In his Address to Congress last April, President Biden issued a call to action to deliver on the promise of democracy.  “Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart?  America’s adversaries – the autocrats of the world – are betting it can’t.”

As we consider this global call to action, we should look no further than one of liberal democracies strongest players – the commercial geospatial industry.  With a mix of entrepreneurial spirit, risk capital, and enlightened policy, this sector is ready, willing and able to contribute to the global transparency that advances our common cause by creating coherence from chaos, and separating fact from fiction.  The data generated from satellite imaging technology provides the visibility that helps us partner as allies and combat disinformation.  In other words, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) can identify and see through the obfuscation.

Commercial imaging companies openly capture images that can be leveraged strategically to shed light on complex geopolitical events.  This light can inform a public narrative that supports our interests and exposes the misinformFor example, in mid-2020, the location of detained Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Western China became increasingly difficult to find.  The Chinese mapping platform Baidu Maps previewed blank reference map tiles over the areas in question, ultimately masking the reality.  Investigative journalists at Buzzfeed turned to commercial satellite imagery from Planet to uncover thousands of prisons and internment camps in the region, exposing China’s false narrative.

Technology now enables a near-continual sensing of all of the world’s activity.  Such a holistic collection will enable a detailed model of the planet and all that is happening on it.  There are many benefits of such a model including increased agricultural yields, strengthened supply chains, enhanced natural disaster preparedness and response, accurate measurements of the environment, and real-time detection of nefarious actors.  However, such a world will demand a rethinking of privacy itself, requiring us to find the optimum balance between the benefits of this technology, their implications for our privacy, and the potential for misuse.

First, it’s important to know who is doing the collecting and what is done with the collected information.  In the past, the collectors were governments – for good and for bad – and the original driver for remote sensing technologies was national security.  However, with the recent increase in innovation and technological advances from both government and commercial sectors, the potential for transparency escalates exponentially, an attribute I find pertinent to our success as a liberal democracy in this technological age.

With this increase in imagery and data collection, we will be able to cross-connect data streams from human activity to physical reality; ultimately answering the questions, “Where are the people?” “Why are the people there?” and “Where are they going to be tomorrow?”  Clearly, there are good and bad uses of the answers to these questions.

Properly thought through, an era of radical transparency can lead to a healthier planet and a more humane world.  However, achieving such a world means also striking a balance between access and control, openness and privacy, and good and evil.  As the expansion and growth of such surveillance is likely inevitable and incessant, we must calculate a means to deal with such a reality.  If approached with caution and aforethought, this will benefit our society exponentially.

Anticipating the ways this radical transparency might be misused is the most likely solution for establishing regulations that will encourage the good and thwart the bad.  We must first determine who controls our data, who can access it, why it can be accessed, and with what oversight.  We also need to firmly establish what role the derived data would play in our legal framework.  We ultimately need to answer the question, “How might our society adapt, innovate and evolve to harness the power of geospatial data and technology while mitigating its ethical challenges?”

As we seek to address that question, I suggest we all take a heavy dose of humility as these are unchartered waters and precipitous actions could have deleterious effects.  It is essential this situation is addressed with deliberate and well thought out actions, as well as the flexibility and ability to modify rules and regulations as we better understand the ramifications and consequences of our decisions.  I would observe that until we can agree on data privacy norms, it will be hard to create lasting rules around transparency.  The stakes are enormous.  In fact, one could see this discussion and debate as existential, especially as it pertains to human freedoms.

Our transparent society is here to stay, no matter how hard one tries to eliminate their digital presence.  If you think of this transparency as light – as I do – it shines both ways.  I believe transparency is good for liberal, democratic societies.  As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis observed, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”  I further believe the bedrock of civil discourse is trust; not so we agree on every issue, rather, but so we appreciate the other perspective and empathize with differing views.  I posit that transparency favors justice – and that evil lurks in the dark.

Thus, we should be considering our society’s core strengths – entrepreneurial spirit, risk capital, market competition and respect for the individual and their rights – as we rethink what the notion of privacy should mean today.  If we anticipate many of the ways that the abundance of data might be misused, we can establish rules, regulations, and governing authorities to encourage the best uses while thwarting bad actors.  If approached with thought and caution, this technology has the potential to make transparency a force for good and change the world for the better.

President Biden concluded his April State of the Union speech by acknowledging that our democratic form of government was being tested and challenged as never before — especially by regimes with very different social compacts.  A transparent world reduces confusion and increases shared awareness and trust.  It is in that world that I see democracies innovating, competing and winning.

L'articolo The perils of “transparency”: welcome to tomorrow’s world proviene da InsideOver.

In Washington, DC, the policy arguments about Big Tech are not nearly big enough. Politically electric issues like censorship and monopoly tend to dominate the policy conversation. But the Information Age has fundamentally altered how human beings relate, how children develop, how markets function, and how our shared social and political life unfolds. Like the Industrial Revolution did before it, the Information Revolution requires a broad and updated policy vision to govern it. In developing such a vision, policymakers must recall an essential truth that challenges their usual faith in markets to solve problems: market forces alone do not maximize human flourishing, and not every good belongs in a market.

In their book “Civil Economy,” economics professors Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni turn to the Italian philosophical tradition to describe an old but neglected conception of the marketplace: “Actual markets,” they remind us, “are never ethically neutral; they are either civil or uncivil.”  By “civil” Bruni and Zamagni do not mean “polite” but civilizing. Markets operate either according to their “ancient, original vocation as an ally of the common good, representing a space for liberty, sociality and the expression of our capabilities…as persons,” and thus are civil—or they do not, instead “compulsively seeking wealth rather than public happiness, and…forgetting and destroying such fundamental economic goods as relational goods, common goods, and gratuitous goods.” Many of the changes the Information Age has wrought have been, in this sense, uncivilized.

