Daily Archives: January 7, 2022

The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2022 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution. Given its recent record, perhaps this should not be a surprise. In the opening two decades of the 21st century, Britain has effectively lost two wars and seen its grand strategy collapse, first with the 2008 financial crisis, which blew up its social and economic settlement, and, then, in 2016, when the country chose to rip up its long-term foreign policy by leaving the European Union, achieving the rare feat of erecting an economic border with its largest trading partner and with a part of itself, Northern Ireland, while adding fuel to the fire of Scottish independence for good measure. And if this wasnt enough, it then spectacularly failed in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, combining one of the worst death rates in the developed world with one of the worst economic recessions.

Yet however extraordinary this run of events has been, it seems to me that Britains existential threat is not simply the result of poor governancean undeniable realitybut of something much deeper: the manifestation of something close to a spiritual crisis.

The 20 years from 2000 to 2020 might have been objectively awful for Britain, but the country has been through other grim periods in its recent past and not seen its coherence come quite as close to breakdown as it is today. At the heart of Britains crisis is a crisis of identity. Put simply, no other major power is quite as conflicted about whether it is even a nation to begin with, let alone what it takes to act like one.

The problem is that Britain is not a traditional country like France, Germany, or even the United States. Britain, here, is shorthand for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Irelanda collection of nations and territories, combining England, Scotland, Wales, and the disputed land of Northern Irelandwhile also being a legitimate, sovereign, and unitary nation-state itself. With the passing of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, it is now one of the rare states in the Western world whose name is not simply the nation it represents: The United Kingdom is more than Britain and the British. Some of its citizens believe themselves to be British, while others say they are not British at all; others say they are British and another nationalityScottish or Welsh, say. In Northern Ireland it is even more complicated, with some describing themselves as only British while others say they are only Irish.

For many, the root of Britains existential crisis today is Brexitan apparent spasm of English nationalism that has broken the social contract holding Britains union of nations together, revealing the countrys true nature as an unequal union, of the English, by the English, for the English. Although Brexit was carried by a majority of the U.K. as a whole, it was opposed by two of its constituent parts, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It was the votes of England, its dominant nation, that carried the day.

Yet the truth is that the Englishness of Brexit only matters if people see themselves as something other than British. So long as an American president has carried the Electoral College, it is irrelevant whether they were rejected by the voters in a given state because, at root, the voters are Americans first. Does Britain, as a nation, even enjoy this basic tenet of national belonging any longer? Brexit, then, might have exacerbated the tensions within the union, but it did not cause them. If anything, Brexit revealed the scale of the problem that was already there.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to see for myself just how disunited the U.K. has become. With three months of paternity leave and a once-in-a-century pandemic leaving dreams of tropical island hopping in the dust, I seized a rare chance to travel the length and breadth of my own country.

My wife, kids, and I had set off on our grand tour following the G7 in Cornwall in Junea dispiriting gathering of old and uninspiring Western leaders defending the idea of the West, hosted by a British prime minister attempting to defend the idea of Britain. After the summit, I deleted Twitter and most of the newspaper apps off my phone and we set off.

Trying to avoid the news, I began a book Id been meaning to read for years: The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The book soon became something of a prophetic companion, somehow able to reflect the crisis of identity at the heart of the U.K. better than any newspaper article or television segment had managed for years.

The book opens in revolutionary Sicily in the 1860s, as the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies starts to collapse, subsumed into the new Italy of Garibaldi. The central character is the Prince of Salina, a member of the kingdoms old ruling class who is haunted by the discovery on his estate of a dead soldier who was killed fighting for the last Bourbon monarch in Naples.

The pointlessness of the soldiers death haunted the prince. What did he die for? Sicily was about to be subsumed into the new Italy. He died for the King, of course, the prince says to himself by way of reassurance. For the King, who stands for order, continuity, decency, honour, right. He died for a cause. But even as he was reassuring himself of this, the prince knew it was not true: The old king had been useless. Kings who personify an idea should not, cannot, fall below a certain level, he admits. If they do the idea suffers too.

The passage reminded me of a conversation Id had with a figure who had been close to Boris Johnson and worried that the U.K. was in danger of becoming an anachronism like the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies or the Austro-Hungarian empire. Britain, this person said, was failing because it had grown lazy and complacent, unable to act with speed and purpose. The state had stopped paying attention to the basics of government, whether that was the development of its economy, the protection of its borders, or the defense of the realm. Instead, it had become guilty of a failed elite groupthink that had allowed separatism to flourish, wealth to concentrate in London and its surrounding areas, and the political elite to ignore the public mood.

The warning is as stark as it is bleak. Austria-Hungary, like the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, had squandered its popular legitimacy after failing to feed, protect, and represent its people equally during its calamitous handling of World War I. As the historian Pieter Judson shows in The Habsburg Empire, Austria-Hungary did not, as is often portrayed, disintegrate because it was illegitimate or a relic of a bygone era. It fell apart because in its desperation to survive World War I, it undermined the foundation of its legitimacy as an empire of nations, becoming instead an Austrian autocracy. In its scramble to survive, it forgot who it was.

Could the same be happening to Britain? Was I touring an anachronistic country, one destined to break up into its old component parts? The breakup of the U.K. is certainly not unthinkable. We tend to think of the worlds most powerful nations as unshakable actors on the world stage, but of course they are not. You only have to cast your eyes back a few generations to the last time the U.K. lost a major chunk of its territory, when London failed to build a nation from the state it had created between Britain and Ireland in 1800. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed entirely, unable to bear the weight of its failures as demands for independence from the periphery turned into demands for independence from the central state itself: Russia.

Read: What aspiring artists can learn from The Leopard

When you speak to people in Westminsterthe heart of the British statethe extent of their pessimism about the future of the country is striking. One friend of mine, who wished to remain anonymous because his public profile makes it difficult for him to speculate openly about the future of the country, told me a story about his grandfather, who had fought for Austria-Hungary before escaping to Britain after its collapse. When he died, he was buried in the United Kingdom, but in a coffin draped in the flag of the old empire, the state that had protected him, as a Jew, and which he had fought for and remained loyal to ever since. His grandson, who has fought under the flag of the United Kingdom, told me his own fear was that he might suffer the same fateburied by his grandchildren in the flag of a nation he had fought for and served, but which had long since passed into history.

Our first stop in England was a holiday resort called Butlins in Somerset, a county in southwest England, which is, perhaps, the most British place in the world. Built in the 1950s to offer affordable holidays for the working classes, Butlins has survived the onset of cheap flights, package holidays, and the rise of the middle class to remain popular, relevant, and somehow more representative of modern Britain than anywhere else we went on our trip.

