America's got talent, just not political talent

The US presidential elections have the feel of the popular talent competition,
America's Got Talent (AGT). Like the reality TV show, they are entertaining,
emotional and highly competitive, and focus exclusively on the candidates' talent
and character or lack thereof, rather than anything that resembles political
substance or agenda. This is reinforced by the mainstream media's "horse race
journalism", focusing mainly on the odds, through daily broadcasts of polls
throughout.
The elections not only provide cost-free content for corporate media, but the
windfall from campaign advertising makes it ever more profitable to treat them like
a reality TV drama. Today, the elections and their coverage are centred almost
exclusively on whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden has the character, talent or
experience to lead the country in trying times. Trump insists that it all boils down
to leadership, where "talent is more important than experience".
He reckons, the choice could not be easier between himself, the strong and "stable
genius", and the "weak" and "cognitively challenged" Biden. And so, in their efforts
to anoint Trump the next president/king, the Republicans adopted an elephant and
a crown as their 2020 convention logo.
However, it was Biden who had to go through the nomination's loops and hoops,
where like AGT, the gruelling primaries start with smaller auditions on the state
level before going national. While Trump was watching TV or playing golf, Biden
was running a serious campaign against 28 other contestants/candidates, the
largest number of nominees in recent memory. And he was able to pull ahead early
on, thanks in no small part to his coalition-building and connections within the
Democratic Party.
Behind the scenes, party apparatchiks, consultants, and their financial backers, like
the judges and producers of AGT, play a major role in vetting the candidates during
the primaries, which make up the longest commercial reality TV show on television.
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They decide on the schedule, makeup and shape of the highly produced debates
and public appearances, where performances are scripted and practised well in
advance to draw the loudest applause. And like AGT, even emotions during the
primaries seem rehearsed, packaged and edited for national audiences, to optimise
support and participation.
Likewise, the dramatic spotlights on supportive family members beaming and
cheering emotionally from the centre or edges of the stage are AGT par excellence.
But this year's pandemic has disrupted much of the drama during the second half
of the election process, frustrating Trump, who has been eager to "get the show
back on the road" to catch up with Biden in the polls.
Even the parties' conventions, which usually promise excitement before the
elections, fell flat because of the absence of live-audiences shouting and cheering.
This was especially true for the populist Republicans, who attempted some bizarre
stunts to manufacture drama by screaming and yelling at an audience of none. The
gimmickry and trickery reached a new low with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
delivering a speech from Jerusalem, trading Palestinian rights for evangelical votes
for Trump.
Show me the talent
Whether live or virtual, entertaining or boring, the elections now depend on two
old men with big egos and small talents of the required kind.
It is indeed tragic that the contest to choose the next leader of the world's leading
democracy is now between two septuagenarians, who espouse no fresh vision for
America and its role in the world. In fact, one is pressed to recall a single original
idea, or even a memorable quote uttered by either man during their long careers.
Worse, Trump is unable to speak in full sentences or even read properly from a
prepared script on a prompter. And the many who believe that Biden suffers from
dementia are only looking for him to stumble on the next sentence.

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But whatever the Republican and the Democrat lack in vision, speech and
inspiration, they made up for in venom and indignation. So instead of building
themselves up, they have torn each other and the country apart.
Trump called Biden mentally unfit and anti-God, and Biden returned the favour,
labelling Trump a racist and a fool. Trump has inflamed the spirits of and appeals
to the "demons of America's worse nature", while Biden has calmed the souls of
and appeals to "the angels of its better nature". Trump has cultivated an image of
an aggressive, uncompromising warrior who will fight for his base come what may,
while Biden nurtured the image of a caring, compassionate leader who heals
wounds and restores dignity to the White House and respect to America.
Biden's message seems to resonate more, for now. But America may still embrace
the warrior over the therapist. Either way, the decisive votes will be those against
a candidate rather than for a candidate, which does not inspire much confidence
whoever wins.
All of which makes one wonder why a country as remarkable as the United States,
which produces the most talented artists, writers, scientists, innovators and
entrepreneurs, ends up with two old, uninspiring leaders.
Politics as showmanship
Many claim the establishment elites and oligarchs have rigged the entire political
system through undue influence and big money. And there is a lot of truth to that.
But there is another crucial factor that has shaped these and the last elections. The
rise of populism in America, and in Western democracies in general, has opened
the door for demagogy, disruption and showmanship in the person of Donald
Trump.
His unparalleled talent for political and personal spin gives him an edge over Biden
as it did over Clinton. He has already succeeded during the past year in making the
presidency and the party, and to some degree the country, all about him.
Indeed, the talented Mr Trump has turned his entire tenure as president into a long
and determined campaign to win the next election. And it is why Trump, who is

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behind in the polls, is already going far and wide to discredit the elections,
threatening to reject an unfavourable outcome. This promises to turn the elections
from an entertaining show into a chaotic nightmare.
If Biden's victory is anything less than sweeping, America may end up weeping well
after the show.
By: Marwan Bishara
Source: Al Jazeera
The writer is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

