Diplomacy & Crisis News

Robert Farley

Security, Europe

Charles de Gaulle has served effectively in keeping France a viable, even necessary presence in the Western multilateral intervention scene.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Almost all of the significant military activities undertaken by France since 2001 (and indeed before) have come in the context of a multilateral, cooperative effort with other major countries. This has meant that Charles de Gaulle can contribute, and contribute effectively, but that her periods of refit do not come at the expense of the coalition’s overall military power.

France’s first carrier entered service in the interwar period, but for a very long time, the French navy trailed behind international counterparts in naval aviation. This changed in the Cold War, however, and today France operates the world’s most advanced carrier outside of the U.S. Navy. How did France build its naval aviation force, what does it do today and what direction will France take next?

The History of French Carriers

Soon after World War I, France joined the international carrier community through the conversion of the battleship hulk Bearn. Although large, Bearn did not carry many aircraft and never actively participated in combat, even during World War II. The construction of two additional large carriers was suspended by World War II, but after the war the French navy gained access to light carriers transferred from Britain and the United States.

Four in total, these carriers helped the French navy develop its naval aviation muscles. The next step was big; France constructed a pair of CATOBAR aircraft carriers, Clemenceau and Foch. Commissioned in 1961 and 1963, the ships displaced 30,000 tons and could carry around forty modern aircraft. A third carrier, the much larger Verdun, was cancelled before being laid down. Clemenceau and Foch, operating the F-8 Crusader and later the Super Etendard, would form the backbone of the world’s second-largest carrier force for the latter half of the Cold War. After nearly forty years of hard service, the two ships were decommissioned in favor of France’s next carrier, the nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle.

The Current State of French Naval Aviation

Charles de Gaulle (CdG) entered service in May 2001, after a troubled fifteen-year construction period. Displacing 42,000 tons, Charles de Gaulle can make twenty-seven knots, and operates up to forty aircraft. She is the only carrier in the world outside of the U.S. Navy to use catapults to launch aircraft, and consequently carries conventional CATOBAR-capable jets such as the Dassault Rafale and the E-2C Hawkeye. CdG is also the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to serve outside the U.S. Navy.

France also has a trio of assault carriers, the Mistral-class ships Mistral, Tonnerre, and Dixmude. At 20,000 tons, the Mistrals can carry around thirty helicopters of various types. During operations off Libya, the Mistrals were pushed into a strike role, serving as platforms for attack helicopters conducting attacks against Libyan government positions.

Strategic Rationale

France’s carriers have contributed in a variety of ways to France’s strategic security vision. From the beginning, the French navy appreciated that its carriers might play a role in high-intensity combat against the Soviets, and accordingly the carriers prepared for that mission. Clemenceau and Foch were equipped for nuclear deterrence, as is Charles de Gaulle. But France also regarded itself as having responsibilities to its (soon to be former) empire, and French carriers served in the Indochina War, as well as the Suez Incident.

French carriers have made their greatest contribution over the past two decades in support of multilateral military operations. Clemenceau and Foch both participated in various operations in support of UN missions in Israel; Clemenceau supported coalition operations in the 1991 Gulf War, while Foch operated in the Adriatic in support of UN and NATO ops in the former Yugoslavia. Charles de Gaulle has conducted repeated operations off Afghanistan since 2001, often filling in for U.S. carriers called to other duties. She served off Libya in 2011, and has conducted airstrikes against ISIS in Syria since 2015.

The Future for French Carriers

France cancelled a second carrier, based on the design of the British Queen Elizabeth–class ships, in 2013. France and the United Kingdom differed over propulsion, and the French are unlikely in any case to have settled for a ski-jump carrier. However, the cancellation of the second ship violates a cardinal rule of carrier acquisition, as France is effectively without a significant proportion of its naval power every time CDG enters refit. Indeed, at the moment, the carrier has been in refit since February 2017.

Charles de Gaulle is expected to serve until 2040, and the French government has authorized studies on the construction of a replacement, which could potentially overlap with CdG’s final years in service. Any future ship or ships would likely retain nuclear propulsion, adopt the EMALS catapult system, and operate conventional CATOBAR aircraft. Would France build two? The United Kingdom has done it, and the French navy has often chafed at the capability hit it endures with Charles De Gaulle enters refit. But much depends on France’s financial and security situation in the late 2020s and early 2030s, and these factors are extremely hard to predict. It is also unclear what sort of aircraft the next generation of French carriers will fly. By 2040 the Dassault Rafale will be quite old, and the future of France’s “sixth-generation” fighter project remains murky.

Conclusion

France’s experience with CdG demonstrates that for a country in France’s position, one aircraft carrier can be made to work. Almost all of the significant military activities undertaken by France since 2001 (and indeed before) have come in the context of a multilateral, cooperative effort with other major countries. This has meant that CdG can contribute, and contribute effectively, but that her periods of refit do not come at the expense of the coalition’s overall military power. Indeed, even the Mistrals helped fill in during the Libya campaign, taking up the slack left by CdG’s refit.

In any case, it is unlikely that the French government will want to go without a naval aviation capability as CdG nears retirement. Charles de Gaulle has served effectively in keeping France a viable, even necessary presence in the Western multilateral intervention scene. Notwithstanding changes in technology that make the environment more dangerous for carriers, it is very likely that France will construct at least one replacement carrier, thus maintaining her naval aviation tradition for another half-century.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. (This first appeared in April 2018.)

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Security,

Nations often linger on their military defeats as long as, or longer than, they do on their successes.

Here's What You Need To Remember: American military failures have undoubtedly had an impact on the country’s strategic position, but have yet to fundamentally undercut national power. The United States recovered quickly from Operation Drumbeat, Antietam, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the defeat in Korea.

Nations often linger on their military defeats as long as, or longer than, they do on their successes. The Battle of Kosovo remains the key event of the Serbian story, and devastating military defeats adorn the national narratives of France, Russia and the American South. What are the biggest disasters in American military history, and what effect have they had on the United States?

In this article, I concentrate on specific operational and strategic decisions, leaving aside broader, grand-strategic judgments that may have led the United States into ill-considered conflicts. The United States may well have erred politically in engaging in the War of 1812, World War I, the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, but here I consider how specific failures worsened America’s military and strategic position.

Invasion of Canada

At the opening of the War of 1812, U.S. forces invaded Upper and Lower Canada. Americans expected a relatively easy going; the notion that Canada represented the soft underbelly of the British empire had been popular among American statesmen for some time. Civilian and military leaders alike expected a quick capitulation, forced in part by the support of the local population. But Americans overestimated their support among Canadians, overestimated their military capabilities, and underestimated British power. Instead of an easy victory, the British handed the Americans a devastating defeat.

American forces (largely consisting of recently mobilized militias) prepared to invade Canada on three axes of advance, but did not attack simultaneously and could not support one another. American forces were inexperienced at fighting against a professional army and lacked good logistics. This limited their ability to concentrate forces against British weak points. The Americans also lacked a good backup plan for the reverses that the British soon handed them. None of the American commanders (led by William Hull, veteran of the Revolutionary War) displayed any enthusiasm for the fight, or any willingness to take the risks necessary to press advantages.

