Make Sense of the Metaverse, Its Promise and Peril

Dirk Lueth”
post_date=”June 21, 2024 05:06″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-make-sense-of-the-metaverse-its-promise-and-peril/” pid=”150708″
post-content=”
Webster’s dictionary defines “metaverse” as “a persistent virtual environment that allows access to … multiple individual virtual realities.” In truth, though, there is no static definition. Much like the internet, the metaverse is constantly evolving.

In just a decade, the internet morphed from an army research project into the birthplace of emails; soon afterward, a whole ecosystem of online services flourished, crashed in the year 2000, and reproliferated afterward into everything from social media like Twitter and Facebook to shopping services like Amazon. Following that trajectory, the metaverse takes current advancements one step further: breaking the fourth wall and translating the real world into a virtual simulation. Enabling virtual concerts, 3D video games, personalized avatars and even virtual economies.

Dirk Lueth is the co-founder and CEO of Upland, a virtual property trading game structured around Monopoly, using real-life buildings. In creating Upland, Lueth pursues “The Magic Triangle”, an ecosystem of the metaverse, blockchain and AI. The metaverse enables virtual interactions, while blockchain validates real assets for digital commerce, and AI generates a virtual setting. 

In addition to property trading, over 2,000 entrepreneurs, or “metaventures”, run their virtual shops in Upland. Players can purchase virtual goods for their avatars, generating a digital economy. In the future, Upland plans to incorporate physical items into these shops.

Where are we going with this new technology?

Naturally, questions and anxiety arise whenever technology opens up new possibilities. Many worry that the metaverse may distract from the real world. But the metaverse doesn’t just have to be an enclosed space; it can integrate with the real world, allowing people to interact with their physical surroundings in an enhanced — or augmented — way. In other words, the metaverse is portable. Users don’t have to sit in front of a computer.

In 2016, the mobile game Pokémon GO was a viral hit that sent users outside. That summer, parks filled with kids walking and enjoying fresh air with their friends while they collected and battled virtual creatures. Rather than passive media consumption, the metaverse can enable mutual interactions where users engage socially and can exercise critical thinking. As Lueth puts succinctly, “You go from scrolling to strolling.”

Still, even with the benefit of exercise, prolonged screen time will cause strain. Scientist and technologist Bill Softky warned about screen addiction, damage to the eyes and brain, and social media fixation.

Related Reading

10 Physics Reasons Why Screens Are Bad for Humans

Nausea can be another side effect of virtual reality. Your senses of sight and hearing tell you that you are moving while your senses of balance and touch tell you that you are still. The disconnect does not sit well physiologically. However, while we suffer, younger generations who grew up with virtual reality headsets have already adapted. They’re immune to the nausea because they don’t find the sensory experience unusual. 

The Metaverse in the Next Ten Years

In a virtual environment, education can become a more interactive process. You can visit the Taj Mahal, a much more authentic experience in 3D, than reading about it or looking at a photograph. This new form of learning can extend socially as well: Users across the world can meet over similar interests, exchanging cultural and creative expressions.

We have yet to scratch the surface of the possibilities. Many new spaces will open up. Plausibly, the new technology will render many jobs obsolete, but at the same time the Magic Triangle will create new roles. The opportunities might not be familiar now, but they will reveal themselves with timely demand. Thirty years ago, few people knew what coders were. Now, the trade employs millions. 

Lueth predicts that, in ten years, the metaverse will be fully integrated into society, the way that video conferencing is now. The metaverse will likely be considered a convenience, rather than an abstract “technology.”

Another factor is greater personalization. Currently, every platform — Facebook, Google, Microsoft — determines how the user experience will unfold. The metaverse can enable a more user-centric rather than platform-centric approach. “You own your data,” Lueth describes. “You own your identity, and your digital asset. You can take those assets from one world to another.”

[Jamie Leung wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
Webster’s dictionary defines “metaverse” as “a persistent virtual environment that allows access to … multiple individual virtual realities.” In truth, though, there is no static definition. Much like the internet, the metaverse is constantly evolving.

In just a decade, the internet…”
post_summery=”Virtual reality is now here. Far from an escape from physical reality, the metaverse can integrate with and enhance the real world. In ten years, the metaverse will create new jobs, new experiences and new kinds of interaction that we are only now beginning to imagine.”
post-date=”Jun 21, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Make Sense of the Metaverse, Its Promise and Peril” slug-data=”fo-talks-make-sense-of-the-metaverse-its-promise-and-peril”>

Josef Olmert”
post_date=”June 15, 2024 06:16″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-benny-gantz-goes-make-sense-of-israels-new-crisis/” pid=”150624″
post-content=”
On June 9, Benny Gantz resigned from the three-man Israeli war cabinet. A centrist, he was a moderating force on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet Gantz has thrown in the towel, decrying Netanyahu’s handling of the ongoing Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza.

Who is Benny Gantz?

Gantz is a career military officer and served as commander-in-chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) until 2015. In 2018, he entered politics, forming the new Israel Resilience party. The new party did relatively well, establishing Gantz as an important figure in the center-left. Over time, Gantz shifted closer to the center or even slightly toward the center-right.

In 2023, after the Israel–Hamas war broke out, Gantz joined the new war cabinet alongside Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party. Gantz’s fellow party member Gadi Eisenkot, who had also served as commander-in-chief of the IDF, and Likud member Ron Dermer served as observers.

Gantz joined the war cabinet for a mixture of patriotic and political reasons. He told his supporters that he would serve as the sane man in the room, ensuring that Israel’s war effort be conducted competently and acting as a counterbalance to the extreme right-wing parties that Netanyahu relies on for political support. He also hoped to gain political prominence by placing himself firmly in the center of Israeli political life. For a while, the gamble paid off for him — Gantz’s approval ratings shot up in the first months after the war. However, as the war dragged on and Israeli citizens realized that Gantz didn’t have as much influence over Netanyahu as he had promised, his ratings slumped.

Netanyahu’s hawkish approach to the war proved to be too much for Gantz to bear. He tendered his resignation, citing Netanyahu’s unwillingness to listen to his fellow ministers. A critic could observe that Gantz was wrong to think Netanyahu would listen from the start.

Gantz leaves Gallant behind in the war cabinet. The defense minister had served as a balancing person in the three-member war cabinet. Although a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, he often joined Gantz in attempting to reign Netanyahu in. Gantz even called on Gallant to realize the untenability of his position and resign along with him. Yet Gallant has stayed on. However, he seems to be resisting Netanyahu at every turn.

Aside from Gallant, the vast majority of the Likud members of parliament support their leader Netanyahu. The prime minister’s personal brand now overshadows Israel’s national conservative party. Netanyahu’s other supporters in parliament are religious Haredi Jewish parties and radical right-wing Zionists like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir is a West Bank settler and has called for Jewish settlement in Gaza. Whenever the war effort faces a setback and Netanyahu loses face, it is Ben-Gvir who picks up disaffected right-wing votes. Yet Netanyahu is a shrewd political player and, so far, remains the key man. Neither the Haredis nor the extreme Zionists can govern without the Likud leader.

Why did Gantz resign?

For the time being, Netanyahu remains firmly in power. He does not need the support of his centrist fellow minister Gantz. Yet in his departure, Gantz voiced concerns that resonate in many parts of Israel.

Above all, Gantz complained that the war has been going on too long. It is not clear that there is any military necessity for Israel to continue its invasion of Gaza. The IDF are unlikely to subdue Hamas to any greater extent than they already have. Netanyahu is dragging the war on for his own personal selfish reasons. In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted on corruption charges. As long as the war continues, there will not be elections and he will remain prime minister. Until then, he will very conveniently not face prosecution. So, it is in Netanyahu’s interest to delay as long as possible.

Gantz’s second chief criticism is that Netanyahu brooks no compromise regarding the postwar governance of Gaza. All agree that Hamas will have no role, but many moderates and the US want the Palestinian Authority (PA), which currently administers the West Bank, to govern after the IDF withdraws. Openness towards this option would secure the support of many Arab states and make a peace settlement far more feasible. Yet Netanyahu will not budge. The right wing of his coalition sees any step towards PA sovereignty in Gaza as a step towards PA sovereignty in the West Bank — and Ben-Gvir will not be turning in the keys to his residence in Hebron any time soon.

So, Gantz has given up on talking to a wall. Indeed, Netanyahu no longer seems to have any plan except to wait and see.

What is he waiting for? A more favorable administration in Washington following the US presidential election this November? A sudden change of heart in Riyadh, with the Saudi monarchy offering normalization without the promise of Arab governance in Gaza? A collapse of Hamas? None of these things are likely to help him even if they did happen. Yet, he has no better options than to wait.

Netanyahu is not a fool. He is a competent political player. But he is better at playing political games and staying in power than he is at grand strategy and achieving Israel’s long term goals. For now, the ship of the State of Israel seems more or less rudderless.

Will US–Israel relations now sour?

Without the moderating presence of Gantz, one may ask whether Jerusalem will now have even more trouble talking to Washington.

US President Joe Biden is an ardent supporter of Israel. He has even described himself as a Zionist. Yet this Democrat does not get along well with the Likud leader. In the past, Netanyahu has made no secret of his preference for Republicans, either.

In recent months, tensions between Biden and Netanyahu have skyrocketed. Biden is growing impatient with Netanyahu’s refusal of to accept ceasefire. Netanyahu is growing impatient with the White House telling him what to do.

Yet, despite Netanyahu’s seemingly impossible situation, it is Biden who has more to lose. The US president is playing a dangerous game. While Arab Americans and other Democratic constituents have voiced their displeasure with US support for Israel, polling reveals that an even greater number of Democrats blame Biden for not supporting Israel enough. They are disgruntled that the White House appears to have taken a turn against the Jewish State.

The US is home to the second-largest population of Jews in the world. Jewish Americans traditionally vote Democrat and are a well-organized interest group. Large Jewish populations in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Philadelphia might express their displeasure by staying home in November. This could tip the crucial swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania in Republican candidate Donald Trump’s favor and possibly lose Biden the election. Already, moderate Democrats like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and West Virginia senator Joe Manchin are beginning to break ranks with the president. Biden may no longer have the political freedom to put pressure on Israel.

The war serves none of America’s interests. It will not subdue Hamas, nor will it lead to a rapprochement between Israel and Iraq. Rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, will likely occur de facto with or without the war. Meanwhile, the war is destabilizing the Middle East and enflaming Islamist and anti-Western sentiment around the world. So, America’s interest is to end the war as quickly as possible. As things stand in Jerusalem, however, it is not clear that Washington will have any success.

[Anton Schauble wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On June 9, Benny Gantz resigned from the three-man Israeli war cabinet. A centrist, he was a moderating force on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet Gantz has thrown in the towel, decrying Netanyahu’s handling of the ongoing Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza.

Who is Benny…”
post_summery=”On June 9, centrist politician Benny Gantz resigned from the three-man Israeli war cabinet. He complained that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not listen to him, dragging the Israel–Hamas war on unnecessarily and refusing to contemplate a plausible peace settlement. Yet Netanyahu will stay in office thanks to his far-right coalition allies and impeccably pursue his flawed policy. Neither Gantz nor the White House can stop or sway him.”
post-date=”Jun 15, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Benny Gantz Goes: Make Sense of Israel’s New Crisis” slug-data=”fo-talks-benny-gantz-goes-make-sense-of-israels-new-crisis”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”June 11, 2024 06:07″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-rishi-sunak-takes-post-brexit-uk-to-the-polls/” pid=”150560″
post-content=”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that the UK’s next general election will take place on July 4, 2024. This election is likely to spell the end for the ruling Conservative Party (commonly known as the Tories), which has governed Britain since 2010 under five prime ministers.

The UK’s political playing field has been in a state of increasing disarray since the Brexit referendum in 2016. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron called this referendum, expecting the Remain campaign to lose. He resigned after voters returned the opposite result. The Conservatives subsequently saw first Theresa May take up the banner, then Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss (who lasted just seven weeks!) and finally Sunak.

From these Tories to Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, the UK has seen quite an assortment of different flavors of spin politicians. The UK has traditionally produced politicians of high caliber from the legendary Winston Churchill to more recent greats like Margaret Thatcher. The latter-day talent pool seems much shallower. So, where is the UK headed this July?

Close up of the candidates: All around depressing

Keeping with trends of the last century, the upcoming election will be a face-off between the Labour Party and the Conservatives. Voters will have two wildly uninspiring candidates to choose between.

While Starmer may indeed appeal to a wider audience through his careful, measured approach to politics, his lack of conviction points to an altogether noncommittal, wishy-washy attitude. Standing in the shadow of Tony Blair, the Labour leader seems content leaving his party and the general public in varying states of confusion and uncertainty as to what he actually hopes to achieve in office and how he plans to go about it. While ambiguity is damaging enough, Starmer makes his own case worse by being, to put it plainly, dull. 

Sunak has a similar Achilles heel. His lack of conviction has lost him favor both within his own party and with the general public in recent months. While Sunak may be an overachiever historically, serving as head boy at Winchester College and quickly climbing the political ladder to the position of prime minister, it seems he had what it took to get into office — but not much more. Sunak’s performance hasn’t been an unmitigated disaster: He has met his inflation target, kept the economy (relatively) stable and made small steps toward reducing illegal immigration. However, he has failed to meet the majority of the promises he made to voters and unfortunately lacks the personality to carry him through the headwinds. 

“King of Brexit” Boris Johnson, on the other hand, excelled in the personality department — ​​if only due to the fact that he at least had one. While Johnson may not have been the most principled or pragmatic prime minister behind the scenes, he certainly knew how to make a statement, galvanize the troops and throw a good party. In politics, that counts for something. 

Shortages in the charisma department could be damaging for both Sunak and Starmer when the votes come in this July, and unfortunately for the both of them, reputation isn’t the only thing these candidates should be worried about as they race toward the finish line.

The shifting status quo

Sunak and Starmer are weak characters who will rely on policy agendas, not personality, to carry their campaigns. The public, though, seems to have grown tired of listening.

Social cohesion in the UK is at a low ebb. The fabric of British society is fraying at the seams as the nation experiences economic difficulties, polarizing social classes and the immigrant/native divide.

