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… read about the hollowness of war as a cure for polarization.

In the grand scheme of world history, China’s gently drifting sensor-laden high-altitude balloon should hopefully not even become a footnote. History moves in weird ways, and op-ed authors often try to bend the crisis of the moment to an overarching ideological project, as longtime neoconservative Robert Kagan did with a recent Wall Street Journal column. Kagan made the claim that a conflict with China would be a “cure for American political polarization.” Spencer Ackerman, writing at Forever Wars [[link removed]], highlights how the sought-for unity of the War on Terror never came. The toll of the War on Terror is “measured in an unknown number of lives ruined [[link removed]], freedom stolen [[link removed]], demagogues empowered [[link removed]] and anti-democratic forces mobilized [[link removed]]. The China Cold War wouldn't redress that. It would scale it all up. ‘The Cure for American Political Polarization’ will not include your Asian-American neighbors any more than the post-9/11 ‘national unity’ included your Muslim neighbors.” And while the War on Terror was tragedy and folly all at once, any escalatory action with China would risk nuclear peril, thanks to the United States’ massive arsenal that Pentagon officials somehow keep portraying as insufficient to deter China’s modest arsenal. Seeking conflict to build unity at home won’t succeed, but it can increase the peril to all life on earth.

class consciousness

In the fall of 2022, student workers across the University of California system struck for better wages and labor protections, which included fighting to waive an additional fee imposed on international students. Ultimately, the unions agreed to a contract that included a raise and codified the non-residential tuition rules. To understand the role of international students in this fight, Lausan Collective interviewed student organizers [[link removed]], especially about the dual precarity of being seen as a revenue source for universities while under intense financial pressure.

“Because the crisis-generating machine that we call capitalism operates through minimizing reproductive cost and maximizing profit, it has fed on the colonial logic of extracting cheap or free resources from the Global South to the Global North, while transferring the cost of the crises in the reverse direction,” said Huang Yiwen from University of California, Irvine.

Ultimately, the organizers conclude, the experience of organizing and fighting is work that could pay forward in a longer struggle, as the modest gains won from the strike are built upon by more stringent, disciplined, and class-conscious student labor following.

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In the fixed world of drawn borders and assumed ethnostates, migration from climate change can be seen as an existential threat to the existing order — a tragic outcome to be avoided. But migration is a long-running human strategy to address external shocks and threats to life, and being open to seeing migration as a useful tool can better prepare countries for waves of change, argues Mahika Kohsla at The Diplomat [[link removed]].

“An effective climate adaptation strategy could be to streamline and formalize seasonal labor migration for the inclusion of climate migrants in social protection schemes. This could be done by creating registration and enumeration systems for internal migrants and their informal settlements, making service delivery systems and social welfare schemes portable [[link removed]], and ensuring the availability of temporary employment and housing opportunities in in-migration hotspots,” says Kohsla.

By thinking about migration now, and anticipating the change, nations in Southeast Asia and elsewhere can proactively prepare inland areas to absorb migrants, ensuring continuity of government even in crisis.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Trust the Process: Part II

International problems can require international solutions, but many of the organizations set up to address problems of global governance are, by design and tradition, slow to act. Much of the study of international organizations focuses on these relatively ponderous giants, the durable structures like the UN, World Health Organization, or NATO, which delicately balance the needs of members and the broader world. But sometimes, when there’s a specific crisis like a violent insurgency that arises across borders or a new disease outbreak in a whole region, ad-hoc organizations are formed to address the specific problem, and then often dissolved after the crisis has passed.

In “ Ad hoc coalitions in global governance: short-notice, task- and time-specific cooperation [[link removed]],” authors Yf Reykers, John Karlsrud, Malte Brosig, Stephanie Hofmann, Cristiana Maglia, and Pernille Rieker argue that these impromptu structures are worth further study, especially as they will shape how states might respond to crises in the future.