The real disaster of the campaign became apparent at Detroit in August, when a combined British and Native American army forced Hull to surrender, despite superior numbers. The British followed up their victory by seizing and burning several American frontier outposts, although they lacked the numbers and logistical tail to probe very deeply into American territory. The other two prongs of the invasion failed to march much beyond their jumping off points. American forces won several notable successes later in the war, restoring their position along the border, but never effectively threatened British Canada.

The failure of the invasion turned what Americans had imagined as an easy, lucrative offensive war into a defensive struggle. It dealt a major setback to the vision, cherished by Americans, of a North America completely under the domination of the United States. Britain would hold its position on the continent, eventually ensuring the independence of Canada from Washington.

Battle of Antietam

In September 1862, Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland with the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s objectives were to take advantage of foraging opportunities (the movement of armies across Virginia had left the terrain devastated), support a revolt in Maryland and potentially inflict a serious defeat on Union forces. Unfortunately for Lee, information about his battle disposition fell into the hands of General George McClellan, who moved to intercept with the much larger Army of the Potomac. President Lincoln saw this as an opportunity to either destroy or badly maul Lee’s army.

The Battle of Antietam resulted in 22,000 casualties, making it the bloodiest day in the history of the Americas. Despite massive numbers, a good working knowledge of Lee’s dispositions and a positional advantage, McClellan failed to inflict a serious defeat on the Confederates. Lee was able to withdraw in good order, suffering higher proportional casualties, but maintaining the integrity of his force and its ability to retreat safely into Confederate territory.

McClellan probably could not have destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam (19th-century armies were devilishly difficult to annihilate, given the technology available), but he could have dealt it a far more serious setback. He vastly overestimated the size of Lee’s force, moved slowly to take advantage of clear opportunities and maintained poor communications with his subcommanders. A greater success at Antietam might have spared the Army of the Potomac the devastation of Fredericksburg, where Union forces launched a pointless direct assault against prepared Confederate positions.

Antietam was not a complete failure; the Army of Northern Virginia was hurt, and McClellan forced Lee out of Maryland. President Lincoln felt confident enough following the battle to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, promising to free slaves in rebellious states. Nevertheless, Antietam represented the best opportunity that the Union would have to catch and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, which remained one of the Confederacy’s centers of gravity until 1865.

Operation Drumbeat

On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Germany’s treaty obligations to Japan did not require action in case of Japanese attack, but Germany nevertheless decided to make formal the informal war that it had been fighting with the United States in the Atlantic. Historically, this has been regarded as one of Hitler’s major blunders. At the time, however, it gave German submariners their first opportunity to feast upon American coastal shipping.

In the first six months of 1942, the U-boat force commanded by Admiral Doenitz deployed into the littoral of the eastern seaboard. The Germans had observed some restraint prior to Pearl Harbor in order to avoid incurring outright U.S. intervention. This ended with the Japanese attack. The German U-boats enjoyed tremendous success, as none of the U.S. Army Air Force, the U.S. Navy, or American civil defense authorities were well prepared for submarine defense. Coastal cities remained illuminated, making it easy for U-boat commanders to pick targets. Fearing a lack of escorts (as well as irritation on the part of the U.S. business community), the U.S. Navy (USN) declined to organize coastal shipping into convoys. The USN and U.S. Army Air Force, having fought bitterly for years, had not prepared the cooperative procedures necessary for fighting submarines.

The results were devastating. Allied shipping losses doubled from the previous year, and remained high throughout 1942. German successes deeply worried the British, such that they quickly dispatched advisors to the United States to help develop a concerted anti-submarine doctrine. Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) was (and is) immensely complicated, requiring a great deal of coordination and experience to pull off correctly. The United States had neither worked diligently on the problem prior to the war, nor taken the time to learn from the British. However, the USN would make good its mistake later in the war, developing into a very effective ASW force, and deploying its own submarines to great effect against the Japanese.

Across the Partition, 1950

Following the successful defense of Pusan, and the stunning victory on the beaches of Inchon, the United States Army and Marine Corps, with support of Republic of Korea forces, marched deep into North Korea in an effort to destroy the Pyongyang regime and turn over full control of the Korean Peninsula to Seoul. The United States saw a counteroffensive as an opportunity to roll back Communist gains in the wake of the Chinese Revolution, and punish the Communist world for aggression on the Korean Peninsula.

This was an operational and strategic disaster. As American forces approached the Chinese border on two widely divergent (and mutually unsupportable) axes, Chinese forces massed in the mountains of North Korea. Beijing’s diplomatic warnings became increasingly shrill, but fresh off the victory at Inchon, few in the United States paid any attention. China was impoverished and militarily weak, while the Soviet Union had displayed no taste for direct intervention.

When the Chinese counterattacked in November 1950, they threw back U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces with huge loss of life on both sides. For a time, it appeared that the People’s Liberation Army’s counteroffensive might completely rout United Nation forces. Eventually, however, the lines stabilized around what is now the Demilitarized Zone.

This failure had many fathers. While General Douglas MacArthur pushed most aggressively for a decisive offensive, he had many friends and supporters in Congress. President Truman made no effort to restrain MacArthur until the magnitude of the disaster became apparent. U.S. intelligence lacked a good understanding of either Chinese aims or Chinese capabilities. The invasion resulted in two more years of war, in which neither China, nor the United States could budge the other very far from the 38th parallel. It also poisoned U.S.-Chinese relations for a generation.

Disbanding the Iraqi Army

On May 23, 2003, Paul Bremer (chief administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority) ordered the Iraqi Army to disband. It is difficult to overstate the unwise nature of this decision. We don’t need hindsight; it was, as many recognized, a terrible decision at the time. In a moment, swept aside was the entirety of Iraqi military history, including the traditions and communal spirit of the finest Iraqi military formations. Eradicated was the best means for managing the sectors of Iraqi society most likely to engage in insurgent activity.

It’s not hard to see the logic of the decision. The Iraqi Army was deeply implicated in the Baathist power structure that had dominated Iraq for decades. Many of its officers had committed war crimes, often against other Iraqis. It was heavily tilted towards the Sunnis, with few Shia or Kurds in positions of responsibility. Finally, it had, from the American perspective, a recent history of appallingly poor military performance. As Bremer argued, it had largely dissolved in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But this was not how many Iraqis viewed the army. The Royal Iraqi Army had come into existence in the early 1920s, when Iraq remained a protectorate of the British Empire. It had revolted in 1941, but the British made the wise decision to keep the force together so as to maintain order. In 1948, its units fought against Israeli forces during the wars of Israeli independence, and it participated in the 1967 war, if briefly. In the 1980s, it waged an eight-year struggle against Iran. While its legacy was complex, for many Iraqis, service in the Army (and in particular its performance against Iran) remained a source of personal and national pride. Eradicated was eighty years of institutional history.

It’s impossible to say how the reconstruction of the Iraqi Army might have played out differently, but then it’s difficult to imagine how it could have been worse. The Iraqi Army has consistently failed in the most elementary of military tasks when not directly supported by American forces. It remains unpopular in broad sectors of Iraqi society, and its performance against lightly armed ISIS fighters has made it the laughingstock of the region.