A strong leader with clear principles could perhaps rise above this division and draw Brits together. But now is a time of stagnation and uncertainty, not strong leaders. Without a passionate candidate to rally behind, the UK will continue down the slippery slope of dysfunction. Transactional, coalition-type politics may be down the road for Westminster.

Once the ruler of a good portion of the world, this island nation now seems dead in the water. If the UK hopes to regain a position of importance in the global order, it must find a way to overcome its political malaise. Only then will Britain finally make it off the bench and back into the game.

[Emma Johnson wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that the UK’s next general election will take place on July 4, 2024. This election is likely to spell the end for the ruling Conservative Party (commonly known as the Tories), which has governed Britain since 2010 under five prime…”
post_summery=”British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has set the UK’s next parliamentary elections for July 4, 2024. Since Brexit’s implementation in 2020, this nation has turned increasingly inward, struggling to cope with vapid politicians and the deterioration of social cohesion. This election may determine if the UK is truly losing its relevance on the world stage.”
post-date=”Jun 11, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: Rishi Sunak Takes Post-Brexit UK to the Polls” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-rishi-sunak-takes-post-brexit-uk-to-the-polls”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”June 06, 2024 06:08″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-irans-president-falls-out-of-the-sky/” pid=”150478″
post-content=”
On May 19, 2024, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian perished in a helicopter disaster. They crashed in Iran’s mountainous Dismar Forest, near the Azerbaijan border.

There is no indication of foul play at work here. It seems the crash was caused by a combination of bad decision-making by the pilot, dismal weather conditions and a poorly maintained helicopter. The craft was a Bell 212 model from the 1960s, so it needed to be well maintained to operate for all these years, which US sanctions have made difficult.

Raisi’s sudden death raises pertinent questions about Iran’s future. He was set to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top dog in Iran’s theocratic state. Raisi’s premature demise raises the question of succession. Who will be Khamenei’s successor now, and who will succeed Raisi as president? There is another follow-up question: How will these new leaders shape Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world?

More repression in store ahead

Raisi was a murderous leader. In 1988, at the end of Iran’s war with Iraq, he sentenced over 5,000 people — political prisoners, militants and more — to death. In 2022, massive protests broke out over Kurdish Iranian Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. This young woman was arrested and fatally beaten for failing to observe Islamic headscarf laws. The former president authorized security to use lethal force to quash the outcry, killing over 500 protesters. Raisi’s propensity for bloodshed made many Iranians loathe him.Though he was colorless and uncreative, Raisi was ruthless. Furthermore, he was a doctrinaire upholder of Islamic theology and a faithful servant of the regime. Thus, he was a good fit to be the next Supreme Leader. Khamenei is now 85 years old, and the question of succession is in the air. A few plausible successors have emerged. They are theologians or political figures. Importantly, Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, is also in the fray.

Despite his violent past, Raisi was a bulwark against the total dominance of the increasingly aggressive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is the praetorian guard of the revolutionary regime and is now the most powerful institution in Iran. Dangerously, the IRGC is demanding a more assertive policy in the Middle East. Without Raisi to hold the organization back, the IRGC is likely to claim more power — probably all of it — in the state and the economy.

The next generation of potential leaders holds more conservative and anti-Western views than Raisi’s generation, which rose to power in Iran’s 1979 Revolution. Raisi, the ruling ayatollahs and the IRGC recognized that most of Iranian society repudiates the regime’s conservative theological tenets and repressive restrictions. To keep the regime’s hold on power, the next Iranian president will probably tighten these restrictions, crushing any form of dissent and engaging in foreign aggression to appeal to Iranian patriotism.

An Iran more hostile to the West

In his international political career, Raisi pursued “resistance diplomacy.” While Iran was hostile to the West, particularly the US, it sought the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal and rapprochement. US President Donald Trump undid this by withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and imposing further sanctions.

This development led Raisi to conclude that rapprochement would not be beneficial for Iran. He restarted the Iranian nuclear weapons program in 2021, bringing the country’s first nuclear weapon closer to reality. Yet his government still signaled to the US and Israel that Iran did not want regional war.Tensions flared up from time to time with sporadic attacks and assassinations. These further increased on October 7, 2023 when Hamas, the militant Islamist Palestinian group, launched a devastating attack on Israelis. On April 1, 2024, an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the capital of Syria, killed top IRGC officers. In retaliation, Iran officially attacked Israeli territory for the first time in history, deploying 300 missiles and drones. Though Israeli forces intercepted and destroyed most of these weapons, Iran proved it could strike Israel. Intercepting the Iranian weapons also cost Israel and the US billions of dollars, while it only cost Iran millions to launch them.

Before his death, Raisi initiated closer relations with Russia and China, two of the US’s greatest adversaries. His coming successor is likely to continue this outreach. This is a strategic disaster for the West and creates a more dangerous Middle East.

What governmental changes lie in Iran’s future?

The Iranian president is a figurehead and the Supreme Leader holds all real power. So, it barely matters who is elected the next president. Further, the IRGC will increase its already determinative power. In the near future, it may ascend the throne openly and rule Iran directly as a thugocracy. This control will bring forth a leader who will likely be worse for the world than Raisi and Khamenei. The only countries that will not be negatively impacted by such a development are Russia, China and North Korea.

As stated earlier, the new Iranian government will probably become more oppressive. It is likely to enforce an even stricter interpretation of Islamic law on Iranian society. This will make the country more miserable and the Middle East more menacing. The government is also likely to continue the policies of “death to Israel” and “death to America.” This would involve more aggressive actions to expand Iranian influence in the Middle East via Iran’s regional surrogates: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen as well as various Shia groups in Iraq and Syria. Finally, the new Iranian government will move closer to developing a nuclear weapon.

Raisi was cruel, but the next generation of leaders are more merciless. Raisi’s generation is slowly dying out, ushering in a younger, even more radical set of leaders. No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. It looks like they will soon.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On May 19, 2024, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian perished in a helicopter disaster. They crashed in Iran’s mountainous Dismar Forest, near the Azerbaijan border.

There is no indication of foul play at work here. It seems the crash was caused by a…”
post_summery=”Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi recently died in a helicopter crash. Known as a hanging judge for sentencing thousands to death, this hardline cleric was supposed to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His death has triggered both a presidential election and a new search for a replacement successor to the Supreme Leader. Furthermore, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is likely to become even more powerful.”
post-date=”Jun 06, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: Iran’s President Falls Out of the Sky” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-irans-president-falls-out-of-the-sky”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”June 04, 2024 06:37″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-taiwan-china-tensions-increase-as-new-taiwanese-president-takes-charge/” pid=”150457″
post-content=”
On January 13, 2024, Taiwan elected a new president and members of the 113-seat Legislative Yuan. Vice President Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai), from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), emerged victorious with 40% of the vote. The DPP is a Taiwanese nationalist party, and thus Lai’s election has ruffled feathers in Beijing, which sees Taiwan as its rightful territory.

The DPP’s main rival is the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang party. The Kuomintang once ruled mainland China but evacuated to the island of Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Kuomintang claimed to be the rightful government of the entire Republic of China (RoC) and vowed one day to return to the mainland. To this day, the official name of Taiwan is still “Republic of China.”

The Kuomintang established an authoritarian rule over their new island home which lasted for decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, Taiwan democratized. Unlike the CCP-ruled mainland, Taiwan today boasts a robust multiparty democracy.

The Kuomintang has long since abandoned dreams of rescuing the mainland from communism by force. Still, they see themselves as Chinese, hope one day to achieve a peaceful reunification of China and seek to maintain cordial relations with the mainland.

In contrast, the DPP believes that Taiwan and China are two separate nations. In the mainstream DPP view, the Republic of China is Taiwan, an independent nation distinct from mainland China. They favor closer ties with Washington and seek to distance Taipei from Beijing. Thus, Zhongnanhai views the DPP, and Lai in particular, with hostility.

Taiwan’s new president is weaker

Lai identifies himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.” In his May 20, 2024 inauguration speech, Lai demonstrated a departure from Tsai’s approach, signaling a more assertive stance on Taiwanese sovereignty.

Beijing saw Lai’s speech as a provocation and, three days later, launched two days of intensive military exercises around Taiwan. These maneuvers, labeled by the Chinese military as “strong punishment” for Taiwan’s “separatist acts,” marked a significant escalation in cross-strait tensions. The exercises were not limited to the vicinity of Taiwan’s main island but extended to target Taipei-controlled islands such as Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu, and Dongyin for the first time. These islands lie close to the Chinese coast, according to maps released by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) distrusts Lai and is using these exercises to send Lai a clear signal. 

Despite Beijing’s firm stance, immediate escalation appears unlikely. Although the DPP kept control of the presidency in this year’s elections, it lost its majority in the legislature. The Kuomintang now controls three more seats than the DPP does. Thus, Beijing perceives Lai as potentially wielding less influence than Tsai.

Lai is clearly weaker than his predecessor. He took the presidency with 40% of the vote; in 2016 and 2020, Tsai had dominated with 56% and 57%, respectively.

With the DPP losing its majority in the Legislative Yuan, Lai confronts significant challenges in advancing his agenda. In May, the Kuomintang joined with the third party, the Taiwan People’s Party, to pass a controversial reform bill. This legislation significantly enhances the Legislative Yuan’s authority to oversee the executive; to interrogate officials, military figures and citizens; and to demand documentation. Tens of thousands of protestors filled the streets of Taipei, calling the reforms unconstitutional. Lawmakers engaged in scuffles on the Legislative Yuan floor. Amid incidents of inter-party violence on the street, Taiwan’s future political trajectory remains uncertain.

[Ting Cui wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On January 13, 2024, Taiwan elected a new president and members of the 113-seat Legislative Yuan. Vice President Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai), from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), emerged victorious with 40% of the vote. The DPP is a Taiwanese nationalist party, and thus…”
post_summery=”In a January election, Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te became president. The Taiwanese nationalist DPP thus retained control of Taiwan’s presidency, but it lost control of the legislature to the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang and the liberal Taiwan People’s Party. Although Lai’s firm stance on sovereignty triggered unprecedented Chinese military exercises, Beijing sees him as a weaker president than his predecessor and thus less of a threat.”
post-date=”Jun 04, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: Taiwan-China Tensions Increase as New Taiwanese President Takes Charge” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-taiwan-china-tensions-increase-as-new-taiwanese-president-takes-charge”>

Rakesh Kaul”
post_date=”June 03, 2024 06:32″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-spotlight-on-kashmir-when-will-we-witness-voter-realignment/” pid=”150439″
post-content=”
Tomorrow, June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections. Exit polls already appear to confirm the result most observers expected — a third victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dominant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Yet it is a different story in the Muslim-majority union territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). In three of J&K’s five electoral districts, the BJP did not even run candidates.

This year’s election is historic for J&K, as it is the first national election since the revocation of Article 370, a constitutional provision that granted the territory significant autonomy from Delhi.

What is Article 370?

When India attained its independence on August 15, 1947, the area today comprising Jammu and Kashmir, along with Ladakh and other areas administered by China and Pakistan, was a separate kingdom. Kashmir’s king, Hari Singh, intended to rule independently. However, Pakistan saw the Muslim-majority kingdom as its natural territory and attempted to incorporate it by force. In response, Singh opted to sign an instrument of accession with the Dominion of India, allowing Indian troops to enter Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. 

Under the terms of the instrument of accession, the government of India controlled defense, external affairs and communications, while Jammu & Kashmir would control all other sectors. The newly independent India codified this arrangement by adopting Article 370 to its constitution. The measure also granted temporary special status to the territory and allowed it to have its own flag and constitution.

As an Indian state under Article 370, J&K suffered from a violent insurgency for almost 30 years. Islamist militias resented Indian rule and sought secession. The violence deterred economic activity, especially tourism, which this picturesque mountainous region relies on heavily. A powerful local elite monopolised what resources there were and left most of the population.

What has changed since the termination of Article 370?

In 2019, the Modi government terminated Article 370. The state was split into two union territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. The change was a breath of fresh air for Kashmir. It broke the stranglehold of the local elite and allowed law enforcement to crack down on Islamist militias. Since then, the lives of ordinary Kashmiris have changed dramatically. The union territory has seen almost no large-scale incident of lawlessness since 2019. Tourists are returning, and the biggest problem for many resorts is not having enough space for all of the visitors. Development projects are now moving at a fast pace. For example, in 2022, J&K inaugurated the Chenab Bridge, the world’s highest rail bridge.

Now that they are richer, people are also happier. The ongoing Israel–Hamas war, which has seen so much destruction in Gaza, has enflamed anger among Muslims worldwide. Kashmiri Muslims are no exception. Yet, this anger has not translated into action against the Indian state. People seem to be content with the current arrangement.

How will the 2024 elections go in Kashmir?

One might have expected the BJP to capitalise politically on all this success in the union territory. Yet, although the administration has made great progress over the last five years, the BJP party apparatus has not kept pace. The nationally dominant party did not set up adequate machinery to push its messages and whip up votes. It seems to have entered the 2024 election in J&K largely unprepared. In three constituencies — Anantnag-Rajouri, Srinagar and Baramulla — the BJP did not even bother to field candidates.

The three parliamentary constituencies belong to areas that have traditionally opposed the Indian state. The BJP may have concluded that while anti-Delhi sentiment has gone latent, it may not have entirely disappeared. So, instead of fielding candidates, it tried to put its support behind local parties it deemed acceptable. Yet the move seems more like an afterthought than a bona fide strategy.

Still, J&K is now at a potential inflection point. Kashmiris, Muslims, Hindus and others alike, have the ability to put the past behind them and change their voting patterns by moving away from old sectarian lines to focus on issues that matter for the union territory as a whole. Tomorrow, we will see if this process has begun.

[Aniruddh Rajendran wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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post-content-short=”
Tomorrow, June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections. Exit polls already appear to confirm the result most observers expected — a third victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dominant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Yet it is a different story in the…”
post_summery=”Tomorrow, June 4, India’s official election results will come out. Despite its historic proportions, the election has been largely uneventful. The Muslim-majority territory of Jammu and Kashmir is an exception. Here, the dominant BJP decided not even to run candidates in some districts.”
post-date=”Jun 03, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Spotlight on Kashmir — When Will We Witness Voter Realignment?” slug-data=”fo-talks-spotlight-on-kashmir-when-will-we-witness-voter-realignment”>

Manu Sharma”
post_date=”June 03, 2024 05:51″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-geopolitical-guru-on-the-state-of-indian-democracy-part-2/” pid=”150432″
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On Tuesday, June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections. At least 644 million people have cast their votes in the largest democratic election in human history.

For most of its history since independence in 1947, India has been ruled by the Indian National Congress (INC) party. Leadership of the party passed from father to daughter to son to son’s widow to grandson as the INC has dominated Indian politics for 40 years. During the rule of the Nehru dynasty, India maintained close relations with the Soviet Union and followed socialist policies, without the bloody purges of its big brother. 

The INC first lost power in 1977 and opposition parties came to power in coalitions but the grand old party of Indian politics could always stage a comeback. In 2014, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) triumphed and the INC-led coalition lost power. Since then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has presided over a blossoming economy and is still exceedingly popular. The BJP is now the dominant party in the country like the INC.

Modi is widely expected to win the 2024 election. If he does, he will become only the second prime minister in Indian history to win three elections. Jawaharlal Nehru did so in 1951–1952, 1957 and 1962. Given the BJP’s likely victory, what can we expect from a third Modi term?

What to expect from Modi III

The Modi government will probably take steps to address slow job generation, especially in the manufacturing sector. In the past, poor physical and power infrastructure limited India’s ability to boost this sector. Today, the roadblocks are high cost of capital, labor and land. Another challenge facing the Modi government is the poor civic management of India’s cities. Presently, Indian cities are difficult to live in due to congested roads, crazy high air pollution and a lack of clean drinking water.

The Modi government would also have to tread carefully in its relations with foreign partners. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently blamed India for the assassination of a Canadian citizen in British Columbia. Similarly, the US believes that India was involved in an attempt to murder an American citizen. In India’s eyes, the two assassinated gentlemen were Sikh terrorists advocating the dismemberment of the Indian state. Both immigrated from India, the Canadian on a false passport.

Despite the diplomatic tiff, Washington and Ottawa are keen to maintain close ties with Delhi. They want to bring together all democracies in the Asia-Pacific to create a united front against China. However, India is more diffident about the West. Modi may keep the US at arm’s length, instead engaging closely with middle powers on bilateral terms. The government may also prefer a transactional foreign policy rather than a values-based one.

India’s troubled neighborhood

China is India’s northern neighbor and is indeed a threat.China disputes Indian territory in the Himalayas and has seized Aksai Chin, which India claims as part of Ladakh. India may no longer be able to rely on trade deals and economic relations to keep the peace with China.  India needs to reassess its defense architecture to deal with China.

Myanmar is currently in the midst of a civil war. In the past, militias based in Myanmar have caused trouble in the northeastern Indian states of Manipur and Nagaland. India may need to fortify its border to prevent the spillover of the Myanmarese civil war into India.

Nepal, which traditionally has close ties with India, is now trying to balance relationships with both India and China. India’s challenge is to keep Nepal firmly in its sphere of influence and prevent the expansion of Chinese influence in a country where the local communist party has become quite powerful.

Maldives recently asked India to remove its 89 soldiers and support staff. The country is growing increasingly Islamist and hostile to India. China will be all too happy to step into the vacuum but Maldives is in India’s sphere of influence. As in Nepal, India will compete with China for influence in Maldives.

Finally, relations between India and Pakistan have been deteriorating due to Islamabad’s sponsorship of cross-border terrorism. As Pakistan’s economy goes into free fall, Modi may have the opportunity to improve relations by securing a Pakistani pledge to discontinue these operations.

Modi certainly has his work cut out for him. Rising to these challenges will be crucial for the success of his third term.

[Aniruddh Rajendran wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On Tuesday, June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections. At least 644 million people have cast their votes in the largest democratic election in human history.

For most of its history since independence in 1947, India has been ruled by the Indian National…”
post_summery=”On Tuesday, June 4, India’s official election results will come out. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to win a historic third term. He will have to face the Indian economy’s growing pains as well as an aggressive China, Pakistani provocations and a civil war in Myanmar.”
post-date=”Jun 03, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Geopolitical Guru on the State of Indian Democracy, Part 2″ slug-data=”fo-talks-geopolitical-guru-on-the-state-of-indian-democracy-part-2″>

Manu Sharma”
post_date=”May 28, 2024 07:09″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-geopolitical-guru-on-the-state-of-indian-democracy/” pid=”150343″
post-content=”
On June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections, bringing this six-week saga to a close. India’s elections are the largest democratic exercise in world history, with nearly a billion registered voters participating.

India has been a democracy since its independence from Great Britain in 1947. Its constitution, which came into effect on January 26, 1950, is the world’s longest and draws inspiration from Britain, Ireland and the US. 

Fundamentally, India’s system of government is based on the British Westminster model. The Parliament of India has two houses, the Rajya Sabha (House of the States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People). The former is elected by state legislatures and is the upper house while the latter is elected directly by the people. The prime minister of India must command the support of the majority of the members of parliament (MPs) in the Lok Sabha just as the British prime minister has to command a majority in the House of Commons.

Sometimes, one party has commanded a full parliamentary majority. At other times, the largest party formed government by forging a coalition. Sometimes, larger parties support smaller parties but did not join the government. In this “outside support” tactic, the smaller parties’ leaders become prime ministers or state chief ministers. This experiment is unique to India.

How does a party “win” the Lok Sabha elections?

India is a large, vibrant, rambunctious democracy. After independence, numerous observers predicted that this poor, inexperienced country would fall into authoritarianism. India defied them all. Even under the Indira Gandhi government — India’s closest experience with Soviet-inspired one-party rule — multiparty elections continued.

Related Reading

Reasons Why India’s Big Democracy Is Dynamic

This vast nation is divided into 543 constituencies, each of which elects one Member of Parliament (MP) to the Lok Sabha. To become prime minister, a leader must have the support of 272 MPs. Thus, either one party must win 272 seats or it must find enough coalition partners to make up the magic number.

Like British parliamentary constituencies and US congressional districts, Indian constituencies use the first-past-the-post system. In this system, there is only one round of voting, and the candidate with the greatest number of votes wins, regardless of whether the candidate secures 50% of the votes. This means that if many parties fight for one seat, the candidate who gets the highest votes wins. The victor just needs one vote more than the runner-up. In 2019, the BJP won a thumping majority by winning 37.36% of the national vote. Every winning party has fallen short of the 50% vote share, including the fabled post-independence Jawaharlal Nehru-led Indian National Congress (INC).

India’s elections are largely freely and fair. In the past, violence was common during elections, as was voter intimidation. Booth capturing, a practice where goons of candidates captured voting booths and stuffed ballot boxes, was part and parcel of Indian elections. No longer is such behavior acceptable to a much more informed and assertive electorate.

The Election Commission is autonomous. It takes charge when elections are announced. Many polling booths are set up in constituencies so that people can vote in their own neighborhoods. Workers from all political parties are present at polling booths. They check both the voter list and the integrity of the process. In contrast to earlier times, when one person could stamp many votes, electronic voting machines (EVMs) have to reset each time after someone votes. In the 1990s, T.N. Seshan brought in reforms that have made elections a lot fairer than in the past.

Those who cast doubt on EVMs forget that even Indira Gandhi did not find it easy to tamper elections. The size and scale of the Indian electorate make it very difficult for anyone to rig the elections. Even in 1977, Indira Gandhi lost the elections even though she had imposed the “Emergency” and was a de facto dictator.

Indian elections are a lot cleaner than before

Many in the Indian opposition are seeking answers that explain their poor performance. They might be convinced that they merit more votes. In India, politicians tend to have big egos and cannot accept that either their performance or positioning might be lacking. So, they conjure up conspiracy theories to explain poor election results.

In part, Modi’s ascent is thanks to Seshan’s reforms and the EVMs. In the poorer parts of the country, people did not even turn up to vote. They were afraid of retribution. The Election Commission deployed police forces from other states to conduct elections, and this boosted confidence in the election process.

This increased confidence has allowed leaders like Modi and Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the relatively new Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), to emerge. Aam aadmi literally means “the common man.” Both the BJP and the AAP have leveraged technology and, like new businesses, have demonstrated more energy than the legacy business of the INC.

Since the start of Indian democracy, black money has played a role in the elections. A colorful and powerful politician remarked a few decades ago that elections were all about money, muscle power and mass appeal. The second of the two factors has declined, but the first still matters. Now, candidates are no longer giving money in sacks to journalists, student leaders, mullahs, temple priests et al. 

These intermediaries no longer matter. They cannot turn out the vote for any party. So, they do not get any money. Today, parties spend money on private jets, helicopters and hotel rooms during political campaigns. Just like the US, money is the oxygen every party and candidate needs to campaign. Unlike the US, this money comes in the form of cash. Businesses with cash such as real estate firms, lotteries and liquor chains paid political parties “off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush.”

That is why electoral bonds came into being. The argument for these bonds was that they would formalize campaign finance. They would be anonymous so that businesses would be safe from retribution for donating to one political party. Yet the Supreme Court struck down this measure. The argument of the court is that companies buying these bonds secretly casts a doubt on the integrity of the election process. Indians have a right to know who is financing their parties.

The role of money in politics has led to allegations of crony capitalism. Businessmen back politicians who then favor them in a quid pro quo. In manufacturing, real estate and many other businesses, this shadow system prevails. In India, the capitalist class participates in the political process and spreads their bets. India does not quite have the Southeast Asian-style crony capitalism that we see in countries like Indonesia. Indian politics is far more fragmented.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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post-content-short=”
On June 4, India will release the official results of its 2024 parliamentary elections, bringing this six-week saga to a close. India’s elections are the largest democratic exercise in world history, with nearly a billion registered voters participating.

India has been a democracy since its…”
post_summery=”India will release official election results on June 4. This large, poor and young democracy has defied naysayers and had free elections throughout its history. With new technology and a smarter, more assertive voter base, Indian elections are now cleaner than ever before.”
post-date=”May 28, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Geopolitical Guru on the State of Indian Democracy, Part 1″ slug-data=”fo-talks-geopolitical-guru-on-the-state-of-indian-democracy”>

Gary Grappo”
post_date=”May 24, 2024 07:01″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-the-icc-arrest-warrant-for-netanyahu-is-devastating/” pid=”150282″
post-content=”
On March 20, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Ahmad Khan requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three high-ranking members of Hamas on charges of war crimes. A panel of three judges will decide whether to issue the warrants.

In the case of South Africa v. Israel, which began on December 29, 2023, the International Court of Justice  is considering the charge of genocide against Israel. The ICC case is instead about war crimes. Prosecutors are held to an extremely high standard when proving genocide. They must prove that the accused consciously intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, either partially or totally. High death tolls do not suffice as evidence of genocide. Prosecutors have to prove genocidal intent, which is difficult.

Khan has focused not on the deaths caused by Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza but on the Israeli blockade of the territory. He alleges that Israel adopted starvation as a weapon of war, which is illegal under international humanitarian law. This is much easier to prove. 

Indeed, many far-right Israeli leaders made statements during the opening stages of the war that they intended to starve Hamas out of Gaza. Since this was just after the October 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians, one could argue that this was bluster, not intent. But the panel may not agree. It is likely that they will be satisfied that criminal intent is sufficiently plausible and issue the warrants.

Will the world take the ICC seriously?

Arresting Netanyahu would be a serious step, even for the ICC. The court doesn’t usually arrest sitting prime ministers. Furthermore, Uhuru Kenyatta humiliated the court by winning the Kenyan presidency while under ICC prosecution.

The US and Germany have strongly protested against the requested warrants. They object to the ICC equating Israel and Hamas. The US has even threatened to personally sanction the judges. In contrast, France has expressed support for the prosecution.

Critics around the world have also raised suspicions about Khan. He is British, but he is of Pakistani Pashtun descent and an Ahmadi Muslim. Khan has no history of antisemitism, but this will not stop his critics from making the accusation anyway — not only in Israel and the US but even in places like India and the UK. Religion has emerged as a faultline in international relations again.

Nonetheless, the ICC’s judgment still holds water. Its warrants will be enforceable across the 124 parties to the Rome Statute, covering most of Europe, Africa, the Americas (though not the US), Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

How will the warrants affect Israel?

Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, and Netanyahu will not be in handcuffs any time soon. But Netanyahu is a world traveler, and an ICC warrant would severely hamper his diplomatic journeys. Last summer, an ICC warrant forced Russian President Vladimir Putin to sit out the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Johannesburg. Netanyahu would be similarly caged in.

More importantly, this development is a diplomatic disaster for Israel. Israel has always seen itself as a stalwart member of the international community. Israeli leaders champion their nation as the only democracy in the Middle East. The war and the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza have damaged Israel’s reputation immensely. Now, the rebuke from an honored institution of humanitarian law is a new low.

Hamas is not a state, so the warrants are not as big of a problem for them. The militant group, long labeled terrorist by many states, is used to being portrayed as criminal. Just being associated with Hamas is a blow for Israel. International critics have called Israel an “apartheid state” for years. The proposed warrants now give them the ammunition to call Israel, however unjustly, a “terrorist state.”

After Israel’s, America’s reputation is the most exposed. The beleaguered world hegemon has suffered a lot of embarrassment lately — think of the Capitol Hill insurrection on January 6, the hasty 2022 evacuation from Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Ukraine where Russia increasingly has the upper hand. Now, unconditional US support for Israel is being held to further scorn both outside and inside the country. In fact, the US may have to reconsider the moral blank check it has given Israel so far. This isn’t the Cold War anymore when it arguably made sense to support unsavory anticommunist leaders to push back against a global Soviet menace. Today, if America wants to be the world’s moral leader, it has to keep its hands clean.

Can Israel pull out of this war?

Israel is a small country dependent on the cooperation of the international community. While it has a strong economy and a potent military, Israel cannot afford to be isolated. Israeli leaders must find a way to wrap up the war in Gaza before their country suffers too much reputational damage.

Minister without portfolio Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist National Unity party, has given Netanyahu a June 8 deadline to come up with a plan for Gaza. Even Gallant has been calling for an exit strategy. Netanyahu has been kicking this can down the road for months, probably because eliminating Hamas is a nearly impossible task.

Israel has two options. It may either attempt to occupy Gaza directly, or it must set up some kind of government that can stabilize Gaza after it pulls out. Even Israel’s closest allies would balk at occupying Gaza.

