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I’m just back from France, where my direct experience of riots and looting was non-existent, although I had walked past a Montpellier branch of Swarkowski the day before it ceased to be. My indirect experience was quite extensive though, since I watched the talking heads on French TV project their instant analysis onto the unfolding anarchy. Naturally, they discovered that all their existing prejudices were entirely confirmed by events. The act that caused the wave of protests and then wider disorder was the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, 17, one of a succession of such acts of police violence against minorites. Another Arab kid from a poor area. French police kill about three times as many people as the British ones do, though Americans can look away now.
One of the things that makes it difficult for me to write blogs these days is the my growing disgust at the professional opinion-writers who churn out thought about topics they barely understand, coupled with the knowledge that the democratization of that practice, about twenty years ago, merely meant there were more people doing the same. And so it is with opinion writers and micro-bloggers about France, a ritual performance of pre-formed clichés and positions, informed by some half-remembered French history and its literary and filmic representations (Les Misérables, La Haine), and, depending on the flavour you want, some some Huntingtonian clashing or some revolting against structural injustice. Francophone and Anglophone commentators alike, trapped in Herderian fantasies about the nation, see these events as a manifestation of essential Frenchness that tells us something about that Frenchness and where it is heading to next. Rarely, we’ll get a take that makes some comparison to BLM and George Floyd.
I even read some (British) commentator opining that what was happening on French estates was “unimaginable” to British people. Well, not to this one, who remembers the wave of riots in 1981 (wikipedia: “there was also rioting in …. High Wycombe”) and, more recently, the riots in 2011 that followed the police shooting of a young black man, Mark Duggan, and where protest against police violence and racism soon spilled over into country-wide burning and looting, all to be followed by a wave of repression and punitive sentencing, directed by (enter stage left) Keir Starmer. You can almost smell the essential Frenchness of it all.
There is much to despair about in these French evenements. Police racism is real and unaddressed, and the situation people, mostly from minorities, on peripheral sink estates, is desperate. Decades of hand-wringing and theorizing, together with a few well-meaning attempts to do something have led nowhere. Both politicians and people need the police (in its varied French forms) to be the heroic front line of the Republican order against the civilizational enemy, and so invest it with power and prestige – particularly after 2015 when there was some genuine police heroism and fortitude during the Paris attacks – but then are shocked when “rogue elements” employ those powers in arbitrary and racist violence. But, no doubt, the possibility of cracking a few black and Arab heads was precisely what motivated many of them to join up in the first place.
On the other side of things, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise are quite desperate to lay the mantle of Gavroche on teenage rioters excited by the prospect of a violent ruck with the keufs, intoxicated by setting the local Lidl on fire and also keen on that new pair of trainers. (Fun fact: the Les Halles branch of Nike is only yards from the fictional barricade where Hugo had Gavroche die.) There may be something in the riots as inarticulate protest against injustice theory, but the kids themselves were notably ungrateful to people like the LFI deputy Carlos Martens Bilongo whose attempts to ventriloquise their resistance were rewarded with a blow on the head. Meanwhile, over at the Foxisant TV-station C-News, kids looting Apple stores are the vanguard of the Islamist Great Replacement, assisted by the ultragauche. C-News even quote Renaud Camus.
Things seem to be calming down now, notably after a deplorable attack on the home of a French mayor that left his wife with a broken leg after she tried to lead her small children to safety. As a result, the political class have closed ranks in defence of “Republican order” since “democracy itself” is now under threat. I think one of the most tragic aspects of the last few days has been the way in which various protagonists have been completely sincere and utterly inauthentic at the same time. The partisans of “Republican order” and “democracy” perform the rituals of a system whose content has been evacuated, yet they don’t realise this as they drape tricolours across their chests. With political parties gone or reduced to the playthings of a few narcissistic leaders, mass absention in elections, the policy dominance of a super-educated few, and the droits de l’homme at the bottom of the Mediterranean, what we have is a kind of zombie Republicanism. Yet the zombies believe, including that all French people, regardless of religion or race, are true equals in the indivisible republic. At the same time, those cheering on revolt and perhaps some of those actually revolting, sincerly believing in the true Republicanism of their own stand against racism and injustice, even as the kids pay implicit homage to the consumer brands in the Centres Commerciaux. But I don’t want to both-sides this: the actual fighting will die down but there will be war in the Hobbesian sense of a time when the will to contend by violence is sufficiently known, until there is justice for boys like Nahel and until minorities are really given the equality and respect they are falsely promised in France, but also in the UK and the US. Sadly, the immediate prospect is more racism and more punishment as the reaction to injustice is taken as the problem that needs solving.
A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.
Education bill to require two-thirds of content for standard bachelor’s degrees to be in Dutch
As Britain voted to leave the EU, Dutch universities began offering more courses in English and foreigners streamed in.
But with 122,287 international students in higher education in the Netherlands – 15% of all the country’s students – the government is proposing a cap on the number of students from outside the European Economic Area in some subjects and forcing universities to offer at least two-thirds of the content of standard bachelor’s degrees in Dutch, unless a university justifies an exemption.
Continue reading...Guest post by Sabine Carey, Marcela Ibáñez, and Eline Drury Løvlien
On April 10, 1998, various political parties in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the Republic of Ireland signed a peace deal ending decades of violent conflict. Twenty-five years later, the Good Friday Agreement remains an example of complex but successful peace negotiations that ended the conflict era known as The Troubles.
Since the agreement, Northern Ireland has experienced a sharp decline in violence. But sectarian divisions continue as a constant feature in everyday life. Peace walls remain in many cities, separating predominantly Catholic nationalists from predominantly Protestant unionist and loyalist neighborhoods. Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol increased tensions between the previously warring communities, leading to an upsurge in sectarian violence, which has been a great cause of concern.
In March 2022, we conducted an online survey to understand attitudes toward sectarianism among Northern Ireland’s adult population. Our results show that sectarianism continues to impact perceptions and attitudes in Northern Ireland. The continued presence of paramilitaries is still a divisive issue that follows not just sectarian lines but also has a strong gender component.
Our findings show that the pattern of who identifies as Unionist or Nationalist closely resembles the patterns of who reports having a Protestant or Catholic background. Unionists prefer a closer political union with Great Britain and are predominantly Protestant, Nationalists are overwhelmingly Catholic and are in favor of joining the Republic of Ireland.
Catholic and Nationalist identities appear to have a greater salience for the post-agreement generations than for older generations who lived through the Troubles. For Protestant and Unionist respondents, the opposite is the case, as religious background and community affiliation have a higher salience among older groups, particularly among men. Among the adults we surveyed, for men the modal age of those identifying as Unionists is 58 years, for women it is 46.