Conclusion

American military failures have undoubtedly had an impact on the country’s strategic position, but have yet to fundamentally undercut national power. The United States recovered quickly from Operation Drumbeat, Antietam, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the defeat in Korea.

National greatness depends on more than simply victory in battle, as the persistence of U.S. power suggests. Nevertheless, each of these avoidable defeats proved costly to the United States—in blood, treasure and time.

This first appeared in 2014 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Michael Peck

Technology, Europe

Hard to believe, isn't it?

Here's What You Need to Remember: America's wars over the last century have all been fought overseas, where the U.S. could tap its industrial and technological resources to field expeditionary forces plentifully supplied with advanced equipment. For Russia, the last century was marked by two immense invasions by the Germans, as well as huge land battles against the Japanese, the Poles and even other Russians during the Russian Civil War.

Surprise! America's F-35 stealth fighter is too complicated and expensive, claims a Russian military expert interviewed by Russian media.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Yet while the Sputnik News interview might be dismissed as tendentious at best and propaganda at worst, it perfectly illustrates how Russia and the West view weapons technology.

"The F-35 is a very complex system and, as such, it has lots of holes, bugs and other things, and it is very difficult to debug it," Dmitry Drozdenko told Sputnik News. "Like other problems, all this is because it is an excessively high-tech aircraft."

Sound familiar? Russia would have made the same argument in 1943, when hordes of uncomplicated T-34 tanks faced formidable but heavily engineered and expensive German Tiger and Panther tanks. Or the American M-16 versus the AK-47, or the F-4 Phantom versus the MiG-21.

Americans are horrified when their soldiers don't receive the most cutting-edge equipment. Russia is willing to sacrifice sophistication for simplicity.

Drozdenko also declared to Sputnik News that "unlike us, the Americans rely too much on stealth. However, radar technology is developing fast and invisibility is no longer a sure-fire guarantor of air supremacy."

“Dogfights haven’t gone anywhere," he added. "They will fire from a distance the first day, but a couple of days later, we’ll be flying like we always did before."

Note the words "flying like we always did before." As far back as the 1950s, the U.S. thought the future of air combat would be aircraft engaging each other with missiles at long range (which proved a fallacy in the skies over North Vietnam). The whole concept of the stealth F-35 and F-22 is that they can blast a MiG out of the sky without the MiG knowing it's there. But to Russia, the good ol' days of close-range aerial knife fights aren't over.

Drozdenko does make a point about the F-35 that would have many Americans nodding in agreement. “The Americans tolerate this plane because it’s a very big and expensive business with contracts running into trillions of dollars. While they keep making the F-35s, the Americans are modernizing their fourth-generation-plus F-18s and F-15s trying to bring them up to par with Russia’s Su-35,” he noted.

What's important here isn't the mudslinging about who has better weapons, or the merits and demerits of the F-35. As Drozdenko points out, technological advances like stealth are transitory.

It's the rival conceptions of military technology, and by extension how to wage war. These are concepts rooted in history and circumstances. America's wars over the last century have all been fought overseas, where the U.S. could tap its industrial and technological resources to field expeditionary forces plentifully supplied with advanced equipment. For Russia, the last century was marked by two immense invasions by the Germans, as well as huge land battles against the Japanese, the Poles and even other Russians during the Russian Civil War. Conflicts fought on underdeveloped, rugged or frozen battlefields are harsh on equipment.

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Of course, these images are partly stereotypes. Russia is indeed capable of making advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles. And while simplicity is a virtue, it has its drawbacks, such as Russian jet engines that wear out too quickly. American weapons may be costlier and fancier than they need to be, but they can be quite effective if used by nations that know to operate and maintain them, as the Israelis have demonstrated time and again.

Still, it's hard to argue with Drozdenko's observations that war and technology are not the same. “Imagine a BMW and a Russian Niva on a bumpy road somewhere deep in Russia," Drozdenko says. "Which of the two will wear out? Technology is technology, but war is war."

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook. This first appeared in August 2018.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Doug Bandow

Politics, Asia

The bad was bad policy, but that was a choice that only Seoul could make.

Successive U.S. presidents and Congresses claimed the Republic of Korea to be a close ally. Candidate Joe Biden made improving alliances a key plank in his campaign. Yet Washington has never treated the ROK as a full partner. That remains the case today.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) announced that he intends to hold a hearing in March on South Korean legislation that bans leafletting into North Korea. A member of the GOP minority in the House, Smith no longer can direct committee action. However, he still co-chairs the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, which shames rather than legislates.

In December Smith targeted the South Korean National Assembly’s passage of a law, which takes effect next month, prohibiting the release of propaganda materials, money, and goods into North Korea. He criticized the “inane legislation criminalizing humanitarian outreach” which he said was “frightening in its implications for democracy and liberty.” He explained: “I am troubled that legislators in an ostensibly vibrant democracy would contemplate criminalizing conduct aimed at promoting democracy and providing spiritual and humanitarian succor to people suffering under one of the cruelest communist dictatorships in the world.”

At the same time, Rep. Michael McCaul, the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced the South Korean measure: “Freedom of expression is a core democratic value and bipartisan majorities in the U.S. Congress have long supported efforts to make outside information available in North Korea’s closed dictatorship.’ He added that “A bright future for the Korean Peninsula rests on North Korea becoming more like South Korea—not the other way around.”

Criticism of the Moon government, which backed the legislation, and the ruling party, which pushed it through the National Assembly, has been widespread. In the ROK human rights activists, North Korean defectors, and conservative politicians denounced the legislation. It also drew opposition from international and foreign groups, such as Human Rights Watch and the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Finally, then-Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun “privately conveyed” the Trump administration’s opinion, which likely was quite negative.

I added my voice, contending that the measure was wrong-headed and counterproductive. The prohibition punished people for exercising their fundamental right to express themselves by criticizing an oppressive government. Even worse, Seoul was seeking to sever one of the few means to reach the North Korean people, circumventing controls by a government fearful of any outside communication. Over the long-term the best hope for fundamental reform in the North is internal. The more people in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea know about the South and the rest of the world, the more likely and faster such change is to occur.

Nevertheless, the Moon government backed and the National Assembly approved the legislation. Smith justified his official criticism of the ROK: “No government is above scrutiny, not even that of a long-time ally.” True enough, but should the U.S. Congress then hold what amounts to a human rights hearing on a policy difference—an important one, to be sure, but something that falls far short of what the Commission normally considers to be worthy of its attention?

Consider the body’s most recent hearing topics: “Conflict and Killings in Nigeria’s Middle Belt,” “The Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas,” “Enforced Disappearance in Latin America: Taking Stock,” “Religious Freedom in China: The Case of Bishop James Su Zhimin,” and “Human Rights in Haiti: Ideas for Next Steps.”

Alas, the topic “Should South Korean Activists Be Allowed to Send Balloons into Angry, Unreasonable, and Unpredictable Well-Armed Adversary Next Door?” seems to fall a bit short of the others. Yet Smith abandoned any sense of proportion. In December he fulminated: “If they pass such a law, I call upon our State Department to critically re-evaluate the Republic of Korea’s commitment to democratic values in its annual rights report, as well as in its report on international religious freedom. It may very well be that we will see South Korea put on a watch list, which would be a very sad development indeed.”

Really? Is applying an official genocide designation the next step? How about imposing economic sanctions to match those currently on the North?

Better would be to treat the ROK as the friend that it is and engage its arguments. Before the measure’s passage Smith called on Seoul to remember its better angels. As he put it: “Given the great accomplishments of the people of South Korea, I truly hope this legislative proposal is an aberration, and that cooler heads will realize that this bill is not just ill-conceived, but frightening in its implications for democracy and liberty.”

The Moon government contended that the measure would protect people living near the border from possible North Korean retaliation. According to KBS World Radio, last week Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung wrote congressional leaders expressing concern that “moves by U.S. lawmakers to hold hearings on the matter could hinder a legitimate exercise of South Korea’s sovereignty aimed at protecting the lives and safety of its people.”

Added KBS, “The governor, who is considered a leading presidential hopeful, also stressed in the letter that the law is a peaceful means that can prevent military tensions and confrontation with North Korea, as well as improve strained inter-Korean relations, according to provincial government officials.” These points are not idle concerns, given the DPRK’s brutality and volatility. Indeed, a few years ago there was an exchange of fire between the DPRK and South Korean militaries when the former sought to shoot down some balloons after their release.

Nevertheless, meekly yielding to the North’s demand that Seoul halt leafletting is more likely to increase than decrease Pyongyang’s demands. The word appeasement naturally comes to mind. Historically, addressing other nations’ grievances was a time-honored diplomatic strategy, but the 1938 Munich Agreement on Czechoslovakia demonstrated the danger of attempting to accommodate those who refuse to be appeased. Which appears to be the case today in North Korea.

Despite the Moon administration’s great efforts to promote inter-Korean exchanges and improve inter-Korean relations, Kim Jong-un has responded with actions that range between chilly and contemptuous, highlighted by the dramatic demolition of the joint liaison office in June. Yet with the change in administrations in Washington the North needs a better relationship with the ROK more than ever. Instead of kowtowing northward, the Moon government should toughen its stance. Seoul should indicate its continued desire to work with the DPRK, but insist on respectful treatment in return.

Whatever the arguments, however, this issue doesn’t seem appropriate for congressional hearings and threats to have Washington rate South Korea the same as Pyongyang, China, and Saudi Arabia. Put the ROK on a watch list? Good grief!

With great power comes great arrogance, at least in the case of U.S. policymakers. They ooze sanctimony as they attempt to micromanage the globe and express outrage when other nations don’t play their assigned roles. So it is with congressional attacks on the ROK’s leaflet legislation.

The South Korean ban on offending Pyongyang is bad policy. But the decision is up to the South, its officials and people. If the new U.S. administration and Congress are serious about strengthening their ties with the ROK, they should go light with fevered and public criticism. And behave like Americans expect their friends to act.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.

Image: Reuters.

Regina Smyth

Politics, Eurasia

Since 2011, Navalny has played a long game, challenging the regime through protest and elections and influencing the political agenda. That strategy is gaining traction among ordinary Russians.

Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his team have stunned the Russian government again, forcing President Vladimir Putin and his allies to confront significant protest led by a foe they hoped to first sideline and, more recently, eliminate.

Navalny was nearly killed in August by the Novichok nerve agent in what most experts believe was an assassination attempt by the Kremlin. But he survived, after being airlifted from Russia to Germany, where he spent five months recovering.

The Kremlin discouraged Navalny from returning to Russia by revoking his probation on previous charges and issuing an arrest warrant.

In response, Navalny said, “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, I miss them.” He flew back on Jan. 17 and was immediately detained.

Navalny didn’t go quietly: His call for protests against his detention brought Russians to the streets in late January, in the largest opposition events in a decade and the most geographically widespread actions since the late Soviet period.

A controversial leader

I write about Navalny’s opposition strategy in my book “Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008-2020,” which explores the nature of Navalny’s threat to the Kremlin.

Since 2011, Navalny has been often quoted saying that his goal is to live in a normal country that is fair and can realize its economic potential. When he ran for Moscow mayor in 2013, his campaign slogan was “Change Russia, Begin with Moscow.”

Rivals in the opposition and in the regime dispute his motivations. During his early political career, Navalny espoused ethnic nationalist beliefs, and participated in the far right’s annual Russian March. He supported Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and used racial slurs to call for the deportation of Georgians and illegal Central Asian migrants. This rhetoric generated enduring distrust among the democratic opposition.

Kremlin officials dismiss him as an ambitious megalomaniac, implying that he wants power and wealth. These claims limited his personal support.

Anti-corruption campaign

Navalny began as a lawyer, challenging the large Russian energy companies by buying stock and thus gaining the right to attend shareholders’ meetings. He used his access to confront corporate leadership, demanding transparent corporate governance.

He established the Anti-Corruption Foundation, or FBK, to collect citizens’ reports of corrupt government practices. The project engaged Russians in everyday politics, a core element of the Navalny strategy. But it is now branded a “foreign agent” under Russian law, a move made by the government with no explanation. The designation subjects an organization to disruptive government oversight.

Navalny amplified his anti-corruption fight during Russia’s 2011 parliamentary election, when he labeled Putin’s political party, United Russia, the “Party of Crooks and Thieves.” Navalny was at the fore as these efforts contributed to mass protest sparked by evidence of significant electoral fraud.

He used his platform to build a team of committed activists who extended his reach across the country. Drawing on the resources of past protests, the team crafted an opposition strategy to confront the regime at every step of the election process, from candidate registration to vote tabulation.

His canny combination of investigative journalism and social media provided new evidence of government corruption. In 2017, Navalny released an exposé, “Don’t Call Him Dimon,” lampooning the deep corruption of former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev by showing his vast sneaker collection and an elaborate duck pond at his estate. Both ducks and sneakers became opposition symbols.

In response, tens of thousands of young people took to the streets in 2017, shocking a country that believed Putin’s opposition had waned. Months later, those young people flocked to join Navalny’s presidential campaign.

Since 2011, Navalny has played a long game, challenging the regime through protest and elections and influencing the political agenda. That strategy is gaining traction among ordinary Russians.

Navalny’s return strategy

Social media was key to Navalny’s plans for his return to Russia.

Before he left Germany, Navalny released an interview with a Russian security service officer who allegedly participated in the Novichok attack against him. The officer confessed the details of the assassination plot, revealing that the poison was delivered in Navalny’s boxer shorts. A new protest symbol emerged: blue boxers.

Navalny then headed home. As supporters gathered at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport, the Kremlin diverted his plane to a different Moscow airport, Sheremyetovo, to avoid media coverage. Yet reporters from international and Russian alternative media outlets on the plane recorded his trip. They live-streamed Navalny and his wife Yulia embracing before police led him away.

Yulia addressed supporters outside the airport: “Alexei is not afraid. I’m not afraid either, and I call on you all not to be afraid.” The message echoed across social media.

As he was transferred to prison, Navalny called Russians to the streets to demand his release. His team called for actions across Russia on Jan. 23.