For me, a middle-class child of the 1980s, the whole experience felt far more alien than Id like to admit: a land barely touched by the kind of gentrification I have come to think of as normal. Yet, while it is old-fashioned, it does not feel stuck in the past: There is a timelessness to it, managing to be both modern and a throwback to some lost age at the same time. When I told my mum where we were going, she sent me a picture of her as a little girl on holiday at the same resort in the 1960s. There were the same cheap terraced chalets, garish red staff uniforms, fairground rides, and fried food. Yet it was also far more multicultural, multiracial, and multigenerational than the resorts for the middle classes where we spent most of our time during the rest of our tripmore upscale places where the food and wine is better and the conversation sounds more like Twitter, but the reality is far more exclusive and monocultural.

Butlins was a reminder that there is still something distinctive about Britain; it could be nowhere else but Britain. It was not a cheap version of America or an attempt at continental sophistication. Yes, there were Italian restaurants and the like that would not have been there when my mum visited, but the canteens still served fried breakfasts, roast dinners, and sponge puddings with custard. It was, I realized, one of those English institutions that George Orwell talked about in The Lion and the Unicorn: somewhere viewed by the middle classesthat is, people like meas something almost disgraceful, a place to snigger at, yet somehow more reflective and at ease with modern Britain than they were themselves. That I did not particularly enjoy it or feel at home there says more about me than Butlins.

After leaving Butlins, we ventured east toward London for our next stop: the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire. This is deep Wessex, the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom that gave birth to England itself. Our trip through this Tolkien land of rolling fields, woods, and pristine hobbit villages reminded me of the ageless continuity of England. The country overall likes to think of itself as a mini United States, but when you are this far into old England it becomes obvious that this is not the case: England, like the rest of Europe, is rooted in place and time in a way America is not.

Yet while we were undoubtedly deep into England here, it was a different country from Butlins. It was as if wed left a camp for Anglo-Saxon serfs and arrived at a gathering for their Norman lords. And just as Butlins had its uniforms, so did the people of the Chalke Valley: every shade of pastel imaginable, linen jackets, and more pairs of boat shoes than a Cape Cod regatta. Getting coffee, I heard a snippet of a conversation that would have been impossible at Butlins. No, no responsibilities at all, one woman said to her friend, excitedly, describing her new job as a board member of some company or charity. Its a non-exec position.

At the festival I met a friend, the historian Dan Snow. We chatted about the depths and complexities of England. As we looked out over the festival, he pointed to a series of folds in the hills on the other side of the valley. These lines in the landscape, easily visible to the eye, might have been old Roman terraces, he said, but nobody knows. England is so deep in places that its secrets remain hidden.

Read: The global Britain conundrum

In a land this ancient, then, does the future of the United Kingdoma political entity only 100 years oldreally matter? After all, the state that exists today is the product of Irish secession in 1921. But even the state that existed before that is a relatively modern creation: the product of not just one union, between England and Scotland in 1707, but also a second, between Britain and Ireland in 1800. The United Kingdom might crumble, and perhaps so too will Britain, but England will surely remain. Is this not a comfort? My sense of sadness at the loosening of the ties that bind the U.K. are really just emotional. Would life change all that much?

If these were my ramblings, they were also dripping out of The Leopard, in which the prince begins to have similar thoughts about Sicily. All will be the same, just as it is now: except for an imperceptible change round of classes, he declares, dismissing the revolutionary hopes of the liberal garibaldini, who believed they were transforming society. The Salina will remain the Salina, he says, defiantly, of his own aristocratic family.

From England, we ventured north into Scotland, which today feels almost like a foreign country. Our plan was to attempt a grand tour of Scotlands island periphery. We would spend a week in Shetland, an archipelago 100 miles north of the Scottish mainland, before venturing south to neighboring Orkney (another collection of islands off the coast), and from there through the Highlands to Scotlands dramatic Western Isles.

In Shetland, you are closer to Bergen in Norway than to Edinburgh, and it was rare to spot a Scottish flag. There the people even spoke of going to Scotland. In Orkney, too, there was a striking sense of separation. They are both very different from the rest of Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, the member of Parliament for both sets of islands, told me. [They are] Nordic, not Celtic.

Orkney had been the center of a vast Stone Age world of the north. Here, 5,000 years ago, the Neolithic lived and worshipped in colossal stone temples, many of which remain standing today. As with the Chalke Valley, then, it is possible to visit Britains far north and feel a sense of calming fatalism: that geography is destiny, Orkney will remain Orkney, whatever happens to the United Kingdom. Yet, while this feeling was real, it was also fleeting. The overwhelming sense that I came away with from my time in Scotland was one of loss, not enduring stability.

This feeling began in Orkney but followed me throughout my time in Scotland. In Orkney, we visited the house of the local lairdthe landed noble who would once have dominated life on the island. Skail House captures a bygone age and a bygone class. Each room is packed with trophies plundered from the East: tiger-skin carpets (with the head still on), Japanese silks, Chinese crockery, Indian embroidery. In one room a recording of the last lady of the house plays on loop. The voice is not that of a Scottish noblewoman, however, but a British one. At first I thought it was a recording of the Queen.

The recording and the family mementos were a reminder that even the aristocracy itself was a national British institutionone that stretched the length of the country, educating its children at the same schools, entering the same services, running the same empire. This has now all but gone, living on with the same costumes and titles but without the substance. Today, these figures do not sound British but English, representatives of a foreign class.

None of this is to suggest that the union will collapse because of the hollowing-out of Britains aristocracyof course it wont. But the story is nevertheless emblematic of the far more pernicious problem eating away at the core of the union: the imaginative sense of who we are.

Visiting Scotland today is to very obviously visit a land from which the British state has all but withdrawn. The national industries and national institutions that once existed have gone. By the time we arrived in Glasgow, wed passed an abandoned British nuclear-research facility and an abandoned British military base. The only signs of the British state were the partially privatized post office, the pound, and the monarchy. Is this really enough?

The scale of the British states voluntary withdrawal was brought home to me when I had to find a way to get my second COVID shot in Scotland. Nominally, Britain has a National Health Service, but in practice this has been broken up into its component (sub)national parts. In Glasgow there was a giant walk-in vaccination center available to anyone. The service was exemplary: Our details were taken on an iPad by a nurse, and within a few minutes my wife and I had received our second dose. It was only later, when we tried to prove that wed had the vaccine, that things began to unravel.

After being vaccinated in Glasgow on July 20, we spent five months trying to get the Scottish health service to provide proof. The problem was that we had fallen into a bureaucratic black hole, a COVID catch-22 that reveals the scale of the British states retreat.

To get proof of our vaccination, we had to log in to Scotlands NHS website, but to do so we needed log-in details that were only available to people living in Scotland. It has proved almost impossible to bypass this circular logic, even by asking NHS Scotland to post proof of our vaccination, because the Scottish health service will not mail records outside of Scotland. Our only hope was to ask our member of Parliament in London to somehow find a way of extracting proof from the Scottish system, but she has no power over the system north of the border. It took an intervention from the British secretary of state for health to change the system so that vaccination records can be shared between England and Scotland.