Democratic government must play a role in correcting this.  Technology leaders would prefer we believe that any harms resulting from their products and practices are the unavoidable cost of progress—that the neutral market has spoken, and the role of government is to get out of its way.  This obscures the reality that allowing technological change to unfold in ways that damage individual well-being, community economic thriving, the integrity of our shared social fabric, and our political liberties is a political choice.  We can and should make better choices, bearing several key principles in mind.

The first is that a free and flourishing nation must defend its children.  Children deserve a protective sphere in which to safely grow and develop, but a growing body of evidence makes clear that the mass migration of childhood social life into the virtual environment of social media has caused them profound harm.  This is unacceptable. The virtual world which Big Tech induces children to inhabit is not built for the benefit of children, but to capture their attention and profit from it, at the expense of their well-being.   The market has not corrected for this harm.  Quite the opposite: it is now effectively beyond the ability of parents to voluntarily remove their children from the reach of social media, and as for children, the product is engineered to be addictive and render them socially dependent on its use. Policy must intervene. We do not usually leave questions of child safety to the market to define and determine, or sacrifice children for the sake of “innovation” and “growth,” nor should we in this case.

Public policy must also protect the right of persons to enjoy a private life to which neither the state nor the market has access.  This is a matter of personal privacy, certainly, but also of autonomy.  The massive amount of personal data available to corporations (and in many cases to governments) presents frightening opportunities to manipulate both belief and behavior. This use of personal data, especially when it has not been consensually and affirmative disclosed for such a purpose, is unethical and dangerous. Yet the provision of such data, while in some cases technically “voluntary,” has functionally become the necessary price of entry to both social and professional life in America, rendering true choices difficult. And meaningful consent is difficult to give in an environment in which personal data, once provided, effectively leaves the control of the individual whom it concerns. Functioning democracies should not permit a market in the privacy of its citizens, nor in the personal autonomy of which their privacy is a necessary precondition.

Citizens must be in control of technology, not the other way around. To paraphrase the New Testament, human beings were not made for technology, but technology for human beings. Algorithms can enhance decision-making power in valuable ways, but their use must be subject to human judgement and democratic reflection. Failure to properly oversee the use of algorithms in the pursuit of market efficiency results in unacceptable but avoidable injustices and indignities, as in cases when healthcare algorithms meant to improve administrative efficiency distribute care in a racially discriminatory manner, or hiring algorithms discard qualified but non-traditional job candidates before their application ever sees a human eye.

Finally, the right of nations to democratically make and enforce their laws, protect their citizens, and uphold their values should not be subject to trading in the marketplace. And yet the global technology market ignores the integrity of national prerogatives. American tech companies must not be permitted to sidestep American law and values simply because they believe their business models demand it.  Foreign tech companies wishing to conduct business in the United States must be subject to American law written in the interests of its citizens.

There are signs of hope.  In recent months, in response to the growing discontent and concern of the American public, U.S. policymakers have increasingly wrestled with larger questions of what governing the Information Age well might entail.  They must continue expanding that understanding, until it is big enough to govern Big Tech properly.

Chris Griswold is the Policy Director at American Compass.  @Chris_Griz

More on this topic can be found at americancompass.org/technology.

L'articolo The real threat of Big Tech proviene da InsideOver.

A decade ago, as climate change was altering the geography of the region, the resource potential of the North grabbed attention, and states saw the chance to turn a profit. Today, this focus has shifted to concerns about the increased tension between NATO countries and Russia, with a dash of Chinese interests on top. 

This brief article unpacks Arctic geopolitics by exploring the different, at times contradictory, political dynamics at play in the North. It explores three levels of relations: the regional (Arctic) level, the international system, and the level of bilateral relations. Labelling these levels as “good,” “bad” and “ugly” – borrowing from Sergio Leone’s 1966 wester film – helps shed light on the distinctiveness of Arctic geopolitics. 

The Good: Regional Relations and Cooperation

Starting with the good in the Arctic, the regional relations among Arctic states: Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. The Arctic region was thrown onto the international agenda in the early 2000s due to the increasingly apparent effects of climate change. Arctic ice sheets were disappearing at an accelerated pace, which coincided with new prospects for offshore oil and gas exploration, as well as the opening of shipping lanes through sensitive areas such as the Northwest Passage. 

In response, the Arctic states publicly declared the Arctic to be a “region of cooperation.” They also affirmed their intention to work within established international arrangements and agreements, in particular, the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), an international agreement binding states in shared pursuit of order, cooperation and stability at sea.5F

Since then, the Arctic states have repeated the mantra of cooperation. The deterioration in relations between Russia and its Arctic neighbours since 2014 — a result of Russian actions in eastern Ukraine and Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula — did not change this.

The emergence of the Arctic Council as the primary forum for regional affairs in the Arctic plays into this setting. The Council, founded in Ottawa in 1996, serves as a platform from which its member states can portray themselves as working harmoniously toward common goals. Adding to its legitimacy, an increasing number of actors have applied for and gained observer status on the council: Italy, for example, joined in 2013, alongside China, India, Japan, Korea and Singapore.

The Bad: Global Power Politics

What happens in the Arctic, however, is not the same as international global politics concerned with the Arctic. During the Cold War, the Arctic held a prominent place in the political and military standoffs between the two superpowers. It was important not because of interactions in the Arctic itself (although cat-and-mouse submarine games took place there), but because of its wider strategic role in the systemic competition between the United States and the USSR. The Arctic formed the buffer zone between these two superpower rivals, its airspace comprising the shortest distance for long-range bombers to reach one another’s shores.

Following the easing of Cold War tensions, from the mid-2000s onwards, the Arctic regained strategic geopolitical importance. A repeat of Cold War dynamics has seen Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, strengthen its military (and nuclear) prowess in order to reassert Russia’s position at the top table of world politics. Given the country’s geography and recent history, one of its obvious focus areas would be its Arctic lands and seas. 

