Foreign Policy Blogs

The Integration Center for Georgian Azerbaijanis (GAIM) was opened on April 3, 2019 in the Marneuli region of Georgia.

The opening ceremony was attended by Fuad Muradov, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s State Committee for Work with Diaspora, Shota Rekhviashvili, the governor of Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia, Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, the state minister for reconciliation and civil equality, and other officials.

The opening of the Integration Center of Georgian Azerbaijanis in Marneuli is an important event. The proposal regarding the integration center opened in Marneuli was put forward by local youth living in Georgia in 2018. The opening of the center is a very important project, and it is the solution for a number of issues that concern the local Azerbaijanis in Georgia.  

The main purpose of the establishment of the center is to deepen the existing relations between Azerbaijan and Georgia in the fields of science, education, culture and sports and to support the integration of local Azerbaijanis into civil society. Azerbaijani, Georgian and English languages, as well as the history of Azerbaijan and Georgia, will be taught in the center, and sports clubs will operate.

The center operates in various directions and supports Azerbaijanis living in Georgia. The biggest support was during the Coronavirus pandemic. With the support of the State Committee for Work with Diaspora, they helped foreign compatriots by providing support to low-income and vulnerable population groups, such as Azerbaijani houses and separate diaspora organizations established abroad, by carrying out humanitarian actions. The Integration Center of Georgian Azerbaijanis repeatedly helped low-income and elderly families and elderly people living in social isolation in various cities of Georgia during the quarantine period and distributed food parcels to Azerbaijani families due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The center also organizes events on significant days for both countries. This year, a commemorative event was held at the Georgian Azerbaijani Integration Center in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Khojaly genocide. They laid a wreath in front of the monument in February 2022. Azerbaijani Minister of Education Emin Amrullayev, who was on a visit to Georgia, also visited the Integration Center of Georgian Azerbaijanis in Marneuli.

 

The “proxy paradox”, namely, the fact that the “Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics”, which for 8 years have been completely subsidized by the Russian Federation, enjoy broad military support and have “authority” totally dependent on the Kremlin, but so officially and not annexed to Russia, suggests that there is a complex and multi-level model of Moscow’s interaction with the “satellites”.

A kind of “food chain” has been formed, in which a “satellite” country or territory can be “sacrificed” for the sake of Russia receiving geopolitical benefits and advantages.

At the lowest level of this “chain” are several well-known countries in Africa, in which both governments and national wealth are controlled by Russian private companies, primarily the infamous Wagner private military company. The socio-economic development of Russia, in essence, is of little interest, despite the traditional declaration of “friendly ties with the countries of Africa.” Much more profitable and interesting is the export of minerals, the “range” of which is very wide, including gold. The presence of PMCs, which do not require large resources, makes it possible to keep local clans “on a short leash”, as well as successfully compete and even squeeze Western countries out of the region, i.e. former metropolises.

“Trojan horses” are Russia’s “gold asset” among the “satellites”, primarily due to the personal loyalty of the leaders, in the spirit of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, or traditional “historical” allied relations, as in the case of Serbia. The main task of the “Trojan horses” is to create a deep split in the West, in particular, the European Union, designated by Russia as a hostile entity. The situation with sanctions has clearly shown that a “Trojan horse” can be used to destroy political unity on conceptual international issues.

The current “energy crisis” in Europe also did not do without the Hungarian “Trojan horse”. Against the background of serious problems in the industry and the growing dissatisfaction of the population caused by a shortage of gas in European countries, Hungary is confidently increasing its pumping, demonstrating to the entire EU the “advantages of friendship with Russia.”

Serbia, whose economic potential is very small, is being used by Russia in its traditional role as an “eternal fuse” in the Balkans. The recent idea to create a military base in Serbia was met with a bang by the local patriotic community, but with great apprehension in neighboring countries. The fears are quite understandable since Russian forces are almost in the center of Europe close to the NATO countries.

Serbia is a “satellite” very vulnerable to pressure. On the one hand, the Serbian economy, and its export potential, are focused on the EU, but on the other hand, the status of a “historical ally” obliges the Serbian authorities and Serbian society to demonstrate loyalty to Russia at all levels.

The “satellite” countries from among the former republics of the USSR traditionally play the role of a “security belt” for Russia. “Setting fire to conflicts” along the perimeter of its borders, Russia is trying to “stop” tension, preventing destructive processes from spreading to its territory. True, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the “satellites” from the CSTO began to demonstrate intractability and therefore are now considered a cheap source of resources for the war with Ukraine. Mercenaries are being recruited in Central Asia, and Soviet-made weapons are being exported.

Also, “post-Soviet satellites” are considered by Russia as platforms for circumventing sanctions or a profitable exchange with influential players in the Transcaucasus, and Central Asia. The role of PMCs at this level of the “food chain” is performed by the Russian “peacekeeping contingent”, the effectiveness of which is doubted, for example, by all parties to the Karabakh conflict.

Belarus occupies a special place among the “post-Soviet satellites”. In fact, this is a military springboard for Russia’s advance to the West and at the same time a “theater of military operations” that allows you to “export chaos” and take the war out of Russia.

Finally, one more, extremely interesting element of the “food chain” of Russian satellites, is now being actively developed. These are “rogue states”, i.e. Iran, and North Korea. In exchange for economic preferences, they must also ensure the “export of chaos” and blackmail of the West, including nuclear. The special operation in Ukraine made its adjustments to this standard set. Now these “satellites” are also a source of weapons (Russia tried to buy drones from Iran) to continue the war with Ukraine.

Several countries in Latin America, where Russian propaganda is traditionally strong, can also replenish the “food chain”. They are destined for the role of “counterweight” to American influence in the region.

Finally, the BRICS countries. In the literal sense, they are not “satellites” of the Kremlin, but they have a “strange respect” for Russia (like India). This group of countries is a platform for Russia’s attempts to realize the idea of ​​a “multipolar world” and declare a “pivot to the East”, which in many respects has a pure propaganda value.

The entire food chain satellites” is called upon to play an active role in Russia’s struggle with the West. We now have a rather unique situation – what for centuries formed the basis of the existence of the Russian state, namely, opposition to the West, is being implemented at all levels. We hear about the “turn to the East”, about the “predatory aggressive West”, about the “pernicious Western values”. But this was during the time of the dispute between the “Slavophiles” and the “Westerners” back in the 19th century.

Using “satellites”, Russia is testing new technologies for the destruction of Western civilization.

Russian “satellites” are active or potential “grey” zones of instability. The formation of such “zones” is Russia’s calling card. So it was in Georgia, so it was in Syria. Now, this technology is being scaled up in Ukraine, where Russia is trying to turn the occupied Ukrainian regions into mini-satellites. The same scheme is being implemented – control over resources, mobilization of the population, the transformation of the territory into a “theater of military operations”, a barrier that does not let the war directly into the territory of Russia.

The carriers of the “ideology of destabilization” in the occupied Ukrainian territories are both local collaborators and officials who “landed” from Russia. But, most importantly, these are figures from the ruling United Russia party, a kind of “collective Putin”, organizing “referendums” and establishing quasi-state structures in these territories.

There is no guarantee that Russia will not organize such “gray zones” somewhere in Europe. The scheme is quite simple. A country, region, or even a separate city declares itself to be a “satellite” of Russia, due to traditions, historical memory, or the presence of a Russian population, which is allegedly “infringed on their rights.” Further, the current government is declared illegitimate, and an enclave controlled by Russia is rapidly forming with all the attributes of chaos – from the degradation of administrative and economic structures to the emergence of a base of militants, arms, and human trafficking.

The events in Ukraine testify that the “export of chaos” can be organized by Russia anywhere in the world.

Mykola Volkivskyi is a political scientist, fellow of the Lane Kirkland Scholarship, Founder of the Foundation for the Development of Ukraine in Poland, and the Institute for Government Relations in Kyiv. Former Advisor to the Chairman of the Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Artem Oliinyk is a political scientist, President of the IAPSS in Ukraine and research assistant at the Academy of Political Sciences of Ukraine, Director of the Institute for Government Relations (Kyiv).

The recent news that Venezuela will be providing Iran with 1 million hectares of arable land for farming draws further concern from the security circles concerned about the Islamic Republic’s growing influence in the Western Hemisphere.  That follows a rapidly growing energy collaboration between Caracas and Tehran following the Biden administration’s decision to lift oil sanctions on the Maduro regime. This collaboration includes the boosting of Iran’s crude supply to Venezuela for refining, which gives room for an increased export of Iranian oil for sale – and further undermines the impact of sanctions on Iran’s operations.  

There is reason to believe that the recent US government’s foreign policy in Latin America has encouraged a more assertive political and defense cooperation between leftist governments, rogue regimes such as Iran, and its terrorist proxy Hezbullah, as well as assorted criminal enterprises and gangs. 

With the election of the FARC-affiliated leftist president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, the United States is losing one of its few remaining allies in Latin America. US-Colombia cooperation on drug trafficking and counterterrorism strengthened Colombia against cartels, curtailed the Marxist-Leninist FARC rebels (despite the ill-advised peace deal), limited the spread of Hezbullah and its Venezuelan supporters, and bolstered Israel and Colombia’s security relationship. 

Colombia helped prevent the assassination of an Israeli businessman by Hezbullah, allegedly planned in retaliation for the liquidation of Qassem Soleimani. But stability in Colombia has always been contingent on US political and security support. The refugee crisis in Venezuela, which brought 3.5 million Venezuelans to Colombia, has resulted in economic concerns and risks of destabilization.  Instead of addressing this crisis, the Biden administration has announced the removing of FARC from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list. Colombia and the European Union withdrew the “terrorist” label from FARC when the peace agreement was first concluded in an effort to encourage integration, but FARC has factionalized into militias that engage in occasional bouts of violence.  The US administration’s signal that it no longer considers FARC a security threat could embolden the group’s worst elements. With the newly elected President Petro pursuing the policy of decriminalization of cocaine, many fear that the policy will give cover to drug cartels, and Hezbullah to enter the markets under more official covers and embed themselves further. 

