Historically, the US has demanded that North Korea abandon its nuclear program as a prerequisite for formally ending the ongoing Korean War... Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

...read about a new approach on North Korea.

Tomás Ojea Quintana, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, made waves [[link removed]] recently when he said in an interview [[link removed]] that the United States should pursue a peace agreement with North Korea regardless of whether North Korea chooses to give up its nuclear arsenal. Historically, the US has demanded that North Korea abandon its nuclear program as a prerequisite for formally ending the ongoing Korean War, so Quintana’s statement is a significant departure. Quintana argued that progress on human rights and denuclearization in North Korea is unlikely while the North is still under explicit threat from the US — which, incredibly, it is. The armistice that ended hostilities in Korea in 1953 was only a ceasefire, and the US and North Korea have never agreed on a formal end to the war.

Never let it be said that Davos gave us nothing

Last week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) actually released [[link removed]] something interesting. The ICRC polled 16,000 millennials in 16 countries about their attitudes toward global security issues, and found real evidence for what people who have social media already know in their hearts: 20- and 30-somethings think the world is about to end.

Of millennials surveyed, 54% believe that there will be a nuclear detonation in anger in the next 10 years, which is bad enough, but even more believe that there will be another world war in that time frame.

Those bleak predictions have led to renewed idealism in some (75% support limiting war through international law) and nihilism in others (37% say torture is justifiable in some instances). Presumably, at least 12% of respondents are quite confused.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Ah! Well, nevertheless

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deported Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, an Iranian student set to start his semester at Northeastern University in Boston, to France last week. That, depressingly, is par for the course, with border officers targeting [[link removed]] Iranian-born travelers in the wake of US-Iran tensions. What’s remarkable about Shahab Dehghani’s case is that CBP deported him after a federal judge expressly ordered them not to.

Judge Allison D. Burroughs scheduled a hearing at which she ordered a 48-hour stay of Shahab Dehghani’s deportation, but CBP put him on a flight before the hearing could take place, rendering the judge’s ultimate ruling moot.

Striking a blow for judicial authority, a judge at a follow-up hearing said of CBP: “I don’t think they are going to listen to me.” No contempt of court citations have been issued.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE REEVALUATING IRAQ: PART II

Last week on Deep Dive, we looked into the effects of elections on America’s war effort in Iraq. This week, we’ll take a step back to examine the rest of the “coalition of the willing” and look at some recent research on that coalition’s most notable attribute: its dwindling size.

Political scientist Patrick Mello has an article [[link removed]] in the European Journal of International Security examining why countries — and particularly democracies — left the American-led coalition to invade and occupy Iraq when they did. When countries sign on to join a war effort, they usually claim to be in it, as they say, to win it. As wars drag on, however, countries sometimes choose to drop out of military coalitions — to defect from them, in political science speak. The Iraq War is a useful case for studying coalition defection because so many countries defected from America’s coalition. Between 2003 and 2008, 18 democratically elected national leaders announced their countries’ unwillingness to remain in the coalition of the willing.

The most famous Iraq War coalition defection was Spain’s decision to withdraw in 2004, directly after a national election. A major al-Qaeda attack in Madrid, just before the election killed 193 people, and the center-right government’s bungled response played a part in a major electoral victory by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). New PSOE prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero immediately announced Spain’s withdrawal from Iraq, following through on a campaign promise.

As Mello shows, however, the Spain case was something of a perfect storm. Over the course of a long war, you might expect that defection would arise after the leaders who originally joined the coalition lost elections and were replaced by their political opponents. That happens, but, as Mello demonstrates, it’s actually quite rare and depends on other factors. Many coalition countries went through leadership changes without leaving the coalition. Mello found that leadership change only led to defection when the new leaders were significantly to the political left of the outgoing party, and when new elections were not imminent. That accounts for Spain’s defection, and for the less dramatic defections of Italy, Australia, Hungary, and Slovakia.

More striking is that many withdrawal decisions came from the exact same leaders who agreed to join the coalition in the first place. As casualties mounted — both military and civilian — and the war became less and less popular, many leaders who had initially signed on to the invasion had changes of heart. These leaders tended to be more conservative, and their withdrawal decisions came when they were not facing new elections — perhaps to maintain their credibility as hawks. Leaders in Honduras, Nicaragua, Bulgaria, Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and the Philippines all followed this path to defection. That’s an interesting finding, because most research on earlier wars suggested that risk of coalition defection increased around election time. The Iraq War, it turns out, made exiting war so popular that even some leaders whose political personas depended on them being warlike bailed on it.

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FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS

Shannon Sims recounted [[link removed]] the recent experience of Brazilian comedy troupe Porta dos Fundos, whose film, “The First Temptation of Christ,” was temporarily banned in Brazil for its depiction of Jesus as gay, and whose studios were attacked with Molotov cocktails following the film’s release. Brazil’s Supreme Court eventually reversed a lower court’s order to censor the film, but action against media that challenges the Brazilian right wing’s views is stepping up. Journalist Glenn Greenwald was indicted last week on cybercrime charges, stemming from reporting he did on corruption in Brazilian politics.

Bergen Cooper and Kevin Fisher made [[link removed]] the case that stalled progress in the global fight against HIV is due in part to the Trump administration’s decision to expand the so-called global gag rule to PEPFAR, the US government’s leading anti-HIV program. The gag rule prevents American dollars from going to implementing organizations that even mention the existence of abortion. That means PEPFAR can no longer support the family planning clinics most effective at reaching girls and young women at risk for HIV infection — a demographic where infection rates remain stubbornly high.

Chantal Flores spoke [[link removed]] to families in the western Balