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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 the coup in Peru.
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When a leader calls for a coup against their country’s electoral system of government, it’s important to have any supporters in power, or at least the armed forces, to ensure it can be carried out. So discovered Pedro Castillo, who started Dec. 7, 2022, as president of Peru and ended that day jailed by his own bodyguard after his call for a “government of exception” was met with a resounding “get out” from all quarters of government. “Congress moved quickly to declare his presidency vacant, now without any doubt as to its constitutionality: staging a coup is a clear cause of ‘moral incapacity’ under Peruvian constitutional practice,” writes Alsonso Gurmendi, a law professor in Lima, Peru.
Castillo’s reckless move broke a long standoff between the former president and Congress, each of which had the power to remove the other provided certain conditions were met. With Castillo’s misfired shot, the country now faces a series of difficult choices, especially since popular protests have broken out calling for his reinstatement, in the face of the ascendant authoritarian filling a void left by the ouster of the authoritarian left. Preserving rights and democracy, Gurmendi argues, needs a constitutional remedy, not an electoral one. But it should happen in a way that builds on the existing constitution rather than risk a rewrite that favors authoritarian tendencies.
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reoccupations
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Until Afghanistan in 2021, the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was the longest military occupation by the country that didn’t end with that country being made at least the territory of the United States. The scars of that war, indignity after indignity forced upon the first free republic, are at the center of “The Forgotten Occupation,” a film by Alain Martin, which just released its trailer. As the United States again floats a reoccupation of Haiti in light of the collapse of formal government, Woy Magazine interviewed Martin.
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“So these young despairing Haitians desperately thought an American Occupation would grant them entrance into the modern world of the 20th century,” says Martin of the initial response to the 1915 occupation. “They were of course mistaken.”
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Now, with Iraq, Afghanistan, the long legacy of Haiti, and the perpetually colonial status of Puerto Rico to point to, it’s hard to make the case that the US military showing up would be anything like benevolent.
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grain drain
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“Public granaries have a millennia-long history as a hedge against pests and bad weather, and in fact, the first modern programs in the US explicitly drew inspiration from ancient Chinese policies,” writes Adin Richards at the Institute for Progress. What is distinct about present conditions is that international trade agreements are structured to see stocks sold, rather than saved, a policy that keeps prices low in good times but leaves the world vulnerable to scarcity and suffering whenever there’s a shock to the system.
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Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was one such shift, with implications felt all over. The US federal government, which began a federal policy of maintaining food reserves in the New Deal and then continued it through the Cold War, ended that practice in 1996, with reserves finally depleted through aid donations in 2007.
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“American federal farm policy has increasingly moved to disincentivize farm adaptations that would make US agriculture less vulnerable to these risks and has discouraged private reserves that would stabilize food supplies,” writes Richards, who includes a set of proposed reforms to both US and WTO trade policy, with the aim of greater food security via better stockpiles.
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Outsourced Force: Part I
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The state, as we understand it has a monopoly on force, but that doesn’t prevent the government from licensing out that power. Paramilitaries and pro-government militias can be a tool of state violence with plausible deniability for the government, even if there are provable links showing funding and direction. That deniability is a huge reason a government might choose to outsource its violence, especially if the government's formal agents, like soldiers and police, have already been condemned by the international community.
In “From Shame to New Name: How Naming and Shaming Creates Pro-Government Militias,” Lora DiBlasi examines the role of governments in creating pro-government militias, especially as a response to critique.
Di Blasi points to the experience of Nigeria, which was called out for human rights violations by Amnesty International a total of 35 times between 1996 and 1998, prompting resolutions from the UN Commission on Human Rights. In 1999, Bakassi Boys and Abia State Vigilante Group pro-government militations were stood up, which engaged in execution, mutilation, torture, unlawful detention, and election violence.
“The Bakassi Boys received orders directly from the government and had close and regular interaction and communication with government officials,” writes Di Blasi. “The government has also provided office space, paid their salaries, and equipped them for their missions. Moreover, the militia purportedly announced to their victims, ‘We are Bakassi Boys. It's a government order … The government wants you to die.’”
Despite the clear ties, the use of militias to carry out the condemned violence of the state creates an air of deniability, however flimsy, between the people doing the violence and the people directing it. If it’s a militia doing the violence, it becomes beyond the state’s control, even if the militia serves the ends of the state.
This matters especially for countries and leaders who want to enlist repression as a tool to hold power but fear international condemnation and sanction for doing so.
“After being named and shamed, many states will be eager to avoid being chastised publicly again, as was the case in Kenya [in 1991],” writes Di Blasi. “However, not all leaders will want to end their spell of repression. An alternative solution is for states to create a separate apparatus to carry out acts of repression on its behalf, such as a PGM [pro-goverment militia]. Instead of making genuine efforts to reform their human rights practices in their country, states may instead opt to delegate violence to PGMs to escape the responsibility of subsequent human rights abuses.”
As leaders work out ways to repress while sidestepping shame, it behooves the international community to find new ways to condemn and constrain these end-runs around accountability. Using proxies for violence may make the chain of causality murkier, but the effects can be seen clearly, especially when the supposedly uncontrollable militias do violence in a way that just so happens to align with the leaders saying they are powerless to intervene.
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Ope Adetayo strolled among the unemployed okada drivers of Lagos. The city teems with internal migrants, many working in or around an informal economy. To navigate the bad traffic, and especially last-mile commutes, many people pay for a ride from an okada motorcycle driver. This year’s ban on okadas put workers out of a job while also snarling traffic as riders either get by on foot or crowd other forms of transportation. Many internal migrants “gravitate towards the transportation industry, a multi-million dollar unregulated sector in the state of more than 20 million people,” wrote Adetayo. “But with the okada ban, internal migrants face a double loss of livelihoods.”
Alisa Reznick spoke with a veteran who went only by “A.,” to not endanger herself or her family of the Republic of Afghanistan’s Female Tactical Platoon, living in Tempe, Arizona. The unit was fostered by the democratic government that collapsed with the US withdrawal in August 2021. Women soldiers had a special role on patrol, speaking to women and children who would not talk to male soldiers. It also made them a target. “A. and her roommates are among nearly 40 platoon members who made it out of Afghanistan and are living in the US,” wrote Reznick. “Even though they’re safe now, they remain in legal limbo.”
Shirin Jaafari documented a renewed and ongoing protest against the Assad regime in the city of Suweida, Syria. The country has been at war for 11 years, as the Russian-backed Assad government has held power against a host of rebellious factions and even for a time, the ravages of ISIS. Now, however, the toll of the long war, combined with the government’s inability to fix the economy, has people breaking out in protest again. “People here used to survive on money sent from abroad and farming, and now, these two sources have mostly dried up,” Rawya, a Suweida resident, told Jaafari over WhatsApp.
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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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