An occupation is not really militarily feasible. Already, Israel has had to redeploy troops to sectors in northern Gaza, which Israeli leaders had previously declared clear of militants. The US faced the same problem in Iraq. The US solution was to occupy problem sectors indefinitely but Israel does not have either the military or financial resources for deploying troops indefinitely.

So, Israel must find some way to solve its Hamas problem in Gaza and do so quickly. Hezbollah, an Islamist militant group in Lebanon, is a perpetual threat to the north. If Hezbollah fighters attacked while Israeli troops were still tied up in Gaza, Israel would be trapped in an unsustainable two-front war.

The grim reality is that there will be no progress toward a stable solution until Netanyahu signals that he is willing to hold serious talks about Palestinian statehood. Note that he has never done so before and has been implacably opposed to a two-state solution.

As the war goes on, factors that could aid peace are weakening. At the beginning of the conflict, many onlookers suggested the possibility of an interim government led by the Arab League or powerful Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These rich Gulf states have the cash to rebuild Gaza’s economy but the outrage on the Arab street against Israel makes it impossible for Arab leaders to engage with their Israeli counterparts. Arab leaders fear revolt from their own people for selling out to the hated crusader state.

The US would doubtless have a role to play in any end to conflict in Gaza. However, the Americans will want to see the first stages of a democratic transition if they get involved. Gaza will have to hold elections. This opens another can of worms though. What happens if Hamas wins? The Muslim Brotherhood, which gave birth to Hamas, won democratic elections after the 2011 Egyptian uprisings. Hamas itself won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Should Israel really cede power back to Hamas after fighting a costly war to remove it?

Besides, it’s not clear who would even set up Gazan democracy. The Gulf states are absolute monarchies and have no institutional experience of democracy. Israel or the US are unlikely to try their hand at state-building because, as Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, it is risky, protracted and expensive.

No war ever goes the way leaders think it will. Netanyahu thought that he could destroy Hamas, pack up and go home. In the summer of 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II told his German troops that they would be home “before the leaves fall from the trees.” These unfortunate Germans would be home only five autumns later, minus two million of their countrymen.

At the outset of the Gaza war, US President Joe Biden warned Netanyahu: “Don’t do what we did.” Don’t get stuck in an invasion with no exit strategy like the US did in Iraq.

Netanyahu didn’t listen.

[Anton Schauble wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On March 20, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Ahmad Khan requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three high-ranking members of Hamas on charges of war crimes. A panel of three judges will decide…”
post_summery=”ICC prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan has requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have been charged with war crimes. The specific charge is not genocide but using starvation as a weapon of war. The latest development has further dented Israel’s international reputation and is a huge blow to Netanyahu who is now locked into a war with no end in sight.”
post-date=”May 24, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: The ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu Is Devastating” slug-data=”fo-talks-the-icc-arrest-warrant-for-netanyahu-is-devastating”>

Gary Grappo”
post_date=”May 21, 2024 03:46″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-live-make-sense-of-the-new-israel-iran-clash/” pid=”150225″
post-content=”
On April 1, an Israeli airstrike hit the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. The action killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including the most senior Iranian military officer in the region, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. He was the head of the elite IRGC Quds Force, in Lebanon and Syria, and thus the key liaison between Tehran and its Arab militia allies in the region, particularly Hezbollah.

On April 14, Iran retaliated with a large airstrike of 330 missiles and drones targeted across Israel. This marks the first time Iran has directly struck Israeli territory. Israel came into being in 1948 and has faced attacks from its Arab neighbors in the past. In a historic development, the Arab states have stood by Israel while Iran has attacked the Jewish state.

On April 19, Israel responded with a small missile strike in Natanz, which is in Iran’s central Esfahan province. The attack targeted an airbase close to nuclear facilities.

Iran has not retaliated against this latest strike. For the moment things seem to be calm. However, there is no telling whether this latest escalation will be the end of hostilities between the two Middle Eastern powers.

Fair Observer Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh spoke with retired CIA operations officer Glenn Carle and distinguished US diplomat Gary Grappo who retired as the Envoy and Head of Mission of the Office of the Quartet Representative in Jerusalem.

At that time, Tony Blair occupied this position after he left 10 Downing Street. Blair had success in bringing peace to Northern Ireland but his magic did not quite work with Israelis and Palestinians. Relations between the two had deteriorated by then and Blair himself was damaged goods after the 2003 Iraq War.

Carle played a key role in the War on Terror and has a deep understanding of radical Islamist terrorism. Likewise, few experts and analysts know the Middle East as well as Grappo who was also the US Ambassador to Oman. Singh is no expert on the region but has studied it with avid interest, is an astute analyst of geopolitics and an insightful interlocutor.

Iran shows that it can strike Israel if it wants to

Iran struck Israel with 330 drones and missiles. Many were outdated and slow-flying pieces (or even duds). Unsurprisingly, they fell easy prey to Israeli air defenses. International media were quick to report that Israel and its US, British and French allies successfully shot down 99% of the incoming weapons. 

While technically true, this soundbite misses an important fact. Iran used most of these missiles and drones as decoys. Shooting down these Iranian weapons cost the allies an arm and a leg. More worryingly, Iran struck all the Israeli targets it had identified, signaling its ability to hit any part of Israel anytime. This “swarm attack” tactic may be a harbinger of things to come in modern Middle Eastern warfare.

While Iran achieved tactical success, Israel’s security architecture proved resilient. Its Western allies came to its aid and so did its Arab neighbors. If the Arab states’ tacit support for Israel were not so solid, the situation would be a lot more volatile.

More than two weeks have passed without further incident. For now, the situation seems to be stable. However, Iran and Israel have now crossed a line that they cannot un-cross. What has long been a shadow war or a regional cold war — involving cyberattacks, honey traps, assassinations et al. — has now turned into a hot war.  This is the first time that Iranians and Jews have fought one another since ancient times. 

Despite the fireworks, there are no reported casualties as yet. Iran had broadcasted its attack days in advance, giving Israel time to prepare. In addition, they targeted military assets, not populated areas. The Iranian attack sought to avenge their honor and signal to Israel that Tehran would strike back in a more aggressive manner going forward.

Encouragingly, all sides have pulled back from all-out war. They have let off some steam, and deft diplomacy behind the scenes has prevented the escalation of conflict in the region as well as saved the global economy from another oil shock.

Still, both sides can make mistakes and random incidents can trigger conflict. No one predicted the assassination of Austrian heir apparent, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, that led to World War I. Likewise, a stray Hezbollah missile striking an Israeli village could spark a war.

Indeed, Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been exchanging strikes across the Israel–Lebanon border. This conflict has already threatened to break out into war more than once. At the beginning of the Israel–Hamas war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu wanted to mount a preemptive strike against Hezbollah. Only with difficulty did the US persuade him not to. The resulting two-front war against both Hamas and Hezbollah would have dragged Israel’s ally Uncle Sam into the conflict.

Hezbollah is Iran’s oldest and dearest ally in the Levant. The two powers share the Twelver Shia Muslim faith. Iran views its other Arab partners, like Hamas (which is Sunni) and the Houthis (which belong to a different Shia sect), as pawns. They may be expended to gain Tehran an advantage. Hezbollah is not a pawn but a queen on Iran’s geopolitical chessboard. Tehran would not risk Hezbollah’s destruction unless there was an existential threat to the Iranian state.

Hezbollah does not all-out want war either. This Shia militia still remembers the savage beating the IDF gave them in the 2006 Israel–Lebanon war. Although Hezbollah survived that conflict, its leaders have no desire to see another war devastate southern Lebanon and damage their dominance in Beirut.

Still, unless Israel and Iran somehow decide to live and let live, the tit for tat will continue, and a serious incident can easily happen. To prevent this scenario, the two sides must negotiate. But they cannot do so without a trustworthy mediator that can credibly speak for each side’s interests. Neither the UN nor the US is capable of doing so, and it is not clear who this mediator could be.

Hawks are in charge from Tehran to Jerusalem as US campuses erupt

While things are calm for a moment, the prospects for peace look poor.

Iran struck Israel in revenge for IRGC officers. This echoes similar events in 2020. On January 3, the US assassinated Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force. Iran took revenge by striking an American airbase in Iraq, injuring more than 100 US soldiers. Like the April 2024 attack, Iran was striking its adversary directly for the first time, and for the same reason: to defend the honor of the IRGC.

This suggests a disturbing possibility. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei does not want war. Yet he has twice compromised, allowed direct attacks and risked war. At least as far as war policy goes, the Supreme Leader may no longer be in the driver’s seat. The hardline IRGC seems to be directing things.

Hardliners are also running the show in Israel. Israel has a unicameral legislature elected by proportional representation. This creates a fragmented multiparty system. The main political parties need the support of small extremist parties to form a coalition government. These extremists can easily make or break a coalition, giving these small parties outsized influence. Any coalition leader would be beholden to extremist allies in the Knesset (Israeli parliament). Bibi is especially beholden because he is desperately clinging to power. He is accused of corruption and has pending proceedings in court. When Bibi’s prime ministership ends, so will his immunity from prosecution and he might end up in jail.

Bibi, who is already a right-wing Zionist himself, relies for support on far-right leaders like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. These religious Zionists still harbor the hope of incorporating all of Palestine into the Jewish state. Israel thus finds itself led by a cadre of nationalists with an extreme, even messianic commitment to the war.

Unfortunately, Israel has committed itself to the impossible. It has found that, despite its first-class intelligence capability and its overwhelming superiority in firepower, the IDF cannot achieve its stated war goal of destroying Hamas. Israel has failed to learn a lesson that Iraq bitterly taught the United States earlier in this century: armies are only good for destroying other armies or cities or other physical targets. However, they cannot build a society, change minds or even contain extremism.

After seven months of brutal fighting, the IDFhas failed to destroy Hamas or liberate the hostages this extremist militia kidnapped on October 7, 2023. Yet the Jewish state is fanatically devoted to fighting a brutal war, regardless of the cost. So, the IDF has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and degraded the lives of over two million people..

While most Israelis despise Netanyahu, a majority still support the war effort. Most are not right-wing extremists, yet they do not seem to understand how their ongoing war is unwinnable. The longer the war goes on, the more Palestinian resentment rises. Reports of abuse against Arab civilians in the West Bank, where reservists perform primarily law-and-order duties, are increasingly frequent. Note that most of these IDF reservists are secular Jews, not religious Haredis (a community of Orthodox Jews). Clearly, anti-Arab sentiment in Israel is on the rise. 

Israel’s actions have led to public outrage not only in the Muslim world but also the West. Attitudes are shifting in the international community and particularly within the US, which has long been Israel’s guardian angel. Protests have broken out in US college campuses, reminding many of the upheaval in 1978. 

Some student protests have turned violent, with fistfights between protesters and counter-protestors. Many protesters are wearing Palestinian keffiyehs — black and white cloth head coverings — and some have even waved Hamas flags. Protesters have dramatically occupied university buildings and police have entered campuses to make mass arrests.

Importantly, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. Many young Democrats harbor a deep animosity for Israel, which they perceive as a white imperialist project, and have unprecedented solidarity with Palestinians. Many of these young Democrats come from Arab or Muslim backgrounds, and do not feel the instinctive sympathy with Israel that many Americans have felt for decades. Even white Americans who are the children of Baby Boomers increasingly see Israel as an apartheid state that has grabbed the land of dark-skinned Palestinians and continues to exploit them.

US President Joe Bide is a Democrat and now faces a revolt within his own party. He is avowedly pro-Israel and has even described himself as a Zionist. While pro-Palestinian Democrats are unlikely to nominate a rival candidate, many of them feel betrayed by Biden and will not vote for him again in November. This could tip the scales in favor of the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump whom Biden replaced as president. In 1968, similar college campus protests in support of the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War harmed the Democratic campaign of Hubert Humphrey and clinched the election for Republican candidate Richard Nixon.

What would it take to resolve the conflict?

With hardliners in charge of Israel and Iran, it is hard to imagine what negotiations would look like. Any peace settlement would require Israel to have a credible Palestinian interlocutor, a role which neither the terrorist Hamas nor the hopelessly corrupt Fatah, which governs the West Bank, can play.

Yet negotiations will be necessary for any sort of lasting solution. Israel’s failure to destroy Hamas has proven that a one-sided Israeli solution is not feasible. Indeed, the IDF has already partly withdrawn from Gaza and peace talks have intensified.

There are ways to end this conflict. If Hamas released all the remaining hostages, that would take the wind out of Israel’s war sails. Hamas’s allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis say that they will stand down in case of a ceasefire. While we cannot take the statements of these two Iran-backed Shia militias at face value, there is good reason to believe they might be telling the truth.

Ultimately, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and poor treatment of Palestinians fuels Arab and Iranian hostility towards the Jewish state. If Israel were to grant Palestinians a state, such bitter hatred for Israel would not exist. Israel’s relentless nibbling of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza is the raison d’être for the rise of extremist groups arrayed against the Jewish state. A two-state solution — towards which a ceasefire would be a necessary first step — would resolve decades-long Israeli-Palestinian tension.

In this conflict, no one’s hands are clean. Both Palestine and Israel have passed up chances for peace before. In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat came closest to peace at the Camp David Summit with US President Bill Clinton. Yet Arafat ultimately refused all proposals and began the Second Intifada (uprising) later that year. Israelis perceived this as a slap in the face after what they say as a generous offer of peace. Yet, in the following years, Bibi himself scuttled the possibility of a two-state solution. Notably, Israel committed a strategic blunder by covertly supporting Hamas to undercut Fatah. In hindsight, this move was spectacularly shortsighted.

For now, those in charge in Israel need the war to continue. The Israeli far right will not contemplate a two-state solution because it would involve renouncing forever their ambition to unite all of Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel). Perversely, Iran and its extremist allies need the conflict to continue too in order to justify their pavlovian hatred of Israel. It also helps the mullahs to retain their vice-like grip on power by whipping up public support by taking on Israel. The existence of a Palestinian state, giving Palestinians both a physical and symbolic home, would undercut hardliners in both Jerusalem and Tehran.