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 SAARC on ventilator
With the US finding it difficult to steer the wheel of the international liberal order,
the spirit of global solidarity and cooperation remains on a slippery slope. The US -
the architect of this world order - emphasised on globalising the economy,
something which the Bretton Woods institutions helped achieve in the previous
decades. Today however, as right-wing conservative, hyper-nationalistic politics
and populist regimes gain momentum, the international liberal order is under
retreat.
Brexit was a critical sign of how integrated regional cooperations such as the EU
can dismantle through a referendum. In South Asia, even though it carries potential
like no other region, we see how SAARC has remained on a ventilator since its
creation. Pakistan and India - being at constant daggers drawn - is one fundamental
reason why South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. But today the
current geo-political landscape has added more fuel to fire.
India has gone to lengths in a bid to stall SAARC. To undermine the regional
organisation, India is now turning to the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral
Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) to alter its foreign policy interest
and disregard Pakistan. No surprise that New Delhi has begun to look for alternative
“multilateral regional/sub regional organisations” that do not include Pakistan.
Being called a “slow boat to nowhere” by Indian strategic analyst C Raja Mohan,
chances of SAARC coming back into the spotlight seem remote, especially when
Indian ambition to become a regional hegemony looms large in the complexed
region.
Kashmir is another bone of contention between India and Pakistan which gives little
hope to SAARC’s revival. With Indian brutality and mass violations of basic rights
escalating in the vulnerable Kashmiri valley, Pakistan will never sit on the same
table with Indian authorities. Kashmir remains the most contentious issue in the
South Asian region, which has also led to the cancellation of the 2016 SAARC
Summit in Islamabad. No summit has taken place since the Uri attack.

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This year, Covid-19 pandemic exposed the existing fault lines in South Asia with
collapsing health systems, choking economies, and poverty reaching
unprecedented levels. These must act as a wake-up call for the regional countries.
It is time for regional solidarity and SAARC is the ideal platform for making regional
cooperation a reality.
One simply cannot neglect the trade potential this region carries. According to the
World Bank, South Asia’s trade potential currently hovers around $67 billion,
almost thrice the current trade of about $23 billion. The Covid-19 crisis has given
the region a new window of opportunity for economic independency. Today,
through the use of SAARC, South Asian countries now have an opportunity to come
together to remove tariffs on medical devices, protective gear and essential
products.
With accelerated climate change manifesting, South Asia must focus on a robust
regional- level response to curb climate vulnerabilities, where all nations are on the
same page. If states are constantly hostile, ecological disruption will gain more
momentum and cause damage of unprecedented nature and scale. Only a unified
narrative will help mitigate the impacts of ecological disruption.
During the inauguration of the historical Kartarpur Corridor in November 2019,
Pakistan’s FM Shah Mahmood Qureshi stated, “If the Berlin Wall could fall and
Kartarpur Corridor be opened — the issue of Kashmir can also be solved,” which
would mean the end of the Line of Control (LoC). Even though Pakistan’s foreign
policy has been ambiguous on multiple occasions, this time, it sent out the right
message. The Kartarpur Corridor shows how there are chances of reconciliation
between two nuclear-armed archrivals. With political and economic vulnerabilities
looming large and climate trauma becoming ever so prominent, regional solidarity
in South Asia is an urgent need. One thing the Covid-19 crisis has taught us that
diseases, terrorism and accelerated climate change are all borderless challenges
which must be countered in coordinated forums. Today more than ever, SAARC
needs a revival.
By: Eric Shahzar
Source: The Express Tribune
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 Multipolar history is a lesson for rising China
Among fellows of all think tanks, I admire British historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee
(1889-1975) the most. He is best known for his 12-volume A Study of History, which
contains more than 3 million words and about 7,000 pages. These tomes trace the
development and decay of 19 world civilizations in the historical record, most of
which can be described as the most profound illustrations of human civilization.
Toynbee served as a diplomat for several years. He had been director of studies at
the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, one of the world's leading
think tanks, for more than 20 years. But his creative peak took place on his global
tour after retirement at the age of 64. He started the voyage with his wife from
London and spent nearly two years in South America, the Pacific Rim, South Asia
and the Near East, as he wanted to visit peoples and places which he had already
known about from books.
I am luckier than Toynbee. Because of a fast globalizing world order, convenient
transportation and opportunities brought by China's rise, I have been to almost 100
countries - and I am still far from my retirement age. I have been to the US and
Europe tens of times, and I have repeatedly visited some countries that are rich in
history. For example, I have been to Iran eight times, Turkey five times, and Kenya
three times. But due to my busy work schedule, my visits to these nations were
rushed.
Fortunately, I had worked as a journalist for eight years. Even with a glimpse, I could
feel the unprecedented collective rise in the world. At the National Museum of the
Republic of Kazakhstan, upon entering the hall I saw a huge map of Kazakhstan's
national territory. That map reflects the ambitions of this nation which owns a
history of thousands of years but only declared its sovereignty on its territory as a
republic in the early 1990s.
In Brasilia, I looked down from hundreds of meters at this city which was
inaugurated as Brazil's capital in 1960. I could see the city was designed in the shape
of an airplane, which reflected Brazil's desire to become a major power when the
capital launched.

