010 (presidential)     1.43 (Tiahnybok) 2012 (parliamentary)   0.08 (UNA-UNSO) 10.44 (VOS) 2014 (presidential)   0.70 (Iarosh)* 1.16 (Tiahnybok) 2014 (parliamentary) 0.05 (KUN) 1.81 (PS) 4.71 (VOS) 2019 (presidential)     1.62 (Koshulyns’kyy) 2019 (parliamentary)     2.15 (VOS)**

* In the 2014 presidential election, Dmytro Iarosh formally ran as an independent candidate but was publicly known as the leader of Pravyy sector (PS).

** The 2019 Svoboda list was a unified bloc of most of the relevant Ukrainian far-right political parties, but was officially registered only as a VOS list.

Abbreviations: KUN: Konhres ukrains‘kykh natsionalistiv (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists); UKRP: Ukrains‘ka konservatyvna respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party); URP: Ukrains‘ka respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Republican Party); VPO-DSU: Vseukrainske politychne ob‘‘ednannia “Derzhavna samostiynist’ Ukrainy” (All-Ukrainian Political Union “State Independence of Ukraine”); SNPU: Sotsial-natsionalna partiia Ukrainy (Social-National Party of Ukraine); OUN: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists); UNA: Ukrains’ka natsionalna asambleia (Ukrainian National Assembly); UNSO: Ukrains’ka narodna samooborona (Ukrainian National Self-Defense); VOS: Vseukrains’ke ob’’ednannia “Svoboda” (All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda).

There was in 2014, to be sure, something close to panic among many anti-fascists around the world concerning Ukraine’s far right. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists had still their faction in parliament, been highly visible during the Euromaidan revolution, and entered the first post-Euromaidan government for several months with four ministers. Above all, the Russian propaganda machine and its various Western branches were, on a daily basis, hammering into worldwide public opinion the idea that former President Yanukovych had been thrown out of power by a fascist coup in Kyiv (while, in fact, Yanukovych left Kyiv after violence had already ended, and was officially deposed by the same parliament that had earlier supported him). To be sure, few non-Russian observers bought the Kremlin’s horror story in full. Yet, a widespread approach among Western politicians and commentators has since been that there can be no smoke without fire, and, if Russia is so concerned, the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists must be a relevant problem.

The few academic experts who had researched Ukraine’s far right before it became a popular theme, and studied it from a cross-cultural perspective warned, however, already in 2014 that the media hype around this topic was misplaced. The Russian historian Viacheslav Likhachev (Zmina Human Rights Center, Kyiv), Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov (Center for Democratic Integrity, Vienna) and American sociologist Alina Polyakova (Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington, DC) had researched pre-Euromaidan and non-Ukrainian permutations of the far right before 2014. From their historical and comparative points of view, they and others warned early on that alarmism is inapt and spoke out against an emerging mainstream Western opinion that ultra-nationalism is a major issue in Ukraine.

Some of these researchers explicitly predicted in 2014 that the prospects of Ukraine’s far right are limited. And, indeed, it has since turned out to be again only a tertiary national political force, as it had been before its only notable electoral success (10.44%) of 2012. Today, the overall domestic political impact of Ukrainian right-wing extremists is lower than in many far richer and securer countries of Europe. Even the highly publicized participation of many radical nationalists in Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s hybrid war since 2014 has not had much effect on their electoral fortunes. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky with his openly Jewish family background won, against a powerful incumbent, in Ukraine’s presidential elections with a result of 73%.

This leads to the second main point in Carpenter’s two unfortunate portrayals of Ukraine – allegedly authoritarian tendencies disqualifying Ukraine to receive US support. Here again, Carpenter’s argument is bizarre. Ukraine has indeed been exceptional, within the post-Soviet context, yet in the opposite sense in which it has been presented in The National Interest.

Already early in its post-Soviet history, Ukraine passed, after its emergence as an independent state in 1991, one of the crucial tests that political scientists use to determine the democratic potential of a nation: Is an electorate able to kick out a country’s top official and most powerful politician via popular vote? In 1994, the Ukrainians deposed their incumbent regent in a presidential election. As a result Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) was replaced by its second head of state, Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005).

The much older and richer Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, passed this particular democracy test only four years after Ukraine. In 1998, the Germans, for the first time in history, deposed a sitting Federal Chancellor, the CDU’s Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), via parliamentary elections that were won by the SPD. The Social Democrat’s then leader (and today employee of the Russian state) Gerhard Schroeder became the new head of government until 2005 when he too was deposed via popular vote. (There had, to be sure, in 1969 been the replacement of then incumbent Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger by the SPD’s Willi Brandt. Yet, this was the result of a change of Germany’s governing coalition and not of that year’s parliamentary elections that had been won by Kiesinger’s CDU/CSU.)

In the 2010 and 2019 national elections again, Ukrainian voters kicked out their sitting heads of state with embarrassing results for the two moderately nationalist incumbents. The then respectively highest office holders, the outgoing Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, manifestly wanted second terms in Ukraine’s highest political office. Yet, the one-term presidents were spectacularly beaten by opposition candidates, and duly stepped down after their crushing defeats.

Over the last thirty years, Ukraine has conducted dozens of highly competitive rounds of presidential, parliamentary, and local elections most of which fulfilled basic democratic standards. This experience is in sharp contrast to almost all other post-Soviet states that had been part of the USSR when it was founded in 1922. What is special about Ukraine, as a successor country of the original Soviet Union, is the opposite of what Carpenter asserts: It is not the relative authoritarianism, but the relative democratism of Ukraine that is remarkable, and that makes this state more worth of all-Western (and not only US) support than other founding republics of the USSR.

Carpenter’s confusion about these issues becomes especially visible in his second TNI article and rebuttal to Klain and me of June 28, 2021. He compares various post-Soviet states and comes to a strange conclusion: “Umland stresses that other countries emerging from the former Soviet Union are noticeably more autocratic than Ukraine, noting that [in a recent Freedom House democracy ranking in which Ukraine had received 60 out of 100 points] Russia received a rating of twenty points and Belarus received eleven points [out of 100 possible ‘Global Freedom Scores’]. He could have added that Kazakhstan was in the same dismal category with twenty-three points. But no one expects the United States to defend such countries militarily or praise them as vibrant democracies. Umland, Klain, and other fans of Kiev [sic] expect Washington to do both.” However, that is exactly the point: If Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan had achieved the same Global Freedom Scores as Ukraine, in the quoted Freedom House table, they should be treated like Ukraine. If they were – in Freedom House’s parlance – “partially free” and not “unfree,” the three countries would be worth Western support – including assistance by the US (which, by the way, received 83 points in this ranking).

What is, however, most surprising in Carpenter’s two The National Interest articles is not what he writes about, but the preeminent security issue he is entirely silent about – the narrowly understood national interest of the US in Ukraine’s fate as a former atomic power and today non-nuclear weapons state. As indicated in my first rebuttal to the Cato Institute fellow in June 2021, the US played a major role in the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine in the early 1990s. Together with Moscow, Washington pressured Kyiv then to give up not only a major part of the huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that Ukraine had inherited from the USSR when achieving independence in 1991. Russia and United States made sure that Ukraine would be deprived of all of its strategic and tactical nuclear war heads and ammunition. Today, Moscow’s and Washington’s concerted efforts from a quarter of a century ago look like direct preparations of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and start of a covert war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The only relevant political concession that Washington made back in the Nineties to Kyiv was that it agreed to supplement Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-weapons state with the – now infamous – 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and United Kingdom. The latter country also underwrote this fateful document although Great Britain had not taken part in the trilateral negotiations about Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament with the US and Russia. London supported this deal, however, with its official signature because the UK had, in 1968, been one of the – together with US and USSR – three founding countries of the world-wide non-proliferation regime and has since been a depositary state of the NPT. At a CSCE summit at Budapest in December 1994, Washington, Moscow and London assured Kyiv, in connection with its signing of the NPT, of their respect of Ukrainian sovereignty, integrity and borders.

With its attack on Ukraine since 2014 and especially with its overt annexation of Crimea (as well as also with some earlier and other actions), Moscow has been now for several years undermining the logic of the non-proliferation regime. It is not any longer clear that countries which refrain from possessing, building or acquiring nuclear weapons would be secure and especially be protected from countries that do hold atomic arms. Russia’s officially allowed possession of nuclear weapons, moreover, not only gave it a key military advantage vis-à-vis Ukraine. It was also the major reason why the West – unlike in Yugoslavia, Iraq or Libya – has not militarily intervened in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

A widely discussed June 2021 incident with a British war ship near the port of Sevastopol in the Black Sea had thus a more than symbolic meaning. The UK’s destroyer “HMS Defender” passed, on a trip from Odesa to Batumi, by Crimea without making a detour to avoid Black Sea waters claimed by Russia. This behavior of Great Britain was a peculiar form of validation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and 1968 NPT. Having received Kyiv’s permission to pass Ukrainian waters, the “Defender” defended not only general international law by taking the shortest path from the shores of Southern mainland Ukraine to its destination at Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The British vessel also upheld the logic of the non-proliferation regime built on the premise that the borders of non-nuclear weapons states are as respected as those of the official nuclear-weapons states under the NPT.