This is where Russia’s strategic submarines are based, which are essential to the country’s status as a major global nuclear power. Melting of the sea ice and increased resource extraction on the coast along the Northern Sea Route are only some elements that have spurred Russia’s military emphasis in its Arctic development efforts: Russia’s north matters for the Kremlin’s more general strategic plans and ambitions in world politics. 

Within these shifting geo-economic and geo-strategic dynamics, China has also emerged as a new Arctic actor, proclaiming itself as a “near-Arctic state.” With Beijing’s continuous efforts to assert influence, the Arctic has emerged as the latest arena where China’s presence and interaction are components of an expansion of power — be it through scientific research or investments in fossil fuel industries. This has led to the Arctic becoming relevant in a global power competition between China and the United States. 

The Ugly: The Complexity of International Affairs

There is, however, one further political dynamic that requires examination: actual day-to-day interactions between Arctic states. This is where things get ugly, both because some relations are more fraught than others, and because it is difficult to draw generalizing conclusions across the region. 

Central here is the role the Arctic plays in considerations of national defence. This varies greatly amid the Arctic states, because each country prioritizes and deals with its northern areas differently. For Russia, with its vast Eurasian empire, the Arctic is integral to broader national defence considerations. For the Nordic countries, the Arctic is fundamental to national defence policy, precisely because this is where Russia invests considerably in its military capacity. 

The Arctic arguably does not play the same pivotal role in national security considerations in North America as in northern Europe.21F Alaska and northern Canada are primarily locations for missile defence capabilities, surveillance infrastructure and a limited number of strategic forces. 22F Commentators have even argued that the most immediate concerns facing the Canadian Arctic today are not defence capabilities, but rather social and health conditions in northern communities, and their poor rates of economic development.

However, bilateral dynamics like in the case of Norway and Russia are multifaceted. Those two states also engage in various types of cooperation, ranging from co-management of fish stocks to search-and-rescue operations and a border crossing regime.26F These cooperative arrangements and agreements have not been revoked following the events of 2014. 

Cooperation and Conflict

The Arctic is on the global geopolitical agenda. However, things are not as straightforward as conflict or cooperation in the North. There are some paradoxical that are best understood through the threefold distinction presented here: international competition (why the United States is increasingly focusing on China in an Arctic context), regional interaction (why Arctic states still meet to sign new agreements hailing the cooperative spirit of the North) and bilateral relations (why some Arctic states, and not others, invest heavily in their Northern defence posture).

What these nuances imply is that simplistic descriptions of Arctic geopolitics or a new Cold War in the Arctic today must be taken with a grain of salt. Political dynamics in the North are far too complex for these reductive descriptions. Recognizing this complexity should therefore encourage further studies of security politics in a region that has become an international focal point of examination and discussion.

L'articolo Three levels of Arctic Geopolitics proviene da InsideOver.

In 2019, President Donald Trump offered to purchase Greenland from the Danish government. Embarrassed, the government in Copenhagen rejected the offer because nations are no longer sold in the way the former US president was used to buying New York real estate. What made the offer to buy Greenland particularly awkward was the fact that the United States in certain ways already owns the Arctic island and have done so since the Second World War. Mr Trump’s interest in Greenland probably arose from a briefing the president received about the renewed geopolitical competition in the Arctic and the pivotal role of Greenland in maintaining US interests in the region. In geopolitical terms, Greenland is an American island.

While Greenland constitutes a nation in its own right, and its 57,000 inhabitants are part of the Kingdom of Denmark as an autonomous region heavily subsidized by the Danish government, the island’s 2,166,000 square kilometres has been an integrated part of the North American security architecture since the United States required basing rights from the Danish ambassador in Washington during the Second World War. The US used airbases in Greenland as a refuelling point between North America and Britain, and it was weather data from Greenland that gave Allied commanders confidence to give the go-ahead for operation Overlord (the invasion of Western Europe) in 1944.

During the Cold War, the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States was bitterly cold in the Arctic. Nuclear submarines remained constantly on patrol in Arctic waters ready to provide a second-strike capability in case of a nuclear war, and a radar station in the furthest north of Greenland provided first waring if the Soviet Union were to launch a nuclear attack on North America. After the end of the Cold War, the Soviet bases in Siberia was neglected. The United States withdrew from its bases in Island and maintained a much smaller footprint in Greenland. US attention was elsewhere – fighting the global war on terror with engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the last ten years, the Arctic has returned on the geopolitical agenda. Russia has reinvested in its Arctic bases, and Russia demonstrated it renewed Arctic engagement with a couple of spectacular exercises in the region, included the landing of Russian paratroopers on the North Pole icesheet. Less spectacular, but equally importantly, China shows an interest in the region. Diplomatically, China sought membership of the Arctic Council, thus using the Arctic to demonstrate that as a true global power China has an interest in every region, however remote from Chinese territory. Economically, Chinese capital backed mining firms that sought rights from the Greenlandic government to develop mining projects – most spectacularly, an iron ore mine in the fjord outside Greenland’s capital city, Nuuk.

China also raised the possibility of financing an airport outside Nuuk as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. Chinas civilian interest in Greenland challenged the traditional division of labour between the Danish and the American government which made Greenland a part of the North American defence architecture while the responsibility for the internal affairs and economic development of the island was left to the Danes in cooperation with the local administration. A Chinese presence in Greenland would clearly have security implications, and the Danish government moved decisively to make sure that the airport was financed by the Danish taxpayers and the Chinese backed mining firms never gained mining concessions.