This conundrum exposes the absurdity at the heart of Britains constitutional mess that was predictable and predicted. In 1998, Tony Blair devolved power from London to Edinburgh, giving a new Scottish assembly powers over a raft of areas that had previously been decided by the British Parliament. In the debates over this radical constitutional change, opponents warned that it would undermine the integrity of the United Kingdom by creating an imbalance at the heart of the country.

The central problem is this: With a separate Scottish Parliament, Scottish voters can elect lawmakers to the British Parliament in Westminster, whose votes decide policies that only apply in England. English voters, meanwhile, have no say over policies decided by the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, even though the money used to pay for these policies is raised by the British government. This structural problem has no solution, either, because to create an English parliament on a similar footing to the Scottish one would mean that the most important person in the country would no longer be the British prime minister, but whoever ran the new English assembly.

Today, Boris Johnson leads a government that is for the most part an English one, and only occasionally a British one. In dealing with the pandemic, he acts almost exclusively for England. In most of his job duties he acts as the de facto prime minister of England and is treated, psychologically at least, as a foreign leader when he visits Scotland.

Read: The minister of chaos

It wasnt supposed to be like this. In 1998, supporters of devolution said the measure would not only strengthen the union but also kill support for Scottish independence stone dead. The argument was essentially that Scotland would have the best of both worldsself-government and unionismso it would never feel the need for formal secession.

In The Leopard, when Italy is born, the prince worries about the future. An evil fairy, of unknown name, must have been present, he says to himselfthe speeches in favor were just too emphatic to be real. Italy was born and one could only hope that she would live on in this form, he continues. Any other would be worse. But he is still worried: He had a feeling that something, someone, had died, God only knew in what back alley, in what corner of the popular conscience.

In Britain, too, something has died.

States that have forgotten who they are tend not to last long.

The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: In each case, the breakup came about because of the demands of the dominant state in the union (or from outside the union, in the case of Sicily) as much as the demand for independence or autonomy from the peripheries.

One of the problems in Britain is that the loss of faith in the country is now so pervasive that it is hard to know whether it can be rebuilt. The union is not only being questioned by Welsh, Irish, and Scottish nationalists, but also, now, by the once-unionist middle classes in England for whom Brexit has broken a bit of the faith they had in Britain. Some simply no longer believe its worth savingthat like Butlins, it is somehow shameful or anachronistic. They actively prefer the thought of being a less powerful but more settled European country: a greater Holland rather than a mini United States.

This instinct is not unreasonable. The Dutch are no longer a world power, but they are rich and stable nonetheless. Anyone who has traveled to the Republic of Ireland in recent years (as I did at the end of my trip) must also acknowledge the uncomfortable challenge it presents to British unionism. And this is not just because it too is wealthy and settled, but because, in the imaginative sense, it knows who it is. Its national myths and stories might be just as bogus as any other countrys, but it believes them and promotes them through symbols and ceremonies. It is, in effect, a deeply conservative state that promotes a cohesive nationalism in a way the British state simply does not. For Ireland, this success carries its own challenge as it seeks to subsume Northern Ireland and its million-strong British Protestant population, who do not share these national stories.

It seems to me that if Britain is to survive, it has to believe that there is such a thing as Britain and act as though that is the case. Joseph Roth wrote that the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy died not through the empty verbiage of its revolutionaries, but through the ironical disbelief of those who should have believed in, and supported, it. In time, we might well say the same of Britain.

It is for this reason that Brexit acts as both an irritant and a potential bandage for the union. At root, Brexit was an assertion of nationthe British nationbut one mostly made by the English. Herein lies its essential paradox. It is a revolution that has the potential to accelerate the breakup of the nation by revealing its Englishness, but also one that carries within it the potential to slowly rebuild a sense of Britishness by creating a new national distinctiveness from the other: Europe.

Outside the European Union, Britains collective experience becomes more national by definition. Its economy diverges from the EU, with separate trading relationships, tariffs, standards, and products. It will have its own British immigration system, border checks, and citizenship. For good or bad, Brexit means that Britain will become more distinct from the other nations of Europe. It is for this reason that Brexit makes Scottish independence more likely in the short term, but more complicated in the long term, because it would mean imposing a hard border across the island of Britain that would not have been necessary had the U.K. remained in the EU.

None of this means that EU membership was a threat to British national unity. No other country in the European Unionapart from Spainis at risk of breaking up. It is also crucial to point out that Northern Ireland will not experience the consequences of Brexit in the same way as the rest of the U.K., having been forced to accept permanently different rules than mainland Britain to ensure that there is no land border with the Republic of Ireland.

And while there is no active British state to speak of in Scotland, attempts to rebuild a sense of Britishness will remain marginal. In time, Brexit might prove to be the thing that finally breaks the union, or a shock that started the long, painful rebuilding process. If my travels are anything to go by, Brexit is unlikely to be the decisive factor either way. Unless people in Scotland believe that they are also British and that the British government and state is their government and state, nothing else matters.

At the end of The Leopard, as the prince lies dying in his old age, he realizes that his youthful calm about the fate of his class and country had been misplacedhe had been wrong to think nothing would change. The significance of a noble family lies entirely in its traditions, that is in its vital memories, he says to himself. But the revolution has swept away his familys old aristocratic privileges and way of life. The meaning of his name, of being noble, had become, more and more, little more than empty pomp.

He had said the Salina would always remain the Salina. He had been wrong. The last Salina was himself.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland remains an unusual country, but its vital memories are dying. To survive, it must be more than empty pomp.

More:

Will Britain Survive? - The Atlantic

As U.S.-China relations continue to deteriorate, strategists and policymakers are calling for the two countries to establish guardrails and rules of the road to manage great power competition and reduce the risks of a military clash. Its time to interrogate some assumptions behind these calls and ask whether and how diplomatic negotiations over rules for risk reduction and deescalation can help stave off armed conflict.

A useful place to start is a recent essay by University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Mearsheimer sat down for a conversation with Lawfare co-founder Jack Goldsmith. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Mearsheimer excoriates U.S. leaders for their policy of engagement toward China over the past 30 years. The essay is a bit of a victory lap insofar as Mearsheimer has been warning for decades that U.S.-China rivalry is a tragic inevitability. Despite his bleak prognosis, however, Mearsheimer proposes steps to mitigate the risk that a U.S.-China cold war turns hot. Aside from military deterrence, he argues, Washington can also work to establish clear rules of the road for waging this security competitionfor example, agreements to avoid incidents at sea or other accidental military clashes. If each side understands what crossing the other sides redlines would mean, war becomes less likely.

Is the arch-realist Mearsheimer being sufficiently realistic about the prospects of Washington and Beijing finding common ground on rules to prevent conflict escalation? The question is crucial given the stakes: potential high-tech war between nuclear-armed great powers. Mearsheimers rationale for establishing these rules of the road is captured strikingly during his conversation with Goldsmith in the Nov. 9 episode of the Lawfare Podcast. Remarkably, Mearsheimers realist analysis appears to share some of the core assumptions that so-called liberal internationalists hold regarding the importance of the United States writing rules of the road to advance its interests on the international stage.

