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Social scientists like to consider terrain as a factor in politics. Terrain has some real explanatory power — it really is easier to hide as a rebel in rugged mountains rather than in an open plain. Social scientists also value it because it’s easy to measure. Look at a map, find some mountains, and that’s data baybee. Sociologist Esther Marijnen, in a new article [[link removed]] in Geoforum, argues that conflict scholars should pay more attention to a terrain feature that most have thus far overlooked: Lakes. Her work, which focuses on politics and rebellion around Lake Edward in Democratic Republic of Congo, highlights how the inherent tensions between the way people use lake resources and the way governments try to manage them drives conflict. As Congolese officials try to divy the lake up into jurisdictions that cut off existing social and business relationships, the central role of the lake in people’s lives creates pushback from both inside and outside the state — what Marijnen calls “fishing rebels” and “fishy state officials,” presumably because the editors of Geoforum wouldn’t let her call them “offishials.”

Opposition research

In most countries where the government is dominated by a single party, opposition parties are constantly bubbling under — winning mayorships or parliamentary seats or just being a presence that worries those in power. A new article [[link removed]] in the journal Party Politics examines the question of how these parties actually organize their bases in areas where the state is hostile to them.

The article focuses on the Tanzanian opposition party Chadema, which has worked to expand even in some parts of the country dominated by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

Chadema’s national leaders tend to tour through areas traditionally neglected by CCM, which are more open to their message. In CCM base areas, however, lone Chadema organizers stay in place, conducting small meetings and rallies on a consistent basis to gradually build relationships with the party. Those lone organizers, the article argues, are the main drivers behind opposition party expansion in areas sympathetic to ruling parties.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] The disinformation trap

A new article [[link removed]] in the Internet Policy Review highlights the problems with the EU’s what-a-mole approach to confronting disinformation online. As concern over the effect of state-sponsored lying online increases, many EU member states have moved to make disinformation illegal. As the article points out, disinformation’s response to those laws is to tap its fingers together while muttering “excellent, excellent” and then suddenly laughing too loudly.

The problem comes in defining “disinformation.” The whole point of disinformation is that it is wrong but believable — reasonable people might mistake it for the truth. Inherently, it is difficult to tell the difference between disinformation and simple mistakes in understanding.

If countries make it a crime to host disinformation on a website, how will prosecutors be able to tell the difference between, say, an early report on a breaking news event that turns out to be wrong and a report on the same event that was sourced from a state-sponsored bot farm? And if they can’t tell the difference, then the incentive for news sites is simply to post no news at all, lest they find themselves accused of disinformation in the process of newsgathering. That’s not exactly a situation conducive to healthy democracy.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Political climate: Part I

Happy COP26 [[link removed]] to those who celebrate. As world leaders fiddle in Glasgow, this week and next on Deep Dive we’ll look at new research on how real action on climate change could shift global politics in ways that would upend some of the basic assumptions we hold about what drives conflict and insecurity around the world.

The discourse about transitions away from fossil fuel is, frankly, bizarre. If the current rate of fossil fuel emissions continues, the world is careening toward climate disaster. Yet much of the discussion about shifting towards other energy sources focuses not on the benefits of averting the monstrous effects of over two degrees of warming but on the dangers of the new supply chains that will be required to support a renewable energy economy. If everyone needs batteries, the thinking goes, then lithium and graphite production could become as divisive as oil and coal production is today.

In a new article [[link removed]] in the journal Energy Research and Social Science, researchers Jim Krane and Robert Idel urge everyone who is freaking out about wars over wind turbine production to chill. They make a compelling argument that, while expanding renewable energy production and use will require new supply chains, investments, and forms of resource extraction, the political risks of those new operations pale in comparison to the political risks (to say nothing of the climate risks) of fossil fuel production.

Their argument hinges on a major difference between renewable energy systems and fossil fuel energy systems: When you make an internal combustion engine you keep having to fill it with gas, but when you make a solar panel, you’re done. That is, once you’ve gathered the initial inputs to make renewable energy generation, all the risk around energy access falls away. As long as you’ve got sun or wind or waves or the inexorable process of nuclear decay, you don’t need to worry about refilling your power source.