While the Danish government was shoring up internal security, the United States reasserted its commitment to the region. US marines were stationed in Norway in the aftermath of the Russian incursion into Eastern Ukraine and the US military has begun to reinvest in Arctic capabilities. Yet, the nature of great power competition today is different from during the Cold War. This is especially true in the Arctic where the present great power rivalry is no longer about positioning for a nuclear exchange, but about how to utilise the new lines of communication and the new access to resources made possible by the thawing of the Arctic because of global warming.

The new climate offers the kind of promises which made Viking settlers name the island. At present the costs of extracting resources from Greenland remains prohibitive and even if the ice is losing its grip on the Arctic Sea, the time when containerships can sail from Shanghai to Rotterdam via the Northern Sea Route remains many years in the future. This future offers a powerful vision which great powers want to be part of, and that in turn offers the opportunity for the government of Greenland to deal in geopolitical futures in same way as you would deal in futures on the stock market.

The mere interest from China thus delivered investments from Copenhagen and an increased diplomatic recognition from the United States which opened a consulate in Nuuk (staffed with diplomats from the US embassy in Copenhagen). The Greenlandic government may use the prospect of Chinese involvement as leverage in the future, but the utility of this strategy decreases each time it is used. The Chinese presence in the region is already waning, as the United States reasserts itself.

The increased US interest in Greenland offers the possibility for the government in Nuuk to decrease its dependence on Denmark by dealing with Washington directly. However, it also demonstrates the very limited freedom of action which the government of Greenland in fact has on matters of security and foreign policy. The United States will never tolerate that Greenland moves outside the North American security architecture – whether the island at one point might gain independence from Denmark is a secondary issue from a US perspective.

In geopolitical terms, everything has changed, and everything remains the same for Greenland. The United States firmly controls the island’s geopolitics and has, with Danish cooperation, firmly rejected Chinese attempts to gain a presence on the island. As the prospects for the Arctic region changes Greenland will become more important in the region, but China and Russia will have few prospects for changing the Island geopolitical connection to the United States.   

L'articolo The geopolitical role of Greenland proviene da InsideOver.

At this moment in history, two nations are at the center of the Indo-Pacific dynamic, with many other nations pivoting around them: China and the United States. China is the world’s leading exporter. The United States is the world’s leading importer. This is the foundation of tension in the region.

China has depended on exports since about 1980 to grow its economy. Growing low-cost and high-profit exports created the capital needed for China to drive its economy. At the early stages of this process, Chinese products were welcomed by importers. As China’s export flow increased, competition within other countries increased, causing economic and social problems. As the leading importer, the United States felt this pressure, and for over a decade demanded that China allow greater imports from the United States and stop manipulating its currency to favor Chinese products.

China was still in the stage of capital formation and transitioning to a more advanced stage of production. The United States ultimately responded with the normal measures: imposing tariffs on Chinese products. China could not accommodate the U.S. but had to head off further tariffs.  China’s need for capital to stabilize an overheated economy made accommodation impossible.

China therefore shifted the tension from being an economic conflict to posing a military threat.  The United States was the dominant power in the Pacific. As an exporting powerhouse, China depends on shipping from ports on its east coast. Its products must pass unmolested through the South China Sea, and then through the choke points between the island nations that ring the Sea of Japan. If the U.S. Navy cut off those ports with mines, submarines or missiles -or if it blocked the relatively narrow choke points leading into the Pacific, or closed the straits of Malacca through which Beijing receives most of its energy imports – China would not be able to export enough to sustain its economy and would thus face an existential crisis.

The U.S. was increasingly alarmed by the growing Chinese exports. China was increasingly concerned that U.S. alarm would turn into military action. Unable to cede on economics, the Chinese sought to force the U.S. out of its area by attempting to persuade the U.S. that China had the military capability of undermining its naval dominance.

Part of China’s problem is that many of the nations that surround it, stretching from near the Aleutians to the Indian Ocean, are either formally allied with the United States or have an informal relationship. Working with the United States and against China is Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia and India. The formation of the Quad – the United States, India, Australia and Japan – has created a powerful force to block China. China, on the other hand, has good relationships with Cambodia and Laos, and a formal relationship with Pakistan.

The future of the Indo-Pacific region rests in large part in the nations in this structure. China will remain a very significant part of the future, but cannot dominate it. The limits to Chinese economic growth has for an extended period been reached. Its military power is limited by geography. Leadership of this region will shift away from China. It will always be present, but it will have to share power.

Among these nations is a single, inherently powerful country: Japan. Japan is the world’s third largest economy, with a per capita GDP much higher than that of China. Japan has a nearly homogenous and highly disciplined work force and an advanced technological basis. It also has a good relationship with the United States.

If China loses its dynamism, it is merely a country divided ethnically and socially, with a vast impoverished hinterland. Japan has none of these weaknesses. At this point, Japan has not militarized to the extent it could. With U.S. security guarantees, it never had to. But as the U.S. limits its exposure, and as China remains inward-looking and somewhat diminished, it is Japan that will emerge as the dominant power, not on the Asian mainland but in the vital waters to the east of China. This will make many countries such as South Korea and the Philippines uneasy, given their historical memory of Japanese behavior. But the facts remain that Japan is the largest economy if China slips, and the largest potential military power if it chooses the role, which it will have to.

India ought to be Japan’s economic and political partner in the Indian Ocean, but it has serious problems. The most important are the tensions between various national groups that constitute it. Disagreements and rivalries have limited the ability of India to emulate China as many expected it to, and has limited its growth as a military power. Japan will certainly partner with India, but it will not be a partnership of equals.

Perhaps the most important development will be the economic surge of a region in which Japan will be a dominant force. China sucked up capital.  Japan has surplus capital plus the ability to generate foreign capital. It will be in Japan’s interest to build this region’s economy. Nations like the Philippines and Indonesia are also promising future actors in the region. Neither of them has ever fully realized its potential.