With his explicit demand to end US support for Ukraine, Carpenter calls not only for a betrayal of a beacon of democracy in the post-Soviet space. He also proposes to sweep under the carpet the normative and psychological foundations of humanity’s non-proliferation regime. If – after Russia as the legal successor of the USSR – a second founding country of the 1968 NPT would signal to the world that Ukraine’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty are of secondary importance, this could have far-reaching consequences for the international order. This is especially so as Kyiv once possessed an atomic arsenal that was significantly larger than those of Great Britain, France, and China taken together.

The Kremlin’s manifest violation of the logic of the non-proliferation regime since 2014 can be seen as a temporary and singular aberration of one guarantor of the NPT from a key international norm. An, as Carpenter proposes, US withdrawal from support of the Ukrainian state would, however, create a pattern in the behavior of the non-proliferation regime’s founders. It could signal to political leaders around the world that international law in general and the NPT in particular provide no protection for non-nuclear weapons states. Reliable national security can only be achieved through the production or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. As the ultimate instruments of deterrence, nuclear war heads may, moreover, come in handily, if a government decides – like the Kremlin did in 2014 – to annex to its state a neighboring territory, and wants to scare away third parties from getting involved.

That Carpenter does not even mention these issues in his two articles in The National Interest is – even more than other aspects of his argument – odd. In so far as Carpenter presents himself, in his articles, as concerned about core national interests of the US, one would think that preventing nuclear proliferation is on his agenda. Yet, Carpenter did not even take an interest in this topic after it was explicitly mentioned in the first rebuttals to his initial May 2021 article.

In fact, the discussion about the grave repercussions of Moscow’s violation of the 1994 Budapest nuclear deal and the resulting implications for US foreign policy has been ongoing for more than seven years now. The debate has been taking place not the least on the websites of various DC institutions – from the Wilson Center for International Scholars to the oldest US journal of its kind, World Affairs (founded in 1837). One would have thought that the Cato Institute’s fellow had taken notice of, and addressed in his deliberations, the gist of the numerous US publications on this topic.

Andreas Umland is Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”  as well as Collector of the book series “Ukrainian Voices” both published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart.

Should the US Support Ukraine? A Debate in Washington, DC, and Elsewhere

Andriy Boytsun,  August 30, 2021

Western Support and Leverage

For decades, Ukraine has been engaged in a strategic partnership with the West aimed at promoting deep structural reforms. At times Ukraine’s leaders have been honest partners in this effort, sometimes they have been dragged reluctantly, and at other times they have offered determined resistance.

As a democratic country currently facing external military aggression, partial Russian occupation, economic difficulties, and a large debt burden, Ukraine cannot do without significant US and Western support. As a result, Ukraine’s economic dependence on aid and diplomatic support has created great leverage on the part of the Euro-Atlantic community, which the West has exploited to prompt reforms.

President Biden himself has a long, even impassioned, record of support and nudging of Ukraine down the bumpy road of reform. Similarly, following the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, the European Union has been a staunch supporter of Ukrainian civil society, anti-corruption measures, and the rule of law.

While this dynamic has often driven important progress, at other times, Ukraine has had to acquiesce to poorly conceived or poorly executed reforms designed in Washington or Brussels. Such programs are often implemented in coordination with Ukrainian NGOs, which themselves have limited room for independent action as they, too, rely on Western aid and donor support.

Ultimately, this means that the success or failure of reform is often dependent on Western reform strategies with a mixed record. When real and measurable advancements are made, all is well and good. Yet, when setbacks occur, who then is to blame? The public and Western governments too often are quick to blame Ukrainian leadership, citing a stubborn corporate culture plagued by corruption, influential oligarchs, and murky business dealings.

For the sake of fairness, created by the poor track record of successive Ukrainian leaderships, this expectation is certainly not groundless. However, it should not be automatic. With the Ukrainian corporate governance reform once again in the headlines, and a part of the forthcoming summit between Presidents Biden and Zelensky, Western leaders also ought to recognize the shortcomings of their own involvement in the reform as a key variable in the equation.

SOE Reform

Following the Maidan Revolution of 2014, the West and Ukraine’s leaders agreed to tackle the problem of Ukraine’s large array of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which for many years were a den of massive corruption and mismanagement, resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the state.

The corporate governance of Ukrainian SOEs started with Naftogaz, the state oil and gas champion and Ukraine’s largest SOE, initiating and pioneering the change in 2014. I am proud to have been part of this initiative from the onset. The international community joined in the effort in early 2015, and an independent supervisory board – the first-ever in a Ukrainian SOE – was established at Naftogaz in early 2016.

In parallel, Ukraine agreed that state-owned companies would be governed by supervisory boards in which the majority of seats would be held by independent members, sourced through transparent, competitive, and merit-based procedures.

Long sustained with massive state subsidies, Naftogaz became the leader in deep reforms. Its executives, appointed in 2014, and the new independent supervisory board, established in 2016, delivered impactful changes which turned the company around, improved its performance, and brought billions of dollars of profits to the state, assisting in filling the state budget and eliminating massive corrupt revenue flows to oligarchs.

The 2016 board was adamant in demanding proper and sustainable corporate governance reform. However, it was not able to come to terms with the government at the time, which itself was extremely reluctant to relinquish its nearly manual control over SOEs. In protest, the board’s independent members resigned in 2017.

Over time, Naftogaz’s role as a leader in best practices began to erode. It began to change after a new supervisory board was appointed in late 2017. The selections were made in haste and did not follow a competitive or transparent process. Instead, candidates were appointed via closed-door consultations between the government and a handful of foreign embassies and international partners.

Importantly, the process was not overseen by the SOE Nomination Committee or supported by a reputable executive search company. In that respect, it did not follow the OECD Guidelines on Corporate Governance of SOEs, a standard which the international community continues to uphold as a requirement.

Corporate Governance Failings at Naftogaz

Initially, the new board functioned as intended. Over time, however, the well-remunerated board (its chair receives around $285,000, while independent members are compensated at about $237,000 annually for their part-time supervisory role) became enmeshed with the executive leadership, providing generous bonuses to management and overlooking worrying signals that the corporate targets and projected profits were not being met.

The dysfunction of the board became evident in the controversial decisions it made in 2020. That year, instead of delivering on a projected $400 million profit fueled by an increase in gas prices at the end of the year, Naftogaz delivered losses of nearly $700 million. Despite this outcome, executives were paid out multimillion bonuses. Naftogaz chose not to disclose individual executives’ remuneration in 2020, despite doing so in 2019. This apparent lack of transparency has led to accusations that the supervisory board deliberately concealed information from the public.

In response to Naftogaz’s underperformance, the Ukrainian government, acting as a concerned shareholder at its annual meeting, temporarily suspended the board to dismiss the company’s CEO Andriy Kobolyev and replace him with Yuriy Vitrenko.

In return, US and G7 officials, as well as representatives of international financial institutions, declared that the leadership change violated best practices and Ukraine’s obligations under SOE corporate governance reform. Indeed, while the Ukrainian government’s action was within Ukrainian law, it was certainly not in line with the OECD SOE Guidelines.

Due to international criticism, the government kept the current board. The Prime Minister even offered to add a “US representative” to the Naftogaz board and an “EU representative” to the SOE Nomination Committee. This suggests that Ukraine’s authorities may troublingly see the international community as a set of constituencies each promoting their own interests rather than a well-meaning partner advocating a transparent nomination process, the OECD standards, or, more generally, better rules in Ukraine.

Under protection of the international community, the board doubled down in another controversial act in June 2021, approving a further package of multimillion dollar bonuses to top management – in the middle of the year, well before results were announced, and over the objection of the company’s new CEO.

The Role of the International Community

Not surprisingly, the role of the international community in the board’s performance has resulted in a growing mistrust towards foreign influence in Ukrainian institutions. Mistakes on the part of both Ukraine’s previous government and key Western partners were unfairly blamed solely upon Ukrainian leadership. And Naftogaz’s most critical stakeholder – the Ukrainian public – has suffered for it.

The June 7th statement on the phone call held between Presidents Biden and Zelensky noted that the leaders discussed Ukraine’s “plan to tackle corruption and implement a reform agenda, based on our shared democratic values and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations, that delivers justice, security, and prosperity to the people of Ukraine.”

It is likely that the forthcoming summit will echo the same sentiment. What should be added to the agenda, however, is the recognition of the shared responsibility for Naftogaz and its board’s performance.

Importantly, the 2017 “deal” on the Naftogaz supervisory board was made between the international community and the country’s previous leadership, who bears even more responsibility. Ukraine’s current leadership may then find itself in the precarious position of engaging with its international partners who not only have their fingerprints on the matter, but continue to focus on it as an inherently Ukrainian impediment to its own progress.

In this instance, the international community’s silence over the (under)performance of Naftogaz is harmful to Ukraine’s interest. This idea is, at best, inconsistent with OECD standards and, at worst, can be dangerously construed as being consistent with the concept of “external management” of an independent country and its vital state enterprises.

What Next?

Given Ukraine’s ongoing dependence on Western support, the country’s leaders quietly listened to the criticism that was not entirely founded. Moving forward, the US and other democratic allies of Ukraine should rightfully acknowledge that something went wrong with the governance of Naftogaz, and, critically, work with the company to make the necessary corrective measures to get back on track.

Specifically, if we all want the Naftogaz board – and the boards of all other Ukrainian SOEs – to be truly independent, one must start to think differently and abandon the idea of foreign board members as country “representatives.” It is a concept that critics dismiss as infringing upon Ukrainian sovereignty.

This starts with acknowledging the right and obligation of the state to “act as an informed and active owner, ensuring that the governance of SOEs is carried out in a transparent and accountable manner” in the interest of the country’s citizens as the ultimate beneficiaries of these SOEs – an important basic principle of the OECD SOE Guidelines. Further, with a new board elected via a transparent process in accordance with the OECD SOE Guidelines, Naftogaz can be restored as the bellwether of Ukraine’s corporate governance reform.

Ultimately, the West has great strategic interest in adopting some new thinking about supporting the country (and Naftogaz) to ensure that it becomes a strong, independent, European partner and ally. Helping to set up a transparent, competitive, and merit-based process to select an independent supervisory board at Naftogaz is an excellent first step.

Andriy Boytsun is the Lead of the Corporate Governance Stream at the Kyiv School of Economics. He designed the corporate governance reform of Naftogaz in 2014-2015, advised large SOEs and governments, and drafted Ukraine’s corporate governance law. Andriy leads the team that publishes the Ukrainian SOE Weekly, a digest on state-owned enterprises in Ukraine. He holds a PhD from the University of Antwerp, with a thesis on corporate governance.

 

* The Foreign Policy Association does not take positions, the views of the author are his own.

(Getty Image)

One day, the Kim regime’s diplomatic envoys around the world might be haunted by Otto Warmbier’s name, which will be written on every incoming mail. The heightened bipartisan consensus among NYC councilmen to rename after Otto Warmbier – an American college student who passed away in 2017 from injuries sustained while imprisoned in North Korea – the street on which the Kim regime’s mission to the UN is located, is creating a ripple effect: Washington’s most prominent public figures and the heads of international NGOs are joining a growing wave of enthusiasm for commemoration of Warmbier’s sacrifice. As Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), anticipates, this local activist movement could be “the opening salvo in a coordinated effort by international NGOs to have each and every street where there is a North Korean embassy or consulate mission, all over the world, renamed after Otto Warmbier, from Bucharest to Madrid, and from Stockholm to Kuwait City—everywhere.”

Otto Warmbier at the Kim regime’s Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea, March 16 2016 (Yonhap News)

“We are a symbol of human rights to the whole world, and we have confronted in this city dictators and tyrants historically; this is a place that has really led the international effort against oppression.” So said NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio recently to a City Hall news conference last June, in order to emphasize that his support for “Otto Warmbier Way” is part of NYC’s long history of opposing tyranny. At America’s birth in the late 18th century, the Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan was the venue for two of the three sessions of the First U.S. Congress: During the course of the sessions, fierce yet fruitful debates took place between federalists and anti-federalists over the just definition of tyranny (whether of the majority over the minority, or vice versa), and checks and balances and the bill of rights were officially enshrined in the Constitution. Past street re/naming ordinances in NYC have reflected this heritage, the latest being the new “Black Lives Matter Boulevard” along a portion of Centre Street.

The proposed bill for “Otto Warmbier Way” was first introduced by City Councilman Joe Borelli in 2019. The goal, in the councilman’s own words, was to “recall that this was a life given up … in the face of an absolute dictator and authoritative government” and to “draw attention to the plight of the people of North Korea.” If the bill is passed, the address of the Kim regime’s mission to the UN will change from “820 second Ave” to “820 Otto Warmbier Way.” The passage of the bill requires 51 NYC councilmen’s approval votes as well as the mayor’s final signature. Some prominent public figures who have expressed their support for the bill include former Secretaries of State John Kerry and Mike Pompeo, former U.N. Ambassadors Bill Richardson and Kelly Craft, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Many North Korean human rights experts are also highly supportive of the bill. Suzanne Scholte, the chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, enthusiastically applauded the bill: “We actually reached out to the council member in New York, Borelli, when he introduced the resolution two years ago. I think it’s really important because we can never forget what happened to this young man. He is the face of the cruelty of this regime. So we, the North Korea Freedom Coalition, enthusiastically endorsed this back when it was first proposed…We can’t forget that this is how this regime treats people, and this is how they treat their own citizens as well.”

Pacing with NYC’s local activist efforts, the Congress introduced another bill named after Otto Warmbier on June 19, 2020, the fourth anniversary of Otto Warmbier’s passing. The Otto Warmbier North Korea Censorship and Surveillance Act proposes to annually allocate $10 million to the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM) over the next five years to foster human rights activities countering the Kim regime’s repressive information environment. In particular, it allows the USAGM to develop new means and partnerships to empower North Korean people with both non-digital and digital access to outside information. Furthermore, the proposed bill imposes sanctions on those within and without the regime responsible for precipitating such an environment. In conjunction with previously enacted Otto Warmbier bills, the Otto Warmbier Banking Restrictions Involving North Korea (BRINK) Act of 2017 and the Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions Act of 2019, the proposed bill is expected to strengthen the overall effectiveness of sanctions against the Kim regime’s brutal tyranny.

 

 

The Talmud says, “Whoever destroys a life, it should be considered as if he destroyed the world entire.  And whoever saves a life, it should be considered as if he saved the world entire.”   As American citizens, it is of pivotal importance that we all demand that Armenia hand over the remaining landmine maps to Azerbaijan at the soonest possible date, as Armenia’s refusal to do so is killing innocent people daily.  

On June 4, in the village of Susuzlug in the Kelbajar region, Siraj Abishov and Maharram Ibrahimov, employees of the Azerbaijan State News Agency and Azerbaijan Television, were blown up by a mine when performing their official duties as members of the press.  This incident was condemned by Israeli Ambassador to Azerbaijan George Deek: “We are deeply saddened by the news of the death of two journalists by a landmine.  Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” 

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, also condemned what happened to these two Azerbaijani journalists: “The tragic death of Maharram Ibrahimov and Siraj Abishov is terrible news and I extend my deepest sympathy and condolences to their relatives and colleagues.”     

Since the Second Karabakh War ended, more than 120 people have been killed by landmines, even though 35,000 landmines have been removed to date and the death toll just continues to rise. It did not need to be like that.  If Armenia handed over all of the landmine maps to Azerbaijan in a timely manner, instead of sending them over in piecemeal after getting bribed to do so, like they are required to do upon the cessation of hostilities under international law, then these deaths could have been avoided.

As the Committee to Protect Journalists declared, “The killing of Azerbaijani journalists Maharram Ibrahimov and Siraj Abishev in Nagorno-Karabakh was a needless tragedy.  Armenian authorities should share their landmine maps with the members of the press to ensure that no other journalists will become victims of this conflict.”

Yaakov Abramov, who heads the Azerbaijani Jewish community in the United States, added: “Armenian armed forces continue to commit criminal acts against civilians by mining these territories in gross violation of the basic norms and principles of international humanitarian law, including the requirements of the Geneva Convention of 1949.  Despite the three-sided agreement on the cessation of hostilities signed on November 10, people continue to die and mines continue to explode, killing civilians.   Subversive groups from Armenia continue to penetrate inside Azerbaijani territory, raise flags of non-existent entities, continue to ignore UN Security Council resolutions and refuse to provide maps of minefields.”

In the eyes of Abramov, the West has refrained from condemning Armenia sufficiently over the death of these two journalists: “Europe is silent.  But if they say anything, they only condemn Azerbaijan.  This reminds me of how the whole of Europe is unanimously condemning Israel while not saying a single world about the more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israel during the last war by terrorists from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.”

Adika Iqbal, who heads the Azerbaijan Friendship Organization, concurred: “What happened to the two journalists is heartbreaking.  Deliberately planting landmines is a gross violation of Armenia’s international obligations.  They immediately need to hand over the landmine maps, so that more lives can be saved.”

In fact, Azerbaijan has filed a petition to the European Court on Human Rights, hoping to compel Armenia to hand over the landmine maps.    Chingiz Asgarov, who represented the Republic of Azerbaijan before the ECHR, said: “Armenia’s refusal to hand over the minefield maps has no strategic, legal or moral merits, and solely intends to cause loss of life and suffering to Azerbaijani civilians in the region. Armenia’s actions also endanger Armenians who continue to live in the liberated territories.  We once again urge Armenia to live up to their international legal obligations by releasing the minefield maps and any relevant information.”

Ayoob Kara, who served as Israel’s Communication, Cyber and Satellite Minister, concurred: “It is very tragic that two Azerbaijani journalists were killed in a landmine explosion in the Kelbajar region.  Their untimely deaths represent a violation of humanitarian values and freedom of the press. It is of critical importance for the fragile peace agreement that was established between Azerbaijan and Armenia that Armenia hand over the landmine maps at the soonest possible date, so that no more innocent civilians will get killed.”

If the West seeks for the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to last and not unravel, then it is of paramount importance that all landmines get removed from the Nagorno-Karabakh region, so that both Armenians and Azerbaijanis who live in the area can travel freely and peacefully, without endangering their own lives. 

It is critical to note that many of these landmines are unmarked, so a child playing soccer or another civilian conducting their business can accidentally step on them and cause a series of explosions, thus rendering the whole area uninhabitable.  Without the freedom to play soccer and conduct business without getting killed, how can the peace last?   Thus, solving this issue is of paramount importance to every citizen across the globe who values peace and security in the region.

