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… read about the cholera epidemic in Haiti’s National Penitentiary.

In the past several days, between 32 and 80 people have died of cholera inside Haiti’s infamous and overcrowded National Penitentiary. These figures are reported in The Nation [[link removed]] by Loune Viaud, Pierre Fritznel, Louise Ivers, and Eric Reinhart, a team with a wealth of experience in public health and human rights work. The reporting is based on interviews with prisoners conducted over cell phones and corroborating reports from those who work near the prison. Cholera is horrific if untreated, and prisons especially are conducive to its spread, as even moving a corpse risks contact with the disease still in the fluids of the prisoner. That the prison was built for 800 people but presently holds 4,000, many of them on pre-trial detention, expands the cruelty. “Stopping the cholera outbreak at Haiti’s National Penitentiary is essential not only to protect the lives of those trapped inside; it is also necessary to protect surrounding communities,” the authors write, urging international support, especially to the local organizations on the ground already doing the work. Unfortunately, the errors of the recent past loom large over this work, as a UN military mission in 2010 introduced cholera to the country.

TABOO FISSION

Nuclear arsenals change the stakes for wars, even against non-nuclear armed states. In the case of Ukraine, Russia’s nuclear arsenal is part of what limited counter-action from NATO, as a direct shooting war between the countries risks oblivion. But with Ukraine using NATO-supplied weapons to effectively drive Russian forces back from the furthest points of invasion, nuclear fears have returned to the foreground, cast against the backdrop of Russia attempting to hold onto its ambitious territorial claims.

“It’s also encouraging that the Biden administration has been fairly restrained given the tensions between (1) support for the Ukrainian cause and (2) the nuclear risks of confrontation with Russia. The administration resisted the push for a no-fly zone, declined to send troops to Ukraine, and has refused to meet Putin’s nuclear threats with its own — a wise decision that has apparently angered a few anonymous Dr. Strangeloves in the military and intelligence apparatuses,” writes [[link removed]] John Carl Baker for Jacobin.

At least at present, the risk appears as well managed as it can be by any external actors. Yet, the durability of nuclear arsenals, and the concentration of launch authority in the hands of leaders insulated from pressure, means so long as the weapons exist, the possibility of battlefield defeat turning to radioactive stalemate persists.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Framed in translation

A revolutionary moment can call for revolutionary art, and for non-Farsi speakers eager to understand Iran, a recent English translation of poet Forough Farrokhzad offers one potential window. Farrokhzad, born in 1935, died tragically at 32 years old in 1967. At Lux Magazine [[link removed]], Mariam Rahmani used the occasion of New Directions publishing a translation of Farrokhzad to delve deep into the poet, her legacy, and the limits of translation.

“If Forough has been sexualized by her Farsi readership — and not only in Iran but also in the American academy — in translation, this attention to the female body often takes on an Orientalist tone,” writes Rahmani before delving into the peculiarities of publishing dynamics that necessitate such othering to sell a translation.

In her thorough assessment, Rahmani delves into the poetry of Farrokhzad, her relation to social mores, and the convenient excuse of sanctions in obstructing payment in-country for a work translated outside of it. “To get living Iranian authors paid, some American publishers get around this by using informal, circuitous routes, the same ways Iranians send money to family — paying a friend with an account in each country who then converts and distributes the sum. Ethics can trump foreign policy, the logic goes,” writes Rahmani.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE left unresolved: Part I

At the heart of foreign policy is a simple question: What actions in the world will make tomorrow safer than today? As framed, the question reads primarily about nations. After all, these are the traditional foreign policy agents and the unconstrained players in the anarchic world of realism. But the question could just as easily be about national leaders, transnational alliances between elites, or the interests and desires of everyday people. Likewise, what constitutes a safer tomorrow is likely to have very different answers for an internationally minded high school student and a Saudi oil baron. The world is, in a real sense, what we make of it.