The election’s context was one that experts had warned about: despite the formal end of the civil war guerrilla warfare continued. FARC’s political success brought more leftist elements into the government.  Far from renouncing violence, many fear that FARC affiliates will instead use it to further spread and entrench the ideology that caused the civil war and that has already resulted in political and economic crises in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba. All of those countries have several things in common – strong opposition to capitalism, populist distaste for the United States, close relations with narcotraffickers, and alliances with Iran, China, and Russia.  The brazen assassination on a Colombian beach of a Paraguayan prosecutor, Marcelo Pecci, known for his tough positions on corruption, gangs, and Hezbullah, may be a harbinger of the chaos that can be expected should leftist policies so destructive to Venezuela take root in Colombia.  

That episode, however, did little to change the US government’s haphazard approach to Latin America. Over the various administrations, US role in Latin American has vacillated, with Republicans traditionally emphasizing the security-oriented approach and focusing on countering terrorism and gangs, while the Democratic administrations focusing more on human rights and humanitarian assistance. The Trump administration, for instance, has pushed for Hezbullah’s terrorist designation among both left and right-wing governments in Latin America, and has worked with El Salvador to address the border crisis and to clamp down on the MS-13 entry into the US. 

However, none of the US administrations in the past twenty years had developed a broad strategic approach in the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, there has been neither an effort to work with individual target countries to address ingrained economic conditions, political upheavals, and regional problems – such as the impact of Venezuela’s refugee crisis on its neighbors – nor a broader security framework to root out the pro-Iran elements which have grown across the continent thanks to the Cuban/Venezuelan intelligence network, and Iran’s strategic cooperation on economy and defense with Latin American countries. Both Republican and Democrat administrations overall adopted a reactionary approach to specific pet peeves, failing to develop a vision for engagement which would help advance security, prosperity, and peace in the neighboring countries past any specific governments in the US or among their counterparts. 

The relative silence after Pecci’s murder is an illustration of the US government’s overall failure to understand that the security concerns in Latin American require a long-term consistent bipartisan approach. As Joseph Humire, Center for Secure Free Society’s specialist on Transnational Threat Networks in the Western Hemisphere, told the author, Iran has been patiently pursuing a systematic ground game through As Joseph Humire, Center for Secure Free Society’s specialist on Transnational Threat Networks in the Western Hemisphere, told the author, Iran has been patiently pursuing a systematic ground game throughout the continent, slowly but surely expanding its reach, through consistent social, cultural, and economic initiatives and the expansion of alliances with the help of its regional proxies and networks, including assorted criminal elements. 

Some have compared Pecci’s murder with the analogous killing of Alberto Nisman, an Argentine prosecutor who was investigating the leftist Kirschner government’s cover-up of the Iranian orchestrated AMIA bombing by Hizballah. Since the return of leftists to power in Argentina the investigation into these events has gone cold again – and the Iranian presence has grown stronger. Under the current president, Alberto Fernandez, Argentina claims to crack down on Iranian smuggling, but recently allowed a Venezuelan-flagged flight operated by a US-sanctioned Iranian aviator with at least one senior Tehran official on board to land on its soil.  

The US reaction to these incidents has been muted. Low-key policies on leftist politicians in Latin America lie in sharp contrast to the Biden administration’s aggressively interventionist approach with the few remaining right-wing governments, which are also some of the last remaining US allies and opponents of Iran.  The White House, which initially embraced the Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei, later parted ways and even tried to impede his efforts to replace an official from the prior administration.  The attack on Nayib Bukele’s government in El Salvador has been far more extensive, public, and potentially destructive to US security interests in the Western Hemisphere.  

After Bukele replaced officials loyal to his leftist predecessors and linked to corruption, the newly inaugurated Biden administration reacted by diverting humanitarian aid to leftist self-styled human rights NGOs connected to opposition parties.  A number of these groups were reportedly receiving funding from past lawmakers, who themselves had served in sanctioned governments. The Biden administration also criticized the Bukele government for allegedly engaging in secret negotiations with notorious gangs, such as MS-13, in a scheme that would have reduced violence in exchange for votes for Bukele’s party, “The New Ideas”. The sole source for this accusation were journalists at the left-leaning Salvadoran opposition-alligned publication El Faro. 

Subsequent events raised questions. Between November 9th and 11th, El Salvador saw a strange increase in gang-related murders (46 in a 72-hours-period) before going back to zero homicides on November 12th. These numbers were provided by local authorities on Twitter on November 13th. “After 24 hours of having launched #DespliegueNacional, we can announce that we have contained the increase in violence during the past couple of days,” Bukele wrote. Later he used the phrase “old enemies and new allies with external financing” when referring to the situation.  

Giovanni Giacalone, senior analyst for the Europe Desk at ITCT, Itstime, and ITSS’ Latin America team, says that “[a]ccording to former ES anti-gang units, Bukele is referring to the right-wing and the left-wing political parties that always provided funds to the Maras [gangs].  Those would be the old enemies.” The cryptic reference to the ‘new allies with external financing’ may reference the flow of weapons into the country that ends up in the hands of these gangsters. Whether that external financing includes Venezuela, whose reach is growing across the region, the US, which has been openly meddling in El Salvador’s domestic affairs while ignoring the flow of weapons into the country, or other parties remains to be investigated. 

The Maras appeared to indiscriminately kill people – including vendors, bus passengers, and market-goers. La Prensa Grafica reported that gang members may have been instructed to leave bodies in plain sight. According to Giacalone, these brief spikes of violence usually occur when the Mara leaders want to send a message to the government. 

In January 2022, a Canada-based digital rights organization called Citizen Lab produced a report attacking the Bukele government for its alleged violations of journalists’ privacy via use of NSOGroup’s Pegasus software. In its reports, Citizen Lab relies on the Biden administration’s El Faro-based claims of Bukele’s collusion with the gangs, but produces no new evidence. It also does not reveal the technical methodology by which it arrives at its conclusion. The Bukele government rejected these claims stating it had no access to Pegasus and that several of its own officials had also been hacked. Pegasus is only sold to specific state-based actors and is reportedly untraceable. Could Citizen Lab also be one of the “new allies with external funding”? 

Curiously, despite this alleged collusion with the gangs and the subsequent cover up, the gangs soon declared open season in El Salvador, challenging the rule of law with unprecedented violence. “The ES government always denied such allegations and its strong actions against the Maras, in prison and on the streets, make it hard to believe that Bukele attempted some secret negotiations,” states Giacalone, adding: “Is it possible that those new allies that Bukele referred to are trying to discredit the government by making the public opinion believe that a deal was made and those sudden peaks are supposed to prove it? If the Mara leaders currently detained had the possibility to order a long-term war against the government, they clearly would. However, we have only seen 72-hours-long peaks of violence, mainly against civilians.” 

Bukele reacted by ordering a special operation and rounding up over 47,300 gang members since the state of emergency was approved by El Salvador’s Congress in April, and was extended for the fourth time the week of July 29th, with minimal losses on either side. The Biden administration reacted by issuing multiple statements of concern and sanctioning several officials for “undermining democratic norms” by passing a law preventing the media from sharing gang communications. Ironically, several Salvadorans added to the list are from the previous left-wing administrations, and are being added in connection to their past corruption and embezzlement. While putting political pressure on President Bukele and openly siding with his opponents, the Biden team reportedly shuttered America’s MS-13 task force and embraced open border policies, increasing the flow of fleeing MS-13 members into the country. 

The likely impact of such policies by the US is easily predictable. First, coupled with domestic reluctance to hold accused violent criminals without bail, the US government’s tolerance of MS-13 and other gangsters encourages the flow of violent crime into the United States. Second, the political pressure on the Bukele government encourages criminal elements and the groups that cover for them, and strengthens whatever links may exist between the leftist opposition and these elements. It is the opposition, and not Bukele, who stand to benefit the most from gang violence. Externally, foreign entities, such as Iran and Venezuela would also gain from the Bukele administration either falling by popular will, which is unlikely as it has a widely popular mandate and has coordinated all of its activities with its Congress, or was destabilized and made ineffectual thanks to US pressure.  

The Northern Triangle is a geographically and geopolitically advantageous area for Iran, Hezbullah, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the new socialist Honduran administration’s Red-Green Axis. Given its strange passivity in reaction to growing Iranian and Venezuelan interventions across Latin America, and its aggressive position towards Nayib Bukele, one wonders whether a pro-Iran radically leftist Western Hemisphere is in fact the geopolitical goal of the US, or at least, a reality it is willing to tolerate while in pursuit of the Iran deal. One also wonders, why, over the course of the past decades, both Republicans and Democrats have failed to develop an effective outreach and coordination strategy to ensure that the popular will of the voters in Latin American countries and support for improved relations with the US will outlive any particular government of the day. Iran, on the other hand, has been stealthily pursuing that vision of becoming one of the central influencing powers in the Western Hemisphere. 

Irina Tsukerman is a human rights and national security lawyer, a geopolitical analyst, President of Scarab Rising, Inc., and the Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider. 

Each of us in the twenty-first century recognizes the negative effects of climate change on the future of the earth and strives to mitigate them as much as possible. The global community is attempting to warn international organizations and states about the magnitude of the disasters that await us in the future by organizing various events.

However, some states, knowing the disaster that awaits the earth as a result of climate change, not only participate in the fight against it but also encourage the acceleration of this process through their actions. The Republic of Armenia’s atrocities in Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories are a clear example of this.

Armenia, which has illegally and militarily occupied Azerbaijani lands for nearly 30 years, ignoring all international documents, including four UN Security Council resolutions, was forced to surrender and withdraw from the occupied territories only after the 44-day war that began on September 27, 2020.

Notwithstanding the humiliation and pain that Azerbaijanis have endured over the last 30 years, with 30,000 lives lost and 4000 people missing, the Azerbaijani government and its armed forces treated the Armenians illegitimately settled in Azerbaijani territories humanely, giving them enough time to pack and leave their temporary “homes,” and even extending the time they were given to leave when necessary. But before they left, they packed everything they owned and set fire to their homes. And they will continue to do so. They never considered the places they lived to be their homes. In recent days, Armenians fleeing Azerbaijan’s Lachin district have also begun to burn forests.

The main point to be emphasized here is that the vast majority of the perpetrators are Armenians from Syria and Lebanon, who were illegally resettled in the lands occupied by the Republic of Armenia. By doing this, Armenia also violates paragraph 6 of Article 49 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War of 12 August 1949.

According to a joint declaration signed by Russia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, Azerbaijan is set to retake control of Lachin, which lies on the route between the city of Khankendi in Karabakh and Armenia, by the end of this month.

Russian troops and the Armenian population will leave the areas along the “Lachin corridor,” which includes Lachin, Zabuh, and Sus, and it was temporarily placed under Russian control by a tripartite declaration signed on November 10, 2020, after 44 days of the conflict.

As part of the agreement, Azerbaijan constructed a 32-kilometer (20-mile) road around Lachin for the Armenian population in Karabakh to use on their way to and from Armenia.

According to APA, environmental non-governmental organizations in Azerbaijan held an event related to environmental terrorism committed by Armenians illegally settled in Azerbaijan’s territories in Lachin and the surrounding areas.

Many environmental organizations condemned the environmental terrorism committed by Armenians in Lachin and the surrounding areas, stating that all of this is deliberate damage to the environment by burning the forest areas around Lachin. The participants noted that this process is a clear manifestation of the Armenian government’s pathological hatred for Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani people, as well as their hatred for nature, Azerbaijan’s natural resources, and the ecological environment.

According to the appeal, the Republic of Azerbaijan is always working to protect the ecological balance and ensure that its citizens live in a healthy environment, and non-governmental organizations play an important role in this process across the globe.

Russia and Ukraine recently made an agreement so that grain exports would be able to leave ports in Southern Ukraine and make their way to destinations dependent on Ukrainian and Russian Agro exports. This brief agreement likely have more to do with other nations in Africa and Asia entering a grain crisis as opposed to any measures to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, especially in their southern region. While countries like Canada cap oil production and increase the cost of farming and fuel in the middle of these crises, Russia benefits from a lack of displacement of Russian oil and gas. Canada had to change their own laws on sanctions so that Canadian based Turbines supplied to Russia’s oil pipeline could be sent, despite Russia claiming it will limit energy export to Germany anyways. At the same time, Russia and China plan to develop a pipeline to the East while China becomes increasingly aggressive towards US support for Taiwan. Time has become a crucial issue as winter approaches in a few months and a solidification of the battle lines in Ukraine turn into a permanent land grab by Russia.

Ukraine has moved to retake cities and town in the south of the country so that Russia cannot continue to have control of the Black Sea region nor expand their control over to Odessa and the border with Moldova. Ukraine’s push to liberate Kherson has been met with successes, but Ukraine might find itself in a losing position if it puts its tanks and troops in a position where they can be ambushed by Russian anti-Armour weapons while pushing further into the region. Russia looks to have a similar plan as they had done in Crimea in 2014 by holding referendums on whether those regions taken in Ukraine wish the become a part of Russia or become an independent region under Russian influence.

Battle lines in the East of the country seem to mirror the original objectives of Russia, to take the Donbas and Eastern regions that have been under conflict since 2014. With winter coming and the lack of clarity on the ability to supply civilians with heat and fuel in the cold, there has been actions to move innocents westward. It is likely the case that a push by Ukraine to liberate eastern regions would be difficult as long as the south of Ukraine and its ports are essential to Ukraine, Russia and world food exports.

Ukraine’s 2nd city, Kharkiv, had been defended diligently but will likely become a barometer on where the conflict is heading. If Ukraine can secure objectives in the south and Russia is militarily unable to push back in an effective manner, there will not likely be another attempt on the city using ground forces. If Ukraine depletes its forces and is unsuccessful in retaking territory in the south, or loses ground, the push by Russia in the east to take the rest of the Donbas may also include an assault on Kharkiv. With Western powers supplying Ukraine with weapons, a test on NATO equipment may take shape and look similar as when Russian T-72s and T-80s were ambushed assaulting Ukrainian positions. The key to much of the conflict is endurance, and with Western powers still refusing to displace Russian oil, gas and grain, Russia’s army will have the funds to resupply and purchase arms while creating closer financial and export ties to China and other allies.

Russia is likely pushing to solidify its gains with a referendum and cultural dominance strategy. For this reason, a push to regain territory in the south is essential for Ukraine. Immediate benefits in oil price increases and food insecurity benefits Russia in the immediate conflict and via their midterm strategy. Policies by Western countries to allow Russia to provide wealth and equipment to its oil funded war massively affects the conflict.

It was recently reported that Yadigar Shukarov, Boyshan Alizade and Gylman Huseynov were injured by anti-personnel mines while carrying out demining work in Garakhanbeyli village in Azerbaijan.   This came after Azerbaijani serviceman Vugar Isbandiyarov was injured in a landmine blast in the Kalbajar district.   This comes around the same period of time that 204 anti-personnel mines, 32 anti-tank mines, and 29 UXOs were discovered in Tartar, Aghdam, Khojavandi, Fuzuli, Shusha, Gubadli, Jabravil and Zangilan during a six day period in the beginning of August, the Azerbaijani media reported. 

Following these developments, the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy issued the following statement after the conclusion of a round table discussion at the Begin Center titled ‘Landmines in the Liberated Territories of Azerbaijan: the biggest obstacle to obtaining peace in the South Caucuses” and reads: “More than 220 Azerbaijanis have been killed or maimed by landmines since the Second Karabakh War ended.  To date, Armenia refuses to hand over all the landmine maps and out of the ones they did hand over, only 25% are usable.”

The statement continued: “The failure of the international community to take action on this issue is killing people and is a major impediment to world peace.  For this reason, the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy calls upon the international community to take action to remove all landmines worldwide.” 

As many people here might know, about one year ago, I went to the war-torn Karabakh region for the first time, where I was able to witness firsthand the destructive impact that landmines had on the Karabakh region. Back then, we traveled mile after mile on broken dirt roads surrounded by landmines, which prevented us from swaying to the right and to the left.  In fact, due to the terrible road conditions at that time, our bus broke down in a landmine infested area and we had to wait about a half of day to get rescued by the Azerbaijani government.   During that trip, we saw uprooted trees, polluted rivers, burnt agricultural fields, of which some of them were still burning when we were there and also the ruins of Fizouly, Shusha, Sultanya and numerous other Azerbaijani cities and towns, which were also surrounded by landmines that inhibited reconstruction.   This transformed what was known as the Black Garden into a barren wasteland.    

After that trip, I interviewed Kara and he proclaimed: “Karabakh reminds me of the Lebanon War of 1982 when I was an officer fighting against the terrorists in Lebanon.  The terrorists destroyed Lebanon and here in Karabakh, I saw that everything was also destroyed.  I felt very sad.  It is a very bad situation.”  Kara noted that both Karabakh and Lebanon have the potential to be beautiful places, yet in both instances, terrorists destroyed everything.    In fact, Kara declared that the destruction he witnessed in Karabakh was even worse than Lebanon, as the terrorists in Lebanon did not kill off all of the nature there like the Armenians did to the nature in Karabakh, ensuring that even the fish in the river and the cows in the field could not survive.   

Last May, I returned to Karabakh to cover the Shusha Food Festival together with a delegation of Israeli bloggers and journalists.  On that trip, I was pleased to see that Fizouly is on the map again and even has an airport.  I was happy that a lot of the greenery has returned to the region and there are now proper roads in Karabakh.     I was also delighted that instead of having to eat lunch on an Azerbaijani military base, I was able to dine in a nice Azerbaijani tea house, which did not exist about one year ago.    Additionally, I was impressed by the progress I saw in the restoration of Shusha, which has now built a five-star Karabakh Hotel and restored many nice historical sites in the area.    Although much of the region still has too many landmines and a lot of rebuilding is still required, I saw how hard the Azerbaijanis are working to make Karabakh great again.        

Last month, I had the privilege of once again traveling to Karabakh together with a couple of dozen other foreign experts from around the world, who spoke on a panel at the prestigious Ada University in Azerbaijan.   This time, we went to Aghdam, Karabakh’s ghost city which is otherwise known as the Hiroshima of the Caucuses.  Unfortunately, the progress is rebuilding Aghdam is much slower than it was in Shusha, largely because of the landmine issue.   There were more landmines in Aghdam to remove than there were in Shusha, which has slowed things down significantly.  This is because Armenians actually lived in Shusha, while Aghdam was a booby-trapped ghost town.  

In Aghdam, I witnessed first-hand how a city of 100,000 people, which included theaters, cafes, restaurants, vibrant Azerbaijani tea houses, homes, places of worship and even museums and historic monuments, were reduced to being nothing but rubble. I went to the Ivarant Cemetery, which contained the graves of prominent members of the Karabakh Khanate, dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries.   The graves were gone and the beautiful Turkic architecture of the royal tombs lay in ruins, completely run down from the Armenians utilizing these historic tombs as pig pens.  They treated this site like this even though it was labeled as a world heritage site.  According to a local guide, “The Armenians were taking stuff away from here and selling them to the Iranians.”

In fact, for two hundred dollars, everything inside the homes of Agdam, whether refrigerators, washing machines, family heirlooms or raw construction materials torn from the homes were sold to the Iranians, who were able to profit from the destruction of an entire city and the ethnic cleansing of the Karabakh region in the 1990’s.  After they took everything, they burnt everything down, thus leaving many of the homes without roofs, as the roofs were made of wood.  

The Imarat Cemetery was not the only historic place that they desecrated.  In Agdam, the Armenians used a historic mosque dating from 1860 as a watch tower and pig pen.  According to our local guide, “That was the only reason why this mosque was not completely desecrated.   More than 60 mosques were completely ruined in the region.”  For me, this had an uncanny resemblance to my graduate school trip to Spain, where I witnessed how the Spanish Inquisition transformed historic synagogues into pig pens and stables.  I could not help but ask myself, am I living in the twenty-first century?  How is it possible in our era to witness Christians desecrate holy places in such a manner, to conduct itself as if the Spanish Inquisition was still ongoing and never left us?

After that, I went to a local cemetery in Agdam, where I witnessed how all of the tombstones and gold teeth in the graves were gathered together and sold to the Iranians for profit, while the bones of the people who were buried there were thrown away in the trash.  Since Azerbaijan reclaimed Agdam, relatives of these unfortunate souls have tried to rebuild the destroyed memorials to their loved ones by putting up fresh plaques with pictures, but the bones are gone.  They are no longer proper graves.   What I saw there reminded me of what the Jordanians did to the Mount of Olives following the division of Jerusalem, after Israel’s War of Independence.  In that case, beautiful historic tombstones from the Mount of Olives were used by the Jordanians as construction material to build latrines and other unsavory things.   