When asked about the greatest problem facing Northern Ireland today, sectarianism still features strongly among both communities. Today, the fault lines of the conflict seem to resonate more with those from a Catholic background than with those from a Protestant background. While Protestants were predominantly concerned with poverty and crime, among Catholics sectarianism emerged most often as the greatest concern. Just over 50 percent of Catholic respondents mentioned an aspect relating to the Troubles (sectarianism or paramilitaries) as the greatest problem today, compared to only 39 percent of Protestant respondents. Most Protestant respondents selected Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol as the greatest problem, reflecting concerns of the Protestant community discussed in a Political Violence At A Glance post from 2021.
To what extent does economic status drive concerns? Those who see themselves as belonging to a lower-income group were more likely to identify poverty and unemployment as the greatest problem. Concerns about sectarianism and (former) paramilitary groups appeared most prevalent among those who placed themselves in the high-income group.
The continued presence of Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries is a noticeable feature in post-conflict Northern Ireland. While they are predominantly associated with violence and crime, some view them as a source of security and stability. While our findings show that concerns about paramilitaries were more prevalent among high-income earners, the perception of paramilitaries has a significant gender component. Nearly 50 percent of male Catholic respondents attributed a controlling influence to paramilitaries in their area. And while most of them saw these groups as a source of fear and intimidation, 32 percent agreed that the paramilitaries kept their local area safe. But only 5 percent of female Catholic respondents felt similarly. This difference is not as stark between female and male Protestant respondents. Both groups were substantially less likely than male Catholics to consider paramilitary groups as a source of safety.
Different perceptions of armed groups by gender are not unique to Northern Ireland. A 2014 study on Colombia found significant differences between female and male perceptions of post-conflict politics and participation. Although there were no substantial gender differences in the overall support for the peace process in Colombia, female respondents reported higher levels of distrust and skepticism toward demobilization, forgiveness, and reconciliation and higher disapproval of the political participation of former FARC members. The effect was even greater for mothers and women victimized during the conflict.
Violent attacks have dampened the anniversary celebration of the peace agreement and 25 years of relative stability. The recent injury of a police detective by an IRA splinter group, reports of paramilitary-style attacks and the use of petrol bombs against the police, coupled with turf battles between Ulster factions are continuous reminders of the presence and power that paramilitary organizations still hold across Northern Ireland. Even today, communities are kept under siege through violence and ransom. The formal termination of violent conflicts through peace agreements, as in the case of the Good Friday Agreement and other prominent examples such as the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord, does not automatically imply the disbandment of armed organizations. The impact of the presence of (former) armed groups in people’s daily lives continues to be high in most post-conflict contexts.
Findings from surveys in other post-conflict environments mirror this long shadow of war. A study of Croat and Serbian youths showed the continued impact of the Yugoslav Wars on ethnic group identities and how continued communal segregation impacts inter-group ethnic attitudes towards out-groups. A recent study finds that a decade after the civil war in Sri Lanka people from previously warring sides have very different views of peace and security. Respondents who belong to the defeated minority ethnic group, the Tamils, provided a more negative assessment of security and ethnic relations than those from the victorious majority, the Sinhalese. They also reported seeing irregular armed groups in a more protective role rather than a threatening one, when they encountered them, as we show here. And in many post-war countries, it’s the police who threaten peace, as discussed in this post. A study on Liberia found that experiences during the war continued to impact perceptions of the police afterwards. Victims of rebel violence were later more trusting of the police, while victims of state-perpetrated violence were not.
Much research is rightly concerned about how to avoid the conflict trap. Yet even countries that avoid falling back into full-scale civil war oftentimes do not offer adequate security and peace for all groups of their civilian population. Continued vigilance of unequal experiences and perceptions of security are necessary to work towards meaningful and lasting peace.
Sabine C. Carey is Professor of Political Science at University of Mannheim. Marcela Ibáñez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich. Eline Drury Løvlien is Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Teacher Education.
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) via the Collaborative Research Center 884 “Political Economy of Reforms” at the University of Mannheim.
Beaumarchais and <em>Electronic Enlightenment</em>
The addition to Electronic Enlightenment (EE) of nearly 500 letters from the Beaumarchais correspondence is a significant event in eighteenth-century studies. Drawn from the second volume of Gunnar and Mavis von Proschwitz’s edited collection, Beaumarchais and the “Courrier de lÉurope”, first published thirty years ago in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, these letters join with 175 letters from the first volume (previously included in EE). The total of 660 letters in this collection include a combination of letters printed in that periodical and letters from public and private collections. (In 2005, von Proschwitz published a selection of 107 of these in a French edition, entitled Lettres de Combat.)
Collectively the letters being published by EE represent the largest tranche of Beaumarchais letters available for online research; moreover, they constitute approximately one third of Beaumarchais letters published to date and over one sixth of all known Beaumarchais letters in existence.
In the context of eighteenth-century correspondences, the Beaumarchais archive stands out for several reasons. The first is the volume of the archive. The known portion of the Beaumarchais papers is over 4,500 documents, constituting one of the largest corpora of eighteenth-century papers known. The full archive, if ever fully inventoried and edited, would run somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 documents. At the upper range it would become among the largest known archives of personal papers of the period.
The second is geographical breadth—from Vienna to Madrid to the Netherlands to England and North America, the Beaumarchais correspondence is important because it shows how actually we limit our understanding if we focus on solely “French” or “Francophone” correspondence networks.
The third is sociological breadth—Beaumarchais as an historical figure offers us insights into the eighteenth century that stand apart from the major figures whose correspondence has been edited and studied. He was an artisan, a musician, a financier, commercial entrepreneur, printer, investor, politician, judge, diplomat, spy, litigant, criminal (he was imprisoned in at least four capitals), husband, lover, brother, father and, of course, a playwright. His correspondence, and thus the network of correspondents connected him to a wider swath of eighteenth-century European and North American society than almost all personal correspondences studied to date, rivaling and perhaps exceeding the Franklin and Jefferson papers in this respect.
The editorial history of the Beaumarchais correspondence extends over two centuries of literary and political history. Since 1809, when the first edition of Beaumarchais’s Oeuvres was published, over 1,500 letters have been edited—though most of them not with the critical apparatus of the Proschwitz letters published by EE—over the course of more than two centuries.