Economic sanctions have become an increasingly common foreign policy tool, especially for the United States. What is the nature of the politics behind U.S. policy regarding economic sanctions? Recent events, especially the negotiations concerning the United States’ possible return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, often called the “Iran nuclear deal”), as well as a stint as a discussant at a political science conference featuring a paper on sanctions, prompted me to try to systematize some of my own thinking on the subject of sanctions and their role in U.S. policy and politics. Here is what I came up with.

First of all, economic sanctions are not a single thing but a category of related policy actions. Collectively, they are a foreign policy tool, an option among others such as military force, diplomacy, propaganda, or simply ignoring a problem. These tools can be used in isolation or in combination. Each category has certain costs and benefits, which will vary with the assigned task and target. Some may be better suited to achieve a specified objective in view of a particular set of tasks, targets, resources, risks, and opportunity costs. None of them will always be right for all situations. It may well be that none of them will get you all the way to the goal you seek, yet you still may feel compelled to do something. Objectives may range from convincing a target state to change its way of thinking, to compelling it to change a particular behavior, to imposing a change of regime, to simply demonstrating your dissatisfaction.

Changes over Time

In recent decades the U.S. government’s policy tool preference has shifted from a preference for military action under President George W. Bush, particularly in his first term, to a preference for sanctions under Barack Obama and especially under Donald J. Trump. The Obama administration sanctioned about three times the number of individuals and entities in its final year in office as it did in its first. The Trump administration, on average, imposed sanctions at twice the annual rate of the Obama administration. (The Trump administration, on the other hand, undertook fewer, and often smaller, enforcement actions after sanctions were imposed, and two-thirds of those resulted from companies self-reporting their own violations).

Also, the nature of economic sanctions has evolved. During the Cold War, for example, sanctions generally came in the form of full trade embargoes intended to undermine a country’s entire economy. These, however, often failed because of the political divisions rooted in the Cold War itself. The Soviet Union could not smother Yugoslavia as long as the United States was there to rescue it; the United States could not smother Cuba as long as the Soviet Union was there. That changed with the temporary unity of the immediate post–Cold War era. A trade embargo imposed on Iraq after the Persian Gulf War of 1990–91 had devastating effects on Iraqi society, devastating enough to discredit that form of sanction.

What followed were targeted, or “smart,” sanctions. These were designed to reduce a country’s capacity to threaten others or to target the policy makers responsible for a country’s unacceptable behavior without causing undue suffering to the entire civilian population. Examples include arms embargoes; targeted trade sanctions restricting certain commodities, such as “conflict diamonds”; travel sanctions against specific targeted individuals; and financial sanctions, such as asset freezes or the blocking of electronic transfers.

Advances in technology created further possibilities, sometimes referred to as “weaponized interdependence.” While the growth of widely distributed networks in the cyber age was originally expected to have a leveling effect, networks in certain fields, for reasons of efficiency, evolved in such a way as to create a few key nodes, or chokepoints. Control of those nodes is a tremendous advantage. A prime example is the global financial system. Not only do U.S. banks play a prominent role in global finance, but nearly all international transactions pass through a single chokepoint: the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system. Even though SWIFT is physically located in Belgium, the United States has considerable influence over it. Unlike the Cold War examples noted above, a country that controls key financial nodes can impose effective sanctions unilaterally. It can even impose sanctions on countries with which it has no transactions to cut off. The Trump administration was not only able to re-impose sanctions unilaterally on Iran, with which it had no trade or financial ties, but it could also credibly threaten sanctions against our own allies if they failed to go along.

Two Views of Sanctions

Within the United States, there are two different approaches to economic sanctions, two different understandings that are quite different from each other. The first we can call the professional view, that of the foreign policy elites, including those who fulfill relevant roles in the foreign policy bureaucracy. The second, the popular or existentialist view, is held by many people in the general public, but frankly it is also shared by a number of foreign policy elites, including members of Congress and presidents.

Sanctions as a Practical Tool

First, in the professional view, sanctions are a practical tool for achieving a specific, well-defined outcome. To be effective, the goal needs to be achievable and the sanctions have to be accompanied by a credible promise of relief in exchange for compliance.

The issue of achievability leads to two further questions:

1. How important is the targeted behavior to the country being sanctioned?

To the extent that the leaders of the targeted country view the sanctioned behavior as vital, bringing the targeted country into compliance with the sanctioning country’s demands will become more difficult.

The difference may be seen in the contrasting results of nuclear negotiations with North Korea and Iran. North Korea evidently sees nuclear weapons as essential to its security, which has made it difficult to reach a lasting settlement, or even a short-term settlement. On the other hand it is not entirely clear that Iran even wants nuclear weapons. It was reportedly a few months away from a bomb’s worth of nuclear material for years and never went there. At the very least, Iranian elites have been divided on the issue. That’s part of why JCPOA succeeded. In recent years, with President Trump’s policy of maximum pressure, we may have been on the verge of pushing Iran into a nuclear weapons program intended just to show us that they won’t be pushed around.

2. How many countries has the targeted country offended; or, what is the magnitude of the risk inherent in the situation?

The targeted country will try to avoid the impact of embargoes by cultivating alternative sources. If sanctions are to be effective, then it will be necessary to include as many potential alternative trading partners as possible in the sanctions regime. The number of countries willing to join will depend on what the targeted country has done. Offending American sensibilities will not be enough.

Cuba, for example, survived generations of U.S. sanctions. Initially, as noted above, the United States organized a sanctions regime among its allies, but the Soviet Union came to Cuba’s rescue. With time, even that sanctions regime started coming apart. As Cuba stopped trying to promote revolution in Latin America, fewer and fewer countries saw the trade embargo as necessary. Eventually, the United States was the only country left, allowing Cuba to blame its economic problems on U.S. sanctions while trading freely with much of the rest of the world.

The United States was successful in organizing multilateral sanction against North Korea in the 2000s and 2010s, on the other hand, because many countries saw North Korea’s behavior as threatening. In an odd twist, Trump—perhaps in a witting or unwitting application of Nixon’s “madman theory” of bargaining—raised the general threat level with his “fire and fury” rhetoric in 2017. Soon, South Korea was reaching out to North Korea to calm the situation, and China was pressing North Korea to respond. But then Trump not only backed away from his rhetoric and engaged in talks, which was a positive thing, but announced that the problem had been resolved when in fact nothing had changed. The result was to undermine his own sanctions regime.

The other condition—relief for compliance—should be self-explanatory but is too often forgotten. If the targeted country does not believe that compliance with the sanctioning country’s demands will lead to the end of sanctions, then it will have little incentive to comply. Certain of the sanctions faced by Iran, for example, were imposed by the United Nations, the United States, and other countries expressly to compel Iran to negotiate about its nuclear program. When Iran reached an agreement with the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, which was then endorsed by the UN Security Council, those sanctions were lifted. (Sanctions imposed for other reasons were not lifted, much to Iran’s annoyance.) The Trump administration’s decision to re-impose sanctions unilaterally undermined any confidence Iran (or, for that matter, North Korea) might have had that the Trump administration would abide by any agreement that it made. Thus the administration could not even get Iran to discuss the “better deal” that it had insisted it could achieve.

Sanctions as Moral Imperative

The second understanding of sanctions, the popular view, is existential and moralistic. To oversimplify just a bit, this approach holds that some regimes are good and other regimes are evil. Evil regimes are targeted at least as much for what they are as for what they do. Thus sanctions are the punishment for being evil. In this conception, sanctions may not be aimed at curtailing a specific activity. The only worthy objective is to bring down the evil regime—or at the very least to demonstrate one’s disapproval of the regime and thus assert one’s own moral superiority.

In this conception, mere compliance by the targeted state is a trick, an attempt to escape sanctions while remaining evil. The only valid way to escape sanctions is through regime collapse. Here regime collapse is always seen as a solution to problems and never seen as likely to cause further problems—despite, say, the still continuing years of chaos and turmoil following the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003, and the Muammar Qadhafi regime in Libya in 2011.

It is this existential understanding of sanctions that prompted the Trump administration to shift the goal posts and sanction Iran even after that country had fully complied with the JCPOA. Lifting sanctions on Iran was “siding with the terrorists.” Damage to the Iranian economy was proof of success. It did not matter that Trump’s abandonment of the JCPOA and re-imposition of sanctions were counterproductive in terms of the administration’s own stated goals.

Sanctions as a Wasting Asset

Logically speaking, the use of economic sanctions to achieve a foreign policy goal assumes that the targeted country has economic ties to the outside world, the disruption of which would be damaging to the targeted country. Otherwise, there is little point. The extended use of sanctions, however, reduces those very ties. The ability of the United States to impose unilateral sanctions on North Korea is reduced by the fact that the United States has sanctioned North Korea since 1950 and has virtually no economic ties to it at all. The Trump administration’s trade war with China has induced China to reduce its dependence by striving to produce more of its necessary goods domestically and diversifying its sources of those it cannot produce.

In cases of weaponized interdependence, where the sanctioning state controls key chokepoints, reducing outside dependence will be harder and certainly time consuming but not impossible. Avoiding the impact of sanctions might require establishing alternative institutions, which one country working alone would not be able to do. Extensive use of sanctions by a single country for its own purposes, however, could prompt others to do so eventually. In the case of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against Iran, U.S. allies Britain, France, and Germany undertook efforts to establish an alternative system, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), to enable transactions with Iran without going through SWIFT. In that particular case, Western corporations, fearing U.S. sanctions against themselves, avoided using the alternative system. But the possibility still stands if the incentives grow strong enough. Weaponized interdependence is resilient, but sanctions may still be a wasting asset. The more you use them, the less you may be able to rely on them in the future.