Then, we went to the historic Bread Museum.   It used to house bread from the Second World War, an historic item documenting life during the Second World War in the Soviet Union.  However, that historic piece of bread was destroyed alongside all of the other exhibitions.  The roof was also gone and the beautiful artistic mural was heavily desecrated.  I could not ponder but ask, where was the international community when all of this happened?  Why was UNESCO silent?  What ever happened to the phrase NEVER AGAIN? 

I never stop writing and never stop speaking out for the justice of the Azerbaijani people, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”    For this reason, my organization is taking a strong stance against landmines.   Fuad Muradov, the Chairman of the State Committee on the Work with the Diaspora, noted: “Our main goal is to build peace in the region.  However, for that to happen, all landmines must be removed and removing them is an uphill struggle when the maps you have are not reliable.”

To date, Armenia has refused to hand over all of the landmine maps and this blocks peacebuilding.  And of the landmine maps that they turned over, only 25% are usable.   This means that Aghdam largely remains how it was 30 years ago, even though I did see construction trucks working there.  This is a true travesty.  The time has come for this grave trauma to end.  The time has come to remove all the landmines and to make Karabakh great again.  While I am grateful to Israel, Turkey, France and other countries who are trying to help make Azerbaijan landmine free, the international community still has much more work to do to see the black garden turn into a green colorful paradise once again.  

Al-Shabab’s Enigmatic Invasion of Ethiopia

In countries such as the U.S., there is an unwritten theory in police investigation that assumes whenever a neighborhood robbery occurs it was done by someone who not only had the motive to commit that crime, but the basic intelligence to help time it well and to get away with it. In other words it was committed by someone who lives or operates within 5-miles radius around the crime scene. If your gut feeling is ‘such mentality, regardless of how logical it may sound, will keep the law-enforcement stereotypically myopic and perpetually racist’ you are not alone. But that is a topic for another day.

Meanwhile, an elaborately sophisticated attack carried out by more than 500 al-Shabab and dozens of technical- armed trucks- against Ethiopia left many casualties and many unanswered questions.  Granted this was not a robbery.

According to the VOA’s Investigative Dossier “Officials from both sides of the (Somalia, Ethiopia) border confirmed that the attacks preoccupied Liyu police forces and distracted them as other heavily armed al-Shabab units crossed the border unopposed.” Moreover, the same program quotes an anonymous former al-Shabab militant who said the group was determined to erect its flag inside Ethiopia and then officially declare that “jihad spread to a new front.”

The offensive, according to Matt Bryden of the controversial Sahan research group “appears to be the start of a major, strategic initiative to establish an active combatant presence in Ethiopia, probably in the southeastern Bale Mountains.” How about that for a narrative express?

Surely with the failure of the Somali Federal Government’s military and intelligence campaign as well as the America’s deadly drone doctrine to decapitate and defeat al-Shabab, the terrorist group remains more dangerous than ever. That danger is made worse when governments sometimes engage in their own concocted threats to pave the way for one manipulative objective or another.

Here are some possible scenarios driving al-Shabaab’s incursion into the Somali region of Ethiopia:

Scenario One:

It is the first step of a foreign-driven plan to spook China out of Ethiopia’s oil and gas rich region. A few years ago the Ethiopian government signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Chinese company to develop petroleum and natural gas in the Somali region. Moreover, the company is to design storage, transportation, and marketing logistics as well as to build pipelines for domestic and international supply.

On April 28, 2020, the Ethiopian government signed $3.6 billion deal with a Virginia-based energy firm named GreenComm Technologies to construct an oil refinery in Ethiopia’s oil-rich Somali region. Reminiscent of the Somali facilitated British predatory capitalist Soma Oil and Gas, there is only one problem: the company has neither the expertise nor the credibility to be trusted with such contract. And though the Ethiopian government indicated the willingness to cancel, there is no official report confirming that.  

Scenario Two:

A false flag scheme to re-shuffle the cards in the Horn with derailment of the Horn Economic Integration engineered by the European Union, championed by Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, and funded by the U.A.E. Under such scheme a pretext for prolonged strategic military campaigns and political torpedoes launched from a selected federal state is established. So Ethiopia and Somalia, or President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, will spend the next four years riding a dangerous roller-coaster, as did President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (Farmajo) and President Uhuru Kenyatta. Meanwhile Somalia is secured membership in the East African Community (EAC) and a peace-keeping force that excludes Ethiopia.

Scenario Three:

To further hammer Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who has already lost a loyal partner in the loss of Farmajo. Under this scenario multiple deadly fronts are opened. This scenario is based on the assumption that the United Arab Emirates or President Mohammed bin Zayed has turned his back to the European project that this author criticized before and dropped Abiy Ahmed from his previous pivotal role. Of course the natural replacement is none other than President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea who secured UAE a military base while it was actively partaking the war in Yemen and just completed training 5000 Somali soldiers to provide military protection as UAE colonizes Socotra in partnership with Israel.  

“The saga of these Somali soldiers has been full of twists and turns,” wrote Michelle Gavin, security experts for the Council on Foreign Relations. This lucrative clandestine mercenary project was equivocated and denied by the Farmajo government until literally the last minutes before ceremonially handing over the presidential authority to the newly elected President HSM.

Scenario Four:

To reengineer a new balance of power that would end the ethnic-cleansing of the Tigrayans and boost their military capacity to ultimately takeover what is considered as a viable economic insurance- Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). This requires stretching the Ethiopian military power so thin by opening on it many military fronts. The coalition of the willing under this scenario may include Egypt that considers the dam’s drastic impact on the flow of the Nile as an existential threat, Sudan, the U.S. And due to the rapidly changing geopolitics of the region, and Ethiopia’s steadily growing ethnic nationalism, it is likely to include U.A.E and Israel whose strategic and economical interest in the Nile water is no secret.

Scenario Five:

A combination of the listed scenarios; and this could prove the most complex one to decode and deal with.       

Relevant Context 

For more than a decade, Ethiopia has been dominating the Bay and Bakool regions of the South West federal-state of Somalia. It has been its most reliable laboratory where Ethiopia trained and mobilized some of its most notorious clandestine allies, the violent neo-Islamists such as Mukhtar Robow (still held as a political prisoner) and his militia, and tribal secularists such as Abdirashid Janan and his militias for of subversion and security dependency (AMISOM).

Intriguingly, the Shabaab militia that attacked Ethiopia is reported to have been trained in the Jubbaland federal-state (Jilib and Ras Kamboni). And their objective according to the Governor of Bakool was to raise their flag inside Ethiopia.

To accept that Shabaab would carry out such daring operation with such reported large number of its militia out of Jubbaland while ignoring the temptation to take the jewel of that federal state – Kismayo – or to takeover U.S.’ only military base in Somalia and to chase the American troops out of that region requires an extremely wild imagination that some of us do not possess.

It was recently revealed that billions of top of the line American weapons were abandoned in Afghanistan when Western forces hastily pulled out of the country in 2021. Adding to the shame of leaving many of their own citizens as well as Afghan allies and TERPS to be brutalised in Afghanistan, the billions in weapons have now been found in conflict zones bordering India and will likely infest the region with added violence for generations to come.

The former weapons boom was greatly contributed to by people like Viktor Bout, a well known arms dealer who supplied many of the world’s conflicts in the region and worldwide after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The stockpiles of weapons that were accessed from Eastern Bloc nations that were storing them for an upcoming Third World War found their way to villages in Iraq , throughout conflict zones in Africa and in every part of the globe. Viktor Bout has made it back into the news as a possible US prisoner to be exchanged to Russia. The last time he was mentioned in the media was following his arrest and regarding a Hollywood movie that was loosely based on him called Lord of War.

The after effect of leaving Afghanistan may be a contributing factor to many of the recent conflicts in the world just a few shorts months after 2021. No one would have expected Russia to move past the Eastern regions of Ukraine into Kyiv and Odesa in 2021. Despite the heavy push back in Ukraine, it seems like militants in Afghanistan are now better equipped than most NATO supplied Ukrainian soldiers. These signs of uncoordinated disinterest on the part of the US creates the perception that they would not commit to pushing back against traditional adversaries. Already within a short period of time, Taiwan has been threatened, Iran has increased their rhetoric and actions in upgrading their nuclear program, and intellectuals and innocents have been assaulted deep inside free, Western democracies.

The activity NATO allies have had in supporting weapons transfers to Ukraine has not been met on the greater strategic front. While some of the best German artillery systems have now entered the conflict zone in Ukraine, there is a looming energy crisis approaching Germany and Europe in 2022. To the point where Russia can simply turn off the gas to Europe in winter, North American oil and gas have not committed in any meaningful way to support their friends and cousins in Europe. It has come to the point where Canada was supplying repaired pipeline turbines to Russia, enraging the International Ukrainian community to the point where they issued a lawsuit in Canada on the act. The end result was that Russia claimed the turbines would not be sufficient to supply Germany with fuel in any case, and a new pipeline project was announced between Russia and China. With actions like these coming from NATO allies, the message to many regimes around the world is to take advantage of the chaos.

 

 

 

 

For the last couple of years, I have been writing a book about Ayoob Kara, who served as Israel’s Communication, Cyber and Satellite Minister under Netanyahu.  Today, I finished writing the book and I am in the process of editing and publishing it.   The book is titled, “Ayoob Kara: The Man Behind the Abraham Accords.” One of the main issues that the book tackles is the Iranian threat and how the West should deal with a nuclear Iran.   

At a time when the Biden administration is desperately trying to reach any deal with Iran, Kara has called upon the free world to stop trading with Iran: “The sanctions are very important for stopping Iran.   We have to stop all free countries from buying anything from Iran.  If the world lifts sanctions on Iran, then they will wage war and occupy other states, like they did already in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Libya, etc.   They destroy all of the states they can.   They use all of their money to support this terror.”  For this reason, no one should trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran and view it as a solution to Europe’s energy crisis that was caused by the war in Ukraine.

 Aside from keeping all sanctions in place, the Honorable Kara believes that the best way to fight against the Iranian regime is to have a coalition of states unite together to address the Iranian threat: “All of the Middle Eastern countries should have a system like NATO in Europe.”  He believes that Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Israel, Morocco and perhaps other countries in the Middle East region could form such a union, as all of these countries are threatened by Iran’s hegemony in the Middle East.