In a video posted to Twitter, Navalny spoke from a makeshift courtroom. He counseled supporters, “There is only one thing to be afraid of, that’s your own fear.” TikTok was overrun with videos of young people expressing support.

Three days before the protests, Navalny dropped a new exposé that violated the unwritten code in Russian media against revealing details of Putin’s personal life. The film focused on a US$1.35 billion Black Sea compound that allegedly belongs to Putin, linking Kremlin theft to its failure to improve everyday lives. Navalny ended the video urging Russians to vote, using his Smart Vote app.

Putin’s childhood friend, oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, claimed ownership of what he called the apartment-hotel project.

“Putin’s Palace” has been viewed over 100 million times. The “Palace” rooms became fodder for internet memes and protest icons.

Renewed protest

The return, the video and the protests combined to defy the Kremlin’s version of reality: that Navalny was an unimportant tool of the West.

Instead, what happened next illustrated Navalny’s influence, despite limited personal support. The resulting protests began on Jan. 23 in Russia’s Far East and cascaded west through 11 time zones.

Navalny’s mobilization strategy reflects his deep understanding of changes in Russian society. New research shows that the extension of 3G internet across the globe decreases trust in government and increases perceptions of corruption by giving users free access to information. In Russia, the expansion of internet coverage fueled activism, even in remote areas.

Navalny has also tapped into generational change that divides young people – who rely on new media for information – from their elders, who remain loyal to state television.

The crowd on Jan. 23 reflected this. A survey revealed that protesters’ median age was 31. Women participated equally with men. Over 42% of respondents were first-time protest participants.

Navalny’s team called for renewed protest on Jan. 31, provoking a nationwide government intimidation campaign. Police raided homes and detained protest leaders, including Navalny’s brother. The Federal Investigative Committee posted humiliating apology videos of protesters, who were facing serious charges from the previous week.

The government fined social media corporations and arrested alternative journalists and new media users under expanded censorship laws.

Despite these efforts, nationwide protest continued on Jan. 31 even while police blocked city centers. The actions met with mass arrests and unprecedented police violence.

Russia’s top prosecutor warned that if the protests turned violent, participants would be charged with joining in a mass riot. This suggests a new round of demonstration trials designed to discourage participation.

While the Kremlin’s repressive response risks backlash at the polls and on the streets, Navalny is proving to be an unexpectedly persistent challenge to Putinism. Having survived the assassination attempt, his return to Russia reignited the opposition.

This story incorporates material from a previous article, published Aug. 21, 2020.

Regina Smyth, Professor of Political Science, Indiana University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Stuart MacLennan

Coronavirus, Europe

EU Law is only a small part of the picture. Because these export controls relate to the EU’s trade with the rest of the world, restrictions are subject to the rules of the World Trade Organization.

The European Commission has temporarily restricted exports of vaccines produced in the EU following a dispute with AstraZeneca about supplies to member states. It says that it has invested in the development process and is concerned about the way some manufacturers are handling orders. This comes after AstraZeneca told the EU it would not be able to supply as many vaccines as expected to EU countries in the immediate term.

The temporary restrictions ultimately mean that, for the next few months, in many cases, express authorisation will need to be requested from the member state in which a vaccine is manufactured before it can be exported. The decision has been controversial on many fronts but particularly in relation to the UK, which is miles ahead on its vaccine rollout and now potentially faces difficulty getting more doses.

The question must be asked: is this legal?

According to EU law, the European Commission does have the right to subject exports to authorisation in cases where it needs to “prevent a critical situation from arising on account of a shortage of essential products”.

On the basis of the “principle of solidarity”, various low and middle-income countries, as well as certain favoured partners in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, are exempted from this regulation. This is because, in the words of the regulation, “the single market for medical products is closely integrated beyond the boundaries of the union” – meaning supply chains for medicines spread beyond the border of the EU to its neighbours and trading partners too.

This is undoubtedly true, and particularly so in the case of a neighbouring state which was, until very recently, a full member of the EU’s internal market. The United Kingdom’s exclusion from the favoured list, therefore, undermines this purported rationale.

WTO law

EU Law, however, is only a small part of the picture. Because these export controls relate to the EU’s trade with the rest of the world, restrictions are subject to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

WTO rules prevent the EU from imposing restrictions on the volume of imports and exports, including export controls, on trade in goods between WTO member states such as the UK. There are exceptions, however. The WTO prohibition on export controls does not apply to “export prohibitions or restrictions temporarily applied to prevent or relieve critical shortages of foodstuffs or other products essential to the exporting contracting party”.

The threshold for this exception to apply, however, appears to be quite high. In a case relating to the export of raw materials from China, the WTO ruled that the commodities in question have to be “absolutely indispensable or necessary” and the shortage must be “critical”. While it might seem evident that vaccines are indispensable, the EU’s shortage is no more critical than the rest of the world’s.

Alternatively, another WTO rule permits states to stray from their obligations where it is “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health”. The question of necessity, however, is highly debatable.

In a 2001 case on importing products containing asbestos, the WTO made it clear that if a WTO member could find an alternative, less restrictive way to achieve its goal, it would be less likely for a trade restriction to be permissible.

That would suggest that it might not be legal for the EU to impose restrictions on vaccine exports because there are alternative actions it could take other than imposing export controls. Europe is a world leader in pharmaceutical production so you could certainly argue that the EU could temporarily change its patent laws to allow other manufacturers to more easily produce vaccine doses. This would almost certainly be far more effective in alleviating Europe’s vaccine shortage than the imposition of export controls.

On a more general level, you could argue that export controls don’t actually solve any problem, given this is a global crisis. If nations beyond the EU’s borders can’t get to grips with COVID-19, it won’t be able to “protect human, animal or plant life or health” within its borders.

A bad idea anyway

The legal situation around the EU’s manoeuvring is evidently complex and it may take a long time to work out whether this temporary restriction is permissible. In the meantime, however, some things are clear.

The European Commission has deals for the supply of vaccine doses with a number of manufacturers. Of these, the only exclusively European product is the German-made CureVac vaccine which, at time of writing, has not yet been authorised for use in the EU. The EU’s supply contracts for authorised vaccines are with Pfizer-BioNTech (American-German) and AstraZeneca (UK-Swedish); and for vaccines pending authorisation with American companies Johnson & Johnson and Moderna. The global nature of vaccine development and supply means that any retaliatory measures could easily offset any advantage gained by restricting exports.

What’s more, Article 21 of the Treaty on European Union states that one of the EU’s key objectives in its relationships with the rest of the world is to “encourage the integration of all countries into the world economy, including through the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade”. For the European Union to be the first major economy to indulge in “vaccine nationalism”, therefore, sets a dangerous example for the rest of the world. It’s debatable whether it’s legal – but it’s certainly not a good idea.

Stuart MacLennan, Associate Professor of Law, Coventry University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Michael W. Charney

Politics, South Asia

Military control of the government is nothing new for the Burmese people. In one way or another the military has controlled the country since 1962.