The Domestic Politics of Sanctions

Sanctions may be imposed for a variety of reasons, either professional or popular, either for purely foreign policy purposes or in response to domestic political dynamics. Once imposed, however, they often prove difficult to remove.

In part, the difficulty is rooted in technical/legal obstacles or interactive connections to other issues. For example, the Bush administration’s sanctions on a Macao bank, Banco Delta Asia, imposed for its role in money laundering, interfered with the Bush administration’s later efforts to lift sanctions on North Korea and resume negotiations on its nuclear program because North Korean assets were frozen in that bank and the legal process of unfreezing them was convoluted. With regard to Iran, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) of 2015 requires the president to certify every 90 days that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing” the agreement. Iran, which continued to adhere fully to the agreement for one year after the Trump administration renounced it, then began a program of planned escalating violations at preset intervals in an attempt to coerce the United States back into compliance. Iran now says it will not comply with the JCPOA until the United States does, but INARA implies that Iran must in compliance first. Depending on one’s interpretation of INARA, returning to the agreement may also trigger a host of political/legislative hurdles that the agreement originally had to overcome in 2015. INARA thus complicates efforts to restore the deal even though it was the United States that initially—and more fundamentally—violated it.

On the other hand, the difficulty can be political rather than technical/legal, owing to the likelihood of existentialist arguments to attach themselves to the issue. Sanctions on Cuba persist decades after the original foreign policy justifications (support for guerrilla movements, alliance with the Soviet Union) have passed from the scene. Even the hurdles created under INARA were put there by arms-control skeptics taking an existentialist perspective. While foreign policy professionals may not share the existentialist understanding of sanctions, they will have to take it into consideration for domestic political reasons.

Advocates of economic sanctions often argue that they represent a reasonable middle ground in foreign policy between doing nothing and resorting to military force. They are only reasonable, however, if they are attached to realistic goals and adjusted for changed circumstances. Too often sanctions are employed to demonstrate disapproval or outrage, while the underlying issues are allowed to fester. In that respect, they are really a self-oriented activity. They create the impression of doing something, tar the adversary as morally inferior, and allow one to feel better about oneself. If demonstrating outrage is your purpose, you can do it, but it is unlikely to go far toward resolving international issues.

How Do We Look From the Other Side?

There are two aspects of the theory of just war, jus ad bellum, or the justice of any given war, and jus in bello, referring to just conduct in the waging of war.  There may be an overlooked analogy for American diplomacy.

In the late 1990s I heard a Brazilian ambassador address an American lunch group, saying that Brazil’s growing economic heft would force a re-balance of power between the U.S. and Brazil.  I queried him on what issues made a power relationship relevant.  I expected him to point to less-visible, but real, trade or regulatory contentions.  But he did not specify any issues in his response. Rather, he answered that the U.S. would “have to take account” of Brazil.  The U.S. and Brazil had no differences of principle, and any disputes were quotidian, not all that significant.  But, it seemed, he felt U.S. diplomacy treated Brazil cavalierly because our power allowed us to.

On June 30, Vladimir Putin characterized U.S. diplomacy as “trying at all costs to maintain their monopoly position.”  Of course this statement ignored U.S. complaints of principle over Russian national conduct.  Putin also maintained his practice of casting the complaints as tools of tangible interest, and ignoring any questions of principle.  He diverted the question of pressuring dissenting social media voices by claiming the right to tax U.S. firms in Russia.  He elided legal questions around Russia’s firing on a UK ship with a comment that the world would not go to war over it.  Putin does not contest the principles but buries them by citing U.S. attitudes and hard interests.

In the analog to jus ad bellum, America is on the side of the angels.  But it should always be much more difficult for a Putin to miscast our nature, or for a friendly nation to feel slighted.  In diplomacy’s operational analog to jus in bello, we make it far too easy to dislike us.

As in a war with a just cause, we carry freedom’s moral appeal.  That appeal, however, imposes an unusual burden on American diplomacy.  A justly-originated war can retain that justice even if it is unjustly fought.  But failure to “fight this war justly” can negate the justice of the cause. 

The principles under American diplomacy and under its conduct both rest on America’s self definition in the Declaration of Independence: “We,” the “one people” separating from another, only describe ourselves as “holding” certain truths.  Our conduct must show we hold them sincerely.  America’s core interest requires U.S. diplomacy to act by our principles. 

Harmony between our deep ends and worldly means can pose a paradox.  The creed’s ethos, of rights and government by consent of the governed, leaves people free to undermine that very freedom.  The self evident truths we hold are abstract, making us free to indulge chaotic, self-defeating, even immoral pursuits.  Further, an abstract creed needs a body politic in which to live, and that body has unavoidable needs, which will conflict with others’.  We have to defend our nation, if only as the vessel of our principles, and we must act by democratic choices, even if they are selfish – or self-destructive.  Yet we cannot let our principles look like cosmetic cover for craven self interest. 

America must constantly shape its diplomacy for comportment with America’s founding creed.  That process must keep a national continuity through political mandates that can swing radically.  The nation needs an institution that sees the paradox, and can keep constant vigil for the founding tenets through shifting electoral outcomes. 

Such a guardian must have its own legitimate mandate to maintain this review.  Any American may voice an opinion about American principles – but not as national expression unless given an electoral mandate.   The only exception is for those formally charged to represent America through changing administrations.  The diplomatic service, the nation’s official, professional institutional representative, carries that charge. 

To acquit that charge today requires a highly specialized capacity.  The diplomatic service must know the jus ad bellum analog of our principles, in deep fluency with the case for the unalienable rights.  They must also keep national conduct supportive and exemplary of our ethos, in a sophisticated operational art to ensure the analog of jus in bello.  Such a capacity was unheard of before.  But 21st Century disruptions and dysfunctions confront us all with radical, basic questions: whether free will is an illusion, whether a free humanity can manage its impact in the world, whether technology can replicate people.  Everyone needs a touchstone.  America has one.  If our political process calls for this capacity, and our diplomats grasp the role, America can carry our creed in our conduct.  Brazilian diplomats will have their indignance salved.  Putin will have his cynicism debunked.  Freedom will have an unalloyed champion.

 

Prominently written on history’s ‘gate of shame’ are these haunting words: Hubris never had a worse enemy than itself; you may ask these specialists: Hitler, Pharaoh, or perhaps Lucifer. So, the extreme arrogance and the above-all-laws attitude expressed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his apartheid regime committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the so-called 11 day war is likely to be remembered as Israel’s self-administered demise.

The newly formed coalition government led by another darling of the extremist settlers—Naftali Bennett—asserted its commitment to continue business as usual.

Israel has been viciously oppressing the Palestinian people for more than seven decades while most of the American and Western media groups were providing disinformation or highly sanitized versions of the reality on the ground to keep their audiences oblivious and apathetic.     

Defining the Crime

The most heinous and indeed most politicized form of oppression is what is known as genocide or ethnic cleansing.  

Semantic smoke screening is often used to veil one brand of genocide or another, to accentuate the suffering of one community over others with similar experiences, to underscore sanctity of certain lives over others. Most of us, for one reason or another, have internalized such moral cognitive dissonance, therefore it is seldom challenged, And those who directly or indirectly challenge that mindset are labeled anti-Semite.

You may recall the storm of controversy and slanderous campaign targeting the prominent African-American film director, Spike Lee, after he tweeted: ‘American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust.’ 

Whether one calls it ‘Holocaust’, ‘Shoah’, or ‘Nakba’, or cataclysmic suffering or the catastrophic one, there should be no exceptionalism in such crimes against humanity. The Palestinian people have been suffering physical, economical, political, and psychological holocaust like no other society in contemporary history. 

When it comes to this issue, we need to find a footing in the moral clarity of the younger generation. It does not matter whether genocide was executed in 100 days as in Rwanda, or in 4 years as in Nazi Germany, or in decades as in apartheid Israel. The latter is executed incrementally by way of relentless daily brutality, extreme humiliation, periodical invasions, economic strangulation, mass imprisonment, torture, expulsion, home demolitions and land-grab to uproot the indigenous Palestinians in order to build, as the Jewish human rights organization B’Tselem put it, a regime of Jewish supremacy.  

So unless we play politics with justice and in the fundamental worth of human lives, we should accept the fact all aforementioned cases represent the same evil. And in that spirit, and with utmost respect to the sentimental or collective history value of Nakba, this analyst will deliberately use ‘the indigenous Palestinian holocaust’ to remind the world that the cry ‘never again’ should not be a selective moral outrage.          

Nature of the Beast

While ‘apartheid’ does provide historical reference to the racism that drives much of what the Jewish state does, it does not capture the magnitude of the horrific oppression and dehumanization that the indigenous Palestinian people live under.

If the apartheid regime could deliberately target homes, apartments or commercial towers that are the headquarters of international media such Associated Press, Aljazeera, and host of other aid organizations and civil societies on a broad daylight, try to imagine what they could do away from the cameras and media scrutiny.