The problem is that these assumptions are based on a conception of rational self-interest that Chinese leaders do not necessarily share. On the contrary, Beijing often sees putative rules of risk reduction as destabilizingmore likely to invite conflict than to prevent it. Understanding this is crucial if American officials hope to establish durable rules to promote peace and stability with China or to properly calibrate expectations regarding what rules can accomplish.

The Logic of Power and the Power of Rules

The goal of strengthening U.S-China crisis management and risk reduction mechanisms is a worthy one that I share. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan indicated that this issue was a focal point of discussion in the recent tension-dampening meeting between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping. (Sullivan and Indo-Pacific Security Coordinator Kurt Campbell argued for such steps in their own 2019 essay.) But what makes the United States think China will commit to and comply with these guardrails?

Mearsheimers rationale focuses on trendlines in the balance of power. In his conversation with Goldsmith, he emphasizes the need for the United States to move on this while still in a position of relative powerbefore its too late:

Its very important to understand that if you assume that China is going to continue to grow over time at a more rapid pace than the United Stateswhich is what most people assume; we dont know for sure whether this will happentime is on Chinas side. Time works against the United States because China grows more powerful relative to the United States over the next 10, 20 years. This is the argument that China should not cause any trouble over Taiwan now, they should wait 20 years when theyre much more powerful relative to the United States. But what this tells you is that now is the time for the United States to move to establish rules of the road, because our bargaining position, so to speak, only becomes weaker with the passage of time as the balance of power shifts against us.

In linking the urgency of rulemaking with the fact that time works against the United States, the realist Mearsheimer finds unusual common ground with no less an icon of liberal internationalism than G. John IkenberryMearsheimers intellectual antagonist. Ikenberry deployed similar logic in a 2008 Foreign Affairs essay titled The Rise of China and the Future of the West, wherein he advocated a much broader ambition of sustaining an open and rule-based international order and incentivizing Chinese integration into that order. Mindful of Chinas ascendance and the fact that the United States unipolar moment would eventually pass, Ikenberry argued that the United States should use its power to entrench the rules of the existing order while it is still in a position of relative strength. Washington must, according to Ikenberry, put in place institutions and fortify rules that will safeguard its interests regardless of where exactly in the hierarchy it is or how exactly power is distributed in 10, 50, or 100 years. More recently, Ikenberry has argued that a return to this internationalist spirit of rulemaking and norm construction is exactly what the age of contagion now calls for.

Despite the divergence in Mearsheimers and Ikenberrys theoretical approaches, Mearsheimer in 2021 seems to wield two assumptions that echo those of Ikenberry in 2008. The first is an assumption that Chinese leaders will view acceptance of and compliance with U.S.-preferred rules as being in their interest. Ikenberry in 2008 argued that China would have more to gain than to lose from integrating into and complying with the rules of the Western-centered international system. (He has since reflected that [t]he bet that China would integrate as a responsible stakeholder into a U.S.-led liberal order is widely seen to have failed.) Mearsheimer in 2021 is arguing that China and the United States both have, as he put it to Goldsmith, a deep-seated interest in avoiding major accidents and conflict escalation, and thus an interest in rules and mechanisms to prevent stumbling into great power war.

Second, both arguments proceed from a version of the premise that time is on Chinas side because Chinas power is growing relative to the United States. For Ikenberry in 2008, that meant it was time to sink the roots of [the liberal international] order as deeply as possible, giving China greater incentives for integration than for opposition and increasing the chances that the system will survive even after U.S. relative power has declined. For Mearsheimer today, it means now is the time to put guardrails on strategic competition in a way that maximizes the United States interest in preventing an accidental war.

It is not obvious that these two assumptions are mutually compatible, at least when it comes to conflict prevention. If the putative rules are in Chinas deep-seated interest no less than the United States, then what is the significance of the current balance of power? Why does it matter that China may be better positioned to write the rules in the future if the United States does not use its power to write them now? Wouldnt China see these rules as being in its interest if the shoe were on the other foot?

On the other hand, what if Chinese leaders do not see these rules as being in their interest? Why would Beijing accede to or comply with existing or putative U.S.-preferred rules instead of waiting for the moment when China is more powerful and positioned to get a better deal? Why would Beijing see a need for rules at all if those rules will simply give the United States more confidence to engage in close-in reconnaissance and other activities that China perceives as threatening?

How Do Rules Really Work?

In reality, Beijing has not been eager to advance discussions to establish deescalatory rules of the road that, according to Mearsheimer and others, are fundamentally in Chinas interests. There are some important exceptions. These include Chinas agreement to the 2014 Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) and two U.S.-China memoranda of understanding (MOUs) on military activities and air and maritime encounters. American commanders have noted that interactions between U.S. and Chinese naval vessels at sea are, for the most part, predictable and professional.

At the same time, however, the U.S.-China crisis management mechanisms that do exist remain considerably less robust than those developed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As Rush Doshi has explained:

[T]he [Sino-U.S.] Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) and U.S.-China 2014/2015 MOUs on aerial and naval incidents are not as binding, detailed, operational, or effective as the U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement. Moreover, the U.S. and China lack a conscious effort at the command level to reduce the risk of inadvertent war, which was the focus of the landmark U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities. Finally, Washington and Beijing also lack anything resembling the robust U.S.-Soviet bilateral arms control process, and crisis communication mechanisms remain comparatively undeveloped.

Certain protocols simply do not address key actors. For example, CUES and the U.S-China maritime safety MOU do not expressly apply to coast guard vessels or to Chinas armed fishing militia, despite the fact that such vessels are deployed in gray-zone operations to assert and defend Chinas expansive maritime claims more regularly and extensively than is the Peoples Liberation Army Navy. Existing defense hotlines are underutilized, and proposed theater-specific channels may be of limited value given the misalignment between the operational command structures of U.S. and Chinese forces. In certain domains, such as cyber, nuclear, land and outer space, there simply are no in-depth protocols between China and the United States covering conflict escalation within or between these arenas.

Why does Beijing view rules for risk reduction and crisis communication with suspicion? Chinese officials may see negotiations over these rules as U.S. attempts to contain and constrain Chinas freedom of maneuver. More fundamentally, Beijing may see the opacity and ambiguity fostered by the absence of clear rules as a source of crisis stability and deterrence insofar as it elicits caution from an uncertain adversary. This is evidenced by, among other things, Chinas history of signaling through dangerous intercepts. Beijing may feel more secure if Washington is unsure what Chinese actors will do in an encounter at sea, in the air, or through a cyber network intrusion. Similar logic may apply to Chinas nuclear modernization efforts aimed at achieving mutual vulnerability with the United States.