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In Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, local African friends proudly shared with me their
understanding of their big, new, beautiful capital and their vision that the country
will rise to become the continent's largest economy.
At Tehran's Azadi Square, which can host hundreds of thousands of people, I was
invited to the viewing stand and listen to the speech of then president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad who vowed to fight the US and Israel to the end.
It is sad to see that some established great powers are declining in recent years. I
have been to Paris many times, and whenever I saw the Champs-Élysées
surrounded with streets full of cigarette butts, street vendors, and rampant
pickpockets, I felt somewhat desolate for this once powerful empire. In Bratislava,
the capital of Slovakia; Budapest, the capital of Hungary; and Warsaw, the capital
of Poland, I saw graffiti and shabby buildings everywhere I went. I cannot help but
lament the lapse of the old European powers and the difficulty and hardships the
now face to survive in the fissures of today's greater powers.
The famous scholar Parag Khanna has mentioned in The Second World: Empires
and Influence in the New Global Order that: "Second-world countries prove that
history is less a seamless continuum than an unpredictable contest pitting material
progress against resource scarcity, cosmopolitan globalization against tribalist
traditionalism, political union against fissiparous instincts, and autarky against
comparative advantage."
China has reached the "closest moment to the greatest rejuvenation of the Chinese
nation." It is necessary for China to learn from the successful experience of the
established great powers, regional powers, and emerging economies while
understanding their current conditions.
For a long time to come, the multi-polarization of the world will be an unstoppable
trend. The crevices between the US and Europe and the prosperity of regional
powers will produce unexpected and complex results. We Chinese people are not
over proud about our achievements, and leading the world is not something that
we make as our aim in the multi-polar world where power is shared.

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In this respect, we should follow the wisdom of historian Arnold Toynbee: Only
equality between nations and mutual respect among civilizations can bring about
a better future.
By: Wang Wen
Source: Global Times
The author is professor and executive dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial
Studies at Renmin University of China, and executive director of China-US People-
to-People Exchange Research Center. His latest book is Great Power's Long March
Road.

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 ‘Indian Punjab Will Burn’
At a virtual meeting, Indian Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, while
addressing his Haryana counterpart, Manohar Lal Khattar, and Union Jal Shakti
Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, warned the Centre that “Punjab will burn” if
they completed the Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal—and that Haryana and Rajasthan
would also suffer the impact.
This is not a metaphor, but reality staring at the face of India’s bread basket; Punjab
has been sliding down since past two decades, Punjab ranked first in GDP per capita
amongst Indian states in 1981, fourth in 2001, and sixteenth in 2020.
Water shortage in Punjab has been a serious issue since the fragmentation of the
state into three states, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal.
Following the Indus Water Treaty 1960 between India and Pakistan, India got the
unrestricted right to use the waters of three rivers: Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The
waters were shared among Punjab, Delhi with some cosmetic allocation to Indian
Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK). The current dispute can be traced back
to the mid-1960s, when the Indian Punjab state was fragmented to check the Sikh
majority’s rule in old Punjab.
Bifurcation of Punjab and creation of the state of Haryana was implemented in
1966. Some parts were also transferred to Himachal Pradesh, then a Union
territory, and the city of Chandigarh became a Union territory and served as the
capital of both the residual Punjab and Haryana.
When the state was bifurcated, the sharing of the river water also became a bone
of contention. Being a successor state, Haryana had the eligibility to receive a share
of Punjab’s waters. Water distribution hit roadblocks in the 60s and 70s when
affected states took the case to the Supreme Court.
The centre of gravity of the water dispute between Punjab and Haryana is Sutlej
Yamuna Link Canal or SYL. It is an under-construction 214-kilometer long canal to
connect the Sutlej and Yamuna rivers by diverting a major share of Punjab’s water
to Haryana.

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Extracts from Indian Express, Times of India, The Quint and other Indian media
outlets, especially media reports published in 2016, are being reproduced to
highlight the intricacies of the water dispute.
Under Indira Gandhi in 1981, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan signed an agreement
to share the waters of rivers Ravi, Beas and Satluj, known as Indira Gandhi Award
of 1981.
Under this award, 17.17 MAF surplus Ravi Beas water was agreed to be allocated
to Punjab 4.22 MAF, Haryana 3.50 MAF, Rajasthan 8.60 MAF, IIOJK, a token 0.65
MAF and Delhi 0.20 MAF. It was further stipulated in the Agreement that Punjab
would complete the SYL Canal within a period of 2 years, i.e. up to December 31,
1983. In April 1982, Indira Gandhi formally launched the construction of the canal
at Kapoori village of Punjab; no resistance came from Punjab as it had the Congress
government. The Akali Dal came to power in Punjab in October 1985 and on 5
November 1985, the newly elected Punjab Legislative Assembly repudiated the
1981 agreement.
Things have not settled down since then.
In 2004, Punjab state legislature passed the ‘Punjab Termination of Agreement Act,
2004’, whereby it sought to de-notify the land acquired for the project. The Act
annulled the 1981 Indira Gandhi Award and also subsequent agreements relating
to the distribution of Ravi-Beas waters among Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
Fast forward to 2016, adding fuel to the fire, the Punjab legislature passed a bill,
the Punjab Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal (Rehabilitation and Re-vesting of Proprietary
Rights) Bill 2016, which asked to restore the land (around 5376 acres) acquired for
the canal, back to the farmers free of cost; thus effectively erecting a roadblock for
any more development on SYL. Violating the Supreme Court’s orders, the frenzied
land-owners started levelling the canal land to reclaim it, wasting billions already
spent on it.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision that the state’s termination of the link
canal was unconstitutional, on November 11 2016, Congress MLAs of the Punjab
Assembly resigned in protest. Aam Aadmi Party began an indefinite protest on the

