The city council in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, has elected a new mayor. Communist Party member Elke Kahr has become the first Communist leader of a major city in the country.
The 60-year-old politician, who has been working in the municipal government for more than 15 years and previously served as vice mayor of Graz, was elected as the new city leader on Wednesday. A member of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ, Kommunistische Partei Österreichs) for almost 30 years, she won the election with 28 of 46 votes. Kahr succeeded the previous long-standing mayor Siegfried Nagl of the center-right, liberal-conservative People’s Party.
“Who would have thought that the daughter of a locksmith, a Communist, would become mayor,” she said in her first speech following the vote.
Having acknowledged a number of issues to deal with in the city, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, the new mayor highlighted a housing policy, pledging to put a stop to profit-driven construction in Ganz.
The Communists have also already formed a coalition with the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ), and another precedent in European city governance was made – two women serving as mayor and deputy. Green leader Judith Schwentner was chosen as Graz’s vice mayor, with the new governing coalition saying they would support not only social, but also environmental changes, aiming to improve living standards especially for low-income groups. Providing a bicycle for every child in the city from the municipality is in their program.
However, not everyone in the local government is happy with the new Communist rule. A member of the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Alexis Pascuttini, described the choice as “unpleasant,” having accused the Graz Communists of empty catchphrases in their program and refusing to participate in what he described as “left-wing nonsense.” Kahr herself has been exposed to strong pressure to justify her party, being repeatedly asked about her position on “the crimes of communist parties around the world since 1917,” according to Austrian media.
An American nonprofit behind the US-funded bat virus research in China has denied ever sending virus samples from Laos – a place where SARS-CoV-2 closest natural relative was found – to Wuhan in response to fresh allegations.
“No work was ever conducted in Laos as a part of this collaborative research project,” EcoHealth Alliance – a group that conducted experiments on coronaviruses while receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – said in a series of tweets on Sunday, responding to media reports alleging that the group might have transported a potentially dangerous virus from Laos to the laboratory in Wuhan.
However, we considered it a higher priority to continue our focus on China, and no work was ever conducted in Laos as a part of this collaborative research project.
The group’s name surfaced in October when the NIH principal deputy director, Lawrence Tabak, revealed EcoHealth Alliance did experiment on the viruses with the agency’s financial help. At that time, White House Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that the viruses studied as part of the project “were distant enough molecularly that no matter what you did to them, they could never, ever become SARS-CoV-2.”
EcoHealth has come under renewed scrutiny after its emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, appeared to suggest that the group was discussing the prospect of collecting viral samples from bats in Laos and sending them to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The emails were initially obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and sparked a flurry of reports over the weekend, including in the Spectator by British science writer Matt Ridley.
The emails shared between EcoHealth Alliance and its US government funders reportedly reveal that the scientists discussed collecting viral samples from bats in eight countries, including in Laos, between 2016 and 2019, and toyed with the idea of transporting them to Wuhan, ostensibly, to avoid red tape. One email from 2016 cited by the Spectator reportedly reads: “All samples collected would be tested at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Laos is the birthplace of at least one virus that seems to be very close to SARS-Cov-2. A bat viral strain called Banal-52 discovered in Laos in September shares 96.8 percent of its genome with the virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic
On Sunday, EcoHealth Alliance claimed that the emails cited by Ridley “do not show…that we were sampling bats in Laos and sending the results to Wuhan.”
The group acknowledged, however, that it requested NIH permission to work in Southeast Asian countries, including in Laos, and that this permission was granted.
However, the nonprofit claimed it ended focusing on China instead.
The response failed to satisfy Ridley, who is also a co-author of a book on Covid’s origin, who demanded “evidence” proving that his report was not “fully accurate.”
Marx, Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh – the revolutionaries’ namesakes – have gathered for a wedding in India’s state of Kerala. Friedrich Engels was the one walking down the aisle.
And this has nothing to do with time travel. In India’s southwestern state of Kerala parents have often named their children after prominent figures in the hammer and sickle movement. The local communist party has been at the helm there for much of the past 60 years, and is still quite popular with voters.
