Read about how a just peace in Tigray could save Ethiopia from further civil war. Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing …

… read about how a just peace in Tigray could save Ethiopia from further civil war.

The Oromia region straddles the center of Ethiopia and is home to the Oromo people. Periodic independence movements have mobilized in Oromia, with both political and military wings attempting to win autonomy and recognition under the national government. The latest conflict dates back to 2018, though it has seen renewed focus following the end of the Ethiopian federal government’s war with Tigray in November 2022. During that war, the Oromo Liberation Front-Oromo Liberation Army took advantage of the reallocation of government forces away and expanded their control over Oromia. In April 2023, the Ethiopian federal government and Oromo rebels held inconclusive negotiations, and it appears as though the question may be one both sides are preparing to resolve with force. Bereket Diriba, writing [[link removed] Liberation Front-Oromo Liberation Army] at World Politics Review, still sees hope for building on the ground made at the peace talks. “In the medium term, the international community must also support and engage with the planned national dialogue and transitional justice processes across Ethiopia, as part of the country’s broader efforts toward reconciliation after the Tigray war,” Diriba says “These initiatives might go a long way to address the grievances of the Oromo people, including their demands for self-determination and recognition of their claims over historical injustices.”

AI Beats To Raise The Dead To

In Denver, a DJ decided to bring a Punjabi rapper back to life, or at least revive his voice. Sidhu Moosewala was shot to death in May 2022, but new tracks featuring his voice have circulated the internet, enough that on May 12, 2023, Moosewala’s family had to put out a call for AI songsmiths to cease recreating his voice.

“To me, producing this track was like a slap to the face of the killers of Sidhu,” Denver-based DJ Amarjit Singh told [[link removed]] Rest of World. “I thought it’d make his parents, who lost their only son, happy.”

While some high-profile instances of songfakes, produced with AI-generated voices imitating real artists, have been stopped by legal action in the United States, the proliferation of low-cost tools to make such songs suggest it will be an enduring problem globally.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Whose Europe Is It Anyway?

Travelogues risk only offering the indulgence of the author, a soberly recounted telling of nights only memorable in the specific. To capture the feel of Europe, at this point in the 21st century, author Ben Judah started with such an approach, and then scrapped it after 40,000 words of his first draft for “This Is Europe,” handing over the narrative to the people he encountered in his travels instead.

““Every day,” Judah tells [[link removed]] Emily Tamkin, “we’re bombarded by [reports of] human lives reduced to news stories, or statistics, or geopolitical trends. I wanted to write something with enormous intimacy that would be the antidote to that.”

As Tamkin notes in her review of Judah’s book, a recurring theme of the stories are refugees and migration, as people share their personal narratives around the barriers put up in the name of Europe.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Fallout Shelter: Part II

When a thermonuclear bomb detonates, it creates a fission and then a fusion reaction, shearing energy from atoms at such intensity that it burns hotter than the surface of the sun. The effects are known, tested, simulated [[link removed]], and studied, with a ring pattern around every blast that shows the intensity of radiation. The simulation shows the fireball, blast, and thermal radiation from the lowest yield warhead to the most powerful, with the difference being not the kind of harm done but the scale of who gets caught in that harm. Yet, this blunt truth — that any nuclear weapon is still a nuclear weapon — can get lost in the war planning and theorizing by militaries and political leaders.

The word “tactical,” sometimes thrown around to encompass weapons with a yield multiple times that of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, obscures the conversation, and misses the fundamental strategic choice inherent in any use of any nuclear weapon.

In “ Deterring Russian Nuclear Threats with Low-Yield Nukes May Encourage Limited Nuclear War [[link removed]],” Jeffrey Taylor looks at moves by the United States to develop a low-yield warhead for use by submarine-launched missiles. Taylor’s piece, published shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, doesn’t address that specific conflict. Instead, it offers a window into what was knowable about Russian policy on low-yield nukes, captured in the moments leading up to Moscow’s disastrous war of choice.

