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… read about one year of left government in Colombia.

For just over a year, in Gustavo Petro, Colombia has had its first left-of-center government after decades of centrist and reactionary rule. At New Left Review [[link removed]], Nick MacWilliam offers an overview of how Petro’s efforts stand, in the face of internal opposition and a long legacy of reactionary resistance to progressive policy. “Having campaigned on the need to phase out Colombia’s economic dependence on fossil fuels, which has driven deforestation and the contamination of natural resources, the government has pushed anti-fracking legislation while banning new oil and gas exploratory licenses,” writes MacWilliam. These are moves designed to hasten a green energy transition, but ones that are subject to ruin should the market shift against existing fuel prices and could be undermined should foreign capital be unwilling to invest in the transition in Colombia. While Petro has had some leeway in negotiations with rebel groups, his powers are constrained in the legislature, where his Historic Pact unity front does not hold a majority. Notes MacWilliam, “The Historic Pact thus ends its first year in office attempting to balance the demands of the social movements that propelled it to power with those of a political class that retains legislative sway. Compromise will be essential, which could mean sacrificing some core elements of Petro’s agenda so that others can progress.”

fishy business

Long before the South China Sea was a specific point of political contention [[link removed]], it was a vital source of fish for the people that surrounded it. It remains so to this day, and while political tensions are unlikely to diminish, nations that border the sea may still want to collaborate to prosecute illegal fishing activity, ensuring that the catch is done in line with the law.

“Given [fisheries-related crime]’s transnational and transboundary nature, single states not only lack the resources to address their own [fisheries-related crime] challenges but are structurally unable to without cooperation from others. International cooperation is required and can only be secured through (1) establishing shared responsibilities via memorandums of understanding and common frameworks, and (2) developing common processes and procedures to prosecute transnational crime,” writes Eric Ang at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative [[link removed]].

Acknowledging the geopolitical obstacles to such coordination, Ang proposes a baby step: unclassified information-sharing centers, allowing nations like Brunei, Indonesia, and Singapore to coordinate on that level first.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Good News

On July 13, 2023, UNAIDS published a report showing that there’s a path to the end of AIDS by 2030 and that the end of such a monstrous disease is within grasp, provided there’s political and financial will to do it.

“UNAIDS data show that today, 29.8 million of the 39 million people living with HIV globally are receiving life-saving treatment. An additional 1.6 million people received HIV treatment in each of 2020, 2021, and 2022. If this annual increase can be maintained, the global target of 35 million people on HIV treatment by 2025 will be within reach. Access to antiretroviral therapy has expanded massively in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and the Pacific, which together are home to about 82% of all people living with HIV,” reads the report’s executive summary [[link removed]].

The provision and adoption of antiretrovirals have been hugely important in getting to this point but, as UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima notes, “The facts and figures shared in this report do not show that as a world we are already on the path, they show that we can be. The way is clear.”

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Pink and Greenwashing: Part I

The modern M1A2 Abrams tank, fielded by the US military and some allies, weighs over 73 tons. It gets, at best, 0.6 miles per gallon on jet fuel [[link removed]] and consumes at least 300 gallons of that fuel every eight hours it is in the field. Transporting the tanks by air means fitting one into a large C-17 four-engined cargo jet, or two inside a massive C-5 jet. The tanks can also be brought close to where they’re needed by rail and ship, though that’s slower. When the US Army goes to war, it can do so with hundreds of these tanks.

The Abrams isn’t mentioned by name in “ Disentangling the US military's climate change paradox: An institutional approach [[link removed]],” a new paper by authors Corey R. Payne and Ori Swed, but they do mention the Bradley, another armored vehicle that has poor fuel mileage. Like the Bradley (a mere 28 tons and 0.9 mpg in the new hybrid version, according to the authors), the Abrams is but one small part of a vast fossil fuel-emitting military.

The US military, to its credit, has identified [[link removed]] climate change as real — and a threat — for at least two decades, weathering changes in presidents and shifting political attitudes toward climate action. Yet, the military’s role in contributing to climate change is understudied.