In the town of Athirappilly on Sunday the groom, Friedrich Engels, a namesake of the 19th century German philosopher who helped conceive Marxism, tied the knot with the bride, Bismitha. In attendance were also Engels’s brother Lenin, named after the man behind the 1917 Russian Revolution, as well as the groom’s friends, Marx and Ho Chi Minh, who bear the names of Marxism’s founding father and the Vietnamese revolutionary leader respectively.
All four men are members of India’s Communist Party. Incidentally, Marx is currently working and residing in ultra-capitalist Dubai, but flew back to see his friend exchange wedding vows with his betrothed, as reported by local media.
Another wedding ceremony that took place in June in the state of Tamil Nadu, saw Socialism getting married in front of his brothers, Communism and Leninism, as well as nephew, Marxism.
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As part of a special series on climate in partnership with The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Cipher Brief Expert and Senior Editor Kristin Wood, The Cipher Brief is focusing on the national security implications of climate change.
This report is derived from a half-day conference in April 2021 co-sponsored by the Intelligence Project and the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, along with the Center for Climate and Security and The Cipher Brief. It explores the requirements of the U.S. IC to fulfill the mission prescribed by President Biden, DNI Haines, and Secretary Kerry. The IC must rise to challenge, unshackled from the past, to re-imagine its role in combatting climate change.
The Authors
Calder Walton, Asst. Director, Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project, Harvard University
Calder Walton is Assistant Director of the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project. Calder’s research is broadly concerned with intelligence history, grand strategy, and international relations. The
Sean Power, Masters in Public Policy Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Sean Power is a Masters in Public Policy 2021 candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to HKS, he managed the analyst program at Kobre & Kim LLP, where he assisted on matters involving government enforcement defense and internal investigations.
The Report
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines, has stated that climate change needs to be at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security. It is a threat multiplier that impacts every function of government and society: territorial integrity, economic well-being, social stability, and military capabilities are all impacted by climate change, directly and indirectly. However, in addressing climate change, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is currently unsure of its mission space and hitherto has been relying on boilerplate responses to it. In an exclusive discussion, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Secretary John Kerry, who should be a principal consumer of intelligence about climate change within the U.S. government, stated that the U.S. IC must deliver significantly more.
The increasing effects of climate change are arising at a moment when the nature of intelligence itself is undergoing a revolution—from the collection of hidden secrets to collation of non-obvious (but knowable) data frequently hiding out in the open. This watershed in intelligence and national security requires bold, innovative, ideas for the U.S. IC to adapt and anticipate security threats derived by climate change. It must establish its mission space and alter its own architecture to ensure it is providing its customers with intelligence about them needed. Its mission will not be about spies disseminating secrets to policymakers; rather, it will require a new intelligence and national security paradigm that must reach across society, allowing the general public to consume climate intelligence and hold policymakers to account.
Background
The twenty-first century presents globalized threats that will require globalized solutions, the greatest of which is climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated, no country is immune from actor-less threats like novel disease outbreaks and climate change. When combined with other security threats like transnational terrorism and ubiquitous cyberattacks, it becomes clear that existing national security frameworks are insufficient. New relationships and lines of communication will need to be forged, both within the U.S. government, in the private sector, and internationally with allies and adversaries. The U.S. IC needs to determine the requirements of its customers regarding climate change and how its unique collection and analytical capabilities fit into this new mission space.
The IC has incorporated climate change into its analysis and threat assessments for decades, but climate has not received the attention it requires given the magnitude of the threat it poses. On January 27, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, establishing that “climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security.” The order also called for the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate on the national and economic security impacts of climate change within 120 days.
The Climate Change, Intelligence, and Global Security conference at Harvard’s Belfer Center earlier this year, brought together senior climate experts, current and former intelligence officers, and leaders in the private sector and academia to discuss the climate threat and generate innovative ideas on role the IC will play in combatting that threat. Led by Paul Kolbe, Director of the Intelligence Project, Kristin Wood, Intelligence Project Non-Resident Fellow, and Erin Sikorsky, Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, the conference facilitated an urgent opportunity for productive dialogue on the climate threat.
Climate change as a threat to international security
Policymakers and the public need to understand that climate change impacts seemingly unrelated challenges and magnifies existing threats. The direct effects of climate change are readily apparent around the world—melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, longer droughts, hotter heat waves, persistent wildfires, torrential rains, and catastrophic storm systems. These effects create disastrous consequences for humans like crop failures, fishery collapses, water insecurity, and the inundation of coastal regions, all of which lead to mass migration and displacement. These situations lead to fragile states and regions where increased conflict over scarce resources allows malign actors thrive. In this way, climate change is a threat multiplier that touches every aspect of international security.
Professor John P. Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, noted that the big picture on how climate change will impact the planet is clear, but the detailed effects are difficult to predict with precision and confidence, in part because we do not know exactly how human societies will react. This uncertainty exacerbates the security threat posed by climate change. We know it will increase the number of displaced persons in the world, but we do not know when they will be displaced, how many there will be, or where they will go.
Climate change also impacts the effective functioning of the U.S. military: to meet traditional security threats and protect Americans at home and abroad. U.S. bases around the world function as launching pads for everything from quick tactical operations to large-scale disaster relief missions. When severe weather damages those bases or limits their ability to operate at full capacity, America’s security is put at risk. Disasters like the flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, headquarters for U.S. Strategic Command, and Hurricane Michael’s destruction of Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida show that this threat knows no geographic bounds. Their effects are costly as well—the Air Force requested nearly $5 billion to rebuild those two bases alone.
The overall impacts of climate change on international security are inevitable, consequential, and predictable. Previously the U.S. government has undertaken more extensive, and expensive, actions on the basis of proportionally less intelligence about security threats. The U.S. IC must give climate change the proportional attention it deserves.
Role of U.S. intelligence in addressing climate change
Climate change poses an existential, global, non-state security threat, making it fundamentally different from past threats. Its unprecedented nature will require unprecedented thinking by the U.S. IC and requirements from it. Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon stated clearly that it is not enough to just say that the U.S. IC should focus more on climate— rather, the challenge lies in determining what its specific contribution will be, and then evaluating what changes need to occur to make that contribution happen. Answering these questions will require difficult, but necessary, upfront work. Without that work, the U.S. IC is likely to lead with its current capabilities, rather than identifying and developing capabilities needed to meet the nature of the new threat we face.
The U.S. IC must play to its strengths in carving out its climate mission. Intelligence is no longer just about stealing secrets; it is about providing policymakers with decision advantages to influence events, which is the same as the past, but with a key difference that doing so now requires mastery of is a vast eco-space of openly-available information. To accomplish its mission, the U.S. IC must leverage its analytic tradecraft to present objective assessments about climate change to policymakers. This means collecting intelligence, assessing it, removing bias, and delivering timely and relevant assessments to customers. The U.S. IC must also leverage its global relationships with partners and competitors in performing these tasks. These relationships lie below politics and can help elicit understanding that allows policymakers to distinguish facts on the ground from prevailing political rhetoric of the day.
The U.S. IC’s workforce and technology will need to advance and adapt to serve the climate mission. It does not need to have the foremost climate experts, but it does need to have dialogue with them, and develop its own climate expertise. Like other threats, the IC needs personnel that are devoted to understanding this new threat and understand its place in larger risk frameworks. Predictive models are critical to understanding climate science, and the IC should invest more resources into artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (AI/ML) that can inform them. Intelligence professionals will not need to advance science, and scientists will not need to assess national security; but collaborations between the IC and the federal science community are necessary and will benefit both by allowing them to identify and meet shared objectives.