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same day at Kapoori village, blaming both the Shiromani Akali Dal and Congress for
SYL. Predicting the law and order problem over the issue, the Punjab Police
deployed the Rapid Action Force in parts of Punjab, sealed the border with Haryana
and increased patrolling on the National Highways.
A Congress rally was organised on 13 November at Khuian Sarwar village. Captain
Amarinder Singh declared that not a single drop of water will go out of Punjab.
Captain Amarinder resigned from Lok Sabha on November 23 in protest against the
issue. A delegation of Punjab government’s ministers met the President on
November 28, urging him not to accept any advice against the riparian water rights.
The Akali Dal held a rally at Moga on 8 December regarding the issue. Chief Minister
Prakash Singh Badal stated that the controversy had been resolved after giving back
the land meant for the canal to the original owners. He also stated that Punjab
didn’t have a single drop of water to spare.
Presently, the Supreme Court has ordered for the status quo to prevail on the Bill.
But even after that, the Punjab assembly has unanimously passed a resolution that
the SYL canal cannot be allowed to be built. Punjab defends its act, stating that
under Article 143, the Supreme Court has only advisory functions, and hence
cannot pass an assumptive interim order.
Coming to 2020, the water dispute has erupted again, as reported by ScrollIn
magazine, on August 18, the CM of Punjab Captain Amarinder Singh stated that
‘Punjab will burn’ if forced to share water with Haryana.
The meeting was convened at the directions of the Supreme Court, which in July
had asked the Centre to mediate between Punjab and Haryana to settle the
controversial issue of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal.
Indian Punjab, which used to be the bread basket of India is projected to become a
desert in 25 years. As underground water falls further, desperate farmers are
digging deeper, getting trapped in debt and depleting aquifers.
Punjab’s other challenges include the rise of voices for ab independent Khalistan,
drugs in youth and the RSS agenda of Hindutva against minorities.

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As reported by BBC in 2017, the biggest issue confronting Punjab is not jobs or
corruption, but a drug epidemic that is sweeping the state. Punjab is in danger of
losing an entire generation to drug abuse. One estimate says that more than two-
thirds of Punjab’s households have at least one addict in the family. Across the
state, from villages in the lush green countryside to bustling towns and cities, young
men huddle together in cemeteries, abandoned buildings or plain fields, smoking,
snorting or shooting up.
As stated by the Caravan Magazine in Oct 2019, Giani Harpreet Singh, the chief of
the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of Sikhism, called for a ban on the RSS,
during an interaction with journalists in Amritsar. Singh’s remark came in the
backdrop of a statement by Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, during an annual Sangh
event the previous week, stating that “Bharat is Hindustan, a Hindu Rashtra” and
that “all Bharatiyas are Hindus.” In response, Singh noted, “The remarks by RSS
leaders are not in the interest of the nation. It would hurt and draw a new line of
division in the country and destroy it.”
In a nutshell, Indian Punjab is on a brink of revolt against machinations of RSS and
BJP, from the Khalistan 2020 campaign for a separate homeland and the Sikh
identity, to water wars against Punjab; the youth of Punjab is feeling the heat and
rallying against the tide of Hindutva—there is no turning back.
By: Adeela Naureen and Umar Waqar
Source: The Nation

27-08-2020
 Greece has a deadly new migration policy – and all of Europe is to
blame
A vital part of international refugee law is the principle of non-refoulement: the
idea that states should not push people seeking asylum back to unsafe countries.
In a country like the UK, which does not sit next to a war zone, advocates of
“tougher” policies to deter asylum seekers will claim that the principle does not
apply, since people who reach Britain’s shores will have passed through several
peaceful countries before they get there.
But if every country looks only to its own interests, and behaves as if asylum seekers
are someone else’s problem, then you very quickly end up with a system that traps
people in situations where their lives are at risk. That is the system bequeathed by
Europe’s panicked response to the 2015 refugee crisis, and in recent months, partly
under cover of the emergency conditions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, it
has got worse.
The revelation by the New York Times that Greece has secretly expelled more than
1,000 asylum seekers, abandoning many of them on inflatable life rafts in the
Aegean Sea, is the latest example of this disturbing trend. Since 2015, Greece has
effectively been used by the rest of the EU as a buffer zone against unwanted
migration, leaving thousands of refugees in unsanitary camps on islands in the
Aegean and on the mainland. At the same time, a hastily arranged EU deal with
Turkey saw the latter agree to act as border cop on Europe’s behalf, preventing
refugees from crossing to Greece in return for financial aid and other diplomatic
concessions.
This spring, amid rising geopolitical tensions, Turkey decided to send thousands of
migrants towards the Greek border as a way of exerting pressure on Europe. It
provoked a nationalist backlash, followed by several hardline and legally
questionable border control measures from Greece’s conservative New Democracy
government. Earlier this year, the New York Times also reported that Greece was
operating a secret detention centre at its land border with Turkey, so that it could
carry out summary deportations without giving people the right to claim asylum;
the latest revelations about its actions in the Aegean fit the same pattern.
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In the central Mediterranean, where people still attempt to cross to Europe via
boats launched from north Africa, mainly by smugglers in Libya, the EU has for
several years been trying to stop migration by closing down rescue operations. The
consequence is that people are either more likely to die at sea, or they are returned
to Libya, a war zone where torture, forced labour and abuse of migrants – some of
which occurs at the hands of Libyan officials the EU treats as partners – is widely
documented. This spring, Italy and Malta, the countries where most people rescued
from the central Mediterranean disembark (and which like Greece have also been
used by their European neighbours as buffer zones), closed their ports to rescue
ships on the grounds that they were no longer safe havens due to the pandemic.
While Italy has since allowed some ships to dock, Malta apparently took the
pandemic as an opportunity to form its own private flotilla of merchant vessels to
intercept migrants at sea and hand them over to the Libyan coastguard. As the
migration monitoring organisation Alarm Phone reported in April (and as I wrote
about here), Malta’s reluctance to bring people into port led to a situation in which
a boat carrying more than 60 people was allowed to drift at sea for several days,
during which time some of the passengers died.
It would be easy to place the blame for these situations squarely on the shoulders
of countries at the EU’s Mediterranean frontier. But they are acting in a way that
most European governments see as beneficial. “I thank Greece for being our
European aspida [shield] in these times,” declared Ursula von der Leyen, president
of the European Commission, during the Greece-Turkey border crisis in March. This
includes the UK, which makes use of those buffer zones regardless of Brexit: as
coronavirus spread through Europe, the Home Office refused to resettle refugee
children trapped in Greece – children who had relatives in the UK and the legal right
to join them – only doing so belatedly under pressure from campaigners.
The hardline turn in migration policy over the last five years has taken place
piecemeal, driven by several competing interests: rightwing populists who see non-
European migration as a civilisational threat; centrist politicians trying to keep
populists at bay by co-opting some of their demands; and a security and defence
industry offering hi-tech solutions, such as the drone surveillance that has replaced