Nearly 500 letters were printed in partial editions of Beamarchais’ work or correspondence, from 1809 to 1929. The first edition of his complete works edited by his amanuensis, Gudin de la Brenellerie (seven volumes, 1809), included 55 letters that Gudin had transcribed. A second edition, by the journalist, historian and politician Saint-Marc de Girardin in 1837 included 53 additional letters. A collection of 29 letters from the Comedie Francaise archives were published in the Revue Retrospective (1836). In his two-volume biography, Beaumarchais et son temps (1858), Louis de Loménie, referenced and included partial transcripts of hundreds of letters, but included in the appendix only 35 complete texts of previously unedited letters. A second biographer, Eugène Lentilhac, in his Beaumarchais et ses oeuvres (1887), included 12 partially transcribed letters not previously published. In 1890, Louis Bonneville de Marsagny published a biography of Beaumarchais’s third (and longest lasting) wife, Marie Thérèse Willermalauz, and claimed to have consulted “sa correspondance inédite” though no letters are reproduced or directly referenced.
In the early twentieth century, the first effort to produce a complete edition of the correspondence was made by Louis Thomas; however, as he explains in the preface to his edition entitled Lettres de Jeunesse (1923), his military service during the Great War put an end to his research; so in 1923 he published 167 letters from the first two decades of Beaumarchais’ adult life, some of which had been previously published. Several years later, in 1929, the eminent French literature scholar in the United States of the day, Gilbert Chinard, edited a collection of Lettres inédites de Beaumarchais consisting of 109 letters acquired by the Clements Library at the University of Michigan; these consisted of letters to his wife and daughter.
In more recent decades, over 1,000 additional items have been published, between the edition launched by Brian Morton in 1968, continued by Donald Spinelli, which added an additional 300 previously unpublished letters over four volumes of Correspondence, and then in 1990, the Proschwitz edition.
Proschwitz, a noted philologist, added to these letters the most extensive critical apparatus associated with any edition of Beaumarchais letters. He did not seek to produce a critical edition or a material bibliography of these letters, approaches that are difficult to apply to eighteenth-century correspondence in general and to the Beaumarchais archive in particular. Rather, Proschwitz in his notes emphasized the significance of these documents for our understanding of Beaumarcahis’ life and of the eighteenth century. In these letters, we see Beaumarchais not only as a playwright seeking to circumvent censorship to have Marriage de Figaro finally staged, but also as an entrepreneur, a printer, an urban property owner, an emissary, and a transatlantic merchant. Through this window we have a window on the eighteenth century that is geographically, socially, and culturally much broader and more diverse than what we generally encounter through the correspondences previously published in EE.
With the appearance of these letters and the launching of the first new projects on Beaumarchais’s correspondence in 50 years, including the effort spearheaded by Linda Gil to produce a definitive inventory with a material bibliography, and my own work to analyze the network of correspondents from the known correspondence, this publication in EE offers eighteenth-century scholars new reason to consider a longstanding, but still little understood, figure of the age.
A version of this blog post was first published on Electronic Enlightenment.
Featured image by Debby Hudson on Unsplash (public domain)
Guest post by Jacqueline R. McAllister and Daniel Krcmaric
The International Criminal Court (ICC) shocked the world on March 17 by issuing arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The ICC indicated it has reasonable grounds to believe that each bears criminal responsibility for unlawfully deporting and transferring children from occupied Ukraine to Russia—considered war crimes under international law. Rather than starting its ongoing investigation in Ukraine with arrest warrants for “small fry” war criminals, the ICC rolled the dice by going after its most prominent target ever: Vladimir Putin. Often considered the “most powerful man in the world,” Putin is the first leader with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council—and the first leader with an arsenal of nuclear weapons—to face an ICC arrest warrant.
What does all of this mean going forward? And how will the ICC arrest warrants influence the war in Ukraine?
It is important to start by managing expectations: Neither Putin nor Lvova-Belova is likely to land in the ICC’s dock anytime soon. Since the ICC does not have a police force, it relies on state cooperation for enforcement. Russia refuses to recognize the ICC, and it is inconceivable that Putin and Lvova-Belova will voluntarily turn themselves into the court. The road ahead for securing justice will be bumpy.
Nonetheless, the ICC’s arrest warrants may have several implications for the war, some negative, some positive.
In terms of negative implications, the ICC arrest warrants are unlikely to deter Russian forces from continuing to commit atrocities in Ukraine. In fact, they may perversely convince Russians to double down on their atrocity crimes. This may already be happening in Ukraine. During his surprise visit to Russian-occupied Mariupol after the warrants were announced, Putin thumbed his nose at the ICC by visiting a children’s center. Other Russian authorities have responded to the ICC arrest warrants by signaling that “more deportations are on the way.” Ukrainian civilians—the very people who have already borne the brunt of the war—may continue to suffer as their children are abducted and put on display in Red Square photo-ops and at concerts celebrating the war.
The ICC arrest warrants are also likely to make it harder for Ukraine and its Western allies to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia. The logistics of negotiating peace are more complex now that Putin is in the ICC’s sights. Will leaders in Western democracies be willing to negotiate directly with an accused war criminal? Might they insist that Putin be removed—as they did for other brutal leaders—as a precondition for meaningful negotiations? Will Putin be willing to travel abroad for a prospective peace conference? The ICC’s 123 member states now have a legal obligation to arrest him if he ever sets foot on their territory, making them undesirable sites for a peace conference. It is possible that China, fresh off its role in brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, could play host. But China’s actions thus far have convinced Western officials that it would not be a neutral broker in Ukraine.
There are some positive implications, however. The arrest warrants could facilitate efforts to hold Putin and other top leaders criminally accountable. For example, following Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević’s indictment at the Yugoslav Tribunal, several of his key associates began sharing a wealth of much-needed evidence. As Yugoslav Tribunal Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt explained in an interview with one of the authors, “Milošević opened up other areas of interest. Once he was indicted for Kosovo, we could then bring indictments for Bosnia and Croatia, because people talked to us. Some people were trying to do the right thing, and some people wanted to do deals.” In conjunction with military intelligence from Western governments, such testimony and documents linking top leaders to crimes proved crucial for prosecuting those who were previously beyond the Yugoslav Tribunal’s reach. It is possible that some in Putin’s inner circle could end up doing the same for the ICC.
If history is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants may also shore up support for Ukraine’s war effort, particularly from NATO. During the Kosovo War, the Yugoslav Tribunal’s indictment of Milošević helped to solidify support for NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. Specifically, as NATO’s air campaign ground on with seemingly no end in sight, pressure mounted in Western capitals to bring hostilities to a close. In the face of such pressure, keeping the Alliance together posed a real challenge. The Milošević indictment, according to NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, was “a huge win. Nothing was more likely to stiffen the Allies’ resolve and push us forward into a winning situation than this indictment.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over a year ago, questions have persisted about whether NATO, the US, and European Union will sustain their crucial support for Ukraine’s war effort over the long haul. Indeed, Putin seems to be gambling that Ukraine’s supporters will eventually falter in their commitment to its cause. If NATO’s experience in Kosovo is any indication, the ICC’s arrest warrants might help Ukraine’s backers to keep calling Putin’s bluff.
Jacqueline R. McAllister is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College and will join the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice in 2023 as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Her research appears in leading scholarly and foreign affairs magazines. Daniel Krcmaric is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and the author of The Justice Dilemma: Leaders and Exile in an Era of Accountability. He is currently writing a book about the turbulent relationship between the United States and the International Criminal Court.
Guest post by Mark Nieman and Doug Gibler
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off a security spiral in Europe. Despite US President Biden’s pledge to “defend every inch of NATO territory,” Poland increased its military budget by a whopping 60 percent and asked to have US nuclear weapons based on its territory. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia also announced sizable defense increases, with Latvia re-instating compulsory military training.
Why didn’t Biden’s pledge reassure these NATO members? Is the alliance’s famed Article 5 promise—that an attack on one member is an attack on all—a less than ironclad guarantee?
NATO is an unprecedented and unique organization of formidable military might. It is also an alliance made up of democracies, which are generally considered more reliable alliance partners: they form more lasting alliance commitments, and honor them at higher rates than autocracies. So why then are the NATO members most vulnerable to Russian aggression also the most skeptical about NATO’s commitment to defend them?
Democracies are often put on a pedestal. It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged among scholars of international relations that democratic countries are qualitatively different from authoritarian regimes—nicer, better, and more cooperative—especially when they interact with one another. Democracies do not fight wars against other democracies, though they are just as likely to fight autocracies as autocracies fight one another. Democracies are more likely to win the wars they do fight. And democracies are more likely to trade with other democracies.
But our research suggests that what drives the effectiveness of alliance isn’t democracy or shared values. Our recent article in The Journal of Politics shows that alliance reliability is driven by strategic geopolitical context and opportunities to renege, rather than domestic institutions.
What exactly would make democratic countries any more reliable allies than autocracies? Standard arguments focus on the nature of democratic norms and institutions, often pointing to their legalistic culture, foreign policy stability, or concern for international reputation. All of these explanations are valid, and many have been backed with sound empirical analysis. But they miss a key difference between democracies and autocracies: geography. A quick glance at a map reveals heavy geographical concentration among democratic countries. What distinguishes these areas of concentration—Western Europe, in particular—is a long history of violent conflict, which, once resolved, has been followed by a long history of peace. The geographical areas of concentration of authoritarian countries, in contrast, are characterized by periods of relative peace, followed by continuous or intermittent violence. This violence often centers around a small set of unresolved contentious issues, with those related to conflicting territorial claims being the most violent.
This geopolitical context matters for tests of alliance reliability: alliances are most likely to be called upon and violated when their geopolitical environment is hostile. In contrast, alliances in peaceful environments are less likely to be called upon, so they are less likely to be broken. So while democracies might appear to be better alliance partners, this is only because their commitments are rarely tested. Indeed, peaceful environments may themselves produce democratic counties. Without the threat of attack by a neighbor, states can devote fewer resources to the military, concentration of power devolves, and focus more on economic development and diversification. Threatening environments, in contrast, encourage greater militarization and power concentration, increasing the prospects of a garrison state and authoritarian regimes. To paraphrase Charles Tilly, war makes the state, but it is much more likely to make an authoritarian state than a democratic one.
In short, once the geopolitical environment is accounted for, democracies have the same reliability as other types of regimes. Instead, it is the strategic environment that seems to best predict whether alliances are honored: the riskier the environment, the more likely allies are to abrogate their commitments.
So are Finland and Sweden right to rush their NATO accession in response to the threat of Russian aggression? Will a formal membership make them safer than a mere promise? Yes, but this answer has nothing to do with the virtues of democracies. Alliances deter aggression, but they do so through the aggregation of capabilities rather than any enhanced commitments stemming from the domestic institutions of its members. Shared democratic institutions did not prevent France from abandoning Czechoslovakia in 1938. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given rise to similar fears of abandonment among NATO’s eastward members. These countries rightfully question whether Germany and France would come to their defense should they become the next target of Russian aggression.
Unable to trust their democratic allies, Eastern European countries are openly calling for assurance from NATO’s long-standing bedrock, the US. When push comes to shove, NATO’s junior partners are smart to not put their faith in a piece of paper and demand more tangible acts of support, such as troop deployments, training, and arms transfers. A promise, even by a democratic state, must be backed by action.
Mark Nieman is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Trinity College at the University of Toronto, and an affiliate of the Data Sciences Institute. Doug Gibler is a Professor of Political Science in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Alabama.
The Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) has awarded a €8.9 million “Cluster of Excellence” grant to the “Knowledge in Crisis” project headed by philosopher Tim Crane (Central European University).
The project involves researchers at CEU as well as the Universities of Vienna, Graz and Salzburg. The universities themselves have also committed money to the project, bringing its total funding to roughly €15 million. The project looks at how recent social and technological deveopments affect knowledge:
Today we face a crisis of knowledge. Our claims to knowledge are being threatened by rapid and spectacular developments in technology, and by attacks on the very ideas of knowledge and truth themselves. The flood of information on the internet challenges our ability to tell truth from falsehood, and there is a widespread rejection of the standards of scientific evidence and expertise. The crisis raises deep philosophical questions about knowledge, truth, science, ethics, and politics, and ultimately about our relationship to reality itself. These questions will be addressed in entirely new ways by this Cluster of Excellence, which will work to understand the crisis of knowledge in all its manifestations, and to find ways to combat it and reshape our relationship to knowledge.
Professor Crane writes that the aim of the project is to “to investigate various challenges to scientific and other knowledge by connecting many otherwise unconnected areas of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, political and social philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. The idea is to bring together areas of philosophy which are often isolated from one another, with the aim of getting a deeper understanding of the current crises of knowledge.”
He notes that the funds will be used for, among other things, 18 new academic appointments (postdocs and professors) and for funding PhD students.
The board of directors for the Knowledge in Crisis Project (l to r): Katalin Farkas, Marian David, Paulina Sliwa, Max Kölbel, Tim Crane, Hans Bernhard Schmid, and Charlotte Werndl.