Since 1948, indigenous Palestinians have been ‘cleansed’ out of much of the land that was once known as Palestine, and that vicious process is now in full force to put the last few nails on the two-state solution that has been dangled in front of the Palestinian authority for so long time. In the West Bank—an area recognized under the international law as an occupied territory—has been peppered with over 400 Israeli colonies with more than 600,000 Jewish settlers

However, if you are somewhat confused due to the false narratives advanced by certain politicians, think tanks, and media groups and you found yourself sitting on the fence on who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor, you might need to read the Human Rights Watch’s 217 page damning verdict entitled A Threshold Crossed.

Ironically, outdoing its trademark arrogance, in less than two weeks after the report ignited broad debate over the nature of the Israeli regime, Benjamin Netanyahu started in-your-face orgies of war crimes and crimes against humanity violations. So much in violation of the international law that if they were committed by another country in the world, the apartheid-protecting world’s moral police, otherwise known as the U.S., would have mobilized a ‘coalition of the willing’ to invade that country and brought it down into submission. 

But, if you still find yourself unconvinced that Israel is a racist country, let the ill-famed Jacob The ‘Settler’ tell you how the last apartheid regime in the world operationalizes land grab and justify it. In the video, a courageous Palestinian female home owner confronts Jacob (Yaakov Fauci) who literally stole her home and tells him: you are stealing my house. He responds with this heartless colonial logic: “If I don’t steal it, someone else (another settler) will….so what’s the point?” Here is him doing what he called a “damage control”.  

Will the Current ‘Cease fire’ Bring Lasting Peace?

The short answer is ‘no’; because this cease fire is not grounded on a sound political settlement,  Hamas that should be part of any political solution is still considered by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, and the apartheid forces are still provoking and violating Islam’s third holiest mosques, al-Aqsa.

For Israel and its Zionist supporters, the cease fire was a great opportunity to defuse the global moral outrage against the brutality of the apartheid regime and the above-the-law status secured to Benjamin Netanyahu who should have his day at the International Criminal Court.

Let’s be frank here, the apartheid regime has no incentive to change its modus operandi of constantly moving the goal post for solution by establishing new facts on the ground (more colonies and more Jewish settlers who mostly migrated from U.S. and Europe).

Moreover, under its current tactic, Israel deliberately destroys lives, significant number of residential and commercial towers, hospitals, schools, bridges, sacred places and other components of Gaza’s already frail infrastructure without suffering any consequences.

The U.S. provides the apartheid regime absolute protection with its ‘Veto Power’ at the UN Security Council and it mobilizes a few of her oil rich friends to bankroll the cost of reconstruction. Israel is like that spoiled boy who smashes all pottery on display at the store so his dad’s clients would pay for the damage. Apparently the ‘you broke it, you pay for it’ rule does not apply to Israel. So under such unchecked privilege and indeed power, why would Israel respect the international law and stop its war crimes and crimes against humanity?

Enhancing the Non-violent Strategy

No liberation is achieved and sustained at random, so those who have been at the forefront of the indigenous Palestinian struggle would have to think and act more strategically than ever before. And that may require pulling together divergent ideas, personalities, and priorities.

Some New and Od Ideas to Ponder:

Collecting and documenting property deeds, house keys, family photos, decapitated dolls, dead person’s shoes, bullet-ridden garments, and all other belongings that attest to the humanity that those indigenous Palestinians were denied in their lifetimes. These items should be displayed at a future museum to be named the Indigenous Palestinian Holocaust Museum.

Establish International Friends of Palestine Registry to list all organizations and activist groups for effective collaboration and motivation to sustain the global moral outrage, and intellectual intifada for liberty, justice and peace. 

Organize, fundraise, and find pro bono legal services for victims and their families to file criminal and civil lawsuits against Israeli officials and military commanders at various U.S. courts and in other Western countries that will allow.

Streamline the anti-apartheid movements and Palestine liberation advocacy groups under one vision, distinctive logo and inspiring slogan. 

Now that a federal judge has declared Georgia’s anti-BDS law to protect Israel as against the First Amendment, thus unconstitutional, the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) should reach every household using television, radio and other media ads as well as billboards.

Recruit celebrities, congressional figures, and other influencers to invite international media to cover their constitutionally protected civil disobedience and maybe subsequent arrests. In addition to the Israeli embassy, targets should include the State Department, Zionist and Right-Wing institutions, and all others that lend the apartheid regime funding and blind support. Imagine the curiosity and the debate it would’ve provoked if Senator Bernie Sanders—who is a Jew and a civil rights activist—getting arrested for protesting against apartheid Israel.    

Establish a counter-MEMRI TV that archives and translates into English violence inciting hate-speeches by zealot Rabbis, politicians, settlers, and others. Also the abuses, provocations, and violence intended to make life unbearable for the indigenous Palestinian people.

Meeting with editorial boards of major newspapers such as New York Times, Washington Post, etc. as well as decision makers on television and cable news to pressure them for fair coverages and to place correspondents in Gaza to better educate their respective audiences. 

Streamline speakers under one bureau that cultivates them to become well-versed on the liberation cause, to speak at various gatherings, conferences, human rights platforms, conferences such as the Congressional Black Caucasus, and call in right-wing and apartheid supporting radio programs with factual information to dispel their disinformation.

Organize a diverse team of social media savvy young men and women to monitor disinformation, to expose BOTS, disseminate factual information, and persuade the misinformed.

Solicit wealthy Muslims and non-Muslims to produce Hollywood films that tell this holocaust from the indigenous Palestinian perspective. These investments could produce films that are educational, empowering, and profitable.

Lastly and perhaps more importantly, build diplomatic, media, academia, think tanks, and social media activists alliance to pressure the U.N. to reform. And that reform must include restructuring of the Security Council and the absolute authority or ‘veto power’ granted to current 5 permanent members. Imagine if the permanent members were 9 and a ‘veto power’ required two thirds’ vote. Also, the UN must become an independently funded institution that is not politically beholden to one wealthy funder or another.

Though Israel has advanced militarily, scientifically, and in the fields of intelligence and entrepreneurship, the Zionist project is clearly a failed project of first degree. With U.S. taxpayers’ $4 billion annual free check, apartheid Israel is the mother of all ‘welfare queens.’ And that certainly is not sustainable.

America continues to lose a great deal of international credibility in its unconditional or absolute support of a ruthless colonizer and an apartheid regime that is bent on holocausting indigenous Palestinians for an exclusive Jewish state.

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With the recent and severe condemnation of Belarus’ actions against an opposition activist and a civil airliner, with must acknowledge that the same level of continuing condemnation should continue to address the murder of the passengers and crew of Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS752 over a year ago. Recently, the crime that was the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians on PS752 by Iran’s Air Defense forces was acknowledged as an “act of terrorism” as well as “intentional” by a Canadian court in the Province of Ontario where many of the surviving families of the victims reside.

The late Cold War sophistication of the TOR-M1 system that shot two surface to air missiles at a passenger plane three minutes after takeoff from Teheran’s International Airport is well known to have a horrific and brutal effect on victims of an airliner. The TOR-M1 has several fail safe plans and mechanisms as part of its design and implementation. It is difficult to see how an accident could have occurred on so many levels. With the firing unit of the TOR-M1 having its own radars and optical systems, as well as being linked to the tracking and guidance systems of several other TOR-M1s in the unit, PS752 would have been seen on all of their radars and ID systems. The units are always under the control of a dedicated control unit in the field that is in communication with the central command structure of the Air Defense Forces of the Iranian military, who also have information and flight plans for civilian air routes. The TOR-M1s were purchased from Russia, who often trains and organises the use of such weapons when sold abroad, and it is doubtful that the method and training on the TOR-M1s would have been lax when they were purchased and installed within Iran’s Armed Forces.

Despite the obvious horror of the murder of the passenger of Flight PS752, there has been a somewhat passive approach by Canada where most of the victims resided to achieve true justice for the families. Many of the families who lost loved ones were harassed in Iran itself, and the Prime Minister of Canada was photographed bowing, joyful and shaking hands with Iran’s foreign minister weeks after Iran killed his citizens. Hopefully the recent judgment will motivate the Government of Canada to respect the victims of this clear human rights atrocity, by acknowledging how the use of military grade weapons on civilians occurred, and move beyond simply a financial compensation package for victims where an account of justice clearly needs to take place. Considering their lack of immediate action in condemning the Uighur Genocide, there seems to be a moral deficit with many Western leaders in 2021.

With the two missiles that shot down PS752, it has been reported that many of the 4000 rockets that were fired into Israel were supplied and designed by Iran’s military as well. These missiles were aimed and fired at civilian targets in order to continue their use of military grade weapons against civilians, even pointed towards civilian airports, hospitals and schools. While the TOR-M1 missiles were precise weapons, the rockets fired are similar to smaller calibre GRAD, or Katyusha type rockets used as deadly artillery by the Soviet Army against the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. One of the most feared weapons of the Soviets during the Second World War, the GRAD rockets are designed to flatten a wide area using multiple missiles to destroy full units of dozens of tanks and troops. To fire such a military grade weapon in a populated area is a clear crime against humanity, as was the firing on Flight PS752. Governments need to show that shooting into a crowd of civilians with any type of weapon is horrific, those that choose to delay or qualify condemnation are clearly ignoring fundamental rights.

Zero tolerance is paramount in the use of military grade weapons on civilians, without an ounce of qualification.