According to Kara, “The Shiites in Iran seek to occupy the Sunni areas.   The fighting between the Shias and Sunnis has been ongoing since the days of the Prophet Muhammed.  The Shias believe in Ali and the Sunnis do not.  Afterwards, there was a big fight between them.  The Sunnis threw them out of Saudi Arabia and sent the Shias north to Iran, which became the capital of the Shias.   This situation makes the Shias feel like outsiders in the Islamic world.   The Sunnis hate them so much not only because they fought with them about who succeeds Muhammed.   They hate them for the empire they created.  For many years, the Shias say among themselves that even though the Sunnis sent them far away from the holy areas of Islam, one day we must re-occupy them.” 

For this reason, Kara believes that the Iranians seek to occupy the Arab areas of the Middle East before Israel and thus that the Sunni countries in the Middle East are Israel’s natural allies.    Kara supports the creation of a Turkic Union, where all of the Turkic states like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, etc. unite together to fight against the Iranians: “This is very important.   This stops Iran from expanding.”  Historically, it was the Turkic nations who fought against the Persians in the past, so Kara believes they have a role to play in stopping the expansion of the Shia Crescent.   Kara noted that he visited Azerbaijan’s border with Iran, as a means to counter Soleimani’s visit to the Lebanese-Israeli border: “It is important to show them that we don’t care and we have the power to help states like Azerbaijan that hate the extremism.”

Kara believes that the free world has a duty to stop the Shia Crescent and to help the Iranian people obtain freedom: “I think that all of the minorities inside Iran must shake hands and cooperate together against the mullahs to destroy the regime, and the world must support these minorities.   We should do everything to stop the Iranian regime including supporting the independence movements of many of the minorities in Iran for the number one danger now is Iran.”  Thus, there should be a free Ahwaz nation, a free Baluchistan, a free South Azerbaijan, etc.   

–

By Rachel Avraham

Canada sends Nord Stream turbine to Germany, despite Ukraine resistance

Active Support for Ukraine has made history for the amount of funds and military equipment that has been given to Ukraine by NATO and other supportive nations. Sanctions against Russia has also made history for the level of restrictions and depth of sanctions against Russia’s Government and those tied to Putin himself. The donated advanced military equipment has taken a large toll on Russian forces in Ukraine, as systems like Hi-Mars and Javelin have given Ukraine the ability to stop Russian tanks and armour in the field and challenge Russian positions.

A recent break in relations between Ukraine and some of its NATO allies took place when Canada decided to suspend parts of its sanctions and send upwards of six gas turbines to Germany’s Russian oil pipeline in order for Russia to send oil to Germany via a main pipeline in Europe. Despite sanctions, Canada readily sent equipment to Russia that would help financially support their war effort. While the intent of the turbine and pipeline is to get fuel to Germany, and much of Europe is still unable to displace Russian oil and gas from their economies, it angered President Zelinsky to such a degree that Ukrainian organisations decided to sue over the actions. This act is also compounded with the fact that North American oil and gas has done little to increase production in order to displace Russian oil in Europe. The strategy so far has been to beg countries with atrocious human rights records to increase production. In one instance, Iran was tapped by Russia directly for military equipment in the form of drones, a country that has been asked by the United States to increase production to help ease fuel prices in support of the effort to protect Ukraine.

Open support for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people have been openly bold, but when looking into the finer details, some of the support has been more useful for publicity at home than in aid of soldiers on the ground in Ukraine. In this interview linked here, a Canadian fighting on the ground in Ukraine stated that half of the night vision equipment sent to them from Canada simply did not work. With transport so difficult to the front line in Ukraine right now, occupying shipping space with broken equipment is a multilevel detriment to the war effort in Ukraine. Even when assisting Ukrainian refugees into their country, Canada has created a special status for Ukrainian claimants into Canada that removes some of the supports under their normal Refugee Protection system. This left many in difficult situations when in Canada. Even on the announcement of a hotel for refugees in the middle of their largest city, Ukrainians were not allowed to have access to this newly funded refugee shelter, despite them consisting mostly of women and children in an area close to their larger immigrant community. In a time when Canadian citizens who’s families are the victim of Iran’s Government murdering them on Flight 752, Canada has told the families that they will only be represented by Ukraine in the international claim, this while Ukraine is at war and trying to preserve the continued existence of their own country.

While the world has decided to help Ukraine and punish Russia in support of Ukraine and its people, help must be given in a meaningful way. This means not tying policies to help Ukrainians with those also supporting Russian forces in the conflict on the other end of the policy approach. This means not treating Ukrainian refugees better or worse than others making those claims, and giving them equal treatment in the processes that are well established to help those running from war and human rights abuses. Actions taken by the International Ukrainian Community should extend past the turbine issue, to how refugees from Ukraine are being treated in the few instances where systemic discrimination is being applied upon their arrival to safe countries. The image of help is worth little to those who really need it.

 

 

In his famous 19th century work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “… a democracy is unable to regulate the details of an important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out its execution in the persistence of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy, and it will not await their consequences with patience.”(261) Unfortunately, it was these traits, de Tocqueville argued, that lead nations towards successful foreign policies over the long term. For decades American foreign policy has fallen to each of these traps.

Inconsistent messaging and even more inconsistent policies have become a complication for the United States both at home and abroad. 

The American economy appears to be heading towards a downturn- months of rising prices, increasing interest rates, and supply shortages all make this point crystal clear for consumers. These challenges are not only apparent to everyday Americans- policy makers ranging from President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have each recognized this issue through their public statements. However, despite the broad recognition that the economy appears on the brink of a downturn, leading policymakers offer different justifications for the tough times that appear ahead.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen infamously referred to inflation as “transitory” before being forced to walk back those comments. President Biden has suggested that economic challenges are, in large part, a consequence of Russian aggression in Ukraine. While Chairman Powell has pointed to a post-pandemic economy as a leading cause of economic turbulence. 

This communications debacle is evidence of the inconsistencies intrinsic to democratic government that de Tocqueville describes- more importantly, it leaves Americans pessimistic about our economic prospects, divided about who is to blame, and unsure of how to move forward.

In a similar way, officials from the State Department have regularly been called upon to clarify statements given directly by the President. This weak messaging both domestically and abroad creates an opportunity for America’s rivals to fill the void, and it is worth considering how they have chosen to do so.

Reviewing the content of Russia Today* (a state-controlled media company with headquarters in Moscow) offers insights about how leadership in the Kremlin wants its readers to understand the state of the American economy. A visitor to the site might expect to find articles arguing that Russia was defeating the United States in Ukraine, and that America’s economic uncertainty is a consequence of challenging Russian might. Instead, a visitor will find articles arguing that American economic uncertainty is a self-inflicted wound. Additionally, instead of articles highlighting the military prowess of the Russian army, they would find stories highlighting the resilience of the Russian economy despite American efforts to limit Russian exports.

Despite what might appear to be an obvious opportunity for nationalistic chest-thumping, an apparent plurality of Russia Today’s articles highlight examples of disfunuction in the U.S. lead NATO bloc. RT features disputes between American policy makers, stories of American media censorship, and polls suggesting that Americans have a grim outlook about their economic prospects. The United States is not the only nation targeted by these efforts- others in the EU and NATO have their institutions scrutinized as well.

This highlights something important about the way that the Kremlin leverages its role in Russian media. Rather than display examples of military victories, Russian media praises the resilience of the Russian people and the stability offered by leadership in Moscow. Instead of arguing that American economic uncertainty is a consequence of challenging Putin, RT presents the economic downturn as a self-inflicted wound. In truth, the publication goes out of its way to highlight how few Americans blame the autocrat for their economic woes. 

Russian state media does not work to persuade Russians that their lives are somehow better than the lives of people who live in democratic nations. Instead, these outlets make the nihilistic argument that all governments make promises they can’t keep, that all institutions are corrupt, and that the average American is just as far away from real political influence as the average Russian. The message is not competition, but a sense of shared hopelessness… and at least Putin offers stability in the chaos.

This one insight, however, reveals a second insight. The reality that the Kremlin has been hesitant to “take credit” for America’s stumbles highlights the potential that, one day, Putin might begin to accept that credit and Russian state-media might take on a more competitive tone. To date, the Kremlin has suggested that “Western” institutions have either failed or have been corrupted, and that this fundamental weakness has resulted in a floundering economy and a toxic political environment. Should Kremlin supported media outlets begin to frame American “vulnerability” as a consequence of the United States losing a direct contest with Russia, it might suggest that Putin is preparing for an even more egregious action that would require popular support (much less knowledge).

Poorly managed communications, finger pointing, and a sporadic U.S foreign policy vision has created a vacuum in messaging. Russia, along with other American rivals, have exploited this opportunity.

None of this speaks to the importance of clear and positive messaging in the Southern Hemisphere, where the United States is already bidding for influence against an expanding list of rivals. 

Addressing this problem means considering foreign policy choices more seriously, and more consistently both locally and in Washington D.C.. It means going out of our way to learn about the world’s most pressing problems, and it means using that knowledge to ensure that the leaders we elect guide the nation’s foreign policy with the long view in mind. 

The success of American foreign policy, far more than in autocratic regimes, is dependent on a citizenry that is informed and engaged. A more informed and engaged body of citizens would demand a higher quality of messaging from elected leaders both for internal consumption and international ears.

Ultimately, our ability to shore up these liabilities comes down to our ability to overcome the hazards that de Tocqueville predicts. It is our responsibility to be educated about key global issues, and to press representatives in Washington to prioritize long sighted foreign policy decision making. 

Only by learning to plan, persevere, and await the consequences patiently will American foreign policy be able to move forward in a wise and consistent direction. 

—

*Russia Today is a state-media company that is registered as a direct agent of the Russian government. Neither the Foreign Policy Association nor the author espouse the views that are expressed on that platform. 

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

51T6 SH-11 Gorgon exoatmospheric ABM Transporter/Loader, an older type designed as part of a defensive missile ring around Moscow.

A peculiar occurrence happened recently where what looks to be a Russian BUK missile turned around after launch and impacted the area around its own launch vehicle. Speculation on how and why this occurred was painted by many narratives on the conflict. While it may be assumed that the missile or system may have been hacked or manipulated, it is likely the result of poor manufacturing errors or the use of older advanced equipment with degraded safety abilities. While systems like the SA-11 BUK-M1 was high tech for its time and is still extremely effective, it is a complicated system that is filled with several checks before a launch can occur. With so many things that can go wrong, crew training may have not been able to stop that type of accident. The video of that launch can be seen here.