Chinas ambivalence toward rules of risk reduction and deescalation also raises the more fundamental question of whether this stance is representative of Chinas broader approach to international law and institutions. Beijing has acceded to numerous existing international agreements while often treating those rules instrumentally and capitalizing on their gaps and ambiguities. Theorists are at pains to explain the nature of rules and compliance in the international arena, and it may be that a rules-based approach with China will have more currency in some contexts than others. Chinese officials bristle at American calls for China to play by the rules at the same time that U.S. officials proclaim that the United States and its like-minded partners will be the ones to write the rules of the road for the twenty-first century. Skepticism about Chinas approach to rules for conflict prevention should encourage further analysis of the possibilities and limitations of rules in other spheres of Chinas foreign affairs.

Humility and Hope for Rules-Based Stability

Chinas approach to rules of the road in risk reduction and deescalation has central importance in some of the most dangerous arenas of U.S.-China relations today: tensions around Taiwan, the South China Sea, East China Sea and cyberspace, among others. Dialogue over guardrails is not a mere distraction to be avoided in order to focus single-mindedly on competition. But to more convincingly make the case to China about the need for stronger rules to manage bilateral competition, U.S. policymakers should be attuned to Chinese perceptions regarding the asymmetry of rules.

Arguments that time is on Chinas side could undermine this objective by telegraphing that Washington thinks Beijing can probably get a better deal for itself if it holds out. It would behoove U.S. officials to dispense with that assumptionnot because it is necessarily wrong, but because it is analytically unhelpful.

As Hal Brands and Michael Beckley have argued, it may well be the case that Chinas power has peaked, and going forward it will face a daunting combination of economic headwinds and a coalition of determined foreign rivals. For Brands and Beckley, this is a deeply troubling scenario because it is in these circumstances when a revisionist power may act boldly, even aggressively, to grab what it can before it is too late. Applying their analysis to China, Brands and Beckley conclude that China probably wont undertake an all-out military rampage across Asia, as Japan did in the 1930s and early 1940s. But it will run greater risks and accept greater tensions as it tries to lock in key gains.

It is therefore plausible that Chinas risk tolerance is not strictly dependent on its power trajectory. Chinese leaders may view the absence of clear rules, communication channels and arms control arrangements as a form of strategic ambiguity that works in its favor in an international environment that is likely to be hostile regardless of whether China is on the brink of hegemonic ascent or secular stagnation. The question then is less about whether putative rules are in the objective self-interests of Washington and Beijing than about whether decision-makers on each side perceive the rules as being in their interests. Getting to yes requires persistent efforts at negotiation and persuasion. It may also require experimenting with new approaches.

For example, bilateral negotiations might not be the most fruitful forum for seeking to influence Chinese perceptions regarding the stabilizing value of deescalation rules and protocols. A multilateral process, with a less direct stakeholder such as the European Union playing a convening role, might stand a better chance at helping participants overcome divergences in their views. That outcome is far from assured, and even if such a process succeeded in reducing the risk of military conflict, it could not be expected to resolve deeper tensions in U.S.-China relations. Still, the imperative to prevent accidental war makes a new dialogue structure well worth considering.

Whatever the forum, U.S. officials should enter discussions on rules of the road free of determinism about Chinas future trajectory and fortified by a willingness to rethink assumptions that their Chinese counterparts do not share.

More here:

Rethinking Rules of the Road to Stabilize U.S.-China Competition - Lawfare

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Author of the article:

Looking forward to 2022, StormontDundasSouth Glengarry Member of Parliament Eric Duncan has a list of issues to advocate, saying its time for the minority Liberal government to do more than just react to the pandemic.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

The Leader spoke with Duncan before the Christmas 2021 parliamentary break for a year-end interview.

When first elected in 2019, Duncan said there were several issues he wanted to advocate for, and had begun to do so then the COVID-19 pandemic began. His goal for 2022 is to make progress on some of those issues.

COVID-19 put those [issues] aside, now its time to start getting these off the back burner and pressuring the government that its time for a decision on these.

Duncan specifically addressed the Transport Canada land issue on the Cornwall waterfront, and international water level issues that affect South Stormont and South Dundas.

Were at the point now with COVID-19 that we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, Duncan said. There are going to be blips with COVID, but we cant forget the overall main issues that are coming in.

Another issue of advocacy Duncan pointed out was infrastructure funding.

Every municipality has a list of infrastructure that they need to get done, he explained. We need to make sure SDSG gets our fair share on infrastructure.

A personal issue for Duncan is advocating for the end of the blood ban for gay and bisexual men. On that file there is progress, as the Canadian Blood Services applied earlier in December to Health Canada for the ban to end.

This is an example of being able to take a niche issue and a perspective, and get it on the radar. To pressure the government to address something that I think has been an inequity for many years, he said.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Locally, a personal highlight for Duncan was being reelected in September, but he still maintained the election call was unnecessary.

When there is an election, getting that mandate locally is something I really value and never take for granted, Duncan said. When I look back at the riding going back a couple generations, this hasnt always been a strong conservative riding, so we take nothing for granted.

Duncan said on a more national scale for 2022, the economy, cost of living, housing, and inflation are all key issues to address.

Housing affordability and supply are important. I understand the struggles people are going through and the tight pocketbooks people have. We need to start giving some relief to people.

Addressing inflation, he said that when the government talks about high inflation being temporary, there is not going to bea deflationary period after.

Inflation may go back down to two per cent, but that means prices arent going back down again. That is the new normal.

Stating that 2021 felt like three years not one, Duncan is proud of the local work done connecting residents and businesses to access COVID-19 supports and other programs.

One aspect he has missed is the many community events which he says help keep him connected to the pulse of the riding. But even with fewer events, the community spirit and generosity in the riding never ceases to impress him.

Im always impressed with the magnitude of our charitable and non-profit areas, despite the economic challenges, he said. Its nothing short of amazing.

The Morrisburg Leader

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

See original here:

MP Duncan on 2022: 'walk and chew gum at the same time' - Standard Freeholder

Major global events, committed in the name of freedom and democracy, have occurred in the past two decades that cannot be categorized as anything but global atrocities, Looking back from the year 2000 to the present, the invasion of the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Rohingya Genocide, Israels continuous occupation of Palestine, Indias oppression of Kashmiris, and Uyghur Muslims imprisonment in Chinese concentration camps resulted in severe oppression, massive loss of life, total annihilation of social and governmental systems, and absolute economic collapse. While the world is reminded repeatedly of the Holocaust and the 9/11 tragedy with slogans like Never Forget, the noted global events in the last two decades have gone by ignored and the culprits behind such atrocities roam the world free. No mention or accountability of the architects behind these noted events exists in the media. No international entity exists that calls for the accountability of these individuals or groups that led the invasion of the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Rohingya Genocide, Israels continuous occupation of Palestine, Indias occupation of Kashmir, and Uyghur Muslims imprisonment.

The tragedy of 9/11 provided an opportunity for the United States and other Western nations to invade the Middle East and Afghanistan. Strangely, from the objective of capturing the perpetrators of 9/11 and dismantling groups like Al-Qaida, ISIS, and evil groups as such, the United States mission transformed to nation-building, and It invited all the major Western powers to unite under the banner of freedom and democracy, two terms repeated in the media like a magic spell as if freedom and democracy had been championed at home.