It is normal that nations shift position. The U.S. will shift its focus. China will struggle with economic problems and Japan will try its turn once more at making history.

George Friedman is Founder and Chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

L'articolo The Present and Future of the Indo-Pacific proviene da InsideOver.

At the recent climate change conference in Glasgow, Americans were everywhere. Diplomats made bold promises to phase out fossil fuel subsidies while ramping up the countries cuts in the pollution that causes global warming.  CEOs filled the Glasgow stages with new announcements, especially on how they would help redirect trillions of private investment dollars to green causes.  The U.S. was central to a big announcement to cut pollution of methane, a particularly strong greenhouse gas, by 30%.  The U.S. even rejoined a coalition of countries that were make lofty promises to stop global warming at just 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. America is back, or so it seems.

But behind the swagger, not much has actually changed in the U.S.  Across most of the country there are few signs of a massive “energy transition,” as the shift to zero emissions is often called. Change is afoot at a blistering pace in California and New York but not in Wyoming and Kansas or most of the rest of the country’s middle. Wind and solar technologies are advancing, but so is natural gas, which is the cleanest burning of all the fossil fuels but still emits warming pollution of carbon dioxide and methane.  Those advances are why coal, a less effective competitor, has dropped by half over the last two decades.  Market forces are now bringing coal back, a bit, because gas has doubled in price this year.

In transportation, the Biden administration talks about electric vehicles but that’s not what Americans are buying.  All of the top selling cars in America use internal combustion engines; the top three are giant trucks. (Only one electric vehicle makes the top 25–Tesla’s model 3, ranked 19^th).  This is not a bold transition but the more normal, gentler process of market-driven change.  These changes, most unrelated to climate policy, have helped the U.S. cut emissions a bit—thanks mainly to the pummeling of coal – but far from the deep cuts needed for the country to play its role in stopping global warming.

The slowness to change is, to some degree, just inertia.  When a big industrial system transitions to new technology it rarely does that quickly.  When the world shifted from energy systems dominated by coal – such as the railroads – to oil-dominated cars and airplanes it took more than half a century.  That inertia, which is evident nearly everywhere in the global energy system, is why I have long thought that stopping warming even at two degrees would be next to impossible.  New studies released before Glasgow confirmed that even with big new policy efforts the world will blow through the 1.5 degree goal and also sail past two degrees.  The planet’s climate system and industrial inertia are much more powerful forces than bold agreements reached by consensus in Glasgow.

But the bigger challenge in America is political.  The nation is severely divided on almost everything, from vaccines to policing and infrastructure. Divided politics has a huge impact on energy policy because it is so hard to get the public – and their elected members of Congress – to agree on much.

When they do agree, it is on how to spend more public money – not how to penalize big polluters.  That’s why new legislation from the U.S. is filled with subsidies for clean energy supplies and electric vehicles and other worthy investments.  But it is silent on how to regulate the older, more polluting technology.  Absent regulation or other strong penalties like a carbon tax – all off the table, politically – the U.S. won’t do much cut pollution.

The current energy crisis is creating even stronger political challenges for change.  Electricity prices have doubled, mainly because price of natural gas has doubled.  The cost of gasoline is up as well.  One of the best studies ever done on U.S. public opinion about energy policy showed that American’s want cleaner futures – only if that future doesn’t visibly cost much.  Adopting policies for a green future when energy prices are soaring is a political loser.

In a politically divided country the federal government, for the most part, won’t do much.  That means that the states are the real places to look for leadership.  And the good news is that a state-driven policy—with potentially every state with its own plan—isn’t that much more expensive than an ideal nationwide policy because some energy services like electricity are traded between the states.

Of course America isn’t divided on everything.  One area where much of the American public agrees:  be tough on China.  That’s terrible news for climate policy because the world’s two biggest emitters need to find ways to cooperate if the planet has any chance.  There are some good ideas for how to make that work, and the two countries issued a hopeful statement in Glasgow, but political headwinds in both nations are strong.

To the outside world the U.S. thus looks very hypocritical.  It joins coalitions that claim they will stop warming at 1.5 degrees.  It says it will developing countries adapt to the harsh impacts of warming, even when the political consensus isn’t there to spend the money.

Hypocrisy is a dark word for what is the real art of politics, which is to do what is possible.  And, in doing that, hopefully change the feasible future.  That’s now happening in the U.S. just as it is in Europe.  As solar and wind gain market share they also get more powerful politically, for example.  As more of the public realizes the value of nuclear power in cutting emissions the same happens.

These shifts are reshaping the political landscape, but in a divided U.S. that process is slow and with many twists and turns as power shifts in Washington.  This is frustrating for the rest of the world that depends so much on U.S. leadership, but it means that if you want to know what the U.S. will do don’t watch political statements in Washington too closely.  Watch, instead, the industries that are shifting investments to clean futures and watch the states for a better sense of what’s durable.

L'articolo American Energy Politics in the Era of Biden proviene da InsideOver.

Covid-19 pandemic has been a game-changer for global economy and has accelerated many key dynamics that are affecting its development. How will the system recover from the pandemic? How will the effect of Covid-19 merge with the other important question of our times, the environmental emergence? Are we marching towards a Great Storm that will affect our economic systems? We are discussing those issues with a leading scholar in the field of global economy and economic history, Professor Adam Tooze. Currently Tooze, aged 54, is Professor at Columbia University and Director of the European Institute. He has also been the Director of the International Security Studies who succeeded Paul Kennedy. One of his most famous works is Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, a description of geopolitical, financial and economical consequences of the 2008 Great Recessions. In September he has published his most recent book, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy.

Professor Tooze, how the virus impacted on the global economic system in 2020? Was it a great surprise?