The peace process cannot begin until Israelis take back their country from the ilk of Bibi, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir — no small feat in Israel’s proportional system. Yet even then, only heroic leaders on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, capable of forcing their own peoples to give up on cherished aspirations and agree to a realistic deal, could possibly conclude a peace agreement and find a solution to a so-far intractable problem.

[Anton Schauble wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On April 1, an Israeli airstrike hit the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. The action killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including the most senior Iranian military officer in the region, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. He was the head of…”
post_summery=”On April 14 and April 19, Iran and Israel struck each other’s national territories for the first time. While both countries’ leaderships want to avoid further escalation, risks of an Israel-Iran war have risen while prospects for a peaceful solution to the Israel-Hamas War seem bleak. Protests have broken out in American college campuses and young Democrats may turn against a president who they feel has betrayed them.”
post-date=”May 21, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Live: Make Sense of the New Israel–Iran Clash” slug-data=”fo-live-make-sense-of-the-new-israel-iran-clash”>

Sebastian Schäffer”
post_date=”May 19, 2024 03:35″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-where-is-ukraine-headed-now-what-does-europe-think/” pid=”150196″
post-content=”
Sebastian Schaffer, who is Managing Director of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, a partner of Fair Observer, visited Kyiv in 2023. There, he saw the destruction wrought by the Russian invasion of Ukraine firsthand. Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital while he was there. 

This year, Schaffer returned by visiting the cities of Uzhhorod and Lviv. This trip was safer, yet more psychologically draining than the first. In 2023, morale was high. Ukrainians were confident. Now, the fatigue is palpable. Constant attacks on civilian infrastructure wound and kill people as Western support trickles in slowly . 

This is the Kremlin’s strategy, and it’s succeeding. Momentum is clearly on Russia’s side, and the longer the campaign lasts, the further Ukrainian morale sinks.

Will Russia win? What could this victory mean for Europe?

NATO vs. Russian expansionism

It’s unlikely Russia can fully occupy Ukraine. Russia can’t win by suffocating Ukrainian morale until they stop resisting — and Ukrainians know a loss would bring death, destruction and rape.

No one knows now exactly what a Russian victory could bring. Political scientist John Mearsheimer argues that Russia is not expansionist and it will stop after it secures the territory it now holds. Others say that Russia intends to overrun Ukraine entirely and that it will bring its conquest to other countries next. This would usher in a perilous era for Central and Eastern Europe.

Mearsheimer argues that Russia acted to achieve one political aim: preventing NATO from expanding further eastward. Russia sees its near abroad as a defensive bulwark against potential NATO military invasion. The United States reacted similarly in the 1960s when Soviet Union tried to advance into Cuba.

Hypothetically, Russia could achieve certain goals and then freeze the conflict. But to do that, it would have to control what it believes is now its sovereign territory, namely four Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhia. Russia organized sham referenda to annex these areas. As long as these oblasts remain partly outside of Russia’s grasp, negotiation seems unlikely. Likewise, on the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cannot negotiate a peace that would involve the surrender of national territory. This would violate Ukraine’s constitution.

Mearsheimer is right that the positioning of NATO missiles in Ukraine would be an existential threat to Russia that the federation would necessarily have to stop. But this could have been achieved through negotiation and reasonable planning. Instead, Russia denied Ukrainian statehood and began gobbing up pieces of it. Far from carrying out a defensive action, the Kremlin used the purported threat of NATO to justify its violation of international law.

The European divide

The Russia–Ukraine War is the first large-scale conflict in Europe since the fall of Berlin in 1945. French President Emmanuel Macron tried making peace with Putin in 2022, but now he’s asking for Western troops in -Ukraine. Once a dove, he’s now become a hawk. In his view, if Ukraine falls, others will follow.

Despite this, Europe will not get tougher with Russia. There are too many sovereign states with too many different approaches for that to happen. This is a hybrid war — a war that combines conventional and irregular warfare. A narrative battle rages inside each country in tandem with the deadly campaign in Ukraine.

Many countries are noticing this extra dimension. The last two years have brought a fundamental shift in thought: If Europe can’t defend the Ukrainians who are fighting for the EU’s values, how can it protect those principles? Europe’s security structure was destroyed on February 24, 2022; its freedom, values and democratic way of life are in jeopardy. Further, Europe cannot rely on NATO’s Article 5 to defend itself. The US will not necessarily interve to defend Europe in the event of a limited engagement in eastern Poland or the Baltics, which Russia could plausibly try. If Article 42.7 of the Treaty of Lisbon — the EU’s mutual defense clause — is not to be a dead letter, Europe must have an independent defensive capability.

This viewpoint has divided Europe. Many Europeans lack the will to fight, believing the threat to be exaggerated. Italy and Spain are far from Russia and protected by high mountains; the idea of Russian tanks threatening these southerly nations sounds like science fiction.

France and Germany have always shared the Great European Plain — easy to drive tanks across — with Russia and so perceive the possibility of war, however remote, as more realistic. Yet both nations are internally split on Russia. France has a semi-presidential system where Macron can dictate policy, but many in the National Assembly do not share his  hawkish views.

On the other side, Germany has a parliamentary system where three parties form the government coalition: the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party and the Liberals. There are hawkish Social Democrats, dovish Liberals and both tendencies in the Green Party. It’s difficult for these parties to compromise when debating a common policy.

On February 27, 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered the famous Zeitenwende (“Watershed”) speech in the Bundestag. He announced a change to the country’s security and foreign policy, upping defense spending significantly. Germany was to take an active role as a member of NATO. Yet Germany doesn’t want to get involved in this war. Unlike France, it has a large, resource-hungry manufacturing industry — and no nuclear plants to power it. This makes Germany much more dependant than France on Russian fossil fuels. War means that energy costs skyrocket, growth plummets and industry suffers. Already, Germans are saying that they’re the real losers of the war.

Danube regional affairs

Along with Ukraine and Germany, Europe’s Danube region consists of Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. As Ukraine’s neighbors, these countries would be directly affected if Russia occupied its entirety.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has taken a questionable, pro-Russian attitude. Traditionally, Hungarians are suspicious of Russia, with dark memories of Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest to crush the Hungarian uprising against Bolshevism in 1956. Yet Orbán’s social contract with the Hungarian people relies on growth that cheap Russian gas fuels. Hungary has notoriously made a long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom energy corporation. Meanwhile, Budapest vetos EU measures to aid Ukraine. The country’s stance seems rooted in business, not ideology.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico resigned from power in 2018 over a political crisis: Journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, nearly exposed a financial flow running through the government, but were silenced mafia-style. Now, Fico regained the people’s favor by using their frustration with the war; he was re-elected in 2023. He blames his country’s high inflation on the war and the war on anti-Russian Western policy.

Just outside the Danube region, Poland is also divided on how to should position itself. Supporters of the nationalist Law and Justice party are less hawkish on Russia. Yet Law and Justice is no longer in power as of 2023. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s new government marks a return to upholding European values and feels that, if Europe does not stop Russia at the Donets, they will soon have to do so at the Bug.

Poland is a hotspot because, if it feels threatened and insufficiently protected by NATO, it may decide to develop its own nuclear weapons. Indeed, Europe needs a nuclear deterrent independent from that of the US. This war has caused Europe to see that it must stand on its own two feet, invest in military production and prepare to defend itself. If Russia makes a move, the Yanks may not be coming.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
Sebastian Schaffer, who is Managing Director of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe, a partner of Fair Observer, visited Kyiv in 2023. There, he saw the destruction wrought by the Russian invasion of Ukraine firsthand. Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian capital while he was…”
post_summery=”Russia now has the upper hand as Ukrainian morale is plummeting due to lack of weapons, ammunition, money and fighting men. An expansionist Russia threatens Europe, which stands divided. The time has come for Europeans to make tough choices and stand up to Russia.”
post-date=”May 19, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Where Is Ukraine Headed Now? What Does Europe Think?” slug-data=”fo-talks-where-is-ukraine-headed-now-what-does-europe-think”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”May 08, 2024 03:30″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-indian-elections-mammoth-and-unparalleled/” pid=”150045″
post-content=”
No less than 969 million people out of India’s population of 1.4 billion are voting from April 19 to June 1 in the world’s biggest elections ever. They will decide who will be the next Indian prime minister. Across 28 states and eight union territories, officials who organize the elections may walk 30–50 kilometers (20–30 miles), sometimes at high altitude, to record a single person’s vote, making these elections a herculean logistical feat.

Modeled after Great Britain’s Westminster system, India is a parliamentary democracy. After all, Westminster ruled India for nearly two centuries — indirectly through the East India Company from 1757 to 1858 and then directly from 1858 to 1947 when India achieved its independence. This year, from May to June, citizens will vote for members of parliament (MPs) in the lower house, called the Lok Sabha. Parties are contesting 543 seats, and the leader who commands 272 MPs (a 50% + 1 majority) will become prime minister. The results are set to be announced on June 4.

Electoral map of India. Via ExactlyIndeed on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Who are the key players in the Indian elections?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been in office since 2014 and is likely to win a historic third term. The BJP is a right-leaning nationalist party which opponents call Hindi fascists or Hindu supremacists. These critics allege, often with much exaggeration, how minorities feel threatened in India. In particular, Muslims are said to be under siege. Notably, Modi is India’s first backward-class prime minister — a set of communities deemed to be historically disadvantaged because of India’s inequitable caste system — and is popular both amongst India’s middle class and its poor.

Even opponents praise Modi for targeted welfare programs. He has distributed free food grains to a staggering 813.5 million people. His government gives low-income women a monthly stipend of 1,200.50 rupees (approximately $16) and also provides cheap sanitary napkins for better menstrual health. The Modi government has built sanitation systems, provided piped clean water and delivered cooking gas cylinders throughout India. Naturally, poor women tend to vote for the Modi-led BJP.

Related Reading

Why Women Support Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Modi’s main contender is the left-leaning Indian National Congress (INC), which once led the freedom struggle. The INC has a rich history and was once democratic but now has become a dynastic fiefdom of the Nehru dynasty. Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s first prime minister and the son of a famous INC leader Motilal Nehru. He was a Fabian socialist who looked up to the Soviet Union but kept his distance from Moscow. Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi) jumped enthusiastically into bed with the Soviets and amended the constitution to declare India a socialist country. Indira’s grandson Rahul now is the leader of the INC, and he is running on a populist leftist platform, promising freebies to the public such as monthly cash transfers, increased subsidies, more government jobs and generous pensions.

There are other opposition parties in addition to the INC. They are often regional parties, but they tend to be more dynamic than the INC. The new Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rules Punjab and Delhi. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which elects 39 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the established Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) is in power led by M.K. Stalin (who is neither a love child nor relative of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin).

The border state of West Bengal elects 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha. This state is the western half of the historical Bengal, which was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947. (East Bengal eventually declared independence 1971 and became Bangladesh.) Today, Mamata Banerjee, who left the INC when the Nehru family failed to give this regional satrap her due, rules West Bengal.

What are their records and what lies ahead?

The Modi government has done a great job building infrastructure. They are constructing roads, ports and railway lines day and night. Nitin Gadkari has been an exceptional minister of road transport and highways. Many middle-class Indians want him, instead of Modi, to be prime minister.

The Modi government has also built digital infrastructure. It has reduced the infamous leakage in government welfare programs. Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father, once admitted that only 15% of the disbursed amount reached the intended beneficiaries. By implementing a national identity card scheme, opening bank accounts for hundreds of millions and delivering benefits directly to their accounts, the Modi-led BJP government has reduced theft dramatically. Hence, Modi has a reputation for competence and the BJP has replaced the INC as the dominant party in Indian politics.

Yet Modi has made some wrong calls too. In 2016, he imposed demonetization — withdrawal of high-denomination currency notes — with no notice. This destroyed small businesses around the country and, in part, caused the unemployment crisis that India is suffering today. He practices what one of the two authors has called Modi’s policies Sanatan socialism.

Related Reading

India Enters the Era of Sanatan Socialism

Modi has made business and entrepreneurship a lot easier in this historically socialist economy. However, he still relies heavily on the bureaucracy, particularly the colonial, corrupt and spectacularly incompetent Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Policymaking continues to be haphazard, and the IAS still remains arbitrary. Businesses suffer because of a lack of policy certainty as well excessive regulation.

In fact, even members of the BJP and its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), complain about Modi’s excessive centralization of power. Some BJP and RSS leaders go so far as to say that Modi is Indira Gandhi “true son” because of his absolutist tendencies. They even complain that Modi runs an IAS government with mere outside support from the BJP and the RSS.

Related Reading

Narendra Modi Is the New Indira Gandhi, Only Much Worse

For all his faults, Modi is still more free-market than opposition party leaders. The INC is promising Latin American-style populism to voters, which would derail growth and could even bankrupt the government. So, Modi is benefiting from what Indian political analysts call the “there is no alternative” (TINA) factor.

[Gwyneth Campbell wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
No less than 969 million people out of India’s population of 1.4 billion are voting from April 19 to June 1 in the world’s biggest elections ever. They will decide who will be the next Indian prime minister. Across 28 states and eight union territories, officials who organize the elections may…”
post_summery=”The world’s biggest-ever elections are underway in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has built a reputation for competence but is also known to be an absolutist who concentrates power in his hands. A fragmented opposition, with many disparate parties, promising Latin American-style populism with a feckless, fifth-generation dynast at the helm inspires little confidence amongst India’s voters.”
post-date=”May 08, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: Indian Elections — Mammoth and Unparalleled” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-indian-elections-mammoth-and-unparalleled”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”May 06, 2024 06:49″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-us-congress-gives-ukraine-sizable-if-not-timely-aid/” pid=”150024″
post-content=”
The United States Congress has two houses: The upper house is the Senate, and the lower house is the House of Representatives. The latter has the primary responsibility for the country’s budget and thus controls the proverbial purse strings. Currently, the liberal Democratic Party controls the presidency and the Senate, while the conservative Republican Party controls the House.

For a long time, House Republicans prevented aid going to war-torn Ukraine. They either did not want to transfer any money, could not agree on the amount or wanted to tie the Ukrainian vote to other issues such as border control. But now, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has finally shepherded a bill with Democratic support that gives Ukraine $95 billion in aid. The bill passed the House on April 20, 2024, and the Senate approved it on April 23.

This aid package is significant, but is it too late? What are the consequences of this aid?