Climate change intelligence cannot be siloed. As DNI Haines promised, it must be integrated into traditional security threat assessments, and those emerging threats from other globalized challenges, bio-hazards, cyber capabilities, and weaponized information, if we want to understand how they interact and manifest around the globe. Compared to the twentieth century, when intelligence was dominated by governments, the twenty-first century offers more democratic forms of intelligence: the private sector offers major capabilities to collect and analyze intelligence. It has disrupted and transformed the nature of intelligence. The IC’s advantage in this new environment will come from thinking deeply about these issues and using its unique analytical and collection capabilities to identify patterns and trends others might overlook.
The future of intelligence cooperation and climate change
Climate change is an indiscriminating challenge unlike anything humanity has encountered before. Understanding how it is different helps illustrate the need for intelligence cooperation among states, large and small, to combat it. Carol Dumaine, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the ways in which the climate threat is unique. It is non-state, non-adversarial, non-linear, boundary-less, and its root causes can be found in human economic activity. Unlike pandemics, however, combatting climate change will require something we have never done: decades of consistent cooperation across states with an eye towards tackling a systemic problem that will persist for centuries.
The U.S. IC needs to determine how it will work with other countries to combat the shared threat of climate change. The big first step is determining what the security collective is trying to accomplish. One area ripe for collaboration is foresight and early warning systems. During the Cold War the famous “red telephone” connected the White House and the Kremlin, enabling direct communication to avoid nuclear brinksmanship. Similar innovate thinking will be needed on climate change cooperation. Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee, Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy Lead for the UK Ministry of Defence, emphasized that the biggest danger on climate change is not a morass of bureaucracy, but instead a lack of imagination in understanding its impact and generating solutions for it.
Relying on existing partnerships, such as the Five Eyes alliance or NATO, will not be sufficient. Those agreements will play a role, but they do not include some of largest contributors to greenhouse gases or the countries that will suffer the largest initial impacts from climate change. Intelligence communities are by nature competitive and adversarial, but when it comes to climate change they will need to be cooperative. The U.S. IC needs to identify areas of cooperation even with adversaries like China and Russia. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow and former Director of the Intelligence Project, tasked the U.S. IC to look for a peace dividend—areas where collaboration on climate will yield multilateral benefits. Even though spying will still exist, as it always had, we cannot let espionage stand in the way of climate collaboration.
Any collaboration on climate intelligence will certainly require American leadership. That means America needs to treat the climate threat with the seriousness it deserves. Climate change is siloed into a one-page length analysis in the 27-page Annual Threat Assessment issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in April 2021. The six pages focusing on China and Russia make no mention of how those are contributing to climate change or working to combat it. The IC must continually reinforce that climate is a serious and central threat. We cannot wait until the impacts are painfully obvious for every individual across the globe to treat it with the seriousness it requires.
The private sector, intelligence, and climate change
The threat from climate change reinforces the fact that intelligence is no longer a domain solely for governments. Mekala Krishnan, Partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, underscored that the private sector is also seeking to take climate risk out of a sustainability silo and integrate it into all aspects of decision making affected by risk and finance. Companies are thinking about how climate interacts with physical capital, natural resources, labor supply, and food supply—the factors of production in an economy that fundamentally affect our lives and livelihoods. One of the most important factors in a country’s national security is the health of its economy. The U.S. IC needs to be working with the private sector to understand what the economic effects of climate change will be.
In many respects, the U.S. government is still one of the few parties that can afford the costs to collect data on climate change, much like space exploration and early Internet research. The private sector can innovate ways to extract insights from that public data. Harnessing that with government capabilities will require innovative public-private partnerships with a shared strategy to help combat climate change. The U.S. IC must develop a level of transparency on climate data that will allow the private sector to identify where incentives for research and development exist. It will not matter how good the climate intelligence collected by the U.S. IC is if it does not get into the hands of public and private users in the right shape and form.
At the same time, the IC cannot be everywhere at once, collecting troves of climate data at significant cost. Richard Jenkins, CEO of Saildrone, noted that the private sector has the capability to deploy significant private money to develop and test new technologies that advance climate data collection, which the government can purchase at great value and incorporate into climate intelligence analysis. New technology is democratizing intelligence; it will force the U.S. IC to change how it interacts with the private sector— for the better.