Explaining the problems of Western democracy in his book, The Sacred Freedom, Haneef Oliver quotes Ian Bell from The Herald, Judging on how it works at home, Bell quoted Oborne as saying, We should all be very afraid. The world was led to believe that freedom and democracy were missing and only wars could change the trajectory of the Middle Eastern nations and Afghanistan, but behind the facade of freedom and democracy, a darker reality for Middle Eastern nations and Afghanistan was engineered. Oliver further mentions that Making false promises and lying is encouraged in the democratic political system to achieve authority. How then could it ever be considered a truthful, correct, or morally superior ideology, never mind one that everyone in the world must apply- or else face war? This is exactly what happened in the Middle East and Afghanistan. What kind of democracy is it where a government administration decided to invade two different regions of the world by engineering lies, falsely eliciting the support of masses through lies?

By just examining the statements of the architects of the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, one understands that the lies in the past two decades and the sinister campaign against the Middle Eastern nations and Afghanistan cannot be termed anything but atrocities. Oliver points out in The Sacred Freedom, In an article entitled Cheney: Nations Must Join in Terror Fight, The Associated Press Deb Riechman quoted Dick Cheney, the United States Vice President, as saying: Ideologies of violence must be confronted at the source by nurturing democracy throughout the Middle East and beyond.

In the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium, Condoleezza Rice supported her decision for invading Iraq by proclaiming I would have overthrown Saddam Hussein again. This was in 2013, and by 2013, the world knew well that Saddam Hussain never had weapons of mass destruction nor was he planning to invade any country; yet, Rice showed no remorse or regret about the decision she took, keeping her statement in mind. Fast forward to 2017, an article appears in Newsweek by Tom OConner who highlighted Rices statement, We didnt go to Iraq to bring democracy to Iraq, we went to Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, who we thought was reconstituting his weapons of mass destruction and who we knew had been a threat in the region. It was a security problem. Such contradictory statements from the architects of the war in the Middle East and Afghanistan evoke disgust in anyone who examines their statements.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney aimed to use democracy as a pretext to invade the Middle East and Afghanistan while his own Secretary of State, Rice stated that importing democracy was not the objective but stopping Saddam Hussain, who did not have any weapons of mass destruction nor was he a proven threat in the Middle East. Such kind of deliberate lies and deception resulted in destroying the culture, traditions, economy, and political structure of the Middle Eastern nation-states and Afghanistan where its citizens have no hope left. How could the world then stay silent and allow the perpetrators to get away after committing such crimes that resulted in the mass death of innocent civilians? Why is it that individuals who hold political positions, small or major, are usually protected through some sort of justification while an ordinary man is held liable for minor misconducts? If justice is to be preached and taught to the world and forced upon nations, then it must be served to all in every political position in a straightforward and swift manner.

What is the result of Bush and his administrations lies and deceitful decision-making? The World Bank Group provides the statistics, In 2016, about 87 million people from four MENA countries directly affected by warIraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemenrepresented about one-third of the regions population. Every aspect of peoples lives has been affected by the intensity of the fighting in these separate conflicts. Brown Universitys Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs reported that At least 929,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Additionally, The number of people who have been wounded or have fallen ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who have died indirectly as a result of the destruction of hospitals and infrastructure and environmental contamination, among other war-related problems. This result of wars based on deceit caused major loss of life and destruction of nation-states that were fully functional. The death toll and total crippling of economies are major crimes against humanity, and no legal action is taken against the ones who have ruined the Middle East and Afghanistan by depriving people of future opportunities in their own homelands.

Who is behind the Rohingya genocide and mass displacement of the Rohingya Muslims, and why are the culprits not behind the bars yet? BBCs article, Myanmar Rohingya: What you need to know about the crisis reported that At least 6,700 Rohingya, including at least 730 children under the age of five, were killed in the month after the violence broke out, according to medical charity Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF). Additionally, Amnesty International research concluded that the Myanmar military also raped and abused Rohingya women and girls. Where is the slogan Never Forget? Where is the outrage over the genocide that Rohingya faced? Where is the outrage over the rights and freedom of Rohingya girls and women? Did the Burmese state not have elements of fascism that required the injection of Western democracy? While evoking outrage is not the objective of what has been recorded in worldwide media, the severest form of punishment should be served to those who used their political and military power to rape and commit Rohingya genocide.

A report published by UN investigators in August 2018 accused Myanmars military of carrying out mass killings and rapes with genocidal intent. Is the United Nations purpose only to publish reports and conclude what is apparent or does the United Nations serve a greater purpose? Is an international body of nation-states that came together to solve the problems of human race only attentive and swift in action when it comes to major global powers like the United States or European nations?

Aung San Suu Kyi, as noted in BBCs report, rejected any allegations of genocide during her appearance at the ICJ court in December 2019. BBC article mentions, While the ICJ only rules on disputes between states, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has the authority to try individuals accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. The body approved a full investigation into the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar in November. BBCs Roland Hughes reported in his article Myanmar Rohingya: How a genocide was investigated that Indiscriminate killing; villages burned to the ground; children assaulted; women gang-raped these are the findings of United Nations investigators who allege that the gravest crimes under international law were committed in Myanmar last August. Hughes, moreover, mentions that the UN report says that the six military officials should face trial. It also condemns Myanmars de facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, for failing to intervene to stop attacks, and the UNs outgoing rights chief this week said she should have resigned as a result. The evidence that the UN collected is more than sufficient to put Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese military generals in jail yet the political noise and lack of action against the criminals seems to just halt as a result of political noise.

Furthermore, how ironic, and absurd it is that a Burmese military that carried out the genocide against the Rohingya Muslims turned against its own leader Aung San Suu Kyi who did nothing to stop the Rohingya genocide. In an article by Amy Gunia, How Myanmars Fragile Push for Democracy Collapsed in a Military Coup, Gunia writes that The move came after Myanmars generals complained of fraud in the Nov. 8 electionciting evidence that is, at best, disputed. While Aung San Suu Kyis failure to protect Rohingya went unquestioned or unchecked, nor any international swift action was taken to protect the Rohingya from the brutality and animalistic behavior of the Burmese military, ousting Aung San Suu Kyi based upon the charges of corruption shows deprivation of morality in all its forms.

Two sets of groups, the Burmese military and Aung San Suu Kyi who were accomplices in their crimes against the Rohingya fell into a legal battle with each other over corruption. How could a Burmese military find corruption wrong but not the genocide of Rohingya? This shows that both parties are morally bankrupt. The absurdity of this is best for mockery. Gunia also points in her article, But more recently, she has faced international scorn for her response to a violent crackdown by security forces against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. U.N. investigators determined that the violent campaign of arson, rape, and murder was carried out with genocidal intent. Though proven that there was a genocidal intent, Aung San Suu Kyi whom the Burmese military discarded from her political position still protected the military. Gunia writes, But Suu Kyi has publicly rejected accusations that the military waged a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.