In addition to Professor Crane, the project’s board of directors includes:
You can learn more about the Cluster of Excellence awards here.
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
Last fall, it looked like trouble for Microsoft when the European Union launched an in-depth investigation into its acquisition of Activision, but it now seems that Microsoft will emerge victorious. Three people familiar with the European Commission’s opinion on the matter told Reuters that, by agreeing to make a few more concessions, Microsoft will likely win EU antitrust approval on April 25.
According to Reuters, the European Commission is not expected to ask Microsoft to divest large parts of Activision—like separating out its Call of Duty business—to win approval. Instead, long-term licensing deals of lucrative games that Microsoft has offered to rivals could suffice, in addition to agreeing to “other behavioral remedies to allay concerns of other parties than Sony,” one insider told Reuters.
Microsoft declined Ars' request to comment, but the company told Reuters that it is "committed to offering effective and easily enforceable solutions that address the European Commission's concerns." Microsoft has previously opposed any proposed remedies forcing the merged companies to sell the Call of Duty franchise.
Nancy J. Jacobs explores the thought-provoking, tragic relationship between enslaved Africans and the African grey parrot in eighteenth century European portraiture.
The post The Boy and The Bird appeared first on Edge Effects.
"Our R&D teams in Munich are critical to our efforts to develop products delivering greater performance, efficiency, and power savings," said Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. "The expansion of our European Silicon Design Center will enable an even closer collaboration between our more than 2,000 engineers in Bavaria working on breakthrough innovations, including custom silicon designs, power management chips, and future wireless technologies."In addition to Apple's new Seidlstrasse facility, teams will occupy several additional R&D spaces at Denisstrasse and Marsstrasse as part of the Silicon Design Center expansion. The three new sites are located across the street from Apple's recently opened R&D facility at Karlstrasse. Together with engineering sites at Arnulfstrasse and Hackerbrücke, the new facilities form Apple's European Silicon Design Center, centrally located in Munich’s Maxvorstadt neighbourhood.
Enlarge / This artist's conception shows how Neanderthals might have faced down the mammoth task of butchering a freshly-killed elephant. (credit: Benoit Clarys, courtesy of Schoeningen Project)
Two recent studies of Neanderthal archaeological sites (one on the coast of Portugal and one in central Germany) demonstrate yet again that our extinct cousins were smarter and more adaptable than we’ve often given them credit for. One study found that Neanderthals living on the coast of Portugal 90,000 years ago roasted brown crabs—a meal that’s still a delicacy on the Iberian coast today. The other showed that 125,000 years ago, large groups of Neanderthals came together to take down enormous Ice Age elephants in what’s now central Germany.
Individually, both discoveries are fascinating glimpses into the lives of a species that's hauntingly similar to our own. But to really understand the most important thing these Neanderthal diet discoveries tell us, we have to look at them together. Together, they show that Neanderthals in different parts of Europe had distinct cultures and ways of life—at least as diverse as the cultures that now occupy the same lands.
On the Iberian coast 90,000 years ago, groups of Neanderthals living in the Gruta de Figueira Brava cave spent their summers catching brown crabs in tide pools along the nearby shore, then feasting on crab roasted over hot coals back in the cave.
In this collection, PVG contributors reflect on the war and its consequences, including what justice might look like and how the war might end.
Justice could mean any number of things. Perhaps it is Ukraine winning the war—a war that no one gave Ukraine a chance of winning at the outset. Maybe it is not only Ukraine winning but also recovering Crimea. Maybe it is Russia continuing to suffer sanctions and being forced to contribute to reparations and the rebuilding of Ukraine. Maybe it includes a significant number of costs, including lots of dead Russian soldiers or massive flight and a brain drain of high-earning and high-status individuals. Maybe it means ICC [International Criminal Court] indictments of Putin, Russian military officials, and soldiers on charges of war crimes. Maybe it means outcomes that were the very opposite of what Putin intended, such as fast-tracking Ukraine for European Union and NATO membership. Maybe it means seizing the assets of Putin and his cronies, and using them as reparations. Maybe it means that Putin meets a Mussolini-type ending. Justice, in these ways, means just desserts—that Russia somehow suffers the appropriate punishment for its invasion and subsequent crimes.
Whether Ukraine is able to score a knock-out victory will depend on the West continuing to supply Ukraine’s financial, intelligence, and military needs. It is not something that Ukraine can do on its own. The same can be said about reparations; it will require international cooperation of the highest order and among the rich countries and the global economic elite. This might be harder to pull off than a military victory.
And even harder will be punishing those who committed war crimes. There is a likelihood that any negotiated settlement will have to include some kind of amnesty for those who are accused of war crimes. At least that will be the Russian position, a position vehemently opposed by the Ukrainians. But it is one thing for a negotiated settlement to declare amnesty, quite another for the ICC to follow suit.
One way to help the case that war crimes should be punished is by making sure that the extent of the crimes is never lost. I am speaking about more than holding to account those who are responsible for the mass graves and the summary executions. War crimes include the Ukrainians who were disappeared into Russia. They include gender-based violence. But the war crimes are not simply a minor part of Russian war strategy—they are Russian strategy. The continuous barrages of cities, civilians, and infrastructure are often characterized as if they are just another phase of the war campaign. These missile attacks directed at civilians are war crimes. They should be repeatedly described as such. It will drum home the very brutality and inhumanity that have defined the Russian campaign, the current Russian way of war.
Finding some kind of justice will be important not only to “teach Russia a lesson” but also to warn those in the future who might be tempted to make war crimes part of their military strategy that there will be a price for their inhumanity and rampant and wanton violations of international humanitarian law. The outrage is not only that Russia launched a war of aggression but also that it waged war in the most brutal manner imaginable. Russia is not the only offender; there are others. And these offenses will not stop with Ukraine. Many states are simply shrugging off international humanitarian law. A major reason is because there have been no enforcement mechanisms or punishment. This must end.
During the initial phase of Russia’s invasion, many observers expected more decisive outcomes than actually occurred. Here are three, by now well-known, but initially unexpected developments:
What are the political implications of a conflict more protracted than expected? The durability of the Ukrainian government and the autocratic survival strategies of Putin’s regime will both be tested, as will the domestic coalitions in the developed democracies giving aid to Ukraine. Yet, as late 2022 public opinion research from Gallup indicated, a supermajority of the Ukrainian public supported fighting the war until all territory lost to Russia was recaptured. Around the same time, Russian support for the war, while high, showed cracks. A (flawed) democracy with powerful patrons may yet retain an advantage even against a numerically superior autocratic adversary.
On human rights and justice, and related to my previous PVGlance post on the topic, the consequences of civilians’ and other non-state actors’ contributions to violence will only deepen with a protracted conflict. As territory changes hands, sometimes repeatedly, enmities and violent recriminations among pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian civilians will escalate. Greater civilian involvement in violence complicates post-conflict truth, justice, and reconciliation as these intergroup hostilities solidify.
One of the most important dimensions of the Ukraine-Russia war is how limited it has been. While there has been much concern about escalation, the war has been almost entirely contained to Ukrainian and Russian territory. One errant missile hit Poland in November 2022, and very recently, missiles fired by Russian warships flew over Moldovan airspace. While the discussion continues of whether and how new weapons deliveries to Ukraine might lead to escalation, thus far, the war itself has remained limited. While there are many factors involved, one element is clear: NATO works. Russia is deterred from attacking NATO members with conventional weapons (cyberwar and disinformation are something else entirely).
NATO members, by publicly shipping weapons to Ukraine, have made themselves targets, yet they have not been targeted. Two different fears are likely restraining Vladimir Putin and the Russian forces. First, while Putin has rattled his nuclear sabre, he does understand that a larger war with NATO could lead to catastrophe for all. Second, and perhaps more directly right now, NATO has stayed out of the war, but that restraint would be dramatically reduced if Russia hit NATO territory. As much as NATO has been deterred from attacking Russian forces in Ukraine by the fear of escalation, once some escalation occurs, NATO might unleash its forces to devastating effect. There was some discussion of how to respond if Russia used a single nuclear weapon in Ukraine, and one possible response would have been for NATO to respond conventionally—to take out Russia’s Black Sea fleet. That option is still on the board if Russia expands the war into NATO countries.
While one could argue that NATO’s restraint has provided Russia a free hand in Ukraine, the deterrent effect NATO has had on Russia beyond NATO has mattered greatly, freeing many members of the alliance to provide far more arms, ammunition, and other support than one might have imagined last February.
By Timothy Sisk
Following the theory of ripeness so well-developed by I. William Zartman, two conditions are ostensibly necessary for the termination of the Ukraine war, absent the unlikely non-consensual intervention of outside forces (e.g., a United Nations or other multilateral “peace enforcement” operation, unlikely given that aggressor Russia retains its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council).
The first is a “mutually hurting stalemate” in which no side can definitively escalate its way out of the bloody imbroglio. Importantly, such a condition requires not just an ululating stalemate, as the first year of the conflict has seemingly produced, but a “long shadow of the future” in which further escalation is self-defeating and deemed so by both protagonists. With claims that Russia will attempt again to take Kviv in year two, for Russia such a condition appears not to exist under the current leadership; for Ukraine, the 2022 offensive that rolled back the Russian invasion also limits the perception that the conflict is unwinnable—it wants, and needs, Crimea back. Thus, a stalemate may persist without settlement, leading to intractable conflict and what the late eminent scholar of war termination studies, Roy Licklider, describes as a “long war.”
The second condition is a “way out.” That is, there must be a political solution, in principle as in a framework agreement, or any cease-fire will be at best ephemeral. The “way out” concept means that the essential elements of any peace agreement-outcome must be clear, especially the ultimate political dispensation of the disputed territories. This condition also appears unlikely to be met, as the only outcome of the conflict than can be plausibly acceptable to Kviv is the restoration of full sovereignty of all disputed territories.
Unless both these Zartmanesque ripeness conditions are met, ripeness theory suggests the conflict is likely to continue as a costly military stalemate, ad infinitum. At best a war-termination outcome is one of an informal “frozen conflict,” much like others in the region or in the world’s most long-running conflict: over Kashmir, which initially escalated into violence in 1948.
We are fast approaching the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a sobering time to reflect both on the political implications of the war, and the awful suffering endured by the Ukrainian people. Before the war, I spent quite a bit of time in Ukraine conducting research for my forthcoming book on Nasty Politics. One of the things that struck me from a pure power politics perspective, is how strategically costly and terrible Putin’s strategy towards Ukraine has been stretching back to the Euromaidan revolution in 2013-2014. Before the Euromaidan, pro-Russian parties were regularly some of the largest parties in the Rada (Ukraine Parliament), and also controlled Ukraine’s presidency (under Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych). Yet, one of the ironies of Putin’s strategy in Ukraine since 2014—backing separatists, annexing Crimea, and fomenting the War in Donbas—is that it has reduced Russia’s tools to influence Ukraine’s domestic politics. The 2022 invasion and war has only accelerated these trends, with several leaders of the pro-Russian parties charged with treason and banned from politics, and more moderate remnants of the pro-Russian parties drifting closer to Kyiv’s orbit than Moscow. Putin’s decision to invade was the continuation of his failed strategy to control Ukraine through coercion. The irony is that he has only forged a stronger Ukrainian identity.
I am curious to see what happens when domestic politics eventually return to Kyiv, and Zelensky’s rule will be challenged. Just months before the invasion former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was charged with treason for allegedly selling coal to Russian-backed separatists in Donbas during his presidency. The war put the treason charges on hold. But Zelensky has recently resumed his crackdown on corruption and signaled his willingness to resume his battle against Ukraine’s oligarchs. It will be interesting to see how the war reshapes Ukraine’s domestic politics and partisanship. Before the war, Ukrainian political parties were ephemeral, built around individual identities, and partisanship was weak. Yet again the irony is that despite Putin’s rhetoric that Ukraine’s statehood is a “fiction,” Russia’s war has strengthened Ukraine’s identity, the very thing he sought to destroy. This new Ukrainian identity will likely reshape Ukraine’s politics in wars to come.
Finally, it’s important to note that Ukrainians have been living with war for nearly eight years stretching back to 2014 and the War in Donbas. The 2022 Russian invasion is the most intense iteration of this. Nearly one in five Ukrainians is currently a refugee, and estimates of the military casualties stretch to more than 200,000. Those Ukrainians that have remained in Ukraine have experienced air sirens, bombings, brutal military assaults, and war crimes. I have several close friends who have endured lengthy power outages, regularly had to run to shelters, suffered anxiety over when the next air strike will happen, and are coping with the uncertainty of the future of war. This trauma will have long-term social, political, and economic consequences both for both individuals and Ukraine at large. Ukrainians want and deserve what everyone wants: freedom, prosperity, safety, and sovereignty.