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naval patrols in the Mediterranean. But it is likely to be formalised next month
when the European commission unveils its new pact on migration and asylum,
which will shape the bloc’s overall policy in the years to come. The latest
commission, appointed last year, infamously signalled its intent by creating the
post of commissioner for “protecting the European way of life”.
A defence of this shift might be that the refugee crisis provoked an anti-
immigration backlash in many parts of Europe, and politicians have a duty to
balance competing interests – in this case the need to protect vulnerable migrants
with the desire of some voters to limit immigration. But security measures of this
sort can end up fundamentally changing the character of states that propose them.
A report published this month by Statewatch, a civil liberties NGO that monitors
the European Union, warns of an emerging EU “deportation machine”: the EU’s
border agency Frontex plans to drastically increase its capacity to assist member
states with deportations of migrants who have been refused permission to stay.
This expansion, according to Statewatch, increases the risk that “expulsion flights
funded and coordinated by Frontex may remove refugees to countries where they
are at risk of torture or persecution”, since EU member states are inconsistent in
the way they assess people’s asylum claims. The new enforcement measures will
be backed up by large-scale collection of personal data: the EU is also building a
vast new biometric database to hold the details of all third-country nationals who
enter, a plan criticised by privacy experts and migrants’ rights groups.
Yet Europe’s governments seem to be in denial about where their policies might
lead. Responding to the New York Times investigation, Greece’s prime minister,
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said that reports of illegal push-backs were “misinformation”
and that his country’s policies were “tough but fair”. Ylva Johansson, the EU
commissioner for home affairs, expressed concern at the reports but said she
lacked the power to investigate.
It would be easy to dismiss what happens at other countries’ borders as a matter
for them alone, but the pattern is international, and the erosion of rights it
represents should concern us all. When states opt for extreme measures to push

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refugees away from their territory, it threatens to undermine the entire system
that exists to protect them.
By: Daniel Trilling
Source: The Guardian
The writer is the author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of
Europe

27-08-2020
 U.S. flirtation with 'technonationalism' means trouble for the world
A transformation of U.S. national security policy is underway. It’s practically a
sleight of hand: While observers have been transfixed by the slugfest between the
United States and China, a much more subtle and invidious shift is taking place, one
that has sweeping implications. The Trump administration’s equation of national
security with economic security makes sense — if done carefully and with careful
attention. Neither appears to be the case.
Traditionally, national strength reflected hard power — a nation’s military
capabilities. Economic success was an important factor in calculating a country’s
power, but national wealth was key to building a more effective military. The Meiji-
era Japan crystalized this mindset as fukoku kyohei, or “rich nation, strong army.”
Thinking about power has matured and we now recognize that there are other
ways both to secure the nation and exercise power in the international system. Still,
few countries — no matter how successful or wealthy — have been willing to bet
their survival on those alternatives and dispense with their military.
Economic success was invariably built on technological achievement, which yielded
another connection between wealth and the military: Those advances improved
war-fighting capability. That relationship between wealth and military power has,
for the past half century, been codified in policies that sought to limit the transfer
of technology that could confer military advantage.
Strategic trade controls, often called “export controls,” denied adversaries access
to technology with military applications or, in trickier cases, those that could be
employed by both civilian and military sectors — “dual use” goods. There have
been ugly disputes over strategic trade controls — Japan and the U.S. got into a
particularly nasty fight in 1987 when a Toshiba subsidiary exported machine tools
to the Soviet Union that allowed Moscow to build quieter submarines — because
of U.S. concern that allies did not appreciate how a fixation on corporate profits
undermined their own security.
The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump has embraced technology
controls with a worrying enthusiasm, especially in its escalating conflict with China.

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It has imposed sanctions against Chinese tech companies, like telecommunications
giant Huawei, denying them access to U.S. markets and technology, and demanding
that U.S. allies and partners do the same.
While China does engage in unfair trade practices and Beijing sees the U.S. as a
competitor if not a threat, the Trump administration’s use of sanctions has been
indiscriminate. It looks like sanctions are the cure for most of the country’s
economic problems. Job losses? Sanctions. Intellectual property theft? Sanctions.
Persistent trade imbalances? Sanctions. Richard Haas, president of the U.S. Council
on Foreign Relations, calls it “sanctions madness.” “Economic carpet bombing”
might be more appropriate.
The Trump administration is guided by the belief that “economic security is national
security.” Trump made that simple declaration in October 2017 and it begins the
section on “American Prosperity” in his administration’s National Security Strategy.
Economic security is a vital component of national security and international law
concedes as much, for example recognizing a government’s right to invoke national
security to breach its treaty obligations. That right extends from the logic explained
above: A country can’t be forced to trade if doing so will provide the recipient an
advantage in a conflict. Free trade agreements don’t oblige combatants to sell each
other ammunition. A government doesn’t have a blank check to assert that
exemption, however, as the World Trade Organization ruled last year.
In addition to the frequent resort to sanctions, the Trump administration has
dispensed with the previous military focus of technology controls and is now intent
on denying access to technology that it considers important to economic
development, regardless of its application. This is a radical reorientation of U.S.
policy and a foundational shift in thinking about national security. In the past, this
policy was called “technonationalism;” that word is enjoying a renaissance
although you sometimes hear “geotechnology” today.
This new approach is ratified by the Export Control Reform Act (ECRA) of 2018,
which calls for new controls on “emerging and foundational technologies” that are
essential to the national security of the United States. The Bureau of Industry and
Security (the part of the Commerce Department that implements ECRA) identified