It has been 55 years since Israel occupied Palestine by forced expulsion of Palestinians that has been well documented by major international organizations such as the United Nations and Amnesty International. No culprits have been arrested or held accountable for dehumanizing and displacing the Palestinians from homes they were once settled in. Mohammed Haddads points out in his article, Mapping Israeli occupation, in Al Jazeera that From 1947 to 1950, during the Nakba or catastrophe, Zionist military forces expelled at least 750,000 Palestinians and captured 78 percent of historic Palestine. Furthermore, Israeli forces ended up expelling 300,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1967. This form of oppression has been well documented, yet no action has been taken to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for dignity. Haddad highlights in his article, According to Human Rights Watch, Israel is committing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against the Palestinians. Despite the overwhelming evidence of Israels transgression, no legal action or sanctions have been placed against Israel. How much evidence and how many investigations are needed to prove what the world has been witnessing for the past 55 years?

Amnesty Internationals article Israels Occupation: 50 years of Dispossession points out, Israels policy of constructing and expanding illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land is one of the main driving forces behind the mass human rights violations resulting from the occupation. Israel has settled over 600,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank. As the Palestinians are stripped of their land and Israeli settlement has doubled down, the Western powers that are so concerned about democracy in the Muslim world deliberately neglect the brutal mass occupation of land where Palestinians are settled. Amnesty International notes This settlement enterprise relies on unlawfully appropriated Palestinian resources, including land, water, and minerals, to produce goods that are exported and sold for private profit. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of settlement goods are exported internationally each year. Not only Palestinians are removed from their homes, but the land also has been used for enterprise where local and international businesses have moved in to cater to the needs of Israeli settlers.

Why is Israels government not put on trial by the ICJ? Why are the IDF heads and its members who have caged Palestinians like animals not put on trial for atrocities that have been carried out for the past 55 years? Who is to hold Israels government responsible for its severe oppression where Israels government places hundreds of Israeli military closures across the West Bank such as checkpoints, roadblocks, and settler-only roads, as well as the overall permit regime, make simple daily tasks for Palestinians who are trying to get to work, school or hospital a constant struggle? Amnesty International further affirms Israel claims the winding 700-km fence/wall is there to prevent armed attacks on Israel by Palestinians. But that does not explain why 85% of it is built on Palestinian land, including land deep inside the West Bank.

When Palestinians attempt to make a stand against the barbaric treatment that they receive at the hands of Israels government and IDF, the international media jumps to labeling Palestinians self-defense as a terrorist activity. International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion declares, Israel is () under an obligation to return the land, orchards, olive groves, and other immovable property seized () for purposes of construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory () All States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall. The evidence against the state of Israel and its oppression of Palestinians for the past 55 years is well documented. Unfortunately, no Western power has thought about the young Palestinian girls and women whose social and economic rights have been taken away by Israel, but all Western powers are quick to scream about the rights of young girls and women when Islamic countries are discussed or when its Taliban and Afghanistan in the media. When will ICJ start to hold the government of Israel and IDF members, and all those who have been accomplices in committing massive atrocities against the Palestinians? Action is needed now to restore the dignity of Palestinians.

Indias oppression of Kashmiris has recently resurfaced with Indias revocation of Article 370 that allowed the natives of Indian-occupied Kashmir their right to make their own laws. Revoking Article 370 was used to lockdown the Kashmiri natives. CNBC reported, On Monday, Interior Minister Amit Shah told Indias parliament that the central government would scrap Article 370, a constitutional provision that grants special status and allows the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir to make its own laws. The order was subsequently approved by the Indian President.

Indias ruling party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been elected as the ruling party, which BJP has used to implement their manifesto of Hindu superiority. BJP, also known as the RSS, was Founded 94 years ago by men who were besotted with Mussolinis fascists, the RSS is the holding company of Hindu supremacism: of Hindutva, as its called according to Samanth Subramanian.

Subramanian points out in his article How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart writes, In its near-century of existence, it has been accused of plotting assassinations, stoking riots against minorities and acts of terrorism. (Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead in 1948 by an RSS man, although the RSS claims he had left the organisation by then.) This is the BJP that has taken away the special status by revoking Article 370 from the Kashmiris who have been now under lockdown. The Western media is yet to highlight the freedom and rights of the women now caged in their homes by the BJP party. Why? Do Kashmiri Muslim women not deserve freedom and democracy as Western ideals dictate for the Middle East and Afghanistan? Where are the Western powers and their voices for Kashmir and its women, and where are the words of condemnation and sanctions against Indias government and its ruling party BJP, once designated as a domestic terrorist organization by the past Indian government. ISIS is condemnable because of calling for a caliphate but what about Indias BJP party that pushed India into an authoritarian and fascist state. Subramanian states, But among its affiliated groups is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party that has governed India for the past six years, and that has, under the prime minister Narendra Modi, been remaking India into an authoritarian, Hindu nationalist state.

A Hindu nationalist state means a state only for Hindus, and Hindu nationalist and extremist voices have been loud to call for genocide against the Muslims and other minorities in India. What is significant to emphasize here is, as Subramanian states In its 72 years as a free country, India has never faced a more crisis. Already its institutions its courts, much of its media, its investigative agencies, its election commission have been pressured to fall in line with Modis policies. The political opposition is withered and infirm. More is in the offing: the idea of Hindutva, in its fullest expression, will ultimately involve undoing the constitution and unravelling the fabric of liberal democracy. This is the mindset and ideology behind locking down Kashmiris and revoking Article 370, which strips Kashmiris of special status of autonomy. As a result of such atrocity, Kashmirs leading opposition politicians were arrested; they havent been heard from since. Justifying a draconian detention order, the government argued that one of these politicians deserved to be held because of his ability to convince his electorate to come out and vote in huge numbers. How worse could things get for Kashmiris and their representatives? What further evidence is needed for ICJ or United Nations to intervene for Kashmiris? Is there any legal entity with a moral backbone that can step forward and point wrong for what it is?

Ahmer Khan and Billy Perrigo mention in What Life Is Like Inside the Worlds Longest Lockdown that Even so, the lessons from the worlds longest lockdown appear to be less about epidemiology than democracy itself. Even in the 21st century, in the middle of a global pandemic, 8 million people can be deprived of access to education, livelihood, entertainment, and mental health respite via a medium that has become an essential service for the rest of the world, says Choudhary. Even democracies can kill the switch and take away all human rights. The lockdown of Kashmiris is evidence against India, the second largest democracy that stripped Kashmiris of their democratic rights. What India refers to itself and hopes that the Western world could also refer to it as the second-largest democracy in the world is no longer a democracy but an authoritarian state that has locked down an entire region that is Muslim majority and has been on a killing rampage within its borders, killing Indian Muslims and other minorities to purify India; thereby, making it a purely Hindu nation. This was the objective of Hitler once, to purify Germany from the Jews, and now Modi and his party has adapted the same ideals. When will the leadership of India and its ruling party BJP be held accountable for the atrocities they have been committing?