The military once again hold the reins of power in Myanmar. Citing constitutional provisions that give the military control in national emergencies, army officers detained government leaders in the early hours of February 1 2021, including state counsellor and popular national leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

An announcement on military television said the move was in response to “fraud” during last year’s general election. A spokesman said power had been handed to the army’s commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, who would hold power for one year, after which there would be new elections.

Military control of the government is nothing new for the Burmese people. In one way or another the military has controlled the country since 1962. The post-independence civilian government got off to a bad start in 1948. In July 1947 the charismatic nationalist leader General Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, was assassinated and leadership was inherited by the less politically agile U Nu.

Civil War broke out in 1949 between the government and an array of different insurgent forces, including communist and ethnic armies. As the civil war waged on and national politics became increasingly divisive, the military came to see itself as the only force that could hold the country together.

General Ne Win, who took power in a military coup, took the country economically and politically down a road informed by a new ideology that mixed together Buddhism and Marxism, known as the “Burmese Way to Socialism”. It brought an end to democratic institutions and civil liberties. Nationalisation of the economy and the forced sales by farmers of produce to the government removed private incentives and ruined the economy, leading to mass protests in the rainy season of 1988.

These displays of pent-up frustration including hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets forced Ne Win to step down. This brought to the fore Aung San’s daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi and a new political force, the National League for Democracy (NLD). Another military takeover followed, overtly to “restore order”, with the promise of new general elections in 1990.

When Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD swept the elections, the military cried foul and arrested her, preventing the NLD from taking power.

Military motivations

During nearly six decades in power, the military has been guided by several motivations. Chief among them are the army’s majoritarian nationalism dominated by the Burmese-speaking, Budhdist, Bamar ethnic group and the fear of any open democracy in which ethnic minorities, roughly 30% or so of the population, might gain too much power.

But the most durable motivation is that keeping control of – or at least maintaining a secure veto – over civilian government is a permanent necessity for the Burmese military. The upper echelons of the military and their families have used their control to enrich themselves, largely at the expense of pre-existing political and social elites. The continued wealth of their families would be threatened by any new government that could punish the corruption, reverse the land transfers and demand transfer of foreign bank accounts whose existence explains in part why most Burmese are so poor.

The military has followed a pattern of controlling the government for as long as it can in one guise and then, when a crisis hits, reinventing the official purpose for its continued control under another guise – and another name. So the Revolutionary Council in 1962 gave way to the Burma Socialist Programme Party government in 1974. This gave way to the State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1988, followed by the State Peace and Development Committee in 1997, which in turn was replaced in 2010 by the Thein Sein interim government.

What had been touted as a true democratic transition when the 2008 constitution was implemented, actually set up a system whereby the military still maintained enough power, through its veto power and control of a 25% block of parliamentary seats, to block any reforms that would lead to real change. This was particularly the case given they had banned NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president.

But this changed in 2016 when the NDL, having won won an earlier round of elections in 2015, created the office of state counsellor for Aung San Suu Kyi. The move allowed to take her place as de facto leader, with Win Myint as the figurehead president.

Strange allies

In 2017, the Myanmar military launched a brutal assault on the Rohingya ethnic group in the province of Rakhine in Western Myanmar. Thanks to social media campaigns on platforms such as like Facebook, the majority Bamar Budhdist population had been whipped up into an anti-Islamic frenzy. Aung San Suu Kyi did not oppose the military’s actions as the military had hoped, which would have lost her a great deal of popular support.

Instead she denied the military’s culpability, joined in the military’s political game of not recognising the Rohingya as a nationalist cause, supported the arrest of journalists who had discovered evidence for the military’s actions and even defended the military, most recently in 2019 in the International Court of Justice. These actions were the reason she has lost the human rights halo she once held in the eyes of the world.

But rather than win the military’s favour, army leaders were perturbed that their actions had not cost her and the NLD Burmese public support. Her continued popularity was demonstrated in November 2020 when the NLD swept the elections. The military’s fear that it was losing the nation, and that Aung San Suu Kyi might use this support to force constitutional changes, override the military’s control and bring their game to an end, meant that something had to be done.

The current military front party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), claimed election fraud – perhaps drawing a lesson from Donald Trump in the United States. On January 28, Myanmar’s election commission rejected these claims and validated the NLD victory.

Planning for the takeover of the government evidently began immediately. I have been told privately that there were two days of Chinese-brokered negotiations between NLD leaders and the military that came to naught when Aung San refused to budge to military demands. The military moved the next morning and Burmese woke up to yet another version of military control.

As so many times after so many coups and “corrective moves” made before, the future of the country is in the military’s hands. Sooner or later military rule in Myanmar will assume yet another guise – with another claim that it marks the beginning of a real transition. But only until it threatens to actually lead to real change. Then Myanmar is likely to see the cycle repeated again. Politics moves slowly in Myanmar – the military likes it that way.

Michael W. Charney, Professor of Asian and Military History, SOAS, University of London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Bradley Bowman

Security, Americas

The events last month in D.C. demonstrate the National Guard's value and suggest decision makers should think twice before withdrawing U.S. ground forces abroad from key locations at the frontiers of freedom.

The failure to protect the U.S. Capitol from an insurrectionist attack on January 6 is understandably dominating headlines. Leaders and investigators are right to ask how such a horrible breach of security happened—and what must be done to ensure it never happens again. There are also serious concerns about the role of veterans in the attack last month.

But as vital investigations and reforms proceed, Americans should not miss the other lessons on display. Foremost among them is the extraordinary role the U.S. National Guard played in securing the constitutional transfer of power and how properly positioned ground forces can provide powerful deterrence.

Most Americans appreciate that governors lean heavily on their Guard units to deal with both natural and man-made crises in their respective states. Many may also know the Department of Defense could not have completed its missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere over the last two decades without the National Guard's essential contributions.

Until last month, however, many Americans may not have fully appreciated the importance of the Guard here at home.

Following the January 6 attack, Americans should consider the role the National Guard played, once it was called upon, in standing between insurrectionists and our Constitution.

It is worth remembering that members of the armed forces swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

For this commitment and the sacrifices associated with military life, members of the National Guard deserve our respect and admiration.

At the same time, members of the military, including the Guard, are not super-humans. They are us. They come from every county in our country. Their backgrounds are diverse, and they struggle with the same challenges and maladies as those who do not serve in uniform.

That is what makes what transpired in Washington after January 6 so impressive.

Once assistance from the National Guard was finally requested, the D.C. Guard arrived at the Capitol Hill complex within hours, followed quickly thereafter by units from Maryland and Virginia. Guard units from other states followed, ultimately creating a force of 25,671 troops.

That is essentially a force the size of an Army corps. To put that number in perspective, the United States currently has fewer than 6,000 service members in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria—combined.

In addition to deployments in Washington, governors used an additional 7,102 activated Guard members to protect 26 state capitals.

All 54 state and territory governors mobilized their National Guards in support of state or national requirements.

These mobilizations included Army and Air Guard members, for example, from military police, engineer, infantry, transportation, explosive ordnance disposal, chemical, and civil support units.

Out of the 25,671 troops who deployed to D.C., the Pentagon, as a precaution, proactively pulled 12 Guard members out of duty—12 out of 25,671.

Our nation was tested, and members of the National Guard honored their oaths, maintained the peace, and enabled the constitutional transfer of power.

