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A discussion featuring Yakov Feygin, Daniela Gabor, Ho-fung Hung, Thea Riofrancos, and Quinn Slobodian.
Relying on the private sector to decarbonize is a recipe for abandoning workers.
The debt ceiling legislation would end the pause on student loan payments on Aug. 30 at the latest.
“Fearless progress toward justice often meets ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces,” President Biden told Howard University’s graduating class.
Medical workers treating patients with Covid-19 at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in January 2022, when the Omicron wave was in full force.
Guest post by Patricia L. Sullivan
During her recent trip to Africa, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced a $100 million commitment over ten years to West African Nations to fend off the increasing threat of extremist groups. The announcement followed President Biden’s pledge of $55 billion to the continent for the next three years. While these promises reveal a US commitment to greater engagement with African states, the often-dodged question is whether citizens of these states will benefit. Will US security aid improve human security in fragile and conflict-affected African states? How is US security assistance likely to affect governance and state repression for citizens that often suffer at the hands of both extremist groups and their own security forces?
The empirical record is mixed. Between 2002 and 2019, the US spent almost $300 billion on security assistance and trained at least one million foreign military personnel. In some countries, such as Ukraine, these programs have improved both the capability and professionalism of the state’s armed forces. In others, they escalated human rights abuses and increased the risk of coups d’état. Take the example of Kenya—one of the largest recipients of US military training and equipment in East Africa. The state’s security forces have been found to engage in torture, extrajudicial killings, mass arrests, and forced disappearances. Or the Philippines, where President Duterte employed the country’s military—armed and trained by US aid programs—in a brutal war on drugs that took the lives of thousands of civilians.
Although some studies have found that security assistance can reduce civilian targeting by state security forces, there is mounting evidence that it often fuels human rights violations. Recent research suggests that the risk of civilian harm is greatest when donors transfer weapons to postconflict states or provide aid to states with fragmented, “coup-proofed” security forces. On the other hand, effective institutions to constrain executive power in recipient states, and the provision of some forms of “nonlethal” security assistance—like military education for officers and defense institution building—appear to mitigate the potential for civilian harm.
As the War on Terror spread from Afghanistan to the African continent, the US greatly expanded the use of security assistance—funding, weapons, equipment, and training provided to a state’s security sector by external actors—to build the capacity of weak states to take on the counterterrorism mission without sacrificing American troops in ground combat. According to data collected by the Security Assistance Monitor, funding to train and equip foreign security forces increased more than 300 percent in the ten years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Over the past two decades, the US has provided security sector assistance to more than two-thirds of the sovereign states in the world. Between 2015 and 2020, $4.8 billion in security aid went to sub-Saharan Africa.
While the goal is to reduce the threat posed by violent non-state actors, Kristen Harkness at the University of St. Andrews points out that most aid went to “repressive, heavily coup-proofed authoritarian regimes,” even though boosting military capacity in non-democratic states can fuel grievances that drive recruitment to extremist groups and increase political violence.
When “lethal” aid—weapons, military equipment, and combat skills training—reaches countries that lack effective institutional constraints on executive power, as in many autocratic and anocratic regimes, the risk of extrajudicial killings at the hand of security forces spikes, according to data that follows low- and middle-income recipients of US security force assistance between 2002 and 2019.
In the absence of effective legislative or judicial constraints, leaders can use military aid to buy the loyalty of their security forces and incentivize compliance with orders to repress dissent. Of course, lethal aid also directly increases the capacity of state security forces to quell civilian threats to the regime with force. Security assistance signals that a foreign patron is invested in regime survival. While soldiers ordered to use deadly force against the civilian population might experience moral conflict, or fear facing consequences for targeting civilians if the regime is overthrown, foreign security aid increases the odds that repression will succeed, the regime will survive, and soldiers will be rewarded for their loyalty.
One way to avoid the risk that US assistance increases human rights violations is to provide aid only to countries with effective legislative and judicial institutions. But many regions where extremist groups are active would offer a limited menu. An alternative is providing safer forms of aid.
Separating “non-lethal” security aid—a broad category encompassing professional military education, security sector reform, defense institution-building, and a variety of other types of assistance—from “lethal” aid—which includes material aid, direct combat assistance, and combat training—reveals divergent effects on state violence. While increasing lethal aid significantly raises the risk of extrajudicial killing, non-lethal aid appears to have a dampening effect. The exception is authoritarian states in which leaders have created overlapping and competing security institutions to “coup-proof” their regime. In these states, all forms of security assistance are associated with civilian harm. In post-conflict countries, one study shows that while weapons transfers and military aid increase human rights abuses, levels of Official Development Assistance (ODA) are associated with improved human rights protections.
Moving forward, as the US promises a new wave of security assistance to African states, it has a choice. Considering the recipient country’s institutional context, the state of its security forces, and the type of military aid, can decrease the risk that those resources are used to commit human rights violations.
Patricia Lynn Sullivan is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies.
If there’s one thing that brings our divided nation together, it’s our hatred of junk fees.
Junk fees are extra charges you don’t know you’re paying until you get the bill. They hide the true cost when you buy a good or service, so it’s impossible to comparison shop. For example…
Say I want to travel to go see my favorite musician Dolly Parton play at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.
When I book my plane ticket, I have to fork up extra cash to bring luggage or change my flight. My grandkids are more into Blippi than Dolly — so they won’t be traveling with me. Otherwise, I might have to pay a fee just to sit with them.
I need a rental car once I land, so I’ll be stuck paying an extra fee to pick up the car at the airport and another fee they never told me about to cover the rental company’s costs for disposing old tires. Seriously?
When I pay my hotel bill, the price is way higher than I thought I’d pay when I booked the room, to cover wi-fi, pool access, a gym, state and local taxes and other special fees.
Before I get to the show, I better look at my checking account balance if I want to buy a record. Even if I see that I have enough money to make a purchase, the timing of other charges hitting my account could result in me getting slapped with a surprise overdraft fee. It’s a simple mistake, but could make a $20 record end up costing $50.
Oh and don’t forget the concert tickets themselves. Major ticket sellers like Ticketmaster tack on fees to attend shows, which can drive up the final ticket price as much as 78% percent higher than what I was told the initial price was.
It’s all bait-and-switch. You thought you could afford to see Dolly Parton, but it turns out it’s gonna take a lot more than working “9 to 5”.
Corporations often label these types of charges “convenience fees” or “service fees.” Probably because they “conveniently” “serve” to pad their bottom lines, costing Americans at least $29 billion dollars a year we didn’t expect to pay. This is a huge problem spanning many different industries — not just the ones I’d encounter on my trip.
But there’s good news: President Biden has urged Congress to draw up legislation to prevent these outrageous fees.
Turns out, one of the few things as popular as Dolly Parton is tackling junk fees.
It’s time for Congress to act.
Demonstrators supporting trans rights in Washington last week.
EJ Montini of USA Today suggests that Biden should channel his inner Gerald Ford and pardon Trump for the good of the nation. In his mind, pardoning someone who was impeached twice and has a number of criminal investigations dogging him is the epitome of national unity. — Read the rest
Twenty year recollections of the 2003 invasion of Iraq are popping up. Some are debating whether there were any positive outcomes from the war, others reflecting on what it meant for those who fought (on the US side) or suffered (on the Iraqi side). The Iraq war has played a big role in my career, but I wanted to talk about what it means for the liberal internationalist orientation to the world.
In the first lecture of my classes, I tell my students that the 9/11 attacks were my second week of college, and discuss what a big impact they had on my choice of career and research area. That’s true, but I really should talk about the Iraq war as well.
As the build up to the war began, my classmates and I at my isolated lefty college were shocked. How could anyone want to start a second war after just invading Afghanistan? How could anyone think Iraq had anything to do with 9/11? How could anyone believe this was a good idea?
I soon realized it didn’t matter what I thought. Conservative friends and family members were swept up in post-9/11 patriotism/panic.
Some have argued that neoconservative adventures like the Iraq war are the end result of liberal internationalism, and it should be abandoned
And then, during spring break, the war began. I watched in shock as the United States unleashed its might on Iraq. I was torn. I wasn’t one of those lefties who defended Saddam Hussein (we had some at my college). I wanted him gone. But even at 20 I knew this wasn’t the way to do it.
I continued with my plan to work in the US intelligence community while also pursuing scholarly studies. I got an internship with a defense contractor, was assigned to an intelligence agency. A few years into my career, I got accepted to a PhD program, was offered a promotion at my firm, and was offered a permanent job with the government agency. I went the PhD route (whether or not that was the right choice is the topic for another post).