“We are thus left with a paradox: the military is one of the world's major drivers of ecological degradation, while at the same time is one of the few powerful institutions in the United States that has been willing to acknowledge the dangers posed by the climate crisis,” write the authors. “Our review finds that the military does not see saving the planet from a climate catastrophe as a goal that falls within its mandate. Instead, military officials understand the climate crisis as a threat to national security that has to be dealt with.”

One reason given for why the military is so perceptive on climate change is because there are many military bases, especially ports, which are directly threatened by climate change. The United States operates roughly 800 bases around the world, all nodes in a great logistics chain that ensures soldiers have food, vehicles have fuel, and sensors like radar have electricity.

“Any mitigation measures embraced by the Pentagon are thus necessarily limited by the apparent conflict between military effectiveness and emissions reduction,” write the authors, who go on to argue that the overriding logic of the US military is to preserve its ability to fight and mitigate only as a secondary concern. As much as there is a conflict between the two measures, it is one largely internally resolved.

The greenest thing the military could do would be a strategic retreat that contracts its worldwide presence, argue the authors, thus mitigating the need to ship and sustain gas-guzzling tanks across the globe. What the military should be doing, instead, is investing in ways to deliver the same firepower, but from slightly more fuel-efficient vehicles, if possible.

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FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] CREATIVE CAPSULE CALL

Hello readers! We interrupt this regularly formatted Critical State to invite you to apply for the Creative Capsule Residency [[link removed]]. This virtual residency, supported by Inkstick Media [[link removed]] and Bombshelltoe Policy x Arts Collective [[link removed]], is looking for journalists, artists, and international security experts, at all skill levels, interested in working on a project about global security issues. The deadline for applications is July 21, 2023. Apply here [[link removed]]!

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Gerry Hadden chilled [[link removed]] in Iceland, thanks to the mysterious “Blue Blob,” or patch of cold water in the North Atlantic that’s keeping Iceland and Greenland cold while much of the rest of the northern hemisphere experiences record-shattering heat waves. “From 1995 to 2010, we had about a meter of the surface thickness of the glaciers disappearing every year,” glaciologist Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir told Hadden. “And after 2010, at the same time as this Blue Blob was appearing, this rate of mass loss actually decreased.” The effect of the cooling is temporary, and the Blue Blob may dissipate in a few decades, but in the meantime, its effect is enough to meaningfully mitigate the rate of glacial loss.

MacKenzie Knight mined [[link removed]] the history of the Manhattan Project for the stories of people, especially marginalized people, who may have been left out of director Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer,” debuting on July 21, 2023. “If Nolan wants to paint the fullest cinematic picture, he should include nods to the uranium miners in the Navajo Nation and Belgian Congo (and the victims of a Cold War proxy ground in Congo thereafter) and the downwinders of nuclear testing,” wrote Knight. If those stories are left out, Oppenheimer will have missed a tremendous opportunity to tell the fuller story of the bomb.

Shirin Jaafari dredged [[link removed]] through the grim water reports coming out of Iraq. The Tirgirs and Euphrates rivers that run through Iraq to the Persian Gulf are foundational to agriculture in the region and have been one of the most continuously farmed places in human history. Now, however, the water is becoming less usable, and there’s real concern that the rivers will be dry by 2040. Climate change is exacerbating this, as are the construction of dams outside the country, and the lingering effects of Saddam Hussein’s drainage of marshes in southern Iraq.

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

If your war crimes are sciencey enough, your adopted country may make you a little booklet [[link removed]] about how you escaped justice.

I’m at the reviving a toy brand, I’m at the reasserting femininity of women under arms, I’m at the combination military Barbie campaign of the 1990s [[link removed]].

A towering inferno [[link removed]].

What’s it called when the state outsources a civil function to a theocratic body [[link removed]], it certainly doesn’t sound like freedom.

Everyone remembers that Merle Haggard classic, an Okie from Grozny [[link removed]].

The frame in Spain is difficult to obtain [[link removed]].

Yeet wave [[link removed]].

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

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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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