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14 categories of emerging and foundational technologies that are essential to
national security: They range from artificial intelligence to 3D printing. It is not yet
clear how broad (or narrow) the restrictions will be.
China encourages an expansive approach with its Civil-Military Fusion program, a
government effort to ensure that all science and technology innovations
simultaneously advance economic and military development. Tim Morrison, who
worked in the Trump White House, explained that “the Chinese have said to us,
‘anything you give to us for a commercial purpose is going to be given to the
military,’ (so) what point is there in maintaining a distinction in our export control
regulations?”
The implications of this evolution are profound. Most broadly, it is a repudiation of
old thinking about economics and competition between states. Economics is no
longer a means to just support war. Rather, economic dominance is the goal of
great-power competition, and economic tools are the best means to achieve that
objective. In this world, the U.S. should deny access to cutting edge technology to
any country to preserve its pre-eminence. That is a sharp divergence from
traditional U.S. policy, which has been guided by fidelity to a liberal and open global
economic order.
Before succumbing to that temptation, however, the U.S. must consider the
consequences. Chad Bown, a fellow at the Peterson Institute of International
Economics, warns that export controls of this type threaten U.S. national security
because they could cut the U.S. off from the collaboration and innovative potential
that have sustained its dynamism and made possible its leadership in emerging
industries and on the frontiers of the economy and high-technology.
The new approach demands a new mindset from the private sector, and not just
that of the United States. Any company anywhere that wishes to work with U.S.
counterparts on leading technologies must acknowledge and internalize this logic.
Those businesses must prepare strict controls and compliance mechanisms to
ensure that they are legally able to work with U.S. partners, protecting intellectual
property and restricting access to newly restricted technologies. This is going to be
far more extensive than they imagine.

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Finally, U.S. allies and partners must not be sanguine or blase about this shift.
Washington has traditionally included them in its technological corral, reasoning
that the free flow of ideas and resources among them was a benefit to U.S. global
standing and security. That logic is being challenged, if not eroded, by the new
nationalism.
Nor is this risk purely theoretical: It is evident in decisions to impose sanctions on
imports of aluminum and steel from countries like Japan, South Korea and Canada.
The most extreme version of technonationalism is unlikely to survive the current
administration, but warning bells should be ringing in Tokyo and other allied
capitals.
By: Brad Glosserman
Source: The Japan Times
The writer is deputy director of and visiting professor at the Center for Rule Making
Strategies at Tama University as well as senior adviser (nonresident) at Pacific
Forum. He is the author of “Peak Japan: The End of Great Ambitions.”

27-08-2020
 Hillary Clinton's dire Election Day warning to Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton has a bit of advice for Joe Biden come November 3: Don't even think
about conceding if the election is at all close.
"Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is
going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch
and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is," Clinton told longtime
Democratic strategist Jennifer Palmieri in an excerpt of Showtime's "The Circus"
released Tuesday. Added Clinton: "We've got to have a massive legal operation, I
know the Biden campaign is working on that. We have to have poll workers, and I
urge people, who are able, to be a poll worker. We have to have our own teams of
people to counter the force of intimidation that the Republicans and Trump are
going to put outside polling places. This is a big organizational challenge, but at
least we know more about what they're going to do."
What Clinton envisions is an election night that could well extend into an election
week or even -- gulp! -- an election month, because of an expected surge in mail-in
balloting due to concerns about the coronavirus. If recent elections, particularly in
Clinton's adopted home state of New York, are any indication, there's a very real
possibility that no winner is declared on November 3 or November 4. And that the
country will be in limbo, while waiting to know who will be the next president of
the United States.
The pandemic might have lowered emissions, but it’ll take more than this
temporary fix to have a lasting impact.
Even with a semi-traditional president in the White House, that is a situation
absolutely fraught with peril. The single most important part of an election is that
people believe that the vote was fairly counted and, whether or not they like the
result, that it was an accurate reflection of what the country wanted. The longer it
goes without a declared winner, the more people will suspect that something
nefarious could be going on -- even if the delay isn't solely the result of the slowness
in counting a surge of mailed-in ballots.