Despite Russia has suffering many losses, the assumption that there is no longer a major threat by Russia towards Western Ukraine and Europe seems to be taken in light humour by some G7 leaders, while those countries bordering Russia and Ukraine are on constant and urgent high alert. NATO soldiers have been training those fighting in Ukraine outside of the territory since the beginning of the war with some reports showing that expanded NATO training inside Ukraine may have already been established. Speeches at the G7 seek to pressure Russia further, but the resulting pressure has increased the value of Russia’s energy so greatly that there economic effects on Russia’s oil exports have done little damage to the value of the Rouble.

Backing Russia into an economic corner without expanding the displacement of its energy exports with North American energy will never be successful as Europe is still largely dependent on Russian energy exports. Other BRICS nations continue their purchases of Russian oil and food into their own economies and seem to have closer relationships with other OPEC members the US is begging for energy assistance. It is clear that Russian export revenues through its energy products is enabling it to continue the conflict, even if it is being depleted of its weaponry. Adding more direct NATO involvement may create a more dangerous situation as opposed to taking a serious commitment in displacing Russian energy exports. While inflation is having a direct and notable impact in Western nations, Russia can still escalate the conflict outside of Ukraine greatly with their long range missile capabilities.

Poland was able to secure later types of the Patriot missile systems after years of delays in obtaining a proper missile defense option for itself. The later models of the Patriot system, called PAC-3, is able to shoot down other missiles, a feature which is now needed as Russia’s proximity and the ability to fire medium range ballistic missiles puts Polish forces at great risk. While the effectiveness of the PAC-3 against fast moving targets has not been properly tested in combat, the lack of response to North Korean missile tests and the fact that some Russian missiles like the Kinzhal can travel as high as Mach 10, makes it difficult to counter some of Russia’s missile systems.

Soviet missile defense technology was always a game changer during the Cold War. Russia’s own defense is tied to that of a early 90s Soviet defense doctrine. While invading Ukraine was always going to be difficult as it was also designed to repel a NATO advance with defense technology from 1990s era equipment, so does later generations of missiles like the S-400 air defense systems make the airspace over Kyiv dangerous for Ukrainian interceptor jets. An advancement of NATO deeper into Ukraine will pull the conflict outside of the range of a Javelin missile type conflict, towards one where Russia has a large ballistic missile advantage. One thing that is certain, is that Russian missile technology is above and beyond other equipment in their arsenal and is often equal or better than their Western counterparts. This has been worked on for a few generations as even a strike on Moscow could be repelled in theory, as Russia has had a significant ABM(Anti-Ballistic Missile) system since the 1950s that is continually upgraded with special missiles designed to repel a nuclear attack and the latest S-500 system. Mobile missiles like TOPOL and SARMAT have been put in position towards Europe, and even have been moved to Northern Russia to target the Arctic Region and North America. In light of the reality, we should expect our leaders to keep their focus on reducing a wider conflict before testing their comedy routines during G7 meetings.

With less than five months until the 2022 World Cup, Qatar is making final preparations to host millions of fans. FIFA permitted Qatar to host the 2022 games back in 2010. Since then, Qatar has spent an estimated $220 billion on new stadiums, roads, hotels, and other necessities to accommodate incoming fans. The burden of labor to create this infrastructure has fallen on migrant workers. Migrant labor dominates economies in the Gulf – it constitutes an average of 70% of all labor in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.  In Qatar, it constitutes an astonishing 95% of all labor, according to Human Rights Watch. For the last decade, Qatar has faced increasing criticism regarding its system for migrant labor. The Kafala System, utilized by all Gulf countries, leaves employees extremely vulnerable to the will of their employer. By perpetuating uneven power dynamics without much oversight, this system exposes millions of workers to exploitation and abuse. This exploitation and abuse runs rampant amongst workers hired to build infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.

The Kafala system invites exploitation by giving employers permission to act as a sponsor for individual workers. The employer covers all travel and housing expenses for the migrant. In return, employers have relatively unregulated control over employees’ autonomy. Employers control migrant workers’ legal status, visa status, and often retain important documents such as passports. Employers also have control over workers’ ability to change jobs. By refusing to transfer documents to the new employer, previous employers can essentially force workers to remain in place. Employers can also render employees as illegal migrants by refusing to renew visa documents – upon discovery by authorities, an undocumented migrant can face severe fines and jail time. The extremely unequal power dynamic gives the employer, or sponsor, full control over the worker’s mobility, autonomy, and livelihood. Additionally, migrant workers regularly face issues of delayed wages, long hours, and extremely dangerous working conditions. Since 2010, over 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar.

In 2017, the International Labor Organization (ILO) acknowledged these issues. They entered into an agreement with Qatar aimed at tackling the country’s labor problems. This agreement looked to reform the Kafala System, increase workers’ access to justice, improve health and safety for workers, and regulate wages. In return for these changes, the ILO promised to withdraw its request for the World Cup to be moved elsewhere. Qatar passed several new pieces of legislation in line with the agreement. While the situation has improved over the last five years, much of the new legislation addresses the situation in name only. Migrant laborers still face a multitude of life-threatening issues. Of the 6,500 workers who have died in Qatar, many died during dangerous construction jobs, from heat-related incidents, in road accidents, or from unsafe living conditions in labor camps. The World Cup will occur as planned in November, despite this devastating human toll. FIFA appears to be taking little to no action. Major international players, including the ILO, UN, and governments like the United States, need to acknowledge the reality of the situation. The enjoyment of soccer fans across the world comes at the cost of abused and exploited workers. The international community needs to do better.

Qatar’s new legislation has addressed some of these issues. It removed the exit permit requirement, which gave employers control over migrants’ ability to leave the country. New legislation also removed the ability of employers to prevent workers from changing jobs. Qatar established a new minimum wage, a wage protection system, new labor dispute committees, and a workers’ insurance fund. However, weak implementation requirements have left millions of workers without knowledge of their rights. Many employers continue to utilize unsafe practices. Passport confiscation continues to occur, employees still experience harsh working conditions, and wage theft is common. In July 2020, Amnesty International found that around 100 employees who built Al Bayt Stadium had been denied their wages for nearly seven months.

The 2022 World Cup will occur only thanks to the hours of dangerous labor completed by underpaid and mistreated migrant workers. While the 2017 ILO agreement marginally improved labor rights in Qatar, it did not successfully defend the two million individuals it was created to protect. It seems as though everyone, including the ILO, has turned their backs on some of the world’s most vulnerable. Amnesty International has called for FIFA to donate around $440 million to the migrant workers who worked on the World Cup. This money would be intended to cover the “loss and abuse” they suffered over the last ten years. FIFA acknowledged Amnesty International’s request but only promised to implement a “due diligence process.” It seems unlikely migrant workers will ever receive any reparations. The World Cup provides a massive platform to raise awareness for migrant labor issues. The governments of participating teams should take the opportunity to voice concern over working conditions and the general status of human rights in Qatar. If FIFA refuses to acknowledge its complacency with labor exploitation, participating governments need to step up.

Last week, I traveled to Azerbaijan together with former Israeli Communication Minister Ayoob Kara, who visited Agdam, a city in the war-torn Karabakh region and Baku, where the Honorable Kara was one of 22 foreign experts who gave a talk at Ada University as part of a panel titled “Development in the post-conflict period in the South Caucuses.”   Other speakers included Hikmet Aliyev, the special advisor of Azerbaijan’s president, Fuad Muradov, the chairman of the State Committee on the Work with the Diaspora, and a number of other Azerbaijani government ministers.

In the tour of Agdam, the Honorable Kara saw the ruins of a city, where 100,000 people used to live in the Soviet period.  He saw the ruins of the historic Bread Museum, which used to house a loaf of bread that was preserved by Soviet soldiers dating from the Second World War.  All that remains of that museum is a half-destroyed mural.   He saw tombs dating from the Karabakh khanate, a world heritage site which were partially destroyed.  He saw a mosque, which until recently housed pigs and goats, and was used as an Armenian watch tower.  And he saw the remnants of a cemetery, where all of the bones were thrown away, with the tombstones and gold teeth in the graves being sold for use in the Islamic Republic of Iran.  And until relatively recently, all of these areas were covered in landmines.     

After seeing that, Kara gave an interview to Eurasia Daily, where he declared: “I witnessed terrible destruction.   Mined areas are the greatest disaster of our time.  During our visit, we stated to the government of Azerbaijan that we could provide technological support to Azerbaijan in the field of mind clearance.  Israel has invented a new robotic technology to clear landmines.   With the help of these robot machines, any type of mine can be safely removed from various depths of the earth without manual interference.  We have informed the Azerbaijani government about this in detail and made our proposals.” 

According to him, all of these robots will be able to clear off landmines without the need for landmine maps.   For Azerbaijan, this is critical, as officials in the Azerbaijani government claim that only 25% of the landmine maps that Armenia gave them are usable.    Presently, there are up to a million mines that were planted in the Karabakh region.   

At the conference, Vugar Suleymanov, the chairman of the Mine Action Agency of Azerbaijan, proclaimed: “Azerbaijan is one of the most landmine contaminated countries in the world.    Mines are indiscriminate.   Since the end of the war, there were 228 landmine incidents, which injured 184 and killed 39.”   

However, the Honorable Kara believes a better future is within reach.   In the interview, the Honorable Former Minister also related that he would like to support the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan.   Kara proclaimed in his speech: “Azerbaijan has the land of Karabakh.  It is legitimate. Armenia has to accept it.  Different people have to push to find a solution that the two states can be in a better relationship.  Peace is the right way to go.  It is not easy.   It will not happen tomorrow, but it could happen in the next several years if we work hard on it.”

According to him, “The State of Israel can help with different innovations, technologies that both sides need.  For that reason, we can influence.  We have the power to do it as we crossed the same thing in different states in the Middle East.  Peace can happen if you influence that and convince the other side to support that.”

The Honorable Kara declared that this is what happened with the Abraham Accords, when Israel succeeded to make peace with four different countries: “Step by step, after Trump was elected, this has become a reality and the same thing could happen here.   I think that after I visited Shusha last year with Rachel, we understand that you need different things to support the Karabakh area.   I can help you to find a solution for everything that is necessary there.  I know that there are a lot of people coming from Israel here to help but I think as the former Minister of Communication, Cyber and Satellite, I have the connections needed to help Azerbaijan.”