Conclusion
In a moderated discussion with Dr. Calder Walton, Secretary Kerry stated unambiguously that the U.S. IC needs to start providing policymakers with a decision advantage on climate change in order for the U.S. government to lead the world on meeting this unprecedented threat. That starts with treating climate change seriously. The U.S. IC will need to determine its requirements, play to its strengths, and adapt its workforce to best serve its mission. It will need to cultivate deeper cooperation with allies and adversaries, develop new relationships with the private sector, and approach climate change with a fresh mindset to seek and find what others overlook.
When it comes to climate change, the U.S. IC should also reframe who its customers are, not just policymakers, to whom it gives secret briefings, but also the public. By publicly disseminating assessments, the U.S. IC can effectively democratize intelligence about climate change, with the public holding policymakers to account for their actions or inactions on the basis of shared intelligence.
The Cipher Brief is proud to be continuing our coverage on Climate with a series of webcast briefings beginning in July 2021.
French luxury giant Dior has taken down a controversial photograph that had been criticized in China for “smearing Asian women” by pandering to Western stereotypes while “distorting Chinese culture.”
The photo, which was part of the brand’s ‘Lady Dior’ exhibition in Shanghai, depicts an Asian model wearing a traditional dress and clutching a Dior handbag. It came under fire this week from Chinese media outlets for featuring “spooky eyes, [a] gloomy face and Qing Dynasty-styled nail armor.”
Although Dior has not released a statement regarding the controversy, it confirmed to fashion trade publication Business of Fashion that the photo had been removed from the exhibition. The brand has also reportedly taken the photo off Chinese social media platform Weibo.
The image, which was shot by Chinese photographer Chen Man, had drawn both media ire and public outrage. However, there were apparently no calls for a boycott of the brand.
In an editorial on Monday titled “Is This the Asian Woman in Dior’s Eyes?”, the Beijing Daily paper had noted that the image makes Chinese consumers uncomfortable. The publication criticized Man for “playing up to the brands, or the aesthetic tastes of the Western world.”
For years, Asian women have always appeared with small eyes and freckles from the Western perspective, but the Chinese way to appreciate art and beauty can’t be distorted by that.
Warning that both the brand and the photographer had “gone too far,” the China Women’s News paper ran an editorial on Wednesday that claimed it “indicated their intention of uglifying Chinese women and distorting Chinese culture.”
“Again, from… Dior’s ghost-style picture, which makes the public feel uncomfortable, it’s easy to see some Western brands’ ‘pride and prejudice’ in their aesthetics and culture,” said the newspaper, which is run by the All-China Women’s Federation.
Meanwhile, the Global Times noted that the “lingering controversy could pose a delicate situation” for Dior and other global brands – for whom China’s “massive” luxury market was one of the biggest sources of revenue. The paper said that the Chinese public had become “increasingly sensitive” toward the depiction and treatment of Chinese people and culture by foreign companies.
While pointing out that Chinese social media users had demanded the company and photographer explain their intention, a number of media outlets also highlighted how some netizens had praised the photo as a departure from typical standards of beauty in the country, often characterized by “fair skin and large eyes.”
Clinics in the Austrian region of Salzburg have set up a special assessment team tasked with identifying Covid patients who have a higher chance of survival; the rest may soon have to take a back seat.
Amid a dramatic spike in Covid cases, medical personnel warn they may soon have to make the heart-wrenching choice of which patients get life-saving treatment and which ones will have to wait, Austrian media report. Intensive care units in the Salzburg region are packed, with the number of patients treated there setting a new grim record on Tuesday, reaching 33. The region ranks amid Austria’s hardest-hit, logging more than 1,500 new infections per 100,000 residents in a week. In an emotional plea for help to the local government, the head of Salzburg’s hospitals warned that soon clinics would likely not be able to guarantee the existing level of standards in terms of medical treatment. A representative for the city clinics likened the situation to “running into a wall.”
The region’s governor, Wilfried Haslauer, announced on Tuesday that some of the Covid patients whose condition was no longer life-threatening would be transferred from hospitals to rehabilitation centers to make room for more serious cases.
In neighboring Upper Austria, the situation is no better, with the number of deaths in intensive care units surpassing figures seen in all the previous Covid waves. Speaking to Austria’s Der Standard paper on condition of anonymity, healthcare workers there said they had free beds “because the infected are dying.”
For the time being, the creation of a so-called ‘triage team’ in Salzburg hospitals is being described as a “precautionary measure.” The panel is made up of six people: one legal expert and five providers from various medical disciplines. If push comes to shove, they will be deciding which patients stand a chance and which treatments have little prospect of success.
This piece was first published by RUSI in London. The views do not represent those of RUSI.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE –The international community is coming under increasing pressure to recognise the Taliban and to unfreeze Afghan funds held by the IMF or to risk a humanitarian crisis over the winter and a resurgence of international terrorism.
As Afghanistan heads deeper into winter the desperate need is to avoid a humanitarian crisis. The World Food Programme has launched an appeal to feed up to 23 million people and Médecins sans Frontières have followed suit in the healthcare field. Fortunately, the distribution mechanisms are in place inside Afghanistan; what is needed is for the international community to ensure that UN humanitarian programmes are fully funded. This will require Western capitals to get over the shock of their recent defeat. It goes without saying that hunger and health should not be used as instruments of political leverage.
Meanwhile, it is becoming ever more apparent that the Taliban do not have the skills to administer a country which is far more complex than the Afghanistan of 1996 – when they began their previous and disastrous spell in office. They will need international assistance to stabilise the economy, get people back to work and, in time, continue the gradual infrastructure improvements which have been underway since 2002. China will doubtless be willing to assist in some areas but Beijing has already made clear that it is adopting a cautious, gradualist approach. However, there are emerging indications that the Taliban’s intransigent views are beginning to relax; such as their approval of the polio vaccination scheme and their willingness to work with UN humanitarian agencies.
The Taliban will also need outside help in defeating the threat from the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province (ISK). Already the Taliban are finding it difficult to counter similar asymmetric tactics which they used so successfully against Western forces. This is likely one of the subjects which CIA Director William Burns discussed with the Taliban during his visit on 24 August and where there is a mutual interest.
What can the international community (not just the West) realistically expect from the Taliban, following the militant group’s stunning victory? Maximalist demands will inevitably get short shrift.
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First, the Taliban should form a more inclusive government. According to multiple sources, the Taliban were intending to form such an administration had Ashraf Ghani not fled the country on 15 August. I am sceptical that this was ever their intention but former president Hamid Karzai and former reconciliation chief Abdullah Abdullah may have remained in Kabul on this understanding and Fatima Gailani, a former negotiator, insists this was the Taliban’s intention.
An inclusive government would need to include women and non-Taliban representatives from the Hazara, Uzbek and Tajik communities. It need not comprise the failed politicians and bloodstained warlords of the past, least of all Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rashid Dostum. It is surely time for a new generation of more technocratic Afghans to become involved in government. Some may be persuaded to return from abroad but they will need assurances for their safety.
Second, the international community should insist on female education at all levels be restored and for women to play a fuller role in society. The Taliban will baulk at this but they only need to look at Pakistan where women play an important role in an avowedly Islamic, if not Islamist, society.
Third, all neighbouring countries, as well as the wider world, want Afghanistan to commit to removing all terrorist bases and terrorists from its soil; not just ISK and Al-Qa’ida but also the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), anti-Iranian and anti-Indian groups, and Central Asian militant movements including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Fourth, the Taliban should commit to allow people to join their families in exile if they wish and also cease the continuing search for and punishment of those Afghans who served the Afghan government and Western allies since 2001.
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In an ideal world there would also be a fifth request: to remove Haqqani network members from the Taliban administration. However, that pass was sold when the US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad engaged with the Haqqanis in Doha – another result of that calamitous dialogue. Furthermore, the current reality is that the Haqqanis control both Kabul and its airport and Sirajuddin Haqqani holds the key position of interior minister.