Ukraine should thwart Russian offensive but Putin will still remain in charge

The aid package cannot reverse the tens of thousands of casualties Ukraine has suffered, nor will it save the territory it has lost so far to the Russian armed forces. Yet it might save the country from still more dire consequences. Ukraine was losing territory and its complete collapse to Russia was probable. Now with this US package and equal European aid, Ukraine has a shot at avoiding that grisly fate.Without the aid, NATO would have taken a crippling blow and US–European strategic relations would have suffered with Europe would have been left on its own to fund Ukraine. Ukraine, as we know it, would almost certainly have been destroyed.

Another potential consequence would have been the confirmation of Russian imperium in Central Europe and the Baltic states. If Russia successfully toppled Ukraine, it seems likely that Moldova, Georgia and the Baltic states would be in extreme danger. Poland, especially, would have had to think long and hard about its response. It would probably try to develop a nuclear weapon, which would not help global stability.

Failure to pass the package may have confirmed and strengthened what people derisively view as the Russia–China–Iran axis. The three countries view their alliance as a defensive one against US imperium.

So, what happens now? With disaster presumably averted, there will probably be a period of stasis. Then, Russia will likely launch a major series of offensives in June or earlier. However, these are unlikely to achieve much success. It is difficult to say if peace negotiations are now more likely to happen in 2025. But US aid makes such a future possible.

The Russia–Ukraine War is causing suffering akin to World War I’s trench warfare. Modern technology has made offensives more difficult than ever, because nothing can be hidden on the battlefield. So, a potential Russian offensive is unlikely to succeed.

Yet this is unlikely to affect Russian President Vladimir Putin. He and his assistants excel at projecting the image of authority, strength, stability and control. When dealing with a dictator, those things are true until they aren’t. For now, Putin will persist as Russia’s ruler. Note that Russia is more motivated than the US to win the war, its economy is doing well while the Ukrainian economy has cratered and European allies might be losing the will to continue the fight.

US aid bolsters Europe and deters China but Russia remains ascendant

Thanks to the aid package, US relations with Europe will improve. The US has also bolstered its centrality in international relations. Thus, the normative system and the stability it brings might still hold.

Europe remains a key player in global affairs, but it cannot defend itself. The US subsidizes Europe’s security through NATO. Pax Americana — a state of relative international peace typically overseen by the US — guarantees peace in Europe, but Europe would need to assemble its defenses to increase its international influence. Even if Europe moves decisively, it will take a decade to build defense capabilities under the best of circumstances.

There are implications for Asia as well. Russia has struggled to defeat a much smaller neighbor with which it shares a border. China has surely paid attention to that fact. Invading Taiwan would be an amphibious exercise and thus even more difficult. China had hoped the US might balk in the event of a Chinese military invasion to bring Taiwan into its One China system. But the US has shown a surprising ability to sustain a beleaguered country that will surely give China pause.

The Russian economy is doing fairly well. The country’s big challenge was capital flight — a large-scale exodus of financial assets and capital from a nation due to political or economic instability. Russia sold commodities — particularly oil and gas, but also nickel, copper and other metals —  but the money that came into Russia would immediately flow out to yachts in Monaco and football clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal in England. Just as World War II was good for the US economy, so is the Russia-Ukraine War good for Russia’s.

Related Reading

The Myth of Economic Armageddon: The Truth About Western Sanctions on Russia

Furthermore, from the paranoid Russian perspective, the expansion of NATO is an existential threat. The government seems to believe that if Ukraine were to join NATO, Russia would face a disaster equivalent to the Mongol invasion. Russia’s fighting ability has not weakened and its forces are on the ascendant in the battlefield.

In contrast, the Ukrainian economy contracted by an estimated 35% in 2023. Economic and military aid is keeping the country together. At some point, this aid might not be forthcoming. Russia is striving to capitalize on its enemy’s feeble condition. Pro-Putin candidates are on the rise in Europe as Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia demonstrate.

Yet Russia is unlikely to claim massive swathes of Western Europe or even western Ukraine. Likewise, Ukraine is unlikely to win back territory that Russia now controls. A frozen conflict looms for the near future.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
The United States Congress has two houses: The upper house is the Senate, and the lower house is the House of Representatives. The latter has the primary responsibility for the country’s budget and thus controls the proverbial purse strings. Currently, the liberal Democratic Party controls the…”
post_summery=”Washington’s recent $95 billion aid package to Kyiv will avoid Ukraine’s collapse and NATO’s obsolescence. For now, conflict will continue and Ukraine may be able to fight on for another day.”
post-date=”May 06, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: US Congress Gives Ukraine Sizable, if Not Timely, Aid” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-us-congress-gives-ukraine-sizable-if-not-timely-aid”>

Glenn Carle”
post_date=”May 04, 2024 02:48″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-exclusive-conflict-in-the-middle-east-is-now-dangerous/” pid=”149984″
post-content=”
On April 1, Israel conducted an airstrike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. The strike killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Two of them were top commanders. Iran called the attack a violation of their diplomatic territory. Their response came in the form of 330 missiles and drones launched into Israeli territory. Although 99% of the incoming weapons were shot down, this was the first direct attack by Iran on Israeli soil. So, the situation in the Middle East has become even more explosive.

Israel’s counter-response hit Natanz, in Iran’s central Esfahan province. However, both sides seem to be dialing down the rhetoric for now. Iran declared Israel’s strikes as ineffective and said it saw no reason for a second retaliation. While the tit-for-tat exchange between Iran and Israel may have let off enough steam to prevent an all-out war, the situation remains dangerous. Deep undercurrents drive the current turmoil and have heavy ramifications.

Regional politics are on a dangerous precipice

After suffering negative headlines for months, Israel has won back some international sympathy due to the Iranian attack. However, the Israeli political system is now fundamentally unstable. Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s war leadership has proved ineffective, and his political position is precarious. 

Though the administration is in paralysis, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are still the top dogs in the region. Their attack on Damascus almost eliminated the entire leadership of the IRGC. In addition, the Arab Sunni states surrounding Israel helped shoot down Iran’s missiles and drones.

Iran’s attack shows both their strengths and limitations. They have indeed hit Israel. Though international media were quick to report that 99% of the missiles and drones were destroyed, most of these were outdated tech that Iran used as decoys. The 1% that made it through included serious missiles that successfully struck their targets. However, this capability alone will do Iran little good. The Islamic Republic has no allies in the region except for non-state entities like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. Not one Arab state supported their attack on Israel.

However, the attack is useful for domestic purposes. Iran’s mullahs use the Israel–Hamas war as a tool to increase their public support. Handily, this saber-rattling against Israel also wins Iran greater popularity on the Arab street and boosts its power in the Middle East.

This anti-Israel sentiment makes the region more volatile. It comes at a time when the Israeli political system is weak and the IDF, their much-vaunted prowess, have been unable to achieve either of their war goals: rescuing the hostages and destroying Hamas. 

Although support for Bibi has dipped, the majority of Israelis is still in favor of the current military operation. At the same time, brutality by IDF soldiers in the West Bank has actually increased the popularity of Hamas in that moth-eaten Palestinian territory. In Gaza, Hamas is still in charge. There’s no sign the violence that began thanks to the terrible terrorist attacks of October 7 will decrease any time soon.

Things could very easily get a lot worse

The ramifications of the region’s political unrest have reached the US. Mass protests have erupted in college campuses over President Joe Biden’s support for Israel. Young people believe that Israel is conducting genocide and the US is complicit in this crime. So, they are up in arms against Biden.

Related Reading

Do You Think the Startling Columbia Protests Were Peaceful?

If public opinion has turned against Israel in American college campuses, imagine what it must be like in Arab countries. Many Western observers rejoice at the fact that Arab countries oppose Iran and tacitly, though not overtly, support Israel. Yet there is a fly in the ointment. The Arab palace and the Arab street do not see eye to eye on Israel.

In fact, many Arabs see their rulers as traitors who are selling out like Judas for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver. There is a real risk of a second Arab uprising. Should Arab mullahs gain power like their Iranian counterparts in the not-too-distant future, Israel would find governments arguably even more hostile than Iran’s in their near neighborhood. It goes without saying that this would inflame tensions in the Middle East even further.

[Cheyenne Torres wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
On April 1, Israel conducted an airstrike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. The strike killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Two of them were top commanders. Iran called the attack a violation of their diplomatic territory. Their response came in the…”
post_summery=”Iran has struck Israel directly for the first time and made a point. Israel has struck back, but both sides are now dialing down their rhetoric. The historic Iranian strike increases risks for Israel, wins popularity on the Arab street and portends an even more inflammable Middle East.”
post-date=”May 04, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Exclusive: Conflict in the Middle East Is Now Dangerous” slug-data=”fo-exclusive-conflict-in-the-middle-east-is-now-dangerous”>

Patrick Weil”
post_date=”April 27, 2024 05:40″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-france-in-crisis-macron-now-in-bed-with-far-right/” pid=”149823″
post-content=”
French President Emmanuel Macron’s new immigration policy has shocked many French citizens. This policy sought to restrict legal protections for asylum seekers and even accelerated the deportation process. Once praised for his moderate politics, Macron now has lurched to the right.

In order to pass the new immigration bill, Macron negotiated with the far-right majority in the French Senate. Shockingly, he agreed with many of the extreme conservative amendments added to the bill by Marine Le Pen’s party, National Rally. Consequently, the immigration bill has passed successfully.

The National Rally began in the 1960s as the militant, racist, fascist National Front created by Marine’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Many of its ideals remain the same. Thus, Macron’s deal with the party has caused a great political upheaval in France. So far, no ruling president has worked with this far-right party. Now, all of a sudden, Macron and the far right have struck an alliance on immigration. Why has the French president switched teams? The answer lies in the concentration of power in Élysée Palace — the French president’s official residence —and Macron’s narcissistic opportunism.

French elections are not like American ones

Every five years, France goes to the polls and elects presidents and legislators. Earlier the presidential term was seven years. This allowed for a midterm legislative election and often led to cohabitation. This term referred to the phenomenon in which the president and the prime minister, who enjoyed a legislative majority, belonged to opposing parties. This curtailed the power of even charismatic presidents like François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac.

Cohabitation often led to gridlock, so the French now have five-year terms for both the president and the legislators. This constitutional change has concentrated further power in the hands of the president.

In 2022, Emmanuel Macron was reelected, defeating Marine Le Pen. Despite her attempts to clean up National Rally’s appearance, Marine is really just about as far-right as her father Jean-Marie. The French held their noses and voted for Macron, but the vast majority did not want him to have the extensive powers of the presidency. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, which Charles de Gaulle founded in 1958, the president did not win a majority in the French national legislature.

Macron has tricked the French people

Macron and Le Pen squaring off in the last election demonstrated, the traditionally dominant parties of the center-right and the left have lost credibility. Macron replaced the socialists while Le Pen has defenestrated the Gaullists. Of course, Macron came to power first. He gave France the illusion that he was moderate, centrist and willing to listen to the public.

Once in office, it became clear Macron did not have the public’s interest in mind. He fell in popularity after revealing his pro-business, free-enterprise model for the government. Furthermore, Macron’s narcissistic personality began to reveal itself. His narcissisme pervers showed right from the start when he named his own political party — En Marche — curiously with the same abbreviation as his initials.

Extremely narcissistic personalities are often attracted to high office. Patrick Weil’s biography The Madman in the White House captured the increasing narcissism of US President Woodrow Wilson. In his latter days in the White House, Wilson refused to be confined by the constitutional constraints of his office. Weil concludes that excessive power distorts a person’s ability to govern democratically and correctly.

Today, France is in crisis because of an extreme concentration of power in the hands of the president. Like Wilson a century ago, Macron does not want to be confined in his exercise of power. This former minister in a socialist government has now done a deal with the far-right to push through a draconian immigration bill, breaking all political precedent in the Fifth Republic.

The Fifth Republic is not defective

Some, including Fair Observer’s Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh, argue that the Fifth Republic is dysfunctional. The president just has far too much power, and France today cannot be governed by a republic that Gaulle built in his image. The far right is now rising because the Fifth Republic is failing.

Weil does not think so. He believes that the French constitution does not need further change. The problems in France stem from narcissistic personalities who have become presidents and abused the power of the presidential office.

Related Reading

The World This Week: Another French Revolution

The solution for France is not a sixth republic but a return to the original text of the constitution of the Fifth Republic. Voters have to vote not for narcissists like Macron or Le Pen but for candidates who respect both the spirit and the letter of the constitution.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
French President Emmanuel Macron’s new immigration policy has shocked many French citizens. This policy sought to restrict legal protections for asylum seekers and even accelerated the deportation process. Once praised for his moderate politics, Macron now has lurched to the right.

In order…”
post_summery=”France seems to have effectively joined the growing cadre of right-wing governments in Europe. Once heralded for his moderate, centrist politics, French President Emmanuel Macron is supporting right-wing policies and parties to further his own interests. Macron’s increasing narcissism has caused a crisis for French politics.”
post-date=”Apr 27, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: France in Crisis: Macron Now in Bed With Far-Right” slug-data=”fo-talks-france-in-crisis-macron-now-in-bed-with-far-right”>

Pascal Brice”
post_date=”March 28, 2024 03:58″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-where-is-french-immigration-law-heading-now/” pid=”149218″
post-content=”
France is facing a crisis. It has recently seen widespread resentment among natives against immigrants. They have demanded legislative change. The new immigration bill put forward by the French government in December, endorsed by both President Emmanuel Macron and the right-wing Rassemblement National party, toughened France’s treatment of newcomers.

In the mid-20th century, many African and Middle Eastern immigrants arrived as workers to rebuild France after World War II. First, they were mostly young men who came alone. The French administration intended for them to eventually return to their homelands. Yet they put down roots, and they were eventually able to bring their families to live with them. So, France possesses a large population of Muslim immigrants.

Much of this Muslim community has not fully integrated into French society. In December 2023, French authorities closed a Muslim high school in Lille, citing administrative problems and teachings incompatible with French values. Muslims feel alienated and marginalized by the authorities, and their relationship with police is often fractious. Urban riots in the summer of 2023 brought this issue to the fore. Many immigrants, old and new, also face high levels of poverty.

Related Reading

FO° Exclusive: Make Sense of the Hellish Rioting in France

Immigration has become a hot topic across Europe, with right-wing parties sounding the alarm against newcomers who they say do not share European, liberal or Christian values. France is no exception.

France has tried numerous times to lessen the flow of immigrants. Since the 1980s, it has passed a new immigration law nearly every year. These laws have been typically unhelpful, unsuccessfully attempting to deter immigrants by making the bureaucracy tough and cumbersome. All the same, there has been a steady increase in the amount of immigration into France. In 1982, 7.4% of people in France were immigrants. By 2022, that figure rose to 10.3%, or seven million people, as reported by INSEE. More than a third of those people have acquired French citizenship.

What is Macron’s new law?

On December 19, 2023, the French parliament passed a new immigration law.

In France’s semi-presidential system, the head of state does not necessarily control a majority in parliament. The president has enough authority to govern effectively from day to day, but needs support in parliament to pass new legislation. Currently, Macron lacks that support. His centrist Renaissance party does not control a majority in parliament, so it needs to join with either the Left or the Right to pass new legislation. The new immigration law was a compromise between Renaissance and the right-wing Rassemblement National.

Renaissance added provisions to the law that opened the possibility of work for immigrants in some specific economic sectors. (In doing so, Renaissance resisted the trend among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that has seen tougher work and immigration policies passed in the last few years. France needs immigrants to make up for labor shortages as its population ages.) Rassemblement National, on the other hand, secured the addition of provisions that restricted, for example, family reunification and social benefits for unemployed immigrants. 

Macron refered the law to the Constitutional Council. Upon review, the council decided not to strike the law down, but rather to split it by striking down some provisions and not others. Effectively, it scrapped most of the provisions supported by the Right and kept the government’s provisions.

The Constitutional Council made its decision on procedural rather than substantive grounds. This means that there is nothing to prevent the parliament from adopting the same provisions that were struck down in a later law. Immigrants in France thus rest uneasy, not knowing whether their status will be endangered again in the near future.

The French middle class is shrinking and insecure

Why are French voters becoming more diffident about immigration than they had been before? The answer lies in France’s changing social structures.

In France, as in much of the OECD, the economic position of the middle class has become increasingly precarious. Despite its positive effects, globalization has put downward pressure on wages in the Western world. In traditionally high-income, high-expense economies like France, even those who continue to work can now barely make ends meet. As deindustrialization set in, the French economy began to weaken. In 2000, manufacturing represented 19% of the national GDP as compared to 13% in 2022. Business bankruptcies have increased by 35% in France.  Generations of families were left unemployed. With jobs and wages now harder to get, middle-class French increasingly see migrants as competitors for scarce resources.

Native French workers are not extending solidarity to immigrants. They do not see immigrants as part of “us,” as fellow members of society to be helped, but rather as interlopers from outside of society who are a drain on its resources. They resent that the government helps them with the taxes that they pay, taxes which, in their minds, are collected to help “real” French people. Solidarity, a core part of France’s democratic values, is dying.

Loss of Western geostrategic importance

The middle class’s precarious economic position is not the only factor that is making Europeans uneasy. More broadly, the continent is feeling the effects of its shrinking geostrategic importance.

Just a century ago, Western European powers were the dominant and almost the sole actors on the world stage. Now, they have lost their ability to direct events occurring outside of their own continent. Occurrences in Africa or Asia which Europe is helpless to control can drive waves of immigration to its shores.

While France and the rest of Europe struggle with immigration policy issues, they face quite a different threat from another direction: an expansionist and nuclear-armed Russia, which has invaded its neighbor Ukraine.

The Russian invasion has caused a lot of uncertainty in Europe. EU leaders have continuously discussed and debated what is required to stand up to Russia or if Russia can even be defeated. The war in Ukraine not only presents a threat to Europe, but a threat to democracy itself.

In recent months, Macron has stated his refusal to rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine. According to Pascal Brice, a former French diplomat, Macron’s thought behind this is to show France’s common determination. Russia has to know Europe’s common determination to defeat Putin, especially because he is the only one who will use the nuclear threat against anyone who opposes him. Indeed, Macron has long called for a broader European defense system, notoriously remarking that NATO is “brain-dead” back in 2019.

In Brice’s estimation, it is time for Europe to get tough with Russia. Putin has shown himself to be a dictator, and the West cannot expect to have an amicable settlement with someone whose goals are the weakening of European unity and democracy itself. He must be defeated.

Peter Isackson, Fair Observer’s Chief Strategy Officer, disagrees. He believes that Russia and Europe need to develop a common framework in which to discuss their defense needs together, instead of adopting an excessively antagonistic relationship. If they had done so earlier, they could have potentially avoided the current invasion of Ukraine. Yet even now, negotiation is a viable pathway toward ending the war in Ukraine.

Brice calls for an end to the Putin regime. To Isackson, a leader doesn’t define the nation, the nation defines the person running it. He does not think that Russia will be different or better with a different leader. What is necessary is finding a way to live with Russia all the same.

[Mitchelle Lumumba and Liam Roman wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
France is facing a crisis. It has recently seen widespread resentment among natives against immigrants. They have demanded legislative change. The new immigration bill put forward by the French government in December, endorsed by both President Emmanuel Macron and the right-wing Rassemblement…”
post_summery=”Anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise among a French middle class that feels its economic position is increasingly precarious. A new French law toughening immigration did not make it through constitutional review intact — the Constitutional Council struck down most of the provisions added by the right wing. Yet the future is uncertain as France continues to tackle a growing immigration crisis while it attempts to manage an aggressive Russia in the east.”
post-date=”Mar 28, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Where Is French Immigration Law Heading Now?” slug-data=”fo-talks-where-is-french-immigration-law-heading-now”>

Ellis Cashmore”
post_date=”March 24, 2024 01:43″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-celebrity-culture-more-than-a-figment-of-our-imagination/” pid=”149156″
post-content=”
Ellis Cashmore, a professor of sociology, currently at Aston University is an expert when it comes to why we (the public) are so fascinated with celebrities. He has penned volumes with titles such as The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Celebrity Culture.

Cashmore defines celebrity culture as “our tendency to have our values, practices and habits affected by figures who have risen to prominence (some would say undue prominence because it’s not proportionate to their accomplishments).” Notice that celebrities are referred to as figures and not people. Cashmore makes the distinction because celebrities are more products of our imagination than they are the flesh-and-blood person behind the fame. By existing in our imagination, they are independent of time and space and can be anything we want them to be. 

But what separates a celebrity from an ordinary person? 

When asked if an ordinary person could become a celebrity, Cahsmore replied, “Not without the help of a legion of followers.” Despite many, many people trying to grow a following online, the vast majority fail at becoming a true celebrity. Every so often someone does manage to pull it off by doing something crazy but this fame is often fleeting. Not many have the staying power within our imaginations. 

The deciding factor of celebrity status is, ironically, we, the public. Anything can make someone a celebrity provided we find it interesting. Our perception of them makes them interesting. What makes a famous person a celebrity is the public: We turn them into celebrities. 

A normal person can become a celebrity in a short amount of time provided they get national attention. They simply have to occupy people’s minds (for example, winning the lottery or a reality TV show).

Before the year 2000, movies and TV were the established methods of gaining fame, but now we all carry phones with us. We essentially carry celebrities with us and in a moment’s notice can summon them for our entertainment

Some people, like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, caught onto this trend early. They realized that social media were not just a presence but a force. It doesn’t matter what you say or do as long as the media notice you. Paris Hilton was more than “famous for being famous”; she was famous for appearing. The media trailed her because we were interested in her.

Kim Kardashian saw this and realized she could make it better by using social media and she exploded in popularity. Kim started as an assistant for Paris, but eventually eclipsed her.

Nearly any kind of notoriety can transform into stardom. Oscar Pistorius, who was already famous to a degree as a paralympian, became infamous after shooting his girlfriend, Rea. This rocketed him from being known within the sports world to international stardom. Pistorius’s audience mushroomed because people who weren’t interested in running were intrigued by the murder trial. It’s a combination of our fascination with killing as well as how much we enjoy seeing the rise and fall of our celebrities.

Related Reading

What Makes a Child Murder Another Child?

Another key ingredient of being a celebrity is appearing to be relatable — this is key to the transformation into celebrity culture. It’s like “the larger-than-life characters have come down to earth,” Cashmore explains. Our affection for celebrities is rooted in our love of how ordinary they are.

How does celebrity culture affect us?

Celebrity culture is “inescapable” and “a defining aspect of culture today,” whether we like it or not. Cashmore clarifies, “The main way is that it affects the way we spend our money. We can’t untangle celebrity culture from consumer culture.”

Celebrity culture encourages us to buy things that we don’t need but things that we want. It exists not just to sell us specific products but instead to advertise a way of life in which we are rewarded for owning the commodities we see they have. While this encouragement may not be overt endorsements we do our best to mimic celebrities.

While Cashmore asserts that celebrity influence is often overestimated, there is a chance that this could change in the future. 

We live in a time where people who are famous not for their leadership or anything related to politics, can still earn a reputation (think Arnold Schwarzenegger or Donald Trump). It seems like simply being known is half the battle in politics. As long as you can provoke strong emotion, you’re in business. The worst thing that can happen to a celebrity is that people stop caring. 

Cashmore noted, “I wouldn’t put it past Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift to someday make the transition to the political playing field.”

How long can we expect for Celebrity Culture to last? Cashmore reminds us that “a change is hardly visible on the horizon let alone an end. Celebrity culture is here to stay, it seems.”

[Beaudry Young wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
Ellis Cashmore, a professor of sociology, currently at Aston University is an expert when it comes to why we (the public) are so fascinated with celebrities. He has penned volumes with titles such as The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Celebrity…”
post_summery=”Celebrity culture has become an unavoidable part of life. Sociologist Ellis Cashmore discusses the fascinating relationship between celebrities and the public. They depend on us for attention and fame, while we rely on them as entertainers and “role models.” Since celebrity culture isn’t going anywhere, it’s important to understand how it affects us in our day-to-day lives.”
post-date=”Mar 24, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Celebrity Culture: More than a Figment of our Imagination” slug-data=”fo-talks-celebrity-culture-more-than-a-figment-of-our-imagination”>

Eric Reeves”
post_date=”March 21, 2024 03:22″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-starvation-now-threatens-millions-of-displaced-people-in-sudan/” pid=”149103″
post-content=”
Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a large country in Northeast Africa with a population of 45 million. Since this former British colony gained independence in 1956, Sudan has been plagued by political instability. This has led to deep poverty despite the nations’ ample natural resources: vast tracks of arable land and access to the Red Sea and the river Nile.

Since 2003, Sudan has been in a state of civil war. In its latest phase, the fighting is carried on by two factions: the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group which, though previously under the formal control of the national government, now wages war against it.

This relentless war has disrupted both the production and the importation of food in vast areas. Compounding the problem, it is almost impossible to bring humanitarian aid to the affected regions. 

What is happening in Sudan?

In 1989, a 30-year-long military dictatorship began led by Omar al-Bashir. As his junta came to power, it systematically ran the agricultural sector to the ground. There was little support for farmers and no provision of resources. This led the country to rely significantly on food imports.

Jump forward to 2003. Al-Bashir’s government began what can only be called a genocide in the Darfur region of western Sudan. This genocide against the non-Arab sedentary farmers by the Arab nomadic pastoralists continues to the present day.

In 2015, Vice President Hassabu Mohamed Abdalrahman encouraged the annihilation of the non-Arab farmers. In a series of events that echoed the Rwanda genocide, the Arab militia group Janjaweed (dubbed “devils on horseback”) carried out its genocidal mission by raiding non-Arab villages, destroying food stocks and poisoning wells. Ethnically targeted violence continues in Darfur today. The Janjaweed eventually evolved into the RSF. General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, leader of the Janjaweed, continues to command the RSF. 

Hemedti’s militia is carrying out a ruthless war against the SAF. The RSF have made incursions in most of Sudan and seized four of the capitals of the five federal states that compose Darfur. The only holdout in the region is El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, currently under seige by the RSF. The city is filled with refugees who fear for their lives lest RSF take the city.

Sudan’s neighbors and the African Union (AU) have begun to see the writing on the wall and are preparing to accommodate a Hemedti-led regime. Hemedti’s militia receives support and resources from the United Arab Emirates, while Egypt is on the side of the SAF. This civil war exacerbates the failure of security and diplomacy in the region. The UN Security Council will not authorize any intervention, despite the creation of a rapid deployment force between the AU and the UN.

With regional powers split, the real victims of the war are no more than a second thought. Caught in between the factions warring against each other are nine million internally displaced persons (IDPs). Additionally, one million refugees have fled to neighboring countries such as Chad, Egypt and South Sudan. These nations countries are rather inhospitable to the refugees. It is difficult for them to accommodate the newcomers, since they are to varying degrees struggling with instability themselves. They simply lack the resources, even if they had the will, to manage a refugee crisis of this magnitude.

Driven by desperation, some refugees are attempting the trans-Saharan land route across Libya  in a bid to make the perilous sea voyage to Europe.

The lack of humanitarian aid

The real casualty of the war in Sudan is the inability to deliver humanitarian aid, especially food, water and medicine. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which runs a clinic in the Zamzam IDP camp in Darfur, recently reported that a large percentage of children in Sudan currently suffer from severe acute malnutrition. Due to the insecurity created by the war, agricultural activities have become impossible in most areas of Sudan for years, forcing people to rely on humanitarian aid and food programs.

Darfur is one of the most remote parts of the world. In order to reach the region, convoys of humanitarian aid need to disembark from Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, and cross the breadth of the country. Difficult in the best of times, this journey is all but impossible due to the fighting. The UN World Food Program (WFP) is now unable to deliver food to parts of Darfur.

In the Zamzam IDP camp, located about 14 kilometers south of El Fasher, there is almost no food and no access to clean water. The few humanitarian agencies that remain operational are unable to attain safe access to the sire. The WPF has warned of an upcoming catastrophe in the coming months. As per the report by MSF, a food gap or lean season is inevitable; the next harvest season is in November/December, and the circumstances will not mitigate the famine and lack of food on the ground created by the ongoing civil war. 

The Russia–Ukraine war has also exacerbated the situation. Sudan previously relied on cereal imports from the Black Sea. The European conflict has disrupted the supply lines connecting Sudan to European grain via the Red Sea.

What can the international community do?

Currently, there is very little, if any, human rights reporting in Darfur. The international community has largely abandoned efforts in this region. Getting food and medicine into Darfur and other locations in western Sudan is extremely difficult.

At present, MSF provides supplementary and therapeutic feeding to the most needy, without which they would be unable to survive. The only food going into the Zamzam IDP camp, a camp with 400,000 IDPs, is what Eric Reeves himself and his cooperators at Project Zamzam have been able to send. 

Project Zamzam provides monthly food distributions to the most needy individuals. This project and MSF are now the only international presence in the area. The project has also been able to rehabilitate seven wells that humanitarian groups had abandoned. It also aims to assist and rehabilitate women and girls who have suffered from sexual violence, which has been rampant in the region for over twenty years. More information about the sexual violence that has been going on in this region can be found here.

For more information about the conflict in Darfur, how to help, and how to contribute to Eric Reeve’s project, please visit his website.

Visit this Website: https://sudanreeves.org/

[Mitchelle Lumumba wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a large country in Northeast Africa with a population of 45 million. Since this former British colony gained independence in 1956, Sudan has been plagued by political instability. This has led to deep poverty despite the nations’ ample natural…”
post_summery=”The ongoing civil war in Sudan has disrupted agricultural activity for years and displaced millions of people, especially in the remote western region of Darfur. Starving, packed into overcrowded cities and camps and hounded by the genocidal Rapid Support Forces, these people are teetering on the edge of oblivion.”
post-date=”Mar 21, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Starvation Now Threatens Millions of Displaced People in Sudan” slug-data=”fo-talks-starvation-now-threatens-millions-of-displaced-people-in-sudan”>

Christopher Roper Schell”
post_date=”March 01, 2024 03:11″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-us-immigration-policy-has-now-reached-a-complete-impasse/” pid=”148707″
post-content=”
As the US presidential election grows near, the issue of border security has become more pressing than ever before. The number of migrants coming into the US has skyrocketed from tens of thousands per month, just a few years ago, to hundreds of thousands. Customs and Border Patrol have been overwhelmed by the staggering volume of immigrants. In 2023 alone, Border Patrol apprehended nearly 250,000 people. Why so many, and why now?

The US–Mexico border is the tenth-longest international border in the world. Via www.fmcsa.dot.gov/

Contrary to popular belief, not all of the immigrants entering the US do so illegally. Many migrants use legal immigration methods to enter the US, only to overstay their welcome as provisions time out. So the biggest question is not why so many people are crossing the borders. Rather, the big question is why current immigration policies are failing. The answer lies in the incentive for both Republicans and Democrats to keep the issue open for the parties’ own agendas.

The sudden flood proves things need to change

While it isn’t clear exactly why so many immigrants are making the journey, it is clear that elements of current immigration policy need to change. Neither President Joe Biden nor his predecessor Donald Trump seem to have made great progress in fixing the issue. Biden has fought to overturn strict Trump-era policies such as the Remain in Mexico policy and Title 42. Yet the Biden administration seems to have de facto opened the borders up wholesale, saturating the country with both legal and illegal immigrants. US cities and states are not prepared to deal with the influx.

Thus, the Republican party blames the inundated border on Biden. Yet the party, which controls the lower house of Congress, has blocked several bills and deals that could potentially change immigration policy. Why? Republicans want the issue to stay open because it gives them ammunition against the Biden administration. As long as the issue stays open, they can accuse Biden of creating chaos. At least until the coming presidential election in November of this year, the Republicans have little reason to close the show early.

The border is an issue that resonates with the voter bases of both parties. Many Democrats care deeply about immigration and want to see an administration that is welcoming to migrants and does not repeat the harsh scenes, like widespread child detention, they witnessed during the Trump years. Yet Biden is caught between pleasing his base on the one hand and the need to appear effective and in control on the other.

What’s the deal with the current deal?

One thing is clear: There is very little consensus on Capitol Hill on how to move forward. It is clear that immigration needs to change somehow, but no one has yet given the definitive answer as to how.

US immigration policy has had a long development. The 1924 Immigration Act set up a quota system for arrivals on the basis of national origin. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished this system, instead selecting immigrants on the basis of professional skills, education or family relationship to current US citizens. Immigration policies have shifted over the decades with the ever-changing political landscape. However, they now seem to have reached a state of stasis.

John McCain and Ted Kennedy collaborated on a bipartisan reform bill, the 2005 Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. Yet it never became law. In recent decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have killed potential immigration deals. They are incentivized to keep the issue front, center, and far from conclusion. Manipulating the issue is a far better option for both parties. Today, Democrats hope to gain a larger voter base, and Republicans hope to undermine the Biden administration. The US is beginning to face the consequences of this two-party game. 

An immigration deal is currently making its way through Congress. It seems like the bill is practically gift-wrapped for Republicans. Because of the political pressure the Biden’s party is facing to act, Democrats are resigned to altering asylum and parole provisions in order to get a deal that will reduce the flow of people. Yet the bill continues to hit walls. Since the time of recording, a version of the bill died in the Senate. Yet Biden is continuing to urge Republicans to revive the legislative effort.

The stasis has generated both push and blowback on the state level. Texas in particular, along with its governor Greg Abbott, is the leading charge in state-level anger. Texas had begun busing migrants into Democrat-run cities. There is a sort of political genius in this plan. Texas has finally made the “migrant problem” an issue for the northern states that have denied the severity of the situation. Abbott declared a state of invasion, claiming that the vast number of illegal migrants has forced his hand.

Related Reading

Republican Governors’ Revolt Tests Biden’s Willpower Over Illegal Immigration

Twenty-five Republican governors signed a petition supporting his decision. A standoff in Shelby Park between Texas state militia and Border Patrol over border protection methods has put pressure on the Biden administration’s image. At time of writing, the standoff is still ongoing.

The outlook is beginning to look bleak

Republicans see this as a win-win situation. Either Biden will do something about immigration, or his government will need to punish Texas. Both choices will make the president look weak. Had he done something earlier, he would have retained some credibility. However, any “tough” stance on immigration he takes now would be a betrayal against his party and most notably against his platform. Republicans are keen on capitalizing on the issue to cripple Biden’s chances at reelection. 

Yet even if Biden does run on a tougher platform, Republicans would still have the upper hand. Trump’s strict immigration policies resonate with much of the population. To voters, it seems like he might have the answers to the border issue. But if Trump were to win, Democrats would no longer be interested in a deal. Without the fear of losing reelection pushing them to fast-forward the current bill, Democrats would begin to fight for more provisions.

In short, the US might not get a deal like the current one again. The clash over the border question will continue as long as a bill is on the table. Democrats claim dictators for the flood of immigrants. Republicans claim a weak administration. One thing is clear: There incentives and reasons why the status quo remains as it is. And as long as there are incentives, there will be stasis.

[Cheyenne Torres wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
”
post-content-short=”
As the US presidential election grows near, the issue of border security has become more pressing than ever before. The number of migrants coming into the US has skyrocketed from tens of thousands per month, just a few years ago, to hundreds of thousands. Customs and Border Patrol have been…”
post_summery=”The southern US border is being inundated with migrants as hundreds of thousands cross each month. Despite the severity of the situation, Democrats and Republicans continue to fight over a bill that has the potential to improve immigration policy. Politicians have tacit incentives to keep the issue front and center rather than solved. This has brought any movement for change to a complete standstill.”
post-date=”Mar 01, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: US Immigration Policy Has Now Reached a Complete Impasse” slug-data=”fo-talks-us-immigration-policy-has-now-reached-a-complete-impasse”>

Gary Grappo”
post_date=”February 27, 2024 01:49″
pUrl=”https://www.fairobserver.com/video/fo-talks-israel-invasion-of-gaza-will-not-be-over-quickly/” pid=”148654″
post-content=”
Israel has planned its next move in its war against Palestine’s Hamas fighters: Troops will move on Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, bordering Egypt. This town has housed a large portion of Gaza’s population since the beginning of the conflict. It currently serves as the nation’s only safe haven, as well as a hub for humanitarian relief.

Hamas is battered but not defeated, having suffered extraordinary losses. Though real figures are unknown, Israel estimates that it has killed and captured half of Hamas’ population. It also confirms it has neutralized 75% of Hamas’ fighting force: 18 of 24 battalions. Casualties in Gaza, meanwhile, exceed 30,000.

Israel has heavily targeted Gaza’s underground tunnel system. Hamas uses this structure to house its fighters, command and control systems, leadership and hostages. The network is vulnerable but vast; Israel estimates it has destroyed half the tunnels. Nevertheless, Hamas can still use the remaining ones to shuttle its fighters from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other.

The diplomatic front has been active recently as well. Progress between the US, Qatar, Egypt and Israel looked promising early this month. Hamas proposed a promising counteroffer, one that would have provided a three-month suspension of fighting, a phased release of hostages and a move toward settlement. The countries agreed, sending US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Jerusalem to present the offer to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He rejected Blinken’s plan on February 7, 2024. Hamas was asking too much, he decided, and Israel was not interested in negotiating a ceasefire. So the carnage continues.

Since October 7, 2023, the international community has been deeply concerned that the Israel–Hamas War could escalate, dragging more nations into the battle. This would see Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, threatening northern Israel and the West Bank with rocket fire. It would also prompt the involvement of the Houthi fighters in Yemen, as well as militia groups in eastern Syria and western Iraq.

Sporadic attacks have increased in number and lethality. One prominent example is the recent January 29 attack on the US outpost in northeastern Jordan, which killed three US soldiers. The US response has been vigorous, especially against militia groups in Iraq. A US strike killed a Kata’ib Hezbollah leader in Baghdad, infuriating the Iraqi Government.

So the war has indeed escalated. Fortunately, the combatants have been able to avoid the gravest worry most parties have: all-out war between Israeli and Hezbollah troops in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Though they have had their skirmishes, neither side wants to cross the line and trigger a conflagration on par with the brutal 2006 Lebanon War.

Strategic goals

The Axis of Resistance, comprising Iran and its militant allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere, is unified by an overriding desire to remove the US from the Middle East. These actors also want to eliminate the State of Israel, which is more likely to happen if the US abandons it.

Excluding Iran, the Axis parties are ruthless fighting organizations, not governing bodies. They care little about human rights or their people’s needs. This is especially true of Hamas — they ruled Gaza for 17 years. During their tenure, they pilfered public resources to build their Israel-fighting force while the Gazans suffered. These groups may also be sustaining the violence so they can continue living off the spoils of war.

The disparate groups have not coordinated their military actions, as demonstrated on October 7. It would make sense for Hamas to take Israel by surprise and have the others act simultaneously, but they did not. None of the parties, including Iran, knew the attack’s timing. This delivered a heavy message: If Hamas does not keep the Axis parties informed, they will not assist in Hamas’ time of need. Perhaps this is why Hezbollah has not wholeheartedly engaged.

Geopolitical and economic risks

Yemen’s Houthi militia has accidentally globalized the conflict, specifically by expanding it to the Red Sea. It has attacked shipping vessels traveling through the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb, two major shipping routes. Striking a cargo ship with a drone is cheap and easy for Houthi fighters, but has a serious effect on the world economy.

When these attacks occur, shipping companies have to reroute ships. Cargo that would normally travel through Bab-el-Mandeb must now be rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds fuel, labor and insurance costs to the process. Increasing the shipping cost consequently increases the consumer cost, resulting in inflation. The marketplace cannot correct this.

Several populations in Europe and Asia, especially China, rely on Red Sea trading. This has seriously disrupted trade in Europe and Asia. North and Latin America can trade with Europe and Asia without the Suez Canal, but they are experiencing another problem: a drought in the Panama Canal. With the canal’s level lowered, operators must lessen the traffic passing through it, thus reducing trade. While the economic impact is currently minor, it will increase the longer this crisis lasts.

Europe will have a tough decade. Russian energy is now expensive, China is suffering from deflation, and the US has turned protectionist. On top of that, the Russo–Ukrainian War marches on with no end in sight. When conflicts increase costs to Europe’s economy and bottleneck the trade there, international confidence in that trade drops.

Instability in the face of the Israel–Hamas War is a growing concern around the globe. As these fears grip world leaders, conservative or autocratic figures often rise to “fix things.” When a country’s economy is deprived of critical inputs (ie oil or microchips), that country becomes aggressive, as seen with the two World Wars. Protectionism prompts this response, which can be destabilizing.

Is another great conflict on the way?

It is frightening to imagine the possibility of a new all-out war. Fortunately, the major parties know the consequences of another global war and will work to prevent it. Widescale nuclear bombardments would make Earth uninhabitable.

However, chaotic non-state actors like Hezbollah do not care about governance. They fight for the sake of causing destruction and lack the guard rails that established governments (e.g., the US, China and Russia) have.

Barring the US and its allies, all the adversaries here are ruled by autocrats. Rulers with absolute power are unpredictable and opportunistic. How can the US deal with autocrats, especially when it feels compelled to use its powers for its own interests?

What happens in our world is determined and exacerbated by the information space. An information war rages as every major player fights to spin a narrative. No one can control the space; anyone with Internet access can enter and spread all manner of disinformation. It is easy to fabricate the truth with AI. When people cannot decide what is correct, they fall back on their biases instead of doing due research. Social media exacerbates this, as the algorithms and filters there create echo chambers.

We must hope that the US can bring the Israel–Hamas War to an end, for the security needs of Israel and the humanitarian needs of Gaza. If left unabated, this bloodshed will breed unrest and further wound the world stage.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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post-content-short=”
Israel has planned its next move in its war against Palestine’s Hamas fighters: Troops will move on Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, bordering Egypt. This town has housed a large portion of Gaza’s population since the beginning of the conflict. It currently serves as the…”
post_summery=”The Israel–Hamas War rages on. Israel intends to eliminate the Hamas threat completely, with no possibility of negotiating a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Houthi militants in Yemen are disrupting shipping through the Red Sea. This makes trade between Europe and Asia difficult and will have serious economic implications as the attacks continue. As Middle Eastern conflicts cause instability around the world, will all-out war erupt?”
post-date=”Feb 27, 2024″
post-title=”FO° Talks: Israel’s Invasion of Gaza Will Not Be Over Quickly” slug-data=”fo-talks-israel-invasion-of-gaza-will-not-be-over-quickly”>