The respectable former minister called upon the State of Israel to use all of its power in order to help Azerbaijan obtain the conditions needed to make peace with Armenia.  He also called upon the foreign experts at the conference to do everything in their power to help Azerbaijan: “Slowly, slowly, the conflict will subside if we work together.   If the world says something together, it will be more powerful than just Azerbaijan or Israel saying something.” 

Peacekeeping operations have become a fixture within the international arena and core practice of international organizations since the end of the Cold War. However, these operations, particularly those run by the United Nations, have had a torrid relationship with intelligence collection and analysis. There has been consistent opposition by member states to establishing an intelligence office within the UN, and, up until 2017, the UN had no procedures for acquiring and analyzing information in support of their peacekeeping operations. Despite this improvement, not having a standing office capable of independently deciphering and combing through the piles of information has severely limited the ability of the UN to prepare and support its peacekeeping operations. The current policy is too reliant on the kindness of its member states which does nothing but create a situation where vital information is given based on national interest. However, a permanent office capable of doing so in a way that protects civilians and the reputation of the UN is not only easily conceivable but entirely feasible.

Two reports commissioned by the UN Secretary-General have begged the UN to establish an office for acquiring and analyzing information pertinent to the operation’s success. The Brahimi Report, which debuted in 2000, detailed an office capable of collecting and analyzing data for the Secretariat to plan peacekeeping operations and identify potential conflicts. The Brahimi Report notes that an information analysis office would allow for developing short-term and long-term mission planning and crisis response. Had this office been implemented, it would have allowed several peacekeeping operations to possess adequate resources and prevented disasters like the kidnapping of over 200 UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, which happened that same year. The UN was again warned of the dangers of being unable to independently analyze information in the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO Report) report, which further pleaded for the UN Secretariat to expand its analytical capabilities to support peace operations. The UN took these cries for reform and formulated an intelligence and information analysis policy that relied upon member states willingly turning it over to the UN, potentially exposing their sources, methods, and collection from peacekeepers.

The unreliability of the status quo therefore necessitates the creation of an office as described by both reports and addresses any potential concerns laid out by UN member states. This office must be impartial, assist in the planning of peacekeeping operations, and make use of emerging technologies.

Covert and clandestine operations have been a prominent feature within states’ intelligence agencies since their very inception. This is likely a feature that has probably led to the opposition of an intelligence analysis service. However, the rise of social media platforms and the Internet have led to the expansion of open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools that make information gathering and analysis accessible to even the average person. Therefore, an intelligence analysis office that the UN would not need to rely on secretive methods; instead, they would be utilizing techniques and practices widely available worldwide. The only real need for classification by a UN information office would be to protect human intelligence (HUMINT) sources for their safety.

Intelligence needs to be politically independent and free of bias to be effectively understood and respected by decision-makers, especially when coming from the UN. Moreover, since this office would need to be constantly analyzing information to plan for peacekeeping operations, states may feel threatened by being labeled as a threat to international peace and security. As such, an office meant to support peacekeeping operations would need to be professional and adhere to the same recruitment and hiring practices that all UN employees go through. Of course, maintaining the utmost professionalism is crucial to any intelligence agency. Still, it will be incredibly essential to one serving at the bequest of the UN; an international organization meant to support international peace and security.

Being able to assess and take action on information accurately is crucial to the success of any operation, especially peacekeeping ones employed by the UN. Without a longstanding office, the ability of peacekeepers to conduct themselves will eventually diminish and render them unable to protect civilians, one of their highest priorities effectively. However, new technologies and robust professionalism by analysts can make for the perfect early warning system for crises that may require the presence of UN peacekeepers. As a result, these operations will be better resourced, planned, and overall more effective.

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Peter Roberto is a M.A. candidate at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations where he is the Incoming Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Diplomacy & International Relations and conducted research with the National Security Fellowship.

For United States citizens, policy developments in the Americas were always tied to the belief that the United States saw the region as their own geographical backyard. The ascent of the United States as a world power following the Spanish-American Wars and their relative economic stability compared to Europe following the First and Second World Wars turned them into a powerful hegemony in the Americas.

Balancing the hegemony of the United States through Soviet ties was done on a few occasions during the greater Cold War era. The trend of Left wing dictatorships, often based around narcotics or energy expropriation followed in the post 2000 era. The last decade and a half enshrined these divides and saw them diminish internally as US policy remained as paper projects never implemented. Foreign actors entered the region during this more recent and somewhat lost period of US policy towards Latin America. While a lack of US influence in the region has had its positive and negative results, the current policy approach doubles down on mediocrity as regional crises are challenged by local hegemons in Latin America.

The recent Summit of the Americas was hosted by the United States who clearly had other regions on its mind in 2022. While health policy was a focus of the Summit, the real challenges faced by one of the hardest hit regions by Covid will have little impact as Covid numbers wain. Like for all of us, inflation and employment is dominating their focus as economic chaos and recovery create new challenges and harm citizens in the US, Canada and Latin America simultaneously.

While these more serious issues were not the main target of policy approaches during the Summit of the Americas, they already are having a grand effect on the region itself. Countries excluded during the Summit have already taken to increase ties with Russia as a buffer against the US. Venezuela has been upgrading its military with some of the most advanced Russian jets and missile systems for a generation at this point and has close ties with Iran and China. Venezuelan refugees in Latin America make up one of the largest displaced populations in the world, and while they did give some funding for those issues at the Summit, there was little focus on the cause of the Venezuelan refugee crisis and Human Rights crisis taking place within ballistic missile striking distance of the United States.

The Summit did little to change the policy of restricting North American energy while a displacement of Russian energy is a key tool to ending the War in Ukraine. Openly dropping human rights based restrictions on OPEC members like Venezuela and Iran in order to displace Russian oil is simply fuelling more abuses against Venezuelan refugees, human rights activists in Iran and those in their regions being affected by funding further conflict. Without North American oil and gas displacing Russia’s funding source for weapons of war, they are just displacing conflict. Adding conflict in Latin America and other regions with the intent to help Ukraine will simply result in more atrocities and acts of war in other parts of the world. There is no point in holding a Summit of the Americas if the two biggest economies, the USA and Canada, do not intend to enact policies to reduce conflict in the region and abroad.

China’s economic investment in Latin America has been taking place for over a decade and a half at this point, tying even US allies like Colombia, Brazil and Argentina to Chinese infrastructure projects and natural resource dependency. While diversifying their economies away from the United States is a logical and beneficial decision, linking to only one other producer will likely have a similar effect as in the past where agro-economies rise and fall with the international price of their natural resource goods. The focus of industrialisation in one form or another was the strategy they used to ensure a flexible and diverse economic base in many Latin American countries for generations. It seems like the stability of long term policies have waned, diversifying customers as opposed to creating more economic opportunities for citizens in Latin America. This has not been as much of an issue in IT hubs in Brazil and manufacturing in Mexico, but the economic situation in those countries can change rapidly with the US Administration challenging Brazil’s leadership and Mexico’s President declaring himself absent from the Summit of the Americas altogether.

In 2022, the United States should focus on re-balancing their role in the region with that of China and take serious steps to reduce added conflict in Latin America. While agreements fade and alliances break apart, at the bare minimum the United States should act as an engine for economic diversity and a cap on added international conflict in Latin America. At this point at the end of the Summit, they have barely achieved any of those essential goals.

The Reformer’s View?

On April 27 the Department of State announced a fundamental change to its process for selecting new career Foreign Service Officers.  Where candidates have long had to pass the written Foreign Service Test for consideration, that test would now be one of a number of considerations that would be considered by a panel.  Exact criteria and explicit objectives for the panel to follow were not announced.  The new process would take effect for the June application cycle.

 

It is hard to discern exact motives for this change.  Those who noticed did not generally hold a strong brief for the old test, but noted its original intent to promote professionalism.  Few see particular merit in the new process as announced.  One comment suggested using the old test to screen politically appointed ambassadors.  While few wanted to say so, one media outlet did cast the change as a diversity promotion move.  The possibility for polarized politics to dominate any consideration of new processes certainly exists, whatever the exact motives behind the change.

 

The change is a case of carts before horses.  Particularly for a people-based function such as the conduct of diplomacy, new personnel should be suited to the demands of the function.  Those demands should follow from an institutional understanding of what, in this case, diplomacy is and how it should work.  Traditional ambassadors knew their kings personally, and even in the post-industrial age any permanent official representative of a sovereign should know that sovereign intimately, to represent it and provide counsel.  America’s is the people, defined in the Declaration of Independence as “we” who hold certain “self-evident” truths.  U.S. diplomats need an engrained sense for, and clear fluency in,  that identity and its nuances, first inculcated as a pillar of their professional formation.

 

The Department of State needs to ascertain its institutional character, so that any formative process or intake process create a body of diplomats who know their fundamental mission.  A   two-paragraph announcement on short notice that changes something as significant as the selection process might well signal that other basic functions might also undergo far-reaching, summarily-declared, overhaul.  The Department of State could end up remaking itself from the ground up without naming its mission and with no deliberation in public discourse.   Someone needs to ask that first question.

Russian T-90M, its most advanced tank on the battlefied in Ukraine was destroyed by possible artillery strike.

Russia seemed to have pulled back many of its forces to the eastern regions of Ukraine in order to consolidate the takeover of the eastern regions of Lugansk, Donbas and the surrounding area. It is difficult to measure what the end goal of the Russian forces may be at this point. Ukraine’s response in moving forces south to retake Kherson and moving their forces protecting Kyiv into the area around Kharkiv may lead to quickly shifting battle lines or produce a stalemate as Ukraine takes to the offensive. The fate of many of Russia’s armoured units may burden Ukraine’s forces if Ukraine chooses to enter fortified urban areas that are filled with anti-tank equipment that has proven very effective against BMPs, T-72s, T-80s and even T-90s, systems that both Russia and Ukraine use in this conflict.

While modern tanks and weapons systems started the conflict, many of them were beaten by Cold War era technology with significant numbers and tactics to defeat modernised tanks and aircraft. Much of the success in this conflict comes from a tradition of defending the territory with weapons designed mostly for defense. The advanced missile technology developed over generations was built around keeping a Second World War type invasion out of the Soviet Union, with Ukraine being the most likely battleground for the fate of the Soviet Union. Taking out Ukraine’s Servant of the People and his Cabinet was never a simple task, and Ukraine was designed as the best defense structure in the world in the 1990s apart from Moscow itself.