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Donald Trump is, of course, not a semi-traditional president. Or anything close to
it. In fact, he has spent the last several months suggesting to anyone who will listen
that the increase in mail-in balloting will lead to a "rigged" and fraudulent election.
(There is zero evidence of the sort of widespread voter fraud in mail-in balloting
that Trump is alleging.)
"What they're doing is using Covid to steal an election," Trump told delegates at
the Republican National Convention in Charlotte on Monday. "They're using Covid
to defraud the American people, all of our people, of a fair and free election."
Remember too that Trump, in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election,
insisted that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally as a way to explain the fact that he
lost the popular vote to Clinton. Trump has never provided any proof of this huge
claim. Neither has he backed away from it in the intervening three-plus years.
And that was an election he won!
Imagine what Trump might do this time around -- assuming that we don't know
who won on election night or even sometime the following day. If it looks like he is
likely to lose, Trump would use the intervening hours/days/week to sow distrust
with the vote and discord in the country. He would suggest that Democrats are
cooking the books, adding or subtracting votes as they see fit. He would do
absolutely everything in his power to ensure that even if Biden were declared the
victor on, say, November 7, that a chunk of the country would believe that the
result had been fixed and biased against Trump. And that, therefore, neither they
nor Trump need to accept it. No need for Trump to concede. No reason for his
supporters to acknowledge Biden as the fairly elected president.
Which brings me back to Clinton. She is, on the facts, exactly right in the advice she
is giving to Biden. With lots and lots of mailed-in ballots needed to be counted in
the days leading up to Election Day -- and on November 3 itself -- it would be
political malpractice for Biden to concede to Trump (or vice versa) if the election
were clearly very close.
But you can be sure that her comments will be seized on by the Trump White House
as evidence that Democrats are already working to lay the groundwork for a

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protracted vote count because they think that benefits them. (Clinton's emphases
on how Biden will "eventually" win is the reddest of red meat for conservatives.)
Because of all that, my educated guess is that the Biden campaign would rather not
have Clinton offering their candidate advice on how to handle a close election. Even
if she's right.
By: Chris Cillizza
Source: CNN

27-08-2020
 Whatever You Think of Facebook, the NSO Group Is Worse
Facebook is under fierce scrutiny for its decisions about political advertisements
and consumer privacy, and its foray into developing a new cryptocurrency. So it
makes sense that the company would try to drum up a little positive publicity and
remind people that there are tech firms out there that pose much greater threats
to privacy, democracy and civil liberties.
Whatever you may think of Facebook, the Israeli spyware company known as the
NSO Group — whose products have been used to compromise devices belonging
to lawyers, dissidents, journalists and diplomats around the world — is inarguably
worse. So the decision by Facebook-owned WhatsApp to sue the NSO Group for
compromising the mobile phones of WhatsApp users is a brilliant publicity move,
casting Facebook as a staunch defender of its users’ privacy and a champion of
internet freedom. Public-image rehabilitation aside, however, the lawsuit is also a
genuine step forward for drawing attention to the spyware market and the need
for stricter regulation of private surveillance companies like NSO.
Founded in 2010, the NSO Group sells a surveillance program called Pegasus that,
in the company’s words, “enables law enforcement and intelligence agencies to
remotely and covertly extract valuable intelligence from virtually any mobile
device.” While NSO insists it does business only with government customers, it
does not disclose which governments it works with and has repeatedly come under
fire for targeting human rights activists and journalists — including at least one
close confidant and colleague of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist
who was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
After Mr. Khashoggi’s assassination, one of his friends, Saudi dissident Omar
Abdulaziz, filed a lawsuit charging the NSO Group with helping Saudi Arabia spy on
his communications with Mr. Khashoggi. A slew of other lawsuits against NSO,
including one filed this year by Amnesty International, have levied similar
allegations that the company’s tools are used to surveil not just criminals and
terrorists, as NSO insists, but also activists, journalists and dissidents. Those charges
are backed up by a series of thoroughly researched reports published over the past
three years by the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab tracing Pegasus to 45

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countries and cataloging the ways the NSO Group enabled surveillance of Mr.
Khashoggi, supporters of a proposed soda tax in Mexico, a human-rights activist in
the United Arab Emirates and others.
But none of the researchers or activists who have gone up against the NSO Group
in the past few years have had anything close to the reach or resources of
Facebook. That doesn’t mean that WhatsApp will necessarily triumph in its lawsuit,
which alleges that between April 29 and May 10 of this year, the NSO Group used
WhatsApp to compromise roughly 1,400 mobile phones belonging to users in
several countries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. In fact,
WhatsApp may have an uphill legal battle ahead especially given that part of its
case rests on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it illegal to tap into
computers without authorization, and that the devices that were compromised by
NSO belong to WhatsApp users, not WhatsApp itself.
WhatsApp does its best to argue that NSO gained access to its own signaling and
relay servers without authorization in the process of contacting WhatsApp users,
but this is a dicey interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, akin to
arguing that you need Google’s permission to send an email to a Gmail user through
Google’s servers. And the lawsuit’s claims that the NSO Group’s operations
“burdened” WhatsApp’s networks and injured the company’s “reputation, public
trust, and good will” are unlikely to carry much weight — especially since many
fewer people would have been aware of the Pegasus compromises had WhatsApp
not publicized them in this suit.
But whether or not Facebook wins its case against the NSO Group, it’s doing an
important service by bringing it in the first place. Just as the United States
Department of Justice has filed a series of indictments against Chinese, Iranian and
Russian hackers intended to “name and shame” the perpetrators even if they never
stand trial and shed light on exactly how they operate, the Facebook lawsuit
describes in detail how the NSO Group was able to compromise the phones of
WhatsApp users even if those users never actually answered a call, clicked on a link
or downloaded a file. The lawsuit lays out not just how NSO exploited WhatsApp
software to compromise user phones, but also the underlying technical