Instead, the Haqqanis need to be persuaded to prevent Al-Qa’ida regrouping in Afghanistan. Sirajuddin’s father was close to Osama bin Laden and the group retains its Al-Qa’ida connections. Pakistan is already using the Haqqanis to bring the TTP to the negotiating table. It remains to be seen how successful this will be. It is doubtful that the Haqqanis would be willing to take military action against a group from a similar area in the tribal borderlands. However, the Haqqanis could be useful as intermediaries, if not as enforcers.
Meanwhile, the wider Taliban, usually referred to as the ‘Kandaharis’, are increasingly exasperated by the entryist Haqqanis. Although they have worked together, there was never much love lost between the two. The Kandaharis have always distrusted the Haqqanis’ proximity to the Pakistani military. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul-Ghani Baradar, whose willingness to negotiate with the Kabul government in 2008 and 2010 earned him eight years in a Pakistani prison, has been sidelined. There will doubtless be a reckoning
A lasting regret of the US’s careless withdrawal is that Washington did not conclude a broader settlement for Afghanistan involving China, Iran, Russia, India and the Central Asian Republics. From now on it is essential to include all the neighbours in the discussion of recognition and the conditions required. But first the Afghans must be helped to survive the winter.
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EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — A meeting – albeit virtual – between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping finally happened. It was a cordial and reportedly candid exchange that hopefully cooled some of the tension between the U.S. and China.
President Biden captured the essence of the meeting with his concern that this tension “does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended.” President Xi said, “China and the U.S. need to increase communications and cooperation” and “respect each other and coexist in peace.”
It’s hard to believe that in 1979, when formal U.S. – China diplomatic relations were established, Chinese President Deng Xiaoping looked to the U.S. as the country that would provide the investment, technology, and unlimited access to our best universities. And the U.S. didn’t disappoint. Investment and sophisticated technology flowed to China, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese students enrolling in our universities. Strategic bilateral cooperation initially contributed to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, with joint efforts to address international terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
So, during the span of forty-two years, relations have gone from close economic and strategic cooperation to a concern about conflict, intended or unintended. Understandably, scholars will spend considerable time analyzing what went wrong.
What is important now is that U.S. – China relations move in a more positive direction. That tension over China’s aggression against Taiwan, the militarization of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, internment camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the national security law in Hong Kong that suppresses democratic protests and the theft of intellectual property all must be candidly discussed by our diplomats and leaders to avoid misunderstanding and accidental conflict.
President Biden said Washington continues to have a “one China” policy and “opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo.” President Xi reportedly said, “Beijing will take decisive measures if the pro-Taiwan independence movement crosses a red line.”
The three communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 specifically states that, inter alia, “the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means; to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, is a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”
The challenge for the U.S. and China is to address Taiwan and a myriad of other irritants in the bilateral relationship to ensure that no one issue, or series of issues leads to conflict. Toning down the rhetoric and pursuing a policy of substantive and sustained communications, especially by our diplomats, would be a necessary first step.
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The annual Economic and Strategic Dialogue with China, led by the heads of State Department and Treasury and their counterparts in Beijing was established to oversee progress in addressing these and other challenging issues. A forum of this type, with announcements to ensure that the public is kept apprised of the issues and the work being done to resolve these issues, is of value, only if this dialogue is substantive and not just ceremonial.
This virtual presidential summit can be transformative if, in addition to addressing these and other irritants, it also addresses the opportunity to cooperate on a multitude of geopolitical issues that affect the security of the U.S. and China – and the world.
I’ll start with the nuclear issue and the fact that there’s minimal dialogue with China on its nuclear program. And given recent reporting on the three sites in China with the construction of hundreds of missile silos and the recent DIA report that China, by 2030, will have a nuclear arsenal of 1000 nuclear warheads is of concern. Ideally, China should be part of New Start arms control negotiations with the U.S. and Russia. But they previously refused to join in this or any other arms control dialogue. At a minimum, China should be responsive to a dialogue with the U.S. on nuclear-related issues, to include their recent test of two hypersonic missiles.