But it is not surprising to those who understand the American military’s deep institutional commitment to country and Constitution.

The coup this week in Burma demonstrates what can happen when a military puts power over democratic principles. 

Of course, that is not to say that there are no problems within the ranks of the American military. But as we seek to address those problems, we should take a moment to appreciate the Guard’s performance in defending the seat of our democracy and the constitutional transfer of power.

And what was the result of that Guard deployment in Washington, DC.?  With only a few exceptions, the insurrectionists did not even show up in D.C. once the National Guard arrived.

That brings us to the second lesson on display—the role of ground forces in deterrence.

Our nation is currently engaged in a debate about what military forces the United States must deploy abroad to secure our homeland and our interests. Within that discussion, there is also a lively policy debate—with important budgetary implications—regarding the role of the U.S. Army relative to the other services.

America certainly needs a larger Navy and Air Force. But the role of the U.S. Army remains vital in Europe, the Middle East, and yes, in the Indo-Pacific.

If America comes to blows with China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, we will certainly need modernized air and naval forces with sufficient capabilities and capacities. But it would be better if those conflicts never happen in the first place.

The Guard's role last month in D.C. vividly demonstrates the potentially decisive deterrent value of American ground forces when properly equipped, trained, and positioned.

While there is certainly a difference between armed domestic violent extremists and nation-state adversaries abroad, Americans have seen the same deterrent benefits of forward-positioned forces abroad. In 1997, a high-ranking North Korean defector stated that U.S. military forces in South Korea were the only thing deterring North Korean aggression.

In Europe, Moscow has invaded non-NATO countries such as Ukraine and Georgia in recent years. But after more than seven decades, the Kremlin has never invaded a NATO member country. The presence of joint U.S. combat forces, including ground forces, in Europe, makes clear to Moscow that America and its NATO allies have the military capability to defend against an attack.

The events last month in D.C. demonstrate the National Guard's value and suggest decision makers should think twice before withdrawing U.S. ground forces abroad from key locations at the frontiers of freedom.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

This article first appeared on RealClearDefense.

Image: Reuters

Alexander Kurov

economy, The Americas

Some have portrayed GameStop as a David vs. Goliath story. According to that narrative, the big guys on Wall Street have been getting rich gambling on the stock market for years. What’s the problem when the little guy gets a chance?

Shares of GameStop and other companies or assets that shot up in value in recent weeks are now dropping like stones. While I feel sorry for the many investors who will likely lose a lot of money, the stocks’ return to Earth is actually a good thing – if you want to avoid financial meltdown to the long list of crises the U.S. is facing.

The reason has to do with what financial markets are – and what they are not – as well as what happens when prices of stocks and other securities become untethered from the fundamental value of the assets they’re meant to represent.

As a finance professor who does research on how markets respond to new information, I believe it is important to maintain a close link between security prices and fundamentals. When that stops happening, a market collapse may be not far behind.

Capital markets aren’t casinos

Some have portrayed GameStop as a David vs. Goliath story. According to that narrative, the big guys on Wall Street have been getting rich gambling on the stock market for years. What’s the problem when the little guy gets a chance?

The first thing to keep in mind is that markets aren’t a big casino, as some seem to believe. Their core purpose is to efficiently connect investors with companies and other organizations that will make the most productive use of their cash.

Accurate market prices, meant to reflect a company’s expected profits and overall risk level, provide an important signal to investors whether they should hand over their money and what they should get in return. Companies like Apple and Amazon simply would not exist as we know them today without access to capital markets.

The more jaundiced view of markets focuses on episodes when markets seemingly go crazy and on the speculative gambling behavior of some traders, such as hedge funds. The GameStop saga feeds into this storyline.

But GameStop also illustrates what happens when stock prices don’t reflect reality.

The GameStop bubble

GameStop fundamentals are, to put it mildly, lackluster.

The company is a brick-and-mortar chain of video game stores. Most video game sales now take place as digital downloads. GameStop has been slow to adapt to this new reality. Its revenue peaked in 2012 at US$9.55 billion and had dropped by a third as of 2019. It hasn’t earned a profit since 2017. Put simply, it is a money-losing company in a competitive and quickly changing industry.

The recent speculative frenzy, however, increased the GameStop stock price from under $20 in early January to as high as $483 in a little over two weeks, driven by retail investors on Reddit who coordinated their buying to harm hedge funds – costing the professionals billions of dollars.

It is clearly a speculative price bubble and has some characteristics of a Ponzi scheme. Many small investors who “get on the train” late and buy at the inflated prices – especially those attracted by the extreme price moves and media coverage – will be left holding the bag.

And sooner or later, the stock price will likely come back to Earth to a level that can be supported by the fundamentals of the company. Before midday on Feb. 4, shares were trading near $70 for the first time since Jan. 25.

The problems begin when that doesn’t happen until too late.

Bubbles are made to pop

Financial markets are made up of people. People are imperfect, and so are markets. This means market prices are not always “right” – and it’s often hard to know what the “right” price is.

That is true when it comes to the price bubbles in individual stocks like GameStop. But it’s also true on a much bigger scale, when it comes to a market as a whole.

Price bubbles and crashes are good for neither Wall Street nor Main Street. When the dot-com bubble popped in 2000 – after prices of dozens of tech stocks soared exponentially in the late 1990s – an economic recession followed soon after. The bursting of a housing bubble in 2008 triggered a global financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Too much momentum

So markets fail sometimes, and we need sensible regulation and enforcement to make such failures less likely.

Taken in isolation, the GameStop craze is unlikely to trigger a disruption to the overall stock market, especially if its price continues to fall more in line with the company’s fundamental value. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case. Nor was GameStop the first sign of problems.

In recent days, Reddit users have also driven up the prices of silver and companies such as BlackBerry and movie theater giant AMC Entertainment. Popular trading apps like Robinhood have made trading easy, fun and basically free.

The share price of Tesla, for example, skyrocketed 720% last year, in large part when investors bought the stock because it was already rising. This is called momentum investing, a trading strategy in which investors buy securities because they are going up – selling them only when they think the price has peaked.

If this continues, it will likely lead to more financial bubbles and crashes that could make it harder for companies to raise capital, posing a threat to the already limping U.S. economic recovery. Even if the worst doesn’t happen, large price movements and allegations of price manipulation could hurt public confidence in financial markets, which would make people more reluctant to invest in retirement and other programs.

Warren Buffett once said about stock market behavior: “The light can at any time go from green to red without pausing at yellow.”

What he meant was that markets can turn on a dime and plunge. He saw these moments as opportunities to find deals in the market, but for most people they result in panic, heavy losses and economic consequences like mass unemployment – as we saw in 1929, 2000 and 2008.

There’s no particular reason it won’t happen again.

Alexander Kurov, Professor of Finance and Fred T. Tattersall Research Chair in Finance, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Mi-décembre 2014, la Cour pénale internationale a abandonné les charges pesant sur le président du Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta et suspendu ses enquêtes au Darfour. L'adoption de sanctions serait-elle plus efficace ? / Soudan, Conflit, Droit international, Géopolitique, Justice, Droit international (...) / Soudan, Conflit, Droit international, Géopolitique, Justice, Droit international humanitaire, Soudan du Sud - 2015/01

Biden must rediscover Obama’s patient optimism.