This is in sharp contrast to the way fossil fuel economies work. Most of the risk in fossil fuels derives not from the production of energy-generating facilities, but from market shocks to the inputs for those facilities. It isn’t hard to source the steel to make cars, but if major gasoline refineries go offline then the costs of driving can jump significantly. When Russia wants to mess with the EU, it doesn’t restrict its exports of natural gas power plants, it restricts [[link removed]] its exports of natural gas. That kind of political risk around fossil fuels drives a lot of political calculations about international security issues, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

As Krane and Idel point out, those risks just don’t apply to renewable energy production. If political actors found some way to halt, say, lithium production, people who were already driving around cars with lithium batteries would face exactly zero inconvenience or economic cost. There would be price increases in future production to be sure, but once the infrastructure of renewable energy use is in place it becomes very difficult to target. And indeed, as with fossil fuels, it is difficult for producers of minerals crucial to renewable energy production to effectively restrict their sale. In 2010, China — a major producer of so-called “rare earth metals” — imposed an embargo on their sale to Japan. At first, prices for components involving the metals skyrocketed as investors panicked. But then everyone remembered that rare earth metals are a commodity like any other, and that the market is fungible. Soon, new sources of the metals were coming online and third countries were buying from China and reselling to Japan. Japanese component prices were back to normal before China called off the boycott.

Krane and Idel quantified the vast gulf in risk between existing energy systems and renewable systems by looking at how much mining is necessary to make each system work. Using the Texas electrical grid as a case study, they measured how much mining is necessary to maintain one gigawatt of wind capacity over 20 years and how much is required to produce the same energy in coal plants. Just for that gigawatt, replacing coal with wind would result in 25 million fewer tons being mined over two decades. Texas alone produced [[link removed]] 77,857 gigawatt hours of electricity from coal in 2019. That level of decline in energy inputs represents a major reduction in political risk, even setting aside its obvious climate benefits.

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

Stephen Snyder spoke [[link removed]] to experts about the Biden administration’s sale of $650 million worth of missiles to Saudi Arabia. During his campaign, President Biden pledged to make Saudi Arabia “the pariah that they are” in retaliation for the kingdom’s human rights abuses, especially in Yemen. Many experts say that the missile sale breaks that promise, showing that the US is willing to arm Saudi Arabia regardless of the Kingdom’s actions. The Biden administration says that the missiles are defensive weapons, but also admit that they are meant to shift the balance of power between Saudi forces and their Houthi opponents in Yemen.

Rachel Furlow examined [[link removed]] the implications of a new policy rollout by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In a recent speech, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pledged to dramatically increase the proportion of aid funding that goes to local organizations in aid-receiving countries, rather than to aid organizations based in the US and Europe. Past administrators have attempted similar reforms, but Power’s proposal carries some Congressional backing and allocates staff to manage the administrative challenges of working with a wider range of aid implementers. As Furlow points out, however, Power’s proposal still does not address the inequalities in how the US treats local partners versus major international NGOs. Without efforts to make projects and bidding processes more accessible, international NGOs will still find ways to soak up the vast majority of USAID’s budget.

Emma Jacobs reported [[link removed]] on the current status of the Canadian government’s pledge to take in some 40,000 Afghans who hoped to flee the country after the Taliban returned to power. Advocates working to get Afghans into Canada report that Canada’s immigration agency has been slow to process the paperwork necessary to actually make good on the promise. Canada has experience with emergency refugee programs — it settled tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in a short period at the height of that country’s civil war. The methods used to expedite the process for Syrians, however, have not been implemented in the Afghanistan case. As a result, many Afghans are stuck in a dangerous limbo.

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

Venture capital vulturing [[link removed]] as avante garde art [[link removed]].

All UN climate conferences [[link removed]] are barely hiding how inadequate they are to address the climate crisis.

The volume of bullshit that Pentagon reporters have to sift through in their work makes them pros [[link removed]] on the DC dating scene.

Happy birthday [[link removed]] to the Corps.

It seems that, to keep up with the times, Hades has ceded some power and shifted the governance structure of his realm to more of a constitutional monarchy [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner 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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