In Chinas north-western province of Xinjiang, the Uyghurs are the largest minority ethnic group. The Uyghurs were rounded up in accordance with Chinas state policy of persecuting the Muslim minority group. The camps were established in 2017, established by the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping. BBC reports in Who are the Uyghurs and why is China being accused of genocide? that China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. Many human rights groups have reported that China has detained 1 million Uyghurs and locked up the Muslim minority in what the government of China terms as Re-education Camps.

China was able to take advantage of the Islamophobia, hyper-escalated by the Western governments and the Western media that gave China the excuse it needed to attack the Uyghurs. This form of oppression that the world is witnessing happened once in Germany where 6 million Jews were placed in concentration camps, and the world is reminded of such atrocities against the Jews every year. Washington Posts Eva Dou writes in her article, Who are the Uyghurs, and whats happening to them in China? that Definitions differ for the emotionally charged term, but the Xinjiang camps have key similarities to the early Nazi concentration camps. They similarly targeted ethnic minority and political dissidents, with detainees explicitly expected to contribute factory labor. In both cases, the detentions were made without formal charges or trials. The world is reminded each year of the Holocaust that has happened while the genocide of Uyghurs is happening presently, and the world powers are immobile to rescue the persecuted Uyghurs. Where are the United Nations and ICJ? Where is NATO? Who will step in to stop the atrocities happening against the Uyghurs presently?

BBC also mentions, There is also evidence that Uyghurs are being used as forced labour and of women being forcibly sterilised. Some former camp detainees have also alleged they were tortured and sexually abused. To once again raise the point that Western media and Western governments lack of aggressive measures against the oppressors in China would merely be redundant and futile because the West also has been the accomplice to Uyghurs plight. China has used terrorism charges against the Uyghurs as an excuse, an unproven charge against the whole Uyghur group to justify their oppression against the Muslim minority group. Presently, what China has done to the Uyghurs is the result of hatred, paranoia, propaganda, and crusade led by the Western governments and Western media against Islam and Muslims.

What one sees is an international pattern where minorities, especially when the minorities are Muslims who raise their voices or come out to the streets to protest against the oppression that they have been facing for many years, such struggle against the oppression is politicized and instantly labeled as a terrorist activity. This logic and reason can no longer stand, and it must no longer be accepted. If the United States and Israel amongst other global powers could send warplanes and bomb the countries to preserve their own interests and the freedom of its people, then why cannot minorities that have faced years of torture and oppression not come out to the streets to protest and defend themselves?

The only reason that the United States continues to ring alarm bells against Chinas oppression of Uyghurs is that the United States own economic interests are being challenged by China, because China has appeared as an equal or better force economically and militarily, and China has surpassed the United States in every sphere. It has been well recorded that China has been targeting Muslim religious figures and banned religious practices in the region and destroyed mosques. Dou further explains in her article that Starting in 2017, China carried out a sweeping crackdown in its northwest Xinjiang region under the banner of counterterrorism. It was a harsh campaign to forcibly assimilate the Uyghur population, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group native to Xinjiang. If the so-called tyranny of the Middle Eastern dictators checked off the Western powers criteria to destroy the Middle Eastern nation-states and Afghanistan, why do Western powers become numb when it comes to nations like Israel, Burma, China, or India where the world is seeing atrocities happen against the Muslim minorities?

In December 2020, BBCs research recorded that up to half a million Uyghurs were forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang. BBC asserted that there is evidence that new factories have been built within the grounds of the re-education camps. Dominic Raab who is the UK Foreign Secretary stated that the treatment of Uyghurs is described as appalling violations of the most basic human rights, and the UK parliament declared in April 2021 that China was committing a genocide in Xinjiang. What evidence is further needed to step in and capture the culprits behind the Uyghurs genocide? Does the West not see other evil men besides Bin Laden or criminals that just appear in the Middle East? Ironically, the damage that the West has done through its propaganda against Islam and Muslims, which led to China also being an accomplice in their oppression against the Muslims, the Western powers whose economic world standing is now being challenged have united to capture all the statistics in support of Uyghurs. BBC writes, The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found evidence in 2020 of more than 380 of these re-education camps in Xinjiang, an increase of 40% on previous estimates.

With placing Uyghurs in labor camps, China also used technology to surveil the Uyghurs. Dou writes, During the same period, the Xinjiang government rolled out a high-tech surveillance system across the region that tracked Uyghurs movements through police checkpoints, facial recognition surveillance cameras, and house visits by officials. Dou finally concludes her article, which has been emphasized in this article as well, Many countries, however, have been muted in their responses, as Beijing has warned foreign governments not to interfere in its internal affairs. How long can the world stay silent for atrocities being committed for the political and economic interests of the ruling elites?

In the past two decades, the invasion of the Middle East and Afghanistan, the Rohingya Genocide, Israels continuous occupation of Palestine, Indias occupation of Kashmir, and Uyghur Muslims imprisonment are nothing less than vile crimes or atrocities that cannot be ignored. Behind such atrocities are people who should be tried for war crimes, but they roam the world free because of the political power they held or still hold. Unfortunately, we live in a time where lies and hypocrisy are the best tools that allow people in political seats to commit atrocities in the name of freedom and democracy or in the name of anti-terrorism measures that have ruined nation-states, cultures, religious identities, and economic structures of societies that wanted a better future that would work for them within their respective regions.

Human Rights groups, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and many organizations that have numbers of reports and significant data to charge the culprits behind such crimes against humanity remain stationary. The United Nations, ICJ, and NATO that are supposed to step in and bypass the political noise to bring criminals swiftly to justice are lost in the political noise and continue to cater to the global powers when the crimes of these culprits are very clear.

The Muslim world was served quick justice, but now that it has weakened, and has Muslim minorities suffering under Israel, Bruma, India, or suffered under the bombing of Western nations, no international entity has risen to protect the Muslim minorities. As a result, thousands have died, millions are displaced out of their native homes and regions where they were living once and are re-educated either according to the Western ideals of democracy attached to warplanes, dropped on them daily, through guns, drones, or fighter jets or through Chinese manifestos.

Have all of us lost our morality and sense of justice that we can no longer differentiate between right and wrong, justice and injustice, innocent and oppressor, lies and truth? The past two decades have seen world leaders that have brought havoc to the world and because of the actions of such individuals, the world has seen nothing but chaos. And in that chaos, Afghans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Rohingya, Kashmiris, and Uyghurs are left with no future or hope. In an unjust world, is there an international entity, worthy of serving justice that will come to the rescue of the victims of genocides that are happening before us, those who have died, and the future generation that is left to mourn?

Here is the original post:

Atrocities Of Past Two Decades And Zero Accountability For Its Culprits OpEd - Eurasia Review