Read about the killing of Zawahiri in the unending Forever War. Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing …

… read about the killing of Zawahiri in the unending Forever War.

When news broke on August 1st that the United States had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike on Kabul, my first instinct was to pull up Wikipedia to remind myself of his role in 9/11. This is information I once readily knew, which I probably first learned in newspapers in the wake of the attack, and then definitely learned again in a Spring 2008 college course on the War on Terror. Zawahiri will forever be marked in history as the mastermind of 9/11, and as the significantly less charismatic successor to bin Laden after he was assassinated in 2011. That moment, writes Spencer Ackerman of the aptly named Forever Wars, was the best possible chance to end the war. With the killing of Zawahiri, Biden has an opportunity to avoid repeating his predecessor’s mistake, but the Biden admin seems unwilling to take it. “Whatever al-Qaeda is in 2022—relevant is not a word that I think describes the organization—it's weaker than it was on Friday, but parsing what exactly that means is academic,” writes Ackerman [[link removed]]. “Far more substantial is the reality that the apparatus of the War on Terror, with the exception of the Afghanistan War, the original CIA torture program and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, remains in place.”

Proxy War Powers Act

Much of the violence directly authored by the US government proceeds along accountable chains of command, from bullets fired by soldiers in battle to orders given for CIA drone strikes. In the House version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress is set to codify the “1202 authority,” a provisional rule that “has allowed the military to secretly recruit, train, and pay foreign forces and private individuals to conduct irregular warfare operations on behalf of the United States,” writes [[link removed]] Katherine Yon Ebright.

So far, the existing authority has been used for actions below the level of direct violence, instead funding spying and “information operations,” the spruced-up term for everything from public relations to propaganda.

The possibility exists, Yon Ebright warns, that under a less restrained administration, the 1202 rules, and an expansive reading of self-defense, “the Defense Department has all it needs to raise a proxy force to counter, say, Russian separatists in the Donbass.” Or at least it will, if the Senate adopts the 1202 rule as well.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Host in the Shell

Scratch an artificial intelligence, and you’ll find exploited labor. In the case of ITFLOWS, a migrant route prediction software funded and developed by the European Union, the labor in this case is interviews with migrants undertaken by aid organizations like the Red Cross and Oxfam. The migrants are, in aggregate, experts on how migrants travel into Europe, but their disclosed information could help governments opposed to migrants better hinder their arrival.

An ethical board tasked with evaluating the dangers of a data-driven approach to tracking migrations found, said “Member States may use the data provided to create ghettos of migrants”

“These warnings appear not to have been heeded,” write authors Zach Campbell and Lorenzo D’Agostino at Disclose [[link removed]].

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Civil Workshopping: Part I

Every civil war is a failure of governance. The causes can vary — the factions that emerge and the grievances expressed span the whole of the human condition — but for a state to collapse to the point where people take up arms against it requires more than a routine political dispute. In the aftermath of a civil war, along with efforts at demobilization and reconciliation, is the opportunity for deep rebuilding of society and government, with the hope that whatever new arrangement put in place can better meet the needs of citizens without collapsing into armed violence again.

One possible change is more gender equitable distribution of leadership. In “ Power in the Post-Civil War Period: The Effect of Armed Conflict and Gender Quotas on Women in Political Leadership Positions [[link removed]],” authors Cosima Meyer and Britt Bolin look at how structural factors preserve post-war changes in leadership in sub-Saharan Africa.

“In a first step, a pipeline must be established to develop women's political careers and prepare them for leadership positions,” write the authors. “The civil war itself can create the conditions for the establishment of such a pipeline that allows women to claim political positions that they did not hold before.”

That power, borne of necessity and capability, can be undermined after a conflict, as men previously in power or looking to return to some prior status quo work to exclude women leaders proven in the war. In the process of creating a post civil war settlement, however, legal measures can acknowledge what was already proven in war.

“In a second step, a legal framework is necessary to develop a pipeline for women's political careers and secure its effects. A gender quota serves as such a legal regulation that can help to secure the institutional hold on power,” write the authors.

By looking at the number of women serving in cabinets in the years after a civil war, the study tracks not just the existence of women in leadership but the cultivation and sustained networks supporting that leadership.

Our research, the authors write, “promotes our understanding of post-civil war situations and of the conditions under which women retain broad political power. Our theory implies, at least in post-conflict situations, that a quota is not enough to secure high levels of women's executive-level representation long term. This is achieved in tandem with post-civil war situations in which institutional destabilization has changed the political landscape and first enabled women to gain a foothold in political leadership positions.”

When women are excluded from leadership pre-conflict, valuable perspective and understanding of the problems facing a country is lost, as are perspectives that could point to better policies to mitigate harm.

There’s still much more research in this space to be done. As Meyer tweeted, “What are, for instance, the effects on substantive representation? Are women more likely to hold certain ministerial positions? And who are those women in power?”

Leadership is not everything, but descriptive leadership in a democracy ensures that the people are represented closer to their actual composition. With a post-conflict change in leadership composition and quotas in place, the authors found a long-term impact of durable representation.

LEARN MORE [[link removed]]

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

Joanna Rozpedowski interrogated [[link removed]] the concept of space crime, sparked by Russian and German tensions over the continued operation of a jointly launched telescope in earth orbit. In June, the Russian Space Agency told the German Aerospace Center that it intended to restart the eROSITA telescope against the wishes of Germany. The telescope operated normally, searching the sky for X-ray radiation, until Germany unilaterally made the call to cease operating it in March 2022, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “What might constitute an act of aggression, terrorism, piracy, or a hijacking in outer space remains shrouded in a fog of legal ambiguity,” wrote Rozpedowski. “Legal ambiguity in this regard favors prospective perpetrators.”

Omar Duwaji produced [[link removed]] an interview with the European Council on Foreign Relation’s fellow Hamzeh Hadad, who was present in Baghdad as pro-Mugtada al-Sadr supporters stormed Iraq’s parliament. The Sadrists have stormed parliament in the past, but what marks this storming is that it came after Sadrists had won a plurality in the parliament. The Sadrists “were the leading party in negotiating for a government, but they weren't able to bring enough numbers to form a government. And so the Sadrists actually resigned, which was a move that hasn't been done before and caught everyone by surprise,” Hadad told The World.

Michael Fox reported [[link removed]] on efforts by evangelicals to convert the uncontacted tribes in Brazil’s interior, actions that a Supreme Court Justice had ordered President Bolsonaro to more seriously stop. Any such contact is illegal, and could carry with it direct harm, as people living in isolation from other human groups would suddenly encounter diseases they may never before have experienced. In 2020, Bolsonaro appointed an evangelical missionary to directly oversee the department of uncontacted tribes, though that official was removed by court order within the year. But it shows the settler logic at work in Brazil, which sees the Amazon as still untapped and protections for the uncontacted as an obstacle.

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

The arc of Gravity is long, but it bends towards accomodation of the national security state [[link removed]].

It was the contradictions of the Third Republic, by the water jets [[link removed]], with too much White Claw.

Internet radio defanged the terror video star [[link removed]]. I’m sure we’re all safer for it [[link removed]].

Skateboarding is not a war crime [[link removed]].

Infrastructure weak [[link removed]].

Oh, that IRA [[link removed]].

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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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