What seems to be occurring is that Moscow will want to claim some sort of victory and will try to keep the eastern regions and maintain its hold on Crimea. Ukraine’s push to retake Kherson and protect the flank around Odessa is important as Russia may try to bottleneck Ukraine’s Black Sea access, which would mean Ukraine would become landlocked and will suffer economically in the long run as a result. While Poland has made agreements to help Ukraine remain competitive as an export economy by proposing a shared customs regime and opening its northern sea access to Ukraine in good faith, a Russian move to dominate the Ukrainian coast is likely a strategic long term goal besides claiming Eastern Ukraine for Russian backed forces.

The weakening of Russia’s view worldwide will likely have a massive effect on Putin and Russia if countries surrounding Russia see them as a Paper Bear. If Russia ends up losing Crimea for example, there is little keeping Putin in office after that act. Countries that are dependent on Russia’s protection will likely be challenged further as well. Actions in the Caucasus region may flare up as they did recently between Azerbaijan and Russian backed Armenia. India may try to source more of its defense equipment from France or other NATO allies as confidence in their T-90MS tank force diminishes with pictures of burning T-90M being shown in Ukraine.

China, that always shared a border with Russia in a Cold Peace may look to consolidate old conflicts with the knowledge that the PLA could likely stand up to modern Russian equipment in the field. The conflict in the Middle East will likely have the biggest result, as Russian forces supporting President Assad in Syria may have to re-engage in the region with less funds, less equipment and less of an appetite for the loss of young Russian soldiers in a foreign war. Iran’s S-300 systems and first generation TOR missiles may no longer be seen as the threat they once were, and knowledge in defeating those systems will leave a gap in their air defense.

Much of the prolonged conflict may simply be a result of saving face where losses have become hard to spin as a point of national pride. Diplomacy may serve the world well here as stability becomes questionable from Europe, through the Middle East towards much of Asia. A perfect storm of negligent policy decisions has lead to tragedy, applying further such policy decisions to quell the first fire will make it much worse. What is a universal truth in 2022 is that voting matters, as these issues will certainly affect your daily life to some degree.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-regarded Palestinian journalist, has become the next martyr in the Israel-Palestine Conflict. On May 11, she stood with her colleagues in the occupied West Bank. While wearing her blue press vest, which discerned her from combatants, Abu Akleh was struck in the head by unexpected gunfire.

Unsurprisingly, both sides of the conflict have spun clashing narratives following her death. Israel claims she got caught in crossfire initiated by Palestinian fighters. Palestinians claim Israel Defense Forces murdered Abu Akleh.  Accounts from eyewitnesses at the scene, as well as video footage, seem to support the latter. According to multiple sources, no Palestinian fighters were present at the time of her death. Satha Hanaysha, a journalist working alongside Abu Akleh, told CNN that IDF targeted the group intentionally. According to Hanaysha, the press followed regular protocol on the morning of the attack. This protocol consists of making themselves known to Israeli forces before approaching a scene. Despite identifying themselves at the entrance to Jenin Refugee Camp, the group of journalists were greeted by gunfire. An independent Dutch organization found that Israeli forces likely fired the bullet that killed Abu Akleh.

The United States has forged a strong relationship with Israel over the last fifty years. U.S. leaders have continually hailed Israel as a “vibrant democracy” and “one of the most successful democracies in the world.” These words ignore Israel’s long history of violence. The unjust killing of Shireen Abu Akleh has reminded us of the fragility of Israel’s “moral character.” She is sadly yet another in a long line of tragedies brought on by Israel’s poor human rights record. In 2021, Palestinian journalist Yusef Abu Hussein died in an Israeli air raid. He worked as a broadcaster for the Voice of al-Aqsa radio station. Al-Jazeera reported that his home was intentionally targeted. In 2018, Israeli forces shot Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Hussein while he covered protests in Gaza. Like Shireen Abu Akleh, he adorned his blue press vest when he died. These stories are not isolated events – Israeli forces have killed at least 45 journalists since 2000.

Israel has contended with its own violence by leading self-investigations. It is not difficult to imagine why an accused party cannot credibly lead their own investigation. However, Israel has done so for years. In 2018, Israeli police reacted violently to Palestinian protests in the Gaza Strip. They opened fire on hundreds of unarmed civilians, killing over two hundred Palestinians. The international community demanded Israel allow an investigation of the mass casualties. Israeli leaders obliged; they opened an investigation on their own military. The investigation indicted one Israeli soldier for the murder of a 14-year-old Palestinian. The other 214 victims received no justice.

In 2021, the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into the events of 2018. Israel refused to cooperate, instead firing claims of anti-Semitism. Bringing justice to victims of state-sponsored violence is not anti-Semitic. Rather, it contributes to the creation of a safer environment for those on both sides. Israel cannot be a contributing member of the international community if it continues to oppose international bodies. The United Nations, for example, has attempted to launch multiple probes into alleged Israeli crimes. Israel repeatedly refuses to cooperate. This only prevents transparent investigations and aggravates the conflict.

Israel claims it possesses the ability to conduct its own investigations – if this is true, it should have no problem allowing an international body to oversee. If Israel can address these incidents with full transparency, perhaps it can move one step closer to ending the violence. As for the United States, President Biden should advocate for a U.S.-led investigation into Abu Akleh’s death. If the United States wants to continue to support human rights across the world, it cannot turn a convenient blind eye to Israel.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald is hoping her party will claim the most seats in the assembly election

In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message loud and clear.

For those unaware of Sinn Féin’s origins, a bit of history is necessary. 

The early years of the 1900’s saw the planting of many of the most important seeds that would grow to shape the politics of the coming century- perhaps the most important of these is the idea of national self-determination. The concept of national self-determination is straightforward – it is the idea that groups of people who view themselves as a distinct nation have the right to create government institutions that materialize their shared belief. This view was espoused by political figures as varied as American President Woodrow Wilson and Soviet Premier Vladmir Lenin at the time, and the principle of national self-determination remains enshrined in the UN charter today.        

Inspired by this political philosophy and justified by a history of imperial repression, men and women throughout Ireland came together to forge a band that would pursue, and if necessary fight for, a nation made up of the whole of Ireland that would be fully independent from Britain rule. That movement, over the years that followed, materialized into two nominally distinct but regularly overlapping efforts. The more internationally famous of these two groups is the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which participated in a gorilla conflict against the British military with the goal of making “crown rule” in Ireland ineffective. The second group to emerge from this turmoil was the political party known as Sinn Féin. While Sinn Féin shared many of the IRA’s political objectives, Sinn Féin differentiated itself from the IRA by focusing its efforts on the political liberation of Ireland without employing military force.

It must be said that while the IRA and Sinn Féin were founded as separate institutions, the two groups have generally worked together as if they were a common body. Many of the most prominent Sinn Féin representatives, including Gerry Adams who was Sinn Féin’s President from 1983 to 2018, were allegedly members of the IRA before making a transition into political life. This collaboration was given its rhetorical foundation through IRA volunteer and Sinn Féin Public Director Danny Morrison’s infamous 1981 proclamation that both the “Armalite rifle and the ballot box” would prove necessary in securing full Irish independence. English politicians used this overlap in order to discredit Sinn Féin’s efforts to earn political legitimacy, going so far as to bar Sinn Féin members from appearing in media throughout the British Empire despite Sinn Féin’s grounding as an entirely legal political organization. 

The point of my writing here is not to provide a historical overview of the conflict between Ireland and England- others have covered this topic with more nuance than I could hope to achieve here. Instead, for our purposes, it should suffice to say that the IRA took up arms, and occasionally employed terror tatics, in an attempt to resist the British government’s wrongful killing of Irish citizens, unjust interference with Irish politics, and refusal to allow for Irish territorial sovreignty. This conflict reached its apex beginning in the late 1960’s and raged consistently through 1998 during a period commonly known as The Struggles. 

During this time, the IRA’s militant approach figured more prominently than Sinn Féin’s political efforts in the quest for full Irish independence- the rifle took precedence over the ballot box. Ultimately, despite earning meaningful concessions, the IRA failed to achieve its objective of Irish unification as Northern Ireland was to remain part of the British Empire following the Good Friday Agreement, which formally ended the armed conflict between British forces and Irish republicans. 

While the Good Friday Agreement put a stop to the IRA’s military activism, Sinn Féin’s work at winning the ballot box was in truth just beginning. In the roughly twenty-five years that have passed since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Féin took up the work of proving themselves a legitimate political party both in Ireland proper and in the disputed territory of Northern Ireland. Ultimately, this entailed maintaining the fervor that comes with being the IRA’s political successor while generating sufficient distance from the IRA’s violent heritage. In doing so, Sinn Féin abandoned the rifle in favor of full dedication to the ballot. Following the aforementioned election results in Northern Ireland, there is reason to believe that these efforts are beginning to bear fruit. 

Sinn Féin’s electoral victory in Northern Ireland may prove a necessary condition in order for Irish unification to be achieved, but it is not sufficient in and of itself. Sinn Féin will now need to take on the challenge of directing its newfound political power towards actually achieving the desired policy results. 

In either event, the rise of Sinn Féin as a peaceful stand-in for the political ambition of the IRA is a win for the Irish, the British, and the entire peace loving world. Should Irish unification be achieved, one would hope that it would be through exclusively political means.

A similar line should be taken as it applies to other militant groups the world over. According to a study conducted by Rand, more modern militant conflicts are resolved through political integration than by any other means. Notably, the second largest set of conflicts in this study have not truly ended but instead are managed only through sustained efforts at policing militant organizations. 

The challenge of allowing militant groups to participate in the political process is obvious – it means overcoming long standing hostilities and ceding credibility to groups that were once restricted to the fringes. More directly- it means extending sympathy to people who have proven themselves “our” enemy. I contend that the price of integration at the ballot box is far cheaper than the loss of human lives through the rifle.

Kurds, Palestinians, and other subjugated people around the world see their political rights repressed by their imperial holders. Without the opportunity to meaningfully participate in local politics, these groups might feel that violence is the only way to guarantee a seat for themselves at the decision making table. 

Political inclusion is preferable to political violence- the American genesis reaffirms this fact. Repressed people in all corners of the world will continue their struggle for honest representation and national sovereignty- through the ballot box or, if political participation is barred, through the Armalite. 

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Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association. The opinions expressed here are his, and not necessarily the opinions of the Foreign Policy Association.