 

After being a resident living in the UK and EU, learning the legal foundations and delicate intricacies of British and European Commercial Law and Intellectual Property rights, it still amazes me how these two powerful entities could still place the weakest and most needy in society at peril over the political aspirations of a few wealthy, elite politicians and their political movements. This being done to the clear detriment of everyone’s parents. The birthplace of Parliamentary Democracy and Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite chose to squabble during a deadly pandemic over vaccines, a possible cure to the Covid crisis, in the middle of a third horrendous wave because there are two camps with well dug in positions over the issue of the UK leaving the EU.

When a community votes for an issue that affects them directly, a democracy should work to respect their decision even if it is not wholly correct in the eyes of professional democrats who run democracies. That is the foundation of society in Western Europe. A weakness of the EU system is that direct democracy is often lacking, and large Supranational bodies often apply policy without the constraints of grassroots communities in the process. This was a key failure in the process that lead many in the UK to push away from the EU. If the British people and those of the now streamlined European Union chose a path for their society, it will be taken by vote, but the decision should not result in a political punishment of those voters.

Citizens on both sides need vaccines, and if the parents who need it the most who lived in the European Economic Community need help, they should be helped in concert with other European nations. The European Economic Community was after all mostly a trade agreement before the legal and cultural ties of the modern EU took shape, and it functioned fairly well for citizens of both communities. A shared trade agreement between many of the current EU members and the UK needed and needs to get everyone vaccinated, whatever their politics might be in 2021, to help those who lived well under the EEC in the 70s. A people first approach should be sacrosanct when everyone’s family is at risk, whatever their political opinion on borders are currently.

While the EU as a quasi-Federal political entity did fracture, other Federated states have taken to charging at their political opposition in different regions of their country. While regional health initiatives produced more effective local results in combatting Covid, the challenging of states against other states seems to have more to do with shifting blame to political opponents instead of sharing useful health policy in an environment where honest science produces life saving healthcare strategies. On top of elites challenging elites to the detriment of the greater community, there have even been cases of petty politicians using their petty politics to belittle and even dehumanise their political opponents who are clearly members of the 1% crowd, concerned more about their job than the people they believe they govern. Such individuals need to be ejected from polite society, still landing on a cushion of power, with great rewards depending on how corrupt the system they gave birth to has become. This will not save any lives but their own it seems.

Welcome to 2021…or for most of us still waiting for vaccines under lockdowns, 2020 plus 5.

The Source

To many Americans, foreign policy discourse comes in broad themes punctuated by very specific issues.  China policy may well form the largest of those themes, and reasonably so.  China could pose a threat to displace America’s international system, arguably the only one.  News and commentary focus heavily on China’s actions and their rulers’ intent: whether they aim to displace us in our influence or merely want to insulate themselves from us; whether they want to supplant democracy with their system; and how far they will go to disrupt our society.  Our China experts, and others, report every fact and parse every analysis of China.  They yield deep insight on China’s nature and intentions, possibly deeper than George Kennan’s 1947 study of the Soviet Union.

Relatively few raise the question of what the U.S. seeks in our China policy. AEI’s Giselle Donnelly calls for a true strategic approach, and Ali Wyne of Eurasia Group has queried what we compete over in “great power competition.”  We should recall the old adage about friendships and interests, and add that enmities as well as friendships defer to interests.  Kennan established the Soviet Union as an existential danger, so opposing that country became a proxy for our interests.  But today we lack consensus on America’s core interest.  Having been immersed in what China might do, our discourse should turn its focus, to coin a phrase, to the sources of American conduct.  The same holds for our foreign policy in general.

U.S. policy toward China will variously cite a rules based global order, democracy, human rights, trade, common interests in curbing climate change, U.S. competitiveness, and jobs.  Policies shift between these various concerns, but rhyme and reason to any given shift is hard to see, while the common denominator is that we oppose China.  And we offer no coherent and durable narrative to say why.  We do not confront the Chinese leadership with a durable counter to their self-serving but coherent interpretations.

America in fact has a fundamental bottom line.  The nation was conceived on a short, abstract creed, of unalienable rights and government that exists to secure those rights, under the consent of the governed.  This definition of national identity underpins American national legitimacy, the deepest interest a nation can have.  Yes, we have more tangible interests, of fair trade in principle and of trade advantages of our industries, of democracy in Taiwan and of peace, of human rights in Xinjiang and of climate policy.  But we need to organize our priorities around the deep interest, our commitment to the creed of the Declaration of Independence.

Today, U.S. foreign policy serves as a tool of bipolar politics.  Two partisan camps occasionally voice the same incontestable common points, but they are more concerned to do better than the other side. Everyone knows China is a one party dictatorship, so no one is overly friendly.  Everyone knows we share interests from financial market stability to climate issues.  But Republicans act to hobble China’s tech firms, while Democrats seek collaboration on climate policy.  What degree of support either side would muster for other goals is a matter of political convenience.  Both sides found reasons to ditch the Trans Pacific Partnership trade pact.  Will either find it useful to defend Taiwan?

Walter Russell Mead points out that all potential policy stances toward China carry risks.  He further asserts that a flourishing Asia is the answer to the U.S.’s China problem. If flourishing includes growth in personal freedom, as it has in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, then that approach also fits America’s founding ethos.  A world that not only protects, but promotes, people’s right to the pursuit of happiness best serves everyone, and fulfills our creed.  A flourishing world goes very far toward securing America’s deepest interest, for all of our foreign policy.  If U.S. foreign policy organizes itself to express that aspiration, then to the American public, and to billions of others, that’s what matters most.

Somalia, Is It Time To Part Ways?

If there was any undisputable lesson gained from the three miserable decades of civil war and that lesson was engraved on a stone, it would have read: Avoid the road most traveled; pave yourself a new one.

But, ‘who cares’ is sadly the prevalent attitude. Currently, Somalia is at the tail end of that mindless political combat that occurs every fourth year that many Somalis know as ‘xilligii kala guurka’ or time to part ways. If the phrase was intended to inculcate attitude of apathy toward nationhood and mutual interest, it has worked effectively; certainly among the political class. Make no mistake, language matters.

Today, Somalia is governed by a government whose president’s term has ended on February 8, 2021, is kept in-check by a parliament whose term has ended on December 27, 2020, is guided by a provisional constitution that has been in the making since 2012, which is interpreted by a constitutional court that is yet to be established. This foreign-funded façade of a government is being told ‘you lost legitimacy’ by foreign-funded federal-state presidents, and presidential candidates who telegraph their willingness to preserve the status quo.

Meanwhile, professional narrative framers, foreign intelligence, and mercenary media outlets in Mogadishu, Nairobi, Johannesburg, and other localities continue issuing one-sided reports, stories, interviews, and articles intended to disseminate disinformation and promote that ever-recycled fallacy: ‘Election is the panacea to all of Somalia’s problems therefore all other issues should be shelved.’

Sadly, they are being effective as they have been before. In the past three decades, Somalia has been trading one visionless charlatan for other; at least in most cases.

‘Mutiny’ or ‘right to self-govern’ in Jubbaland?  

The federal-state of Jubbaland still remains the microcosm of the Somali political paradox. It has all the highly flammable political material necessary to detrimentally undermine the progress made since 2013- direct involvement of two frontline states and their local cronies, aggrieved and marginalized clans, political sensitivities between the federal and state governments.  Two of the three regions that constitute Jubbaland (Lower Jubba and Gedo) are currently at odds.

At the outset let me say this: in the past three decades no Somali region has been more tormented with periodical persecutions and military attacks than Gedo. The latest was the attack on Beled-Hawo. that killed dozens of civilians including 5 siblings and seriously injured their mother.  That attack was led by a controversial figure named Abdirashid Janan- a man who is considered by the Federal Government of Somalia and Amnesty International as a fugitive, ruthless criminal accused of committing serious crimes against humanity by “killing of civilians and obstruction of humanitarian aid.” On the other hand, the same man is recognized by the federal-state of Jubbaland and Kenya as Jubbaland’s security minister.

 

Against that backdrop, the FGS has deployed some of Somalia’s newly trained forces to the Gedo region to bulwark against what it described as ‘Kenyan aggression’. Whereas the latter claimed its forces carry out attacks inside Somalia only when in hot pursuit of al-Shabaab and that all other military operations are within AMISOM the legal framework. And Jubbaland authority claimed forces led by Janan were trying to defuse mutiny that was ignited by FGS.

In reality, neither of these authorities are being entirely candid about the real issue that was pouring kerosene on the Gedo fire.

Bone of Contention

Kenyan forces have been in Jubbaland since 2011 when they illegally invaded Somalia. Though the Kenyan forces are now under the AMISOM mandate, they operate an illegal enterprise of exporting charcoal, smuggling in contrabands, and splitting checkpoint extortions collected by al-Shabaab. More dangerously, the Kenyan forces have been attacking the Gedo region at will, destroying mobile phone antennas, and building a wall to annex part of Gedo as ‘a buffer zone.’ On top of all these, you have the ICJ maritime case regarding the ownership of a 58,000 square-mile area off Somalia’s Indian Ocean coastline.     

In 2017, after the people of Gedo organized demonstrations against Kenya’s illegal construction of a border wall, the FGS could no longer keep its head in the sand. It dispatched a fact-finding committee led by its interior minister. The discovery of the fact-finding committee was affirmative. But, upon their return, or the day before presenting their report to the Council of Ministers, the interior minister was sacked and the report never saw the light of day.