The authors define ad hoc coalitions as “autonomous arrangements with a task-specific mandate established at short notice for a limited period of time.” In practice, that looks a lot like a task force or relief mission put together by a few nations in service of an immediate crisis. One example is the Biafran airlift [[link removed]], a humanitarian mission that ran from 1967-1970. Responding to reports of starvation and risk of genocidal violence, a coalition formed of church groups, nongovernmental organizations, and airline companies that received “active (behind the scenes) support from several states, including the United States, Canada, Norway, and Denmark.” The coalition succeeded in evacuating 4,000 children from Nigeria.

A more contemporary example, and one that is the case for the researchers, is Task Force Takuba. In January 2020, the governments of Mali and Niger asked for help against a jihadist insurgency in a cross-border region shared with Burkina Faso. By Mar. 27, 2020, 11 European nations pledged to set up such an effort, and by Jul. 15, 2020, a multinational force was ready. The coalition was consciously formed outside the existing structures of either NATO or the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy [[link removed]].

The task force operated for almost two years, before being dissolved in June 2022. The mission ended not because the threat itself was gone but because the political relationship between France, the task force’s largest contributor, and Mali had changed, leading the rest of the coalition to withdraw. In particular, the military junta that took over Mali had invited Russian-backed mercenaries [[link removed]] from the Wagner group, which precipitated the French exit.

This is an example of how such organizations can be spun up to meet needs and then broken down when the task-specific nature of the mission no longer meets existing political realities.

“When global gridlock and inflexibility dominate a global governance problem, actors tend to look for solutions in which political resistance can be overcome or circumvented,” note the authors. But rather than seeing this as an end-run around existing structures, they could be studied as a complement to other international organizations. “Their short-notice creation suggests that AHCs [ad hoc coalitions], such as Task Force Takuba, are ‘first responder’ governance arrangements, whose performance should be examined in particular during the fast-burning phase of a crisis such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks.”

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Taylor Barnes investigated [[link removed]] state subsidies for nuclear weapons production, specifically diving deep into a contract between Northrop Grumman and Utah for intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) production. “The contract, obtained by Inkstick Media from the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, says the ICBM plant ‘anticipates bringing approximately 2,250 FTEs [full-time employees] with an annual average salary of $104,000’ over 20 years,” reported Barnes. “But later sections of the contract say the job creation required in order to claim state subsidies are detailed in an attachment.” Without transparency, the people of Utah are subsidizing a weapons program without a clear indication that it will deliver the promised jobs.

Durrie Bouscaren reported [[link removed]] on the tragic earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. The 7.8 magnitude quake has killed at least 5,000 people, with death tolls expected to rise as more bodies are uncovered from the rubble. "People are desperately trying to reach survivors," Bouscaren told Marco Werman. "They're trapped under the rubble and rescuers know they're facing a ticking clock. But rescue crews are spread out over an impossibly large area. The worst damage is spread over 10 Turkish provinces as well as northern Syria. And even getting to these victims is hard."

Emily Tamkin interrogated [[link removed]] the ousting of Representative Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Republicans, in justifying the move, pointed to what they called antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric,” wrote Tamkin, but the “move to strip Omar of her committee assignment came from the same party whose elected politicians repeatedly engage in antisemitic tropes for political gain.” On the committee, Omar has held the US government, as well as the Taliban and Israel, to a shared high standard of justice. With her removed from the committee, her voice for critiquing the policy of US enemies and allies alike is intentionally diminished.

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“ How To Hide An Empire [[link removed]],” Daniel Immerwahr, 2019 [[link removed]].

You know what they say, no pain no grain [[link removed]].

Whether you prefer your airships rigid, deflated [[link removed]], or at the center of an international [[link removed]] crisis, used bookstores have everything you need.

After the overthrow, there’s the violence of triumph. And after that, there’s the soul-crushing reality of a desk job administering the spoils of victory [[link removed]].

A crude metric of success [[link removed]].

Not just a leviathan but a levia-stan [[link removed]].

The lengths nation-states will go to do to violence but not call it a " shooting war [[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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