By Lars-Erik Cederman and Yannick Pengl
On February 24, 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked many observers in the West. A year later, Putin exhibits no sign of wanting to dampen his nationalist fervor. Trying to make sense of his actions, Cederman, Schvitz and Rüegger referred to previous research, which shows that ethnic nations’ territorial fragmentation, especially in the case of increases such as that following the collapse of the USSR, increases the risk of civil conflicts along irredentist lines.
Extending these findings further back in European history, our most recent research explores the link between historical grievances and conflict, not only within, but also between states. In a working paper, co-authored with Carl Müller-Crepon and Luc Girardin, we show that incongruent borders are more likely to be contested by violent means where nationalist rulers can contrast current division and alien rule with supposedly more unified and independent “golden ages” in the past. Our analyses reveal that European states have been significantly more likely to make territorial claims or fight against neighbors hosting powerless ethnic kin when past state borders incorporated larger parts of territory currently inhabited by the ethnic nation than the contemporary rump state.
Putin has repeatedly lamented Russia’s lost unity resulting from the breakup of the Soviet Union and his essays and speeches reveal a motivation to restore Tsarist imperial glory. He and many other nationalist leaders go back centuries to unearth medieval kingdoms, early modern territorial states, or empires that allegedly satisfied the nationalist ideals of ethnic unity and home rule. Projecting modern notions of national consciousness onto pre-modern populations and constructing lines of continuity across centuries, “restorative nationalism” thus blends historical facts and fiction into self-serving narratives aimed at contemporary audiences.
Interstate conflict has become an extremely rare phenomenon in post-1945 Europe. In this sense, Russia’s territorial revisionism in Ukraine does, in fact, throw us back to the 19th and early 20th centuries. Against this backdrop, the outcome of the war in Ukraine is crucial for the future world order. Should Russia be seen as a winner there is a risk that revisionist nationalists elsewhere will take notice. Most ominously, China’s irredentist desire to “reunify” Taiwan increases the risk of major war. Within Europe, Serbia and Hungary are expressing acute grievances around ethnic division and lost unity. For these reasons, continued political and military support for Ukraine is critical.
By Noel Foster
Vladimir Putin’s speech before the Federal Assembly—both houses of Russia’s parliament, the Duma—on February 21 bookmarked a year of information and misinformation since the February 24, 2022 invasion. A year after the speech setting the stage for his invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s repetitive and often redundant, with no attempt at outlining a new strategy for victory in the war to the Russian public, Putin’s remarks underscored his stalemate.
If anything, the lack of change in Putin’s talking points underscores Moscow’s difficulty in finding strategic narratives that resonate with foreign audiences and mobilize them in opposing support for Ukraine. In contrast with its COVID diplomacy and rapidly adapting messaging following the outbreak of the pandemic, the Kremlin’s information campaign on Ukraine has stalled. After all, in the course of a year, Moscow has cycled through arguments of the threat of Ukrainian NATO membership, Ukrainian attacks on civilians, fascism and neo-Nazism among Ukraine’s elected officials, and even curious claims of Ukrainian biological or radiological capabilities.
In part, these Russian narratives have failed because they lack the hallmarks of previous Russian strategic narratives, which were usually grounded in facts, not fake news, could reasonably explain current events, and could appear to a wide ideological and international spectrum of audiences. Thus, even in countries where populations largely opposed Russian policy, Russian strategic narratives proved effective on swathes of the population.
It might thus appear easy to dismiss Putin’s remarks, as the aging autocrat promised considerable support to veterans and assured civilians that Russia’s economy would outperform that of the West, or as he resorted to tropes of Ukrainian “Nazis” threatening Russia with “biolabs.” Even his announcement that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control agreement appeared calculated to play into a year-long campaign of nuclear rhetoric aimed at unnerving his opponents.
Yet while most readers may be skeptical towards Moscow’s messaging and attuned to anti-Kremlin sentiment that pervades most of the West, this in itself is an artifact of the informational bubble that has arisen in the past year. Throughout much of the world, sentiment towards the war has been at best ambivalent, and in some regions, such as West Africa, public opinion trends favor the Kremlin. Separate from perceptions of Russia’s brutality and failure in its invasion, Moscow is edging out French influence in swathes of the Sahel and in Central Africa, for instance. In general, non-Western audiences express the strongest desire for the war to end quickly, even at the expense of Ukrainian losses in territory, and are more likely to view Russia as an ally or a necessary partner. If the Kremlin is not winning its global informational campaign, it is not losing it either. Though the divergence in public opinion between BRICS countries and the West appears a marginal gain for the Kremlin, it demonstrates how split global public opinion has become as economic stressors and tensions over strategic competition between the US and China have shaped opinion in other regions, not always in Washington’s favor. However fraught in its execution, the West has converged on a view of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and political course of action. As BRICS states and regional leaders seek to redefine their path outside of the West’s bandwagoning, Russia’s messaging on Ukraine shows how differently the West and the rest perceive the same events and form attitudes and preferences.
By Thomas Maher and Jennifer Earl
Everything is different, but nothing has changed. Last year we wrote about how the Russian state used censorship (e.g., laws restricting how citizens could talk about the war) and information influence techniques (e.g., pushing the Z meme and other pro-Putin messages) to shape its own “reality” about Ukraine. A year later, much has changed and much more has remained the same as tens of thousands of Russians continue to oppose the war in Ukraine and millions more see it as a necessary “defense” against Western aggression.
In the change category, the war has lasted longer than the Russians expected, weakening Putin’s control over Russia’s reality. Putin eventually acknowledged the war and its likely protracted nature; a civilian draft led to public backlash, protests, and emigration efforts. This strained Putin’s ability to “control the perception of reality,” but has not broken it.
In the continuity category, the distraction and disinformation machines that champion small changes and victories in Ukraine, demonize domestic protest, and amplify voices (and particularly Western voices like Tucker Carlson) that portray the war as a war of western aggression have continued. Russia continues to repress dissent with laws prohibiting “spreading disinformation” and by arresting protesters for attending rallies.
What does this teach us? We draw two insights from this year-to-year comparison. First, in a reality versus digital repression face-off, Russian domestic support for the war has declined from its initial highs but still polls around 70 percent approval, showing the relative, but not total, effectiveness of Russian digital repression. That Russian support can stay so high despite big shifts in the reality of the war speaks to the robustness of the intersection between different types of digital repression as well as our need to understand the relationship between disparate forms of digital repression. Leaders like Putin don’t so much stop repressing as they change their portfolio of repression when reality leans in. Second, the intelligence community and policymakers must begin to understand that larger portfolio, the dynamics of different types of digital repression, and the interrelationships between them in Russia (and globally). We recently introduced a typology of digital repression that is designed to help academics, the intelligence community, and policy-makers understand these shifts and, hopefully, counteract them. The US will be ill-equipped to respond to digital repression until leaders better parse the tools in Putin’s repressive arsenal, and understand how different combinations work (or don’t, or backfire).