En France, les penseurs et militants de la décroissance, qui prônent un mode de vie plus simple et plus riche de sens, voient croître leur audience, tant auprès des partis de la gauche antilibérale que parmi le grand public. / France, Écologie, Idées, Mouvement de contestation, Politique, Extrême (...) / France, Écologie, Idées, Mouvement de contestation, Politique, Extrême gauche, Décroissance - 2009/08

Comment l'administration Reagan peut-elle se justifier d'armer, d'entraîner et de soutenir ces rescapés du gouvernement Somoza, l'un des régimes les plus corrompus et les plus répressifs que l'hémisphère ait connus ? Comment Washington peut-il même prétendre qu'un mouvement de « révolte » à ce point (...) / États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Guatemala - 1983/06

Beijing doesn’t oppose monopolies on principle, but even tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent must put party over profit.

Le 19 janvier dernier, Jacques Munier dans sa chronique « Le Journal des idées » sur France Culture a consacré son émission à la Turquie. Il cite à cette occasion l’article de Jana Jabbour, « La Turquie, une puissance émergente qui n’a pas les moyens de ses ambitions », publié dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020).

Le communiqué, publié le 3 janvier par le corps enseignant, résume la situation : « Pour la première fois depuis le régime militaire de 1980, un administrateur non élu et n’appartenant pas au corps enseignant de l’université a été nommé recteur ». Et de dénoncer « des pratiques anti-démocratiques qui vont s’aggravant sans cesse depuis 2016 ». L’université du Bosphore à Istanbul, première université de Turquie, est classée parmi les 500 meilleurs établissements dans le monde. Dans Libération, le philosophe Étienne Balibar et Zeynep Gambetti – ancienne professeure dans cette université – soulignent sa tradition d’autonomie, de liberté scientifique et de respect des valeurs démocratiques. Ils rappellent par exemple la tenue en son sein d’un colloque international sur la situation des Arméniens dans l’Empire ottoman d’avant 1915, qui lui avait valu les foudres des nationalistes et des conservateurs. […]

Une posture proactive en Méditerranée

Au plan géopolitique, « la Turquie adopte une posture de plus en plus hostile aux pays occidentaux » dont son activisme en Méditerranée orientale et en Lybie est l’illustration, résume Jana Jabbour, enseignante à Sciences-Po, dans la revue Politique étrangère. Le titre de son article : « La Turquie, une puissance émergente qui n’a pas les moyens de ses ambitions ».

En adoptant une posture proactive et en s’affirmant comme puissance régionale dans cette région clé pour les équilibres géopolitiques mondiaux, Ankara entend accroître son poids sur la scène internationale pour devenir un État-pivot et un acteur-clé de la gouvernance mondiale. 

Jana Jabbour, Politique étrangère, n° 4/2020.

Accédez à l’émission dans son intégralité ici.

Retrouvez l’article de Jana Jabbour dans son intégralité ici.

Retrouvez le numéro 4/2020 de Politique étrangère ici.

Trump’s draconian legacy on immigration will be hard to expunge.

Tension and competition between the United States and China are inevitable. War, however, is not.

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’hiver 2020-2021 de Politique étrangère (n° 4/2020). Julien Nocetti propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Samuel Woolley, The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth (PublicAffairs, 2020, 272 pages).

Les études sur la propagande et la désinformation sont traversées de nombreux chausse-trappes et néologismes. Dans The Reality Game, il n’est pas question de fake news ; pour l’auteur, l’expression, ultra-malléable, serait devenue un outil de diffusion massive des fausses informations elles-mêmes. Dans la foulée de travaux récents, Samuel Woolley, à la fois universitaire et think tanker, privilégie le terme de computational propaganda, qu’il estime refléter plus fidèlement les mutations technologiques en cours. Celle-ci consiste en la combinaison des usages des réseaux sociaux, des métadonnées (big data) et d’algorithmes d’Intelligence artificielle (IA) dans l’objectif de manipuler l’opinion publique.

Les illustrations abondent : recourir aux réseaux sociaux (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) pour attaquer anonymement des journalistes et les dissuader dans leurs enquêtes ; utiliser des serveurs vocaux interactifs imitant la voix humaine pour appeler simultanément des milliers d’électeurs et les désinformer ; utiliser l’IA et les bots pour fausser la communication humaine dans le but de piéger les algorithmes qui gèrent les nouvelles sur les moteurs de recherche et les réseaux sociaux en priorisant certaines par rapport à d’autres. L’idée derrière la computational propaganda est bien de permettre une propagande et une désinformation très personnalisées, tous azimuts, et difficilement maîtrisables pour la victime.

La propagande computationnelle a de nombreux effets bien réels, parfois physiques. Si Samuel Woolley livre des exemples concrets – l’affaire Jamal Khashoggi, les attentats du marathon de Boston en 2013 –, il souligne surtout la dérive technologique de la propagande et de la désinformation à l’ère du tout-numérique. Les vidéos deepfake, qui manipulent la réalité, deviennent de plus en plus crédibles grâce aux outils d’IA, créant un espace d’expression pour de nouveaux types de désinformation – peu coûteux – et présentant un risque élevé d’escalade, notamment dans des contextes électoraux.

Ces outils contribuent à élargir le cercle des acteurs pouvant influencer directement les opinions publiques, voire la prise de décision politique. La désinformation et la subversion « augmentées » à l’IA, moins statiques car diluant plus habilement qu’auparavant l’authentique dans la confusion, renouvelleront, selon l’auteur, les pratiques de guerre informationnelle.

Une autre difficulté majeure tient à l’alignement de facto des intérêts des principaux acteurs de l’« économie de l’attention » (les GAFAM), et de ceux produisant de la désinformation politique. Pour les États, l’un des défis consiste à agir sur le terrain politique en ne laissant pas aux grandes plates-formes le monopole de l’initiative technologique. Woolley n’élude pas la responsabilité des acteurs privés – dont YouTube, souvent « oublié » dans les débats –, qui préfèrent souvent se défausser derrière les promesses de l’IA pour éradiquer désinformation et propagande, au détriment de la prise en compte d’autres facteurs (conditions de travail et formation des modérateurs de ces plates-formes, interrogation sur le profil des consommateurs de la propagande computationnelle, etc.).

Enfin, un des messages de l’ouvrage – nous vivons à une époque où la quête pour contrôler la réalité devient ludique – aurait mérité d’être davantage approfondi, ce que l’auteur fera certainement dans de prochains travaux.

Julien Nocetti

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L'eldorado universitaire américain n'a cessé de fasciner les élites mondiales, aveuglées par les établissements richement dotés, les campus rutilants et les bibliothèques gorgées d'ouvrages. Même si pendant les décennies de l'après-guerre une certaine démocratisation de l'enseignement supérieur est (...) / France, Université, États-Unis (affaires intérieures), Éducation, Inégalités - 2007/09

The United States and its Gulf partners should consider a fresh approach that makes use of their wealth and countervailing soft power.