In some senses the effects of the pandemic have been a development, an effect of economic dynamics that happened in the last half century. It appeared as an exogenous shock in 2020, as something new, but it impacted on a global context that was in a very tense situation. The economic and geopolitical dynamics that I described in Crashed were already on the stage in years 2019-2020, characterized by strong tensions. In the US, for example, the financial instability that led to the 2008 crisis was still present in 2019; tensions between China and United States have become explicit and they were affecting global politics, trade and the American administration’s agenda. On the causal nexus between politics, economics and geopolitics that I tried to sketch up in Crashed, so, the virus impacted as a general shock on global dynamics.

And what elements of novelty were exposed by the virus?

It has made clear the problem of the instability of the global financial system; it exposed the problem of governance in global economy; it made clear the problems of the political constitution of the United States. The virus was clearly not the cause of all those problem, but reasoning in a complex way we can clearly state that it contributed to the acceleration of those crises,  and it also contributed to the escalation of tensions between United States and China.

This was made clear by Trump presidential campaign in 2020…

Yes, in the mind of the Trump’s people it was a clear, consequential nexus between the outbreak of the virus, the internal fight against the pandemic, Washington’s confrontation with Beijing and even the internal political confrontation with the Left. From the debate about wearing face masks to the consequences of Black Lives Matter, in the minds of the more radical supporters of Trump and in the mind of Republicans like Ted Cruz the crisis was considered as unique, as a way through which the traditional American way of living could be subverted. And this leads us to think that another consequence of the pandemic has been the extreme polarization among political wings in Washington politics.

This polarization can be read as a consequence of the fragility of the American system you have mentioned before. How projects enacted by President Biden’s administration in order to enforce social cohesion e reinforce the American economy could contribute to change the situation?

I am very pessimistic about that. I think that Democrats have tried to figure out a strategy in order to change the bases of United States’ development, in a way that is similar to Ursula von der Leyen’s Commision strategy to enforce a transformation in European economy through the Green New Deal and sustainable policies, in a similar centrist recognitizion of the need of face the problems that the more radical part of the political spectrum diagnoses. The way in which the political system in the US works leads to make more complicated to translated this centrist diagnosis in working politics. Democrats have strong internal divisions, and in some issues the Republicans are strongly entrenched.

Can the compromise on the infrastructure bill recently enacted work as a driver for a new bipartisan consensus among the centre of America’s leading parties?

The bill you refer to is tiny in relation to the scale of the problems the American economy has to solve and it’s only a fraction of the impact that, for example, Next Generation EU will have on Italy in relation to GDP. And while event Next Generation EU will hardly pose an end to Italy’s economic problem, Biden’s infrastructure plan is only a tiny step. So, the impasse remains also because the Democrats legislate in a very tiny majority that makes hard to do actions that could resolve the climate crisis or America’s social problems.

A strong gridlock that blocks political actions…

Yes. The diagnoses of the problems often don’t lead to concrete actions that could solve those problems. If you want to understand the current political crisis in the United States, you can also consider that the political support to strategies leading to transition both in the energy and in the technological sector that have proved to generate a consensus in European capitalist system (think for example to the actions of Italian and Spanish utilities) is hard to find in the United States. The auto industry is moving towards electric vehicles, but the great question is to understand how this way of thinking can pass to other sectors. US needs that political parties do not pose an obstacle to this process.

As you said before, the climate crisis is a leading question in contemporary political debates. Even in time of pandemic, we have seen how the problems created by the virus can merge with environmental troubles. It’s possible to expect a “Great Storm” created by the union of the pandemic crisis with the environmental emergence?

The pandemic and the climate crisis could converge locally to produce perfect storms, as problems emerged during California’s huge fires have demonstrate clearly. The fires’ outbreak happened in a period where the COVID-19 pandemic has depleted the ranks of inmate fire crews that are a key component of the state’s efforts to battle out-of-control wildfires due to lockdowns imposed to many prisons in California. The interesting thing we may point out is the fact that on the horizon of the next ten or twenty years the main challenge of climate change will be regional rather than global, or at least macroregional.

Where those threats will concentrate?

The huge problem is that environmental problems will concentrate in the poorest regions of the world, from India to Middle East, from Caribbean to the poorest regions of the United States. From devastating typhoons from prolonged droughts, from energy shocks to wildfires, those problems can appear in very different way.

And what could be the economic consequences of those problems?

It’s hard to think that dynamics of this kind could generate an economic crisis comparable to the 2020’s one. This would probably emerged by the sum of many regional or macroregional shocks only in most extreme scenarios, such as a wave of accelerating global warming. Now the climate crisis is concentrated locally and it regards mostly developing areas of the world, while the unique feature of COVID-19 pandemic has been the fact that it hit hardly the three leading areas of global economy, China, Europe and the United States, in successions in the space of few months. This is very difficult to imagine on the climate side, while a “perfect storm” is something that could happen globally in the more distant future. We can also imagine a Fukushima-stlye accident and global shock in energy markets succeeded by a political shift spreading globally, but this would be mediated by political and institutional decisions. We are some way very distant, in the end, from a 2020-like trigger on the climate side. However we may not forgot that regional and macroregional sectors are strongly interrelated at the global level, so for example a massive wave of migration caused by climate and demographical problems in Sahel can create political consequences at the EU level.

L'articolo Towards the Great Storm? Covid-19 and climate change’s impacts on global economy proviene da InsideOver.