By Stephen Shulman and Stephen Bloom
The start of the Russian-Ukrainian war signified the abject failure of two strategies of coercive diplomacy: Russia’s attempt to compel the West to reverse the extension of its military power into Ukraine, and the West’s attempt to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine while refusing substantial concessions. As both sides now seek to compel their opponent to give up the fight and accede to their political demands, the West must have no illusions of the challenges it faces.
All four factors we earlier identified as promoting strong Russian incentives to use force absent NATO concessions now create even more powerful incentives for Russia to accept high risks and pay high costs to prosecute the war and achieve at least some of its original political aims. First, the war has greatly intensified, rather than curtailed, military cooperation between NATO and Ukraine. Future levels will likely be high as well, especially following any great Russian military defeat in the war. This, combined with the likely inclusion of Sweden and Finland into NATO and Western commitments to increased military spending in the future, sharply exacerbate the perceived security threat to Russia by NATO.
Second, the threats to Russian national identity are far worse now than before the war. Russian national status and prestige have suffered a crushing blow due to a series of surprising battlefield setbacks and brutal treatment of Ukrainian civilians. Demands for reparations and war crime trials from the West/Ukraine in the event of Russia’s defeat also threaten national humiliation. Prior trends in linguistic and cultural Ukrainization in Ukraine will henceforth accelerate rapidly, undermining Russia’s claim to be the protector of Russians and Russian culture in the near abroad.
Additionally, Russian military defeat raises dramatically the probability that post-war Ukraine will become deeply integrated economically and politically with the West and subject to its externally imposed reforms during reconstruction. The demonstration effect of a democratic and prosperous Ukraine would constitute an unprecedented threat to the legitimacy of Russian authoritarianism.
Finally, the war has greatly raised the stakes for Putin’s reputation, historical legacy, freedom, and possibly life. Almost certainly he realizes that unless he can reasonably claim some kind of military victory in this war, he will be held personally accountable by large swaths of Russia’s population for the great costs in blood and treasure expended for naught.
Western strategy thus confronts a state, nation, regime, and autocrat strongly incentivized to avoid military defeat. It is not just Vladimir Putin who is likely prepared, if necessary, to mobilize much more of Russia’s heretofore untapped economic and military potential to prosecute the war.
Stephen Shulman is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University. Stephen Bloom is an associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies at Southern Illinois University.
The radical simplifications that flow from nationalism shrink the possibilities to understand the other.
The post Armenia and Azerbaijan: That Other War appeared first on Public Books.
The European Parliament formally approved a law to ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars in the European Union starting in 2035 in a move designed to speed up the transition to electric vehicles.
The new legislation, which is part of a broader effort by the EU to combat climate change, says that by 2035, carmakers must achieve a 100% cut in carbon-dioxide emissions from new cars sold, which means no new fossil fuel–powered vehicles could be sold in the 27-country bloc.
With 340 votes in favor, 279 against and 21 abstentions, the new rules also set a path for more immediate emissions reductions targets. New cars and vans sold from 2030 will have to meet a 55% and 50% cut in emissions, respectively, compared to 2021 levels. The previous 2030 emissions target for new cars sold was 37.5%.
The law was first accepted by negotiators from EU countries, the European Parliament and the European Commission in October last year, so Tuesday’s approval is just a step before the law gets a formal rubber stamp and the rules begin to take effect. That’s expected to happen in March.
Member of the European Parliament Jan Huitema said these target revisions are crucial steps if Europe wants to reach climate neutrality by 2050.
“These targets create clarity for the car industry and stimulate innovation and investments for car manufacturers,” Huitema said in a statement. “Purchasing and driving zero-emission cars will become cheaper for consumers and a second-hand market will emerge more quickly. It makes sustainable driving accessible to everyone.”
However, some automakers, industry players and countries have been giving the EU pushback ever since the law was proposed in July 2021. Renault, for example, said in 2021 that it would seek an extension to the proposed plan to ban internal combustion engine vehicle sales in the EU by 2035, instead hoping to push out the transition to 2040 so it could provide more affordable cars to EV buyers.
As a result of resistance, the final deal approved Tuesday includes flexibilities, including a caveat for small carmakers producing fewer than 10,000 vehicles per year to be able to negotiate weaker targets until 2036.
EU formally bans sale of gas and diesel cars from 2035 by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)
The European Commission, which is tasked with tackling disinformation online, this week expressed disappointment that Twitter has failed to provide required data that all other major platforms submitted. Now Twitter has been hit with a "yellow card," Reuters reported, and could be subjected to fines if the platform doesn’t fully comply with European Union commitments by this June.
“We must have more transparency and cannot rely on the online platforms alone for the quality of information,” the commission’s vice president of values and transparency, Věra Jourová, said in a press release. “They need to be independently verifiable. I am disappointed to see that Twitter['s] report lags behind others, and I expect a more serious commitment to their obligations.”
Earlier this month, the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, met with Twitter CEO Elon Musk to ensure that Musk understood what was expected of Twitter under the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA). After their meeting, Musk tweeted that the EU’s “goals of transparency, accountability & accuracy of information are aligned” with Twitter’s goals. But he also indicated that Twitter would be relying on Community Notes, which let users add context to potentially misleading tweets to satisfy DSA requirements on stopping misinformation and disinformation spread. That process seems to be the issue the commission has with Twitter’s unsatisfactory report.
Science now has a cabinet seat, but Britain’s world-leading reputation is fading fast
Another day brings yet another cabinet reshuffle to a weary Britain, but to the university community, it was welcome news to see “science” getting a dedicated department and a seat at the cabinet table. It fits with Rishi Sunak’s pledge to make the UK a “science and technology superpower” and was partially in response to a cross-party House of Lords science and technology committee report on the UK’s “somewhat incoherent” international science policy.
Across the world, Britain is renowned for its universities and world-leading research. A scholarship to study at Oxford, the world’s oldest English-speaking university, is what brought me from tropical Miami to England, and then Scotland. Sadly, the past decade has seen the UK university sector losing its lustre for students and faculty. While it’s easy to talk about making science a priority, supporting world-leading research requires action and concrete steps that go beyond rhetoric. To make the UK a “science superpower” means addressing at least three crucial components.
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
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