A separate but equally important dialogue with China is on cyber, to ensure that the cyber domain is not weaponized and used against our private sector for economic advantage. Also, to ensure that outer space is used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
There are a multitude of global issues requiring bilateral cooperation. We recently saw some U.S. – China cooperation on climate change at the Glasgow COPS 26 UN Climate Change Conference. Obviously, more must be done, but this is a positive first step.
Other issues, like North Korea can and should be addressed now. China has unique leverage with a North Korea that relies on China for its economic survival. China can use that leverage to get North Korea to return to negotiations and to convince the North that complete and verifiable denuclearization, in return for significant deliverables, is in North Korea’s interest.
With over five million global casualties and over 760,000 deaths in the U.S. due to COVID-19, it should be obvious that greater bilateral cooperation on this and future pandemics is necessary.
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Bilateral cooperation on nuclear proliferation, countering international terrorism, the trafficking of narcotics and confronting international organized crime are just some of the global issues that affect the security of the U.S. and China and the global community. Failure to cooperate on these and other international issues is not only a security imperative, but a moral responsibility of all great powers.
Finally, with the Taliban back in control in Afghanistan, the U.S. and China have a shared goal: ensuring that the Taliban does not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to once again use Afghanistan as a base for its international terrorist operations. China has engaged this Taliban government and should use its significant financial leverage to ensure that all terrorist groups are permanently removed from Afghanistan.
Xi Jinping was just anointed by the Chinese Communist Party as one of its revered leaders, with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The Party congress next year will likely give Xi a third five-year term as the Party’s Secretary General. There are a multitude of domestic issues requiring Xi’s and the Party’s attention, to include a campaign of “common prosperity” – addressing the disparity of wealth in a China governed by a capitalist system with Chinese characteristics.
Hopefully, President Xi Jinping will work with President Joe Biden to ensure that the two great powers, consumed with domestic issues, will also address the myriad of international issues requiring immediate and long-term attention and avoid a cold war that could veer into conflict.
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The European Union’s top court has ruled that Hungary’s 2018 law aimed at criminalizing aiding illegal immigrants who are claiming asylum violates the “rights safeguarded” by the bloc’s legislature.
The Hungarian legislation, passed in 2018, sought to punish anyone “facilitating illegal immigration” with a year in prison, under a bill dubbed the “Stop Soros” law. Hungary’s government justified it at the time by arguing that migrants illegally entering the country threatened its national security.
In the ruling, handed down on Tuesday, the European Court of Justice declared that “criminalizing such activities impinges on the exercise of the rights safeguarded by the EU legislature in respect of the assistance of applicants for international protection.”
The EU’s advocate general, Athanasios Rantos, had urged the court to make such a judgement back in February, claiming the introduction of the legislation meant that “Hungary has failed to fulfil its obligations under the [bloc’s] Procedures Directive.”
It became known as the Stop Soros law after billionaire philanthropist George Soros became a vocal opponent of the Hungarian government’s opposition to migration. The administration, in turn, accused Soros of orchestrating migration to Europe, with the Open Society Foundation, run by the philanthropist, closing its operation in the country in response.
Hungary, under the leadership of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has repeatedly clashed with the EU in recent years over its strong stance on immigration and concerns from the bloc about threats to the rule of law in the country.
At the end of 2020, a dispute between Hungary and Poland and the EU risked derailing the bloc’s budget, as both member states were threatening to veto it over their view that the EU was attempting to interfere in their domestic affairs. Ultimately, the EU backed down, agreeing to a compromise with Budapest and Warsaw to ensure the budget secured the support of all 27 member states.
Despite acknowledging the EU court’s ruling, Hungary’s government defended its right to challenge any foreign-funded non-government organizations that are attempting to “promote migration.”
“Hungary’s position on migration remains unchanged: Help should be taken where the problem is, instead of bringing the problem here,” Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs said, adding that the country will challenge outside entities “seeking to gain political influence and interference.”
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