Expectations were high on both sides of the Atlantic when Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election that transatlantic comity and cooperation would be restored, and that Donald Trump’s abrasive, destructive diplomacy soon would be merely a painful memory. Biden’s initial statements as president reinforced those expectations. In his inaugural address, the new president stressed that “We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”

A month later, Biden amplified that goal and applied it with special emphasis to Washington’s relationship to its European allies in his speech to a virtual version of the annual Munich Security Conference. He stated that “I’m sending a clear message to the world: America is back. The transatlantic alliance is back. And we are not looking backward; we are looking forward, together.” He added: “The partnership between Europe and the United States, in my view, is and must remain the cornerstone of all that we hope to accomplish in the 21st century, just as we did in the 20th century.” In an unmistakable slap at his predecessor, Biden acknowledged that “I know the past few years have strained and tested our transatlantic relationship, but the United States is determined — determined to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of trusted leadership.”

The sense of relief in European circles after the Trump years was almost palpable. “Biden gave exactly the speech that many Europeans wanted to hear,” wrote Germany’s influential Der Spiegel magazine. It was a widely shared sentiment on the Continent.

In the aftermath of the chaotic and humiliating departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and the reaction of European governments to that episode,” the president’s promises and confident hopes of transatlantic unity have been shaken to their core. Armin Laschet, a leading German politician, described the situation in especially harsh terms. “This is the greatest debacle that NATO has seen since its foundation, and it is an epochal change that we are facing,” he stated bluntly.

Some European leaders explicitly questioned the continued viability of the Alliance. Czech President Milos Zeman charged that because NATO had failed in Afghanistan, its legitimacy was in doubt. He argued that distrust in the U.S.-led alliance “from a number of member countries will grow after this experience, because they will say – if you failed in Afghanistan, where is a guarantee that you won’t fail in any other critical situation?” Even milder critics questioned the wisdom of Europe’s continued security reliance on the United States, given the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghan withdrawal. “Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez. We need to think again about how we handle friends, who matters, and how we defend our interests,” contended Tom Tugendhat, a prominent Conservative Party leader and chairman of the British Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

European discontent has focused on two points. First, there is the perception that the withdrawal process was handled in an utterly incompetent manner—an amateurish operation that might have been expected from the Trump administration, but was utterly shocking coming from the experienced military and foreign policy professionals surrounding Biden. Second, NATO governments insisted that they were caught off guard both by the administration’s decision to adhere to the withdrawal agreement that President Trump had negotiated with the Taliban and by the speed of the withdrawal itself. Leaders in NATO members contended that Washington had not adequately consulted its allies, much less taken their concerns into account.

NATO leaders have directly disputed the latter complaint, however. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s Secretary General, emphasized that Alliance members had given unanimous approval for the withdrawal in April 2021, weeks before the process commenced. “You see different voices in Europe, and some are talking about the lack of consultation, but I was present in those meetings.” He did concede, though, that Washington’s notification and consultation “was somewhat artificial, because once the United States decided to withdraw, it was hard for other allies to continue without the United States. It was not a realistic option.” Stoltenberg perhaps inadvertently highlighted the main grievance on the part of key European NATO members—that the United States did not treat them as equal partners entitled to a meaningful role in the decision-making process.

The Afghanistan debacle appears to have been the most serious blow to transatlantic security cooperation under the Biden administration, but it is not the only one or even the first one. Signs of impending tensions between the administration and Washington’s European allies emerged even before Biden formally took office. The European Union did not respond well to the president-elect’s call to form a common front against China. In remarks delivered on December 28, he stated that “as we compete with China and hold China’s government accountable for its abuses on trade, technology, human rights, and other fronts, our position will be much stronger when we build coalitions of like-minded partners and allies to make common cause with us in defense of our shared interests and values.” The incoming administration specifically urged the EU to put on hold a major investment agreement that it was negotiating with Beijing. Just days later, though, EU negotiators signed the agreement anyway. Although the agreement still has not gone into effect, the delay is because of resentment at the PRC government’s crude bullying behavior toward the EU on other matters, not because of deference to the Biden administration’s position.

Increasingly, European governments seek to do the minimum necessary to placate Washington without unduly undermining European interests. The communiques that emerged from the G-7 and NATO summits earlier this year embodied such an approach. The Biden administration pressured both bodies to take a strong, collective stance against Russia and China. It was generally successful with respect to Russia, but the language with respect to the PRC was noticeably less hardline, with the G-7 document bordering on anemic. Biden stated merely that he was “satisfied” with the G-7 declaration—a comment that suggested something less than an enthusiastic verdict on his part.

U.S. and European security and economic interests substantially overlap, but they are far from congruent. Indeed, they have been diverging since the end of the Cold War, and Joe Biden’s invocations of transatlantic solidarity cannot change that reality. Europeans have reason to ponder whether signing on to Washington’s counter-insurgency, nation-building venture in Afghanistan served Europe’s best interests. Biden’s mismanagement of the withdrawal process significantly deepened already existing doubts.

Likewise, the administration’s continuing pressure on the European allies to join the United States in pursuing a hardline policy toward Beijing underscores a fundamental difference in U.S. and European interests. The United States is a Pacific power with a crucial stake in trying to maintain its hegemony in East Asia, even at the risk of war. The European nations have no similar stake, and maintaining good relations with Beijing logically has a higher priority than helping Washington preserve its regional dominance. No amount of hectoring from the Biden administration is likely to change that calculation.

Joe Biden did not create the divergence of interests between America and Europe. However, his policy clumsiness has served to underscore rather than paper-over the differences. Ironically, he may ultimately have undermined transatlantic solidarity more that Donald Trump’s boorish nationalism ever managed to do.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international affairs.

L'articolo How Joe Biden Has Damaged Transatlantic Unity proviene da InsideOver.

As many expected, former US President Donald Trump is not going away quietly following his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. He reportedly wants to set up his own MAGA (Make America Great Again) party to challenge disloyal Republicans who helped impeach him in the House or else are considering voting to convict him in the upcoming Senate trial.

Other news reports suggest that the party could be called the Patriot Party.