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architecture that the NSO Group and its clients rely on to carry out their
surveillance campaigns. For instance, the lawsuit identifies the operators of the
malicious servers used by the NSO Group to distribute their spyware to WhatsApp
user phones. According to the complaint, these servers were leased by NSO from
Choopa, Quadranet and Amazon Web Services, three American-based companies.
Ideally, WhatsApp’s very public salvo against the NSO Group will garner enough
attention to shame those companies into more carefully vetting their customers
and cutting ties with clients that are using their infrastructure to distribute
spyware. Even more important, the lawsuit could draw regulators’ attention to the
NSO Group, as well as the larger problem of private firms’ hawking spyware
programs like Pegasus that undermine the security and privacy of consumer
devices. Recent reports that the NSO Group used WhatsApp to compromise senior
government officials in multiple United States-allied countries may also help
generate interest among lawmakers.
The Israeli government has, so far, stood behind the NSO Group and declined to
revoke its export license, despite the best efforts of Amnesty International. But the
United States and its allies should be leaning hard on the Israeli Ministry of Defense
to reconsider this decision in light of how Pegasus is being used. Britain should also
consider whether it can bring any pressure to bear on Novalpina Capital, the British
private equity firm that purchased a majority stake in the NSO Group this year and
promised a “significant enhancement of respect for human rights” at the company.
WhatsApp’s suing the NSO Group is, undoubtedly, a publicity ploy — but it’s also
an important step forward for trying to stem the spread of corporate spyware
across the globe by drawing attention to how it works, who is distributing it and
who is helping prop up that industry by providing infrastructure or merely looking
the other way. Whatever its motives, Facebook deserves some credit for refusing
to be one of the many governments and tech companies that have chosen to
quietly profit from the NSO Group’s business and tools. The United States and
British governments would do well to follow suit.
By: Josephine Wolff
Source: The New York Times
27-08-2020
 China’s Science Talent-Recruitment Program Draws Fresh Attention
In a major report released on August 20, an Australian think tank has sought to
establish how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses overseas “talent-
recruitment” stations to gain access to technology through covert and
nontransparent means. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report
“Hunting the Phoenix” establishes that the CCP has at least 600 stations around the
world that identify and recruit scientists and technologists who’d be valuable to
China’s quest for technological dominance.
Reuters reported earlier today, that according to state-run Chinese television
President Xi Jinping noted that his country will bring in “world class research teams”
to push innovation in order to promote economic growth. Since the inception of
China’s Thousand Talents Plan in 2008, more than 10,000 overseas scientists
(including, though not exclusively, those of Chinese ethnicity) have been invited to
work in the country under extremely lucrative terms, according to former U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency officer William Hannas.
The ASPI report, authored by analyst Alex Joske, observes that the overseas talent-
recruitment stations have a mandate broader than the Thousand Talents Plan. It
starkly concludes CCP talent-recruitment programs facilitate “efforts [that] lack
transparency; are widely associated with misconduct, intellectual property theft or
espionage; contribute to the People’s Liberation Army’s modernisation; and
facilitate human rights abuses.” It notes that the talent-recruitment stations are
“[o]verseas organisations or individuals contracted by the CCP to carry out talent-
recruitment work,” though often supervised by United Front groups –
organizations under the Party’s eponymous department tasked with projecting
China’s influence abroad and protecting the CCP’s political interests, often through
illegal means.
More damningly, the report argues that these stations “[m]ay receive instructions
to target individuals with access to particular technologies.” If this sounds a shade
too close to economic espionage, that’s because it is. The report notes that “[i]n at
least two cases, talent-recruitment stations have been linked to alleged economic
espionage.”

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The ASPI report comes at a time of growing scrutiny of CCP involvement in
cultivating and recruiting scientists and technologists around the world, often
through quasi-legal or even downright illegal means. In January this year, the
international scientific community was shocked by the news of the arrest of
prominent American chemist and head of Harvard’s chemistry and chemical
biology department, Charles Lieber. He was accused of making false statements
about payments he received from the Thousand Talents Plan. In December 2018,
the apparent death by suicide of well-known theoretical physicist, venture
capitalist and Stanford professor Zhang Shoucheng shook both the physics
community as well as Silicon Valley. Zhang, despite being a naturalized U.S. citizen,
had deep business ties with CCP-connected entities. The exact circumstances
leading up to his death — which came days after the U.S. Trade Representative
Richard Lighthizer released a report on China’s commercial malpractices – remains
something of mystery .
While China’s attempt to find creative ways to steal technological-intellectual
property has sharply come to focus in public eyes only over the past few years,
there is nothing inherently new to the challenge, as most with even a cursory
familiarity with the scientific ecosystem in the U.S. will attest. (As early as 2005,
when I was a STEM graduate student there, one would hear of this-or-that Chinese
researcher’s visa or other legal problems on account of alleged illegal activity.)
It is also well known that China has sponsored lavish research programs and
conferences even in areas which have no immediate practical applications – such
as string theory. Often, China’s research agenda in these areas have been shaped
in America’s campuses. For example, Harvard mathematician and Fields Medalist
Yau Shing-Tung has been almost single-handedly responsible for raising China’s
mathematical profile. In the recent years, Yau has advocated that Beijing take the
lead in building the world’s largest high-energy particle accelerator –a game the
U.S. dropped out of decades ago, ceding leadership to the multinational CERN
instead which maintains the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva.

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While the United States and allied powers contemplate means to both stem
Chinese intellectual malpractices as well as maintain their scientific and
technological edge, they must also ensure that such efforts go beyond the reactive.
A good starting point might be asking why so many scientists are being increasingly
drawn to China.
By: Abhijnan Rej
Source: The Diplomat

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