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CRITICAL STATE
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Your weekly foreign policy fix.
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If you read just one thing…
...read about how the “water’s edge” has dissolved.
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Some US foreign policy experts, including former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, are fond of saying that political polarization at home is the biggest national security threat to America. Arguably, however, America’s allies outside the US — who want American presidents to make long-term commitments that their successors will honor — will likely feel the polarizing effects on foreign policy more sharply. A new report explains how increased foreign policy fluctuations between administrations (like the flip-flop on the Iran nuclear deal between Obama and Trump administrations) might change the strategies of countries like Saudi Arabia that have long relied on steady American support. It may become tempting, the
report argues, for countries to take up partisan preferences in hopes of enjoying special treatment when their party is in power. The risks of that approach may outweigh the benefits, however, and the real challenge lies in navigating two bilateral relationships: one with Republicans and one with Democrats.
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What happened in Raqqa
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Researchers at New America have put together what amounts to an oral history of the establishment of Raqqa as the capital of ISIS. Drawing on a range of interviews, social media posts and other data sources, the new report tracks events in Syria’s sixth-largest city from 2013 — when it changed hands three times and eventually ended up under ISIS control — to today.
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The report examines the role of proxy war in the fall (and fall again, and fall again) of Raqqa, arguing that the practice of empowering militias enabled larger powers to take control of the city more easily and made it harder to retain control once they had it.
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It also digs into the extent to which ISIS governance in the city allowed it to hold on to Raqqa for so long. The report shows that ISIS was unsuccessful at delivering solutions to problems the city faced, but overcame their governance failures by understanding well the city's factions and not allowing competing coalitions to become too strong.
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Casual Pentagon racism
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The Pentagon is fighting back against a congressional effort to review all the forms it uses to root out instances of racist terminology that, by rule, should have been stricken decades ago. Some Defense Department documents still refer to African Americans as “negroids,” Native Americans as “red” and Asians as “yellow,” all of which are, to use the technical term, gross. The Office of Management and Budget ordered the Pentagon to change the terms back in 1997, but apparently they missed some.
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Crushingly, families of African American service members who were killed in uniform received a certificate from their government listing their loved one as “negroid” — adding insult to their loss. This was just updated in April 2019.
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Recent regulations written with the racial insensitivity found in the original animated “Peter Pan” include a 2010 Army Reserve regulation about equal opportunity programs that refer to “red” and “yellow” as racial categories. That one was changed in 2014.
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This week’s Midnight Oil guest is Ulrike Franke, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She works on German and European security and defense, the future of warfare and the impact of new technologies such as drones and artificial intelligence. Her most recent report, written with Tara Varma, examines the debate about strategic autonomy in Europe.
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WHAT IS THE HARDEST PROBLEM YOU WORK ON?
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The thing I think about most at the moment is not a specific security-related topic. Rather, since I have temporarily returned to the academic word (I am doing a research fellowship in Oxford over the summer), what has been on my mind a lot lately is how to bring academia and the policy world together. We need to get better at making sure the policy word can benefit from the great insight gained in academia. And we need to make sure the academic world is comfortable sharing its insights.
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HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT TRYING TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM?
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There is not one clear-cut answer to this problem. Rather, it requires a continuous and ongoing effort trying to bring different stakeholders together and to explain the workings of the different worlds. To some extent, think tanks can play a role in bridging the divide by producing academically sound work suitable for policy work, and help academia translate their work for the policy world. Also, initiatives such as the Bridging the Gap project are great. My hope is that we can change the system in a way that it incentivizes researchers who are doing work that is relevant to society and policy to make sure their work has an impact in the world beyond academia.
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Fahrinisa Campana traced the decline of programming for refugees in Greece by telling the story of one of the last initiatives standing: a newspaper by and for migrants and refugees called Migratory Birds. The newspaper, with a bimonthly circulation of 13,000, is written by young people recently arrived in Greece, with editorial assistance from more experienced journalists. Founded by 15 Afghan girls living in a refugee camp, Migratory Birds has been a big success, but its funding is threatened by the same force that has seen many programs for refugees in Greece shut down: donor fatigue.
Raphael Tsavkko Garcia outlined early signs of democratic decline in Spain, where politics has been marred in recent years by arrests and repression of politicians advocating Catalan and Basque autonomy and other dissidents. Garcia pointed out that Spain incarcerates more artists than any country in the world, often on charges of “extolling terrorism,” which is rarely an indicator of a functioning democracy. The Spanish state has also criminalized many forms of peaceful protest, making protesting in front of parliament punishable by a 30,000 euro ($33,426) fine.
Stefania D’Ignoti traveled to Cyprus to report on an olive oil company that is not shying away from its crops’ symbolism. Colive Oil, co-owned by a Greek Cypriot and and Turkish Cypriot, is the first company to produce olive oil sourced from both sides of the divided island. Reunification talks on Cyprus have stalled, but the Colive Oil founders hope that, by promoting economic integration across the dividing line, they can increase the pressure for a political solution.
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It’s hard to make 20 perfect seconds of video, but the data team at the Washington Post had some time on their hands to accomplish the feat while waiting for their FOIA requests to be processed.
Gettysburg, where every day is a battle and the port-a-potty service is excellent.
The Chinese army decided to bring back bugles, and “On Tactics” author Brett Friedman was on it. But Ernie … Ernie was in it. Ernie is in the People’s Liberation Army now.
A few years back, a Luddite icon at a Russian Middle Ages reenactment knocked a drone out of the sky with a spear. This year, they made him a runestone.
One of the weird things about nuclear weapons still being around is that the systems we set up rely on us being able to tell a nuclear blast from an earthquake. Which we can’t really do, or at least not very fast. So that’s not ideal.
It turns out famous Africa-pitier Bob Geldof wasn’t so interested in actually paying taxes his private equity fund owed on the continent. Luckily for him, despite his missteps, Africans are prepared to aid the British Isles in their current hour of need.
It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.
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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between PRI’s The World and Inkstick Media.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRI/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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