Trump Has Massive Electoral Appeal

The prospect of setting up a new political party has many advantages. Last year, Trump won more than 70 million votes, the second highest total in American history. Nationally, he obtained more than a 47 percent share of the vote and despite his defeat, he won the decisive state of Florida.

He has an incredible grip over large swathes of the US electorate, many of whom are devoted to him. Trump managed to win over voters that the Republicans have struggled to win in the past and he remains the GOP’s greatest asset even after his defeat. Who else in the current Republican establishment can inspire such a following?

Of course, if the Senate succeeds in impeaching him, then he would not be allowed to stand for election ever again. But should he survive impeachment, Trump will focus on regaining the White House in 2024.

Third Parties Have a Patchy History in the US

Third parties have always underperformed in US presidential elections. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt established the Progressive Bull Moose Party and despite his resounding success, it has been argued that by splitting the center-right vote, the former US president actually made it easier for Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency that year.

Eighty years later, Ross Perot stood as an independent candidate in the 1992 US election and caused Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush to lose the presidency to Bill Clinton.

No matter how well a MAGA party performs in 2024, American elections are a two-horse race and it would be more advantageous for Trump to stand for the Republicans again. But the former president would need to make some changes to appeal to the highly-educated GOP voters who deserted him during the 2018 mid-term elections and again in 2020. An analysis discovered that many of these people found his presidency too off-putting and often offensive, though they gave him a chance in 2016.

To succeed, Trump would need to expand his support beyond his base.

Trump Should Campaign on a Return to Prosperity

Compared to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden was seen as hard to demonize, and that is why the Democratic establishment were keen to make him their candidate. He appealed to white working-class voters in the Rust Belt and he did not carry the same baggage as Clinton, despite reports about Hunter Biden’s dealings emerging before the election.

In 2024, Trump will have two distinct advantages: his handling of the coronavirus won’t haunt him as badly, since the pandemic should have been dealt with by then. American elections are often fought on the premise of how better the country is compared to four years ago, and if the economy has not improved by then, Trump can play on his strong pre-COVID-19 economic record. The coronavirus devastated the former president’s economic record, but there are already signs that Biden has made the economic situation worse by implementing a fracking ban that has cost jobs in the oil and gas industry in New Mexico. 

The Democrats fought the 2020 election by campaigning for a return to “normalcy” and civility, but Trump should focus his energy on uniting the Republicans behind a message of a return to prosperity.

Establishing a third party is a waste of time and energy and it is doubtful that the likes of Senator Liz Cheney, who many commentators believe is launching her own 2024 bid, can appeal to Trump voters. Division will only play into the Democrats’ hands. To add further insult to injury, Trump has dismissed the idea himself and has announced that he is concentrating on helping the Republicans win back control of Congress in 2022.

L'articolo Will Creating a MAGA Party Work for Trump? proviene da InsideOver.

Since the end of the Cold War, United States warships have not been seen in the Barents Sea. Now, however, the United States Navy and its ally, the UK Royal Marine, have returned. What was officially called an effort “to assert freedom of navigation and demonstrate seamless integration among allies” was primarily a message for Russia and the Kremlin’s activity in the region, which has increased considerably.

US Warships in the Barents Sea

For the first time in more than three decades, the United States Navy has operated in the Barents Sea which is divided between Norway and Russia. Four ships of the United States Navy, together with a British ship of the Royal Navy, passed through the Barents Sea north of Russia on Monday, the US Navy confirmed. According to the Navy, the operation was conducted to “assert freedom of navigation and demonstrate seamless integration among allies” in the geopolitically significant region.

The Kremlin had been informed in advance, on May 1, of the operation to avoid any confrontation with Russian forces due to any potential misunderstandings.

The operation involved three destroyers with guided missiles, a United States Navy escort, and a British frigate. Among them were the USS Donald Cook, the USS Porter, USS Roosevelt, plus the escort ship USNS Supply, while the Royal Navy had sent the HMS Kent.

Building US Military Readiness in the Arctic

Vice Admiral Lisa Franchetti, commander of the 6th U.S. Fleet, stated that in these challenging times, it was more important than ever that one maintained operations across Europe while taking prudent measures to protect the health and security of one’s armed forces. Moreover, the United States and its allies would continue to promote regional security and stability, while building trust and strengthening the foundations for readiness in the Arctic region, Franchetti added.

In recent years, territorial disputes over parts of the Arctic have mounted, primarily due to deposits of raw materials such as gas, which lie below the ice cap melting as a result of climate change. The latter could result in permanent north-west and north-east passage opening from Asia to America and Europe, which could significantly shorten the transport route. In addition, Russia, which has always claimed parts of the Arctic, seeks to charge service fees for any potential opening and has thus been attempting to establish a strong military presence in recent years, to which neighboring countries, some of these are NATO states, have communicated concerns.

Kremlin vs. Washington

Due to the geopolitical relevance in the region, the Kremlin has also significantly increased its activities in the Arctic. As part of the Russian quest for the Arctic, abandoned bases from the Soviet era have been reactivated, while additional bases were built, and existing ones were expanded and modernized. Moreover, Russia has undertaken concerted efforts “to establish a network of air defense and coastal missile systems, early warning radars, rescue centers, and a variety of sensors,” according to a Pentagon report in 2019.

According to the Russian Navy, 3,000 patrol days of Russian submarines were reached in the region by 2016, which is identical to the number of patrol days during the Cold War. In turn, NATO and particularly the United States have been reestablishing its presence in the region also, which has observers believing that a new Cold War is in the making, if not already underway.

Since then, Russian activity and posturing have increased drastically. United States Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Monday at a Brookings Institute video conference that Russia had recently put US air defense operations in the Arctic and Alaska to the test several times. One example is an incident on March 10, when two Russian military planes came close to the Alaska coast but did not enter US airspace.

L'articolo US Navy Operates in Russia’s Barents Sea proviene da InsideOver.