Then in 2019, Kenya’s then speaker of the parliament, Aden Du’ale, made an unannounced visit that violated diplomatic protocols to Kismayo to attend Ahmed Madobe’s controversial second inauguration that the FGS declared null and void. While there, in a speech that was clearly intended to ridicule, if not outrage, President Farmajo’s of-cited ‘Somalia’s territorial integrity,’ Duale said he had to attend that celebration (despite FGS’ position) because Kenya has a special relationship with Jubbaland which it shares a border of 800 kilometers.

So, why were all these not outrageous enough for FGS in the past four years? Why did the FGS not demand the Kenyan forces be removed from AMISOM? How could a country with questionable record and shady motives that you severed diplomatic relationship with them be trusted as a partner against al-Shabaab?

Aside from the contention between Farmajo and Madobe on leverage and electoral advantage over the Gedo members of the parliament, there is another issue that has not been on the surface.

The real bone of contention between FGS and Kenya is the future of Jubbaland president Ahmed Madobe and his security minister Abdirashid Janan. This duo had a very close relationship with TPLF, thus PM Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia wants them out of the picture. Not only for their past but for the danger that they could present when Ethiopia starts to cash on the corrupt 4 seaports deal it acquired under Farmajo. Ethiopia has been bankrolling the transportation of the federal troops and other logistical cost of the deadly showdown in Gedo. Kismayo happens to be one of the aforementioned sea ports. Meanwhile, the civilians of Gedo suffer. As a ‘loyal friend and partner’ of Abiy Ahmed, Farmajo successfully facilitated getting rid of former al-Shaab leader Mukhtar Roobow and the leaders of Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama’ah and host of other less known Abiy targets. On his part, President Uhuru Kenyatta wants Madobe and Janan to sustain the annexation process of Gedo region, and leverage against any drama that may set back the maritime case. 

The Farmajo Legacy

In fairness to Farmajo, he has inherited from his predecessor, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, eight challenges. Among them, the mother of all corruption- the Soma Oil & Gas deal, a deal that gravely compromised Somalia’s natural resources.  What he did about fixing that issue is a chapter of its own. 

Four years later, his presidency would probably be remembered as one of the worst.  Security has never been worse and al-Shabaab has never been deadlier. Finishing four straight years at the bottom of the Corruption Index, Farmajo’s presidency is apparently worse than the one before him whom most Somalis consider the most corrupted president. Over a million IDPs still live in pitiful shacks exposed for rape and other abuses in Mogadishu. The country is ever more dependent on foreign assistance. FGS neither institutionalized national currency nor does it collect taxes. Its four years ended without a Somali-owned reconciliation, for taking over security, for ending the unjust 4.5 clan power sharing system, for protecting the national resources, for a robust foreign policy and for flushing out Halane or shutting down the green zone. 

Farmajo will be leaving behind a gridlock of false narratives, a country that is bitterly polarized and dangerously exposed for exploitation and perpetual division. Staying on course with current trajectory will only lead Somalia back to the same dead-end that it marched into too many times in the past three decades.

Those of us who were against clan-based federalism that was modeled after Ethiopia’s ethnic-based have been arguing that it only creates perpetual inter-clan hostilities and endless fragmentation of the Somali state. Now that we know for a fact, shouldn’t the FGS and federal state governments such as Jubbaland and Hirshabille refrain from forcing grudging clans together?

Starting with Gedo, Hiiraan, Sanaag and Sool, let these regions either stand alone states, or go under the federal protection, or decide freely which other federal-state they wish to join. Why not if that would stop senseless bloodshed and political manipulations? 

If there is one last chance for the Somali state to reemerge and reclaim its rightful place among community of nations, FGS must gain legitimacy from its own people. And there is no political legitimacy without genuine national reconciliation.

 

It was recently reported that the Shah Deniz consortium has commenced natural gas deliveries to Europe.  Shahmar Hajiyev, an AIR Center expert, noted, “This is very important because Azerbaijan became the first country to supply Caspian natural gas to European energy markets.  It represents the future of the European Union’s energy supply.  Azerbaijan will supply 10 billion barrels of gas per year to the EU.   This is very important for Europe’s diversification process.”   According to Hajiyev, it is very important that the EU stop relying upon Russian oil for the sake of its own energy security: “It’s very dangerous for the EU to rely upon Russia.  What happened in the Ukraine shows that this is dangerous.  There was a huge crisis between Russia and the Ukraine.  The terms of the transit issue and later also the conflict with the separatists supported by Russia created major problems.  This showed the EU that relying upon Russia is dangerous for the EU.   Also, there was the price issue.   For all these reasons, they prefer to diversify their sources and Azerbaijan was the best option.”   Paolo Bergamaschi, a European energy expert, concurred: “the European Commission declared that the Southern Corridor is critical for the strategic security of the EU.  The pipeline is thus critical for the security of the EU, especially related to the diversification of supplies for we want to decrease the influence of Russian gas on Europe.  That is why the EU has pursued the support of the TAP pipeline to create an alternative to Russian gas.”   According to Bergamaschi, it is also good for the United States that the EU diversify its oil supply: “One of the foreign policy objectives of the US is to decrease Russian influence on the EU, so that is the purpose of this pipeline.  If I look at the Eastern Mediterranean and the many gas and oil fields all over, the discoveries of Turkey in the Black Sea, etc., there will be many markets.  I believe in a quick energy transition.  But if I must choose, I prefer the Azerbaijani gas for they won’t use it as an instrument to impose their foreign policy objectives like Russia does.  Azerbaijan is a friend of Europe and that is important for us.”   Hajiyev concurred: “The United States always supports the EU on energy security.  They also are against the Russian monopoly on the European market.  The US put sanctions on the Russian gas pipelines, for they would help Putin to improve his position and dominate the European gas market.  Therefore, the US supports the EU in its diversification to decrease the Russian monopoly on EU market.”   When asked how Azerbaijan supplying natural gas to the European Union will influence Israel, Hajiyev responded: “Azerbaijan and Israel are remarkably close.  Azerbaijan supplies 45 percent of Israel’s energy needs.  Israel will also build pipelines, but there are geopolitical issues, so we cannot say exactly when Israel will build the pipeline.  The Azerbaijani pipeline is ready.  Azerbaijan supplies 10 bcn to Europe every year.  They will increase to 20 bcn in the future.  It won’t contradict Israel, for the EU market is very big and there is room for more gas.  It is against the Russian interest, for Azerbaijan and Israel can jointly fill what Russia supplied.  In the end, these two countries will supply Europe and there will be no conflict of interest between Israel and Azerbaijan.  Israel needs 3-5 years to complete the project, if everything goes right.”   The Azerbaijani diaspora in the European Union countries also support first direct gas deliveries to Europe, which will serve to strengthen the diplomatic and economic relations between their motherland Azerbaijan and their host countries.  It will also reinforce the position of the Azerbaijani Diaspora organizations in the EU countries to promote more effectively these relations.

 

Healthy democracies do no burn legal documents. This recent and disturbing trend when confronted with an issue that took place during Covid policy approaches should be considered as an attempt to hide serious crimes from the public at a time when the public is at its weakest. When such options are available to a government that is found to be assisting in human rights abuses, an immediate and swift judicial response should become the norm. Zero tolerance for actions that contribute to human rights abuses should be a standard response. If that response is delayed, ignored or evidence is outright destroyed, criminal charges should follow for anyone interfering with an investigation, as in some cases eliminating evidence can become part of contributing to the atrocities.

Plus Jamais ça, or Never Again is a concept that followed the end of the Holocaust, where humanity dedicated itself to never allowing another genocide. The world has failed on many occasions, but the concept should be adhered to religiously. While average citizens often support human rights, politicians often are the ones enabling atrocities for personal gain. Recently, French footballer Antoine Griezmann cut his sponsorship ties with Huawei  in protest to abuses being waged against China’s Uighur population. Griezmann pointed out that Huawei was tied to an app that apparently was going to be used to digitally identify members of China’s Uighur Muslim minority, a group that has been subject to abuses by China, with many being placed in mass detainment facilities simply for being born Uighurs.

The actions against China’s Uighur population has been known for some time, but little has been done directly about it due to China’s political and economic weight. Protests like those done by Griezmann stand out as money often controls the narrative when speaking about human rights abuses in that part of the world. In reality, in Communist systems almost all organisations and companies are controlled and owned by the government, and actions taken by those organisations are almost always to the benefit of their home nation.

Recent revelations that Canada’s government had been encouraging its own military and intelligence service to accept coordination and training with China’s military has shocked many in Canada, the US and NATO establishment. While still not completely clear the extent of the cooperation, it has been noted that Canada’s leaders took steps to give China winter war training and allow Chinese Generals training inside Canadian military colleges. It is more than likely that Canada has been aware of human rights abuses done against Uighurs and any other abuse that could be easily accessed by reading Human Right Watch reports. With Canada acknowledging its own nation committed genocide against its indigenous populations, the same standard should be applied to other humans abroad.

Training soldiers to operate more efficiently in the regions of the country where Uighurs reside, Tibet is located and where skirmishes with India have taken place, likely contributes to actions taken in those regions as well. It might be the case that actions by Canada may have exacerbated human rights abuses against those groups and populations, and as a result those officials in Canada should be open to questioning by Canadian and international human rights tribunals. While the same government has been those in a democracy that have destroyed legally obtained evidence by its own government’s committee in the recent past, society as a whole needs to demand justice at home, so it can legitimately demand justice abroad for those who have lost all freedoms.

 

 

 

 

Healt