I said this post wasn’t going to me about me, and I meant it. I gave this background to explain how I became involved in the bigger debate about the Iraq war: whether it invalidated liberal internationalism. While I was working in DC I also became part of a foreign policy group, the Truman National Security Project, meant to revive muscular liberal internationalism within the Democratic Party. I left after a few years, but the debates we had there stuck with me.
Liberal internationalism is a specific orientation towards the world. Advocates believe there is an international order that can be mutually beneficial. States should resolve disputes peacefully and multilaterally, through the United Nations and other international organizations. Human rights should trump narrow security interests. And states’ foreign policy should focus on upholding this international order.
Historically it had been tied to the US Democratic Party. This changed with the Bush Administration. A group of thinkers within the Republican party–growing out of the Reagan Administration’s aggressive anti-Soviet policies–sought to ensure US primacy while also defending democracy and human rights. They saw the response to 9/11 as a way to advance these goals, as signified in the 2002 National Security Strategy. Bush drew on similar language when justifying the Iraq War.
The Bush Administration’s use of liberal internationalist arguments to justify the Iraq War did trap some liberal internationalists. For example, the prominent liberal thinker Michael Ignatieff supported the Iraq War. This has given rise to the pejorative “liberal hawk” moniker-the claim that liberal internationalists are basically war-mongers. We’ve seen this deployed against Democratic figures like Hillary Clinton from both the left and the right.
As a result, some have argued that neoconservative adventures like the Iraq war are the end result of liberal internationalism, and it should be abandoned. To these policy thinkers, liberal internationalism is an “increasingly unsustainable grand strategy.” Others have gone further to question the validity or even the existence of a liberal international order, which liberal internationalism is meant to sustain.
But liberal internationalism is not dead.
First, Americans do not support an isolationist or restrained foreign policy. A 2019 report from the Center for American Progress found that US voters are “weary” of military interventions, but have not rejected American leadership in the world.
The irony is that many calling for restraint in US foreign policy for the sake of the world are as US-centric as liberal hawks.
Second, there is more to liberal internationalism than military interventions. This is what restrainers tend to suggest-that, since liberal internationalists tend to just be hawks a liberal internationalist grand strategy will lead to another Iraq war. And, to be fair, the liberal side isn’t helped when prominent members like Anne-Marie Slaughter praised Trump’s poorly-thought out air strikes on Syria. But there is a lot more to liberal internationalism- multilateralism, respect for human rights, upholding international institutions.
More importantly, those who assume the Iraq war damned liberal internationalism seem to ignore its relevance outside the United States. Many countries around the world look to the UN to reflect their views and advance their interests. This is why Trump’s decision to pull out of the UN Human Rights Council was concerning: other states take this, and other UN bodies, very seriously. The rest of the world–especially the Global South–has an interest in a robust UN, which only a liberal internationalist grand strategy can ensure.
Additionally, many countries depend on the liberal international order for support. The UN, while far from perfect, performs services no state can legitimately do on its own, such as supporting economic development, protecting cultural sites, and keeping the peace between combatants. Persistent security threat–like that of ISIS and other militant groups in the Sahel–require the international community’s assistance.
The irony, then, is that many calling for restraint in US foreign policy for the sake of the world are as US-centric as liberal hawks. They approach the relevance of liberal internationalism only in terms of whether America will invade another Middle Eastern country.
It gets a little tiresome when debate over US international action boils down to “but the Iraq war was bad.” Reducing the debate to pro/con military intervention makes it hard to effectively respond to crises, as arguably occurred in the Obama Administration’s response (or lack thereof) to the Syrian civil war. It also leads to poor analysis, such as when Middle East experts, viewing everything through the lens of another Iraq war, assumed that Saudi Arabia would pull America into a war with Iran.
But liberal internationalists are also at fault. They’re attached to US primacy, from Madeleine Albright’s invocation of America as the “indispensable nation” to Joe Biden’s foreign policy promise to “place America at the head of the table.” They seem obsessed with looking tough–which I suspect is behind the cheerleading of air strikes. They haven’t figured out a way to support human rights and a robust US international presence while also criticizing the Iraq War.
And that is the issue. Liberal internationalism is still viable, and much of the world depends on America’s continued support of this grand strategy. But US foreign policy debates revolve around that horrific and illegal invasion of March 20th, 2003, rather than the full set of policies we could adopt.
UPDATE: Edited to fix a typo
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.
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