There’s been a lot of back and forth about which companies will lead the 5G wireless revolution... Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

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There’s been a lot of back and forth about which companies will lead the 5G wireless revolution — will it be Chinese telecom giant Huawei, or American and European competitors? Less prominent, but perhaps more concerning, is another question [[link removed]]: Will the 5G wireless revolution sink ships, down aircraft and ruin your leather shoes? It turns out, according to a letter from the House science committee, that 5G signal interferes with weather satellites, making it hard for meteorologists to generate accurate weather predictions. The head of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration — America’s top weatherman — told Congress that the widespread adoption of 5G would set meteorology back to about 1980, cutting back hurricane warnings by a whole day. Not ideal, in an era of ever more severe weather events.

It’s always worse than you thought

One of the nice side effects of massive government document leaks is that they often prompt people who played a role in creating the documents to explain a bit about how the sausage was made. In a Twitter thread [[link removed]], former House subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs staff director Andy Wright described his part in making some of the documents referenced in “The Afghanistan Papers,” detailing the utter failure of American contracting policy in Afghanistan.

While working on the subcommittee, Wright helped author a report showing that large portions of the US government’s $2.16 billion host-nation trucking contract in Afghanistan were being paid to Taliban-allied warlords as protection money.

Fast forward a decade, and Wright is out of government. He picks up the newspaper and finds that his report prompted further study, which showed that 18% of all US contracting money in the years studied was going to Afghan insurgents. In all, that was a cool $19 billion directly into the pocket of anti-coalition forces as a result of the American war effort.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Take-backsies in international politics

The Pentagon, strategically adept as ever, is reportedly [[link removed]] considering abandoning a $110 million drone base in Niger, that has been in operation since… last month. The base, which was the largest construction project in Air Force history, was primarily intended for counterterrorism missions that Pentagon planners feel may now be passé.

Specifically, the potential closure is part of a shift by American defense officials to viewing Africa primarily as a site of great power competition between the US, Russia, and China. In that framework, local counterterrorism missions in West Africa have little value to American aims in the region. A full decision on the future of US forces in Africa is expected in January.

Africans have historically been less than enthusiastic about being treated as pawns in foreign powers’ Great Games, but that has not stopped the Pentagon’s rhetorical — and now, perhaps, policy — shift toward engaging with African countries through the lens of Russia and China.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Fighting to Elect

This week marks the start of 2020, and for absolutely no reason related to events pending in the coming year, we’ll spend the next two Deep Dives discussing the latest research on election violence.

One of the things about elections is that, in areas where the rule of law isn’t strong enough to prevent it, the incentive to use coercion to win is massive. Voting is a physical act, and if you’re running, you need your supporters to do the act and your opponent’s supporters not to do it. It isn’t much of a logical leap from that to the tactics of an old-timey ward boss from any industrial East Coast city: Punish opposition supporters who try to go to the polls and your own supporters who don’t — violently, if necessary.

Political scientists have long been interested in why the violent part of that equation happens sometimes and not others. One thing that’s generally agreed upon is that election violence is more likely to take place when the election is close. There are a lot of reasons for this, but, put most simply, the electoral value of each potential opposition voter too cowed or bloody to reach the polls is a lot higher in a close race than in a blowout.

There are, however, other predictors of electoral violence. University of Amsterdam political scientist Ursula Daxecker has a new article [[link removed]]in the Journal of Peace Research arguing that malapportionment of districts — that is, districts represented out of proportion to their share of the overall population — incentivizes election violence in underrepresented districts.

To get a better sense of what malapportionment is, think about the US Senate. There are 100 senators representing about 330 million Americans, so if Senate districts were well-apportioned each senator would represent about 3.3 million people. Of course, that’s not how it works at all. Instead, you have states like Wyoming, the smallest state, which gets two senators for barely over half a million people. Wyoming residents, therefore, are overrepresented in the Senate. California, the most populous state, gets two senators for nearly 40 million people, meaning that Californians are hugely underrepresented. Shouts, by the way, to Indiana, which has the most well-apportioned Senate seats (two senators for 6.7 million people).

Using data from Indian elections between 1991 and 2009, Daxecker found that overrepresented districts were significantly less likely than well-apportioned or underrepresented districts to experience pre-election violence. The difference, Daxecker argues, comes from the distinct approaches political parties take to overrepresented districts. Because they are so small, overrepresented districts offer major political parties an attractive investment opportunity: By buying off not that many people, a party can secure valuable legislative seats. The payment might be a literal bribe, but it is more likely a promise of favorable national policy — think about how every presidential candidate pledges their support for corn subsidies before the Iowa caucuses. Once the payment is made, the need for violence to secure electoral victory falls away.

In the more chaotic political environments of more populous districts, the cost of securing loyalty through policy is higher, and the likelihood that any given payment will make the difference in a future election is lower. As a result, it becomes a lot harder for parties to predict how well they’ll do in any given election and trying to ensure victory through violence against opposition voters starts to look like a promising prospect. Counterintuitively, making well-apportioned districts doesn’t solve the problem. Well-apportioned districts are still very difficult to predict or control, but also have few enough people that a low-cost level of violence could be very valuable for a political party.

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Demetrios Ioannou chronicled [[link removed]] the cremation industry’s rise in Greece. Less than 2% of Greeks choose cremation over burial, in part due to the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church. With graveyards running out of space and burial costs high, however, things are beginning to change. Greece’s first crematorium opened in September, and the owners project dramatic expansion in the industry.

Levi Bridges analyzed [[link removed]]the state of Ukraine’s fight against government corruption. Five years after the Maidan Revolution, many politicians who came to power on that anti-corruption wave are now seen as corrupt themselves. But progress is still being made, including the institution of a new High Anti-Corruption Court and increased financial transparency in Kyiv.

Orla Berry reported [[link removed]] on concerns about rising right-wing extremism in Dresden, Germany. German intelligence services report that 2019 saw a 33% jump in the number of right-wing extremists in Germany, and Dresden is home to far-right Islamophobic organizations like PEGIDA, “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.” Dresden city councilor Max Aschenbach got a resolution passed declaring the city in a state of “Nazi emergency” to highlight the problem.

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

Yogi Bear takes [[link removed]] his case for sovereignty and human (well, bear) rights all the way to the United Nations.

Weirdly, there are two of these [[link removed]] on Jamaica Avenue.

After years of stalemate, finally a new front [[link removed]]has opened in the “is this a tank?” wars.

Regular brain: “Moose milk” [[link removed]] is a Canadian version of boozy eggnog with maple syrup in it, and the Canadian military is just trolling everyone with the disturbing name.

Galaxy brain: Who’s to say that isn’t what moose actually produce?!

Bonus, apparently real Canadian cocktail: Caribou [[link removed](drink)] is red wine, Canadian whisky, and maple syrup, and derives from an older cocktail that was just whisky and caribou blood. Enjoy New Year’s Eve responsibly, eh?

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH.

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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