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… read about the suspension of some political parties in Ukraine.

Last weekend, Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government in Ukraine suspended 11 political parties, including most notably the runner-up in the recent election. It is a move undertaken in the name of national security, but it speaks of an attempt at further political consolidation, writes Volodymyr Ishchenko [[link removed]]. This kind of lawfare undermines democracy, and while democratic backsliding can be a durable feature of wars, Ischenko sees it as particularly egregious here, by converting political parties standing in solidarity against the Russian invasion into internal pariahs. If suspended parties “become convinced that they have no political future in Ukraine and rather face persecution, they may start looking towards Russia,” writes Ishchenko. “This could fuel violence as masses begin searching for and punishing 'traitors' and strengthen Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s 'Nazism' problem.” Euromaidan, and Russia’s subsequent occupation of parts of Donetsk and and all of Crimea, had already shifted the balance of domestic politics in the country, and many parties that had once sought ties with Russia found themselves in a new political reality, as any pro-Russian stance became untenable. But the suspension treats old alignments as a durable, modern threat, and undermines the expressed national unity from Ukrainian political leaders, even those in opposition.

Open Letters for Open Internets

Over 35 civil society groups in the United States, including Access Now and the Wikimedia Foundation, called on [[link removed]] the Biden administration to keep internet access open in Belarus and Russia.

Opposition to the war and to official narratives put out by state-controlled media can be coordinated through the internet, allowing people inside the countries external sources of information.

The letter exists to try and preempt private companies choosing to cut Russia off of their own accord, allowing this to be a decision whose parameters and safeguards are made by governments, rather than companies looking to limit reputational harm.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Imagined Antagonists and Polite Conspiracy Theories

In the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, American polite society successfully quashed talk of the disease as a byproduct of Chinese wet markets, but as the pandemic has continued and xenophobia has instead moved to the lab leak hypothesis, that same mobilization is lacking, writes Andrew Liu for N+1 [[link removed]].

The exact origin of the pandemic is at present unknown and possibly unknowable, which makes speculation about routes as much an understanding of popular fear and imagination as anything else.

Liu argues that, while the stereotypes of the wet market theory were easy to identify and dismiss, “lab leak” theorizing persists because it instead hits at a modern caricature of Asia, not as a backward place but instead as one that is hypermodern and up to malicious intent, despite the lack of any concrete evidence to explain it as such.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE The Company And The State: Part II

Even as the European Union and the United States continue to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, some economic exchange remains untouched. Germany continues to buy [[link removed]] natural gas from Russia, citing domestic need. While Germany is not a direct party to the war, it has shipped weapons to Ukraine following the invasion, while at the same time funding Russia through gas purchases.

It is an odd state of affairs, but not unprecedented. In a paper published in International Security last summer, Marija Grinberg examines the commercial policy of the British Empire [[link removed]] during World War I, to better understand how and why countries trade with their enemies in war.

“Britain continued to trade with its enemies until October 1, 1918 — one month and eleven days before the Armistice,” writes Grinberg. “In fact, Britain started the war with restrictions on the export of only 20 percent of the goods that it ultimately prohibited from reaching the enemy. Even after a year of fighting, by the end of August 1915, around half of the products that would eventually be prohibited were still allowed to be legally traded with enemy states.”

To understand why countries will trade goods when they are trading blows, Grinberg suggests countries have to balance meeting existing domestic needs with the concern that they are supplying enemies with militarily useful goods. This has a temporal dimension: The longer countries are at war, the more they will restrict trade, as a way of reducing the capacity of enemies to convert that trade into useful military tools.

The most immediate example would be a prohibition on selling guns to the enemy at the outbreak of war, but as the war drags on, this might expand to include the material components for making guns and ammunition, and eventually to include tertiary economic activity that could be used to buy the material for making guns from elsewhere.

Secondly, Grinberg argues that the durability of trade with foes in wartime suggests that the existence of economic interdependence between countries might just mean trade continues during war, rather than the loss of trade ties being seen as a factor limiting the likelihood of war. Cutting off trade from an enemy carries with it the hardship of denying the benefits of that trade to one’s own nation, which can impact everything from material on hand to tax revenues.

One way this theory can be observed in practice is in the British government's handling of machine guns at the start of WWI.

“Interestingly, machine guns were not prohibited from trade at the beginning of the war, as there was a wide consensus that they were useful only in wars of attrition, not in maneuver warfare,” writes Grinberg. “ Thus, carriages and mountings for machine guns were forbidden from export at the start of the war, but not machine guns themselves.”

Export of British machine guns to Germany was banned on Feb. 3, 1915, at the same time that the government prohibited the sale of heavy machinery for digging trenches and fortifications. The nature of the war, as well as the change in expectations of how quickly it could be won, changed trade policy.

This durability of trade despite the existence of a shooting war suggests that trade ties alone are not much of a deterrent to future wars, especially not between major powers. Smaller states, dependent on one large neighbor, would suffer disproportionately from a halt in trade if they launched a war against that larger neighbor, though it’s the same to consider smaller states already deterred from a war of aggression by the imbalance in strength.

In this, we can riff on Thucydides: During war the strong will trade what they can, and the weak will purchase what they must.

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

Alexandra B. Hall implored [[link removed]] the international community to remember that the destruction of cultural heritage sites is a war crime, alongside crimes like violence perpetrated against civilians. The 1954 Hague Convention, signed by the USSR and which both Russian and Ukraine are party to as successor states, set rules for protecting and marking heritage sites. “Cultural heritage deserves the world’s attention and protection — not only for its worth to our collective history, understanding, and memory, but also because its destruction can symbolize the greater intent of a perpetrator to destroy, in whole or in part, a people,” wrote Hall.

Ashley Westerman covered [[link removed]] the green energy campaigns of candidates in the Philippines. As the country endures drought, high energy costs, and greater concern about expensive, warm summers, presidential candidates are releasing ads where they pose in front of wind turbines, and moves beyond current reliance on coal are being debated. “Since campaign season officially began in February, even longshot candidates such as Manny Pacquiao [[link removed]], Panfilo “Ping” Locson [[link removed]] and Leody de Guzman [[link removed]] are addressing climate change and renewable energy in stump speeches and media interviews,” wrote Westerman.

Yasmine Mosimann attended [[link removed]] the reopening of Mosul University’s Central Library. The library suffered much as the city did: Captured by ISIS in 2014, it was subject to plunder and destruction, with many books discarded and destroyed in the name of strict fundamentalism. While Iraqi forces retook the city in 2017, air strikes from the US-led coalition hit the library, and ISIS then burned some of what remained. “In the chaos that followed the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein [[link removed].], residents nearby hid some of the city’s centuries-old manuscripts in their own homes to prevent theft or destruction by looters,” wrote Mosimann. These books, together with over 30,000 tomes recovered among the rubble, joined donations for the reopened library’s collection.

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

The Chicago Bears auditioned for Good Friday Night Lights [[link removed]].

Y’all is for everyone. Well, almost everyone [[link removed]].

Yeah, I’m into NFTs: Nuclear Fears, Traded [[link removed]].

The “ S [[link removed]]” every cool kid in elementary school carved into a desk stands for “ soft power [[link removed]].”

It’s important to make sure your firgs are ordinary [[link removed]].

The War on Cars [[link removed]] never changes.

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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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