“Russia is estimated to have more than 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear warheads, many of which are thought to be stationed in western Russia within range of critical NATO targets,” writes Taylor. “The United States has only around 200 low-yield nuclear weapons in Europe. The majority of these are gravity bombs that must be carried to their targets by air platforms that are susceptible to Russia's sophisticated air defense systems. From a purely capability-based standpoint, this appears to leave the United States without a credible proportionate response option to a Russian low-yield nuclear threat.” Taylor also explains that US officials worry that Russia may seek to leverage this asymmetry in capability to gain a nuclear advantage — a worry that continues to exist [[link removed]] as Russia’s war on Ukraine continues.

The submarine-launched low-yield warhead isn’t subject to the same rules around use and basing as gravity bombs stored on bases in NATO countries, thus freeing it to some degree from NATO’s consensus-based warmaking powers. This weapon already exists; it marked its first deployment in late 2019 [[link removed]], at most a few 5-kiloton warheads amidst the submarine’s normal complement of 90-kiloton and 455-kiloton warheads.

While the United States may perceive its introduction of a lower-yield submarine warhead as a way to manage risk, it has likely not been received as such.

Ultimately, notes Taylor, “some analysts argue that new US nuclear policies involving low-yield nuclear weapons may actually stabilize Russian strategies for limited nuclear use by presenting a credible response option to a Russian limited strike short of high-yield nuclear weapons, thereby reducing the risk of high-level nuclear escalation. Therefore, in scenarios most likely to elicit Russian nuclear use, deterrence using low-yield nuclear weapons is unlikely to prevent, and may encourage, limited nuclear conflict.”

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Shirin Jaafari reported [[link removed]] on novel efforts to preserve date palms in Iraq. The trees, resilient and maintenance-intensive, have a long history in the country, though the nature of their care and the ravages of decades of war have made it harder for people to keep date farming in the same numbers they once did. “Palm trees, for them, is [a] very heavy project. They need to take care of it four times per year,” Labeeb Kashif al-Gitta, who works in construction in Baghdad, told Jaafari. Al-Gitta is also a co-founder of a startup called Nakhla [[link removed]] that offers care and preservation for trees on a contract basis.

Jamie Withorne imbibed [[link removed]] with some American sailors at a bar in Oslo. The sailors, there with the USS Gerald Ford Aircraft Carrier, were received by the locals as a physical manifestation of Norway’s particular geopolitical role in the Arctic. “Look, we are happy you are here, but we hope to never need you,” a Norwegian woman told Withorne and the sailors. In managing the High North, Norway aims to both limit Russia’s capacity for malice, while ensuring peace and stability among the Arctic Circle nations. It’s a steep task, one where US interests must weigh against public fear of a new, big war.

Michael Fox steamed [[link removed]] with frustration as Uruguayans shared their latest water woes. The country, which has been in drought for several years, is now subject to regular protests, as people decry the increased salinity of local tap water. “You drink maté and it tastes salty,” said teacher Paula Padilla [[link removed]]. “The water’s not potable. So, you have to start to buy water, but that’s not viable for everyone. There are families with six children or more." The salinity of the water in Montevideo has gone from between 30 to 40 milligrams per liter to 440 milligrams per liter.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

I can’t write a better joke about this patch [[link removed]] than its official description [[link removed]]: “The baby dragon illustrates the birth of a new satellite system while the moon with the mother dragon silhouette represent protection of the Five Eyes community, the nation, and its allies.”

Dancing in the costume of the hegemon to celebrate a colony and a diaspora? Esta es la forma [[link removed]].

Conspiracy theories so underground [[link removed]], you probably haven’t heard of them.

Why are economist headlines so lazy [[link removed]]? Blame class positioning, hack editing, and insufficient effort to understand the people they cover.

To the tune of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [[link removed]].

Scientists finally found a valid use of cryptocurrency [[link removed]]: facilitating theft by North Korea from speculative gamers, enabling the Democratic People’s Republic to fund its ballistic missile program.

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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