In “ Left of Liberal Internationalism: Grand Strategies within Progressive Foreign Policy Thought [[link removed]],” Van Jackson examines the broad spectrum of leftist foreign policy ideas and how they formulate what could be seen as grand strategies to understand the world.

“Because military-first politics are a blight on democracy, antimilitarism has always been a throughline for the American Left that informs its antiwar politics. But antimilitarism does not inherently rule out the use of force, which means it is not reducible to pacifism,” writes Jackson. Debates over the how, against who, and to what ends military force should be used is central to differentiating camps of progressive foreign policy.

In looking at the debates among the Left, Jackson finds primarily three camps, which share some language and approaches, but can differ greatly on means, ends, and underlying rationale. The first of these perspectives is “Progressive Pragmatism,” which starts from US foreign policy as it is and seeks to make it more equitable and just. Another is “Antihegemonism,” a camp that sees the United States and US power as responsible for the far-right at home and abroad and seeks to minimize US power in order to reduce the influence of the Right in the world. Finally, “Peacemaking” seeks to structure international relations through means other than the national security apparatus, especially military and intelligence agencies, relying instead on cooperative security and transnational civil society to manage conflict.

While those camps can be at odds, they often share an expansive way of thinking about security, one often missing from narrow assessments of tank numbers or warheads in arsenals.

“The human security agenda, for example, which stresses anthropogenic threats (climate change) and naturogenic threats (pandemics), has received short shrift in grand strategy literature but is instrumental in how progressives think about security; they believe foreign policy should attend to the root causes of geopolitical problems, which reside disproportionately outside the military realm,” writes Jackson.

Guiding all three camps of Left foreign policy is an understanding of some degree of greater kinship with people outside their own nation. This is crucial to all movements that seek international solidarity in a fight for a better tomorrow against reactionary forces, but how the groups define allies can be illuminating.

“In essence, all progressives claim to be global solidarists with an at least thinly cosmopolitan outlook, but that conviction can be directed narrowly at democratic governments, selectively at the working class, or universally at human beings,” writes Jackson.

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Marc Garlasco implored [[link removed]] the Department of Defense to better track the civilian casualties of US operations. In the annual 1057 report, mandated as part of Section 1057 in the 2018 NDAA to increase accountability of US military operations, the United States “accepted responsibility for 12 civilian deaths in Afghanistan and five injuries combined in Afghanistan and Somalia,” during 2021, writes Garlasco. He ends on an optimistic note: a new Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, adopted by DoD, could put this data in civilian hands.

Gerry Hadden muscled [[link removed]] through a report on the warm Mediterranean killing of Spanish mussels. The shallow water of the Ebro delta in Northeast Spain is typically a big mussel-farming spot, but the bivalves start to die when the water temperature reaches 82 degrees Fahrenheit. This summer, Spain had 42 days of water warmer than 82 degrees. “Delta mussels are loved for their small size and unique flavor — one that they get from the brackish waters where the Ebro River spills into the Mediterranean — and mussel-enthusiasts really love them,” reports Hadden. While mussel farmers could move to deeper waters, they risk losing that unique delta flavor forever.

Sara Haghdoosti called [[link removed]] for Western commentators to see the Iranian revolution as not just a rejection of theocracy but a rejection of patriarchy. “The toxic masculinity that underpins the Iranian government is so fragile that despite all their weapons and willingness to murder people on the streets, it cannot even stand a few strands of hair,” wrote Haghdootsi. This protest movement, rooted in Iranian feminism, is part of an internal tradition that sees solidarity with global feminist movements but not one that was imported from the West. The protests, like the thinking that supports them, are fully homegrown.

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

The Many Saint Javelins of Newark [[link removed]].

An insurgency is a kind of relationship [[link removed]].

When a mounted gunman is served this way, that’s a crab dragoon [[link removed]].

Inlanding craft [[link removed]].

Imperial shift change [[link removed]].

When it comes to body count for the dollar, it’s hard to beat a skeleton crew [[link removed]].

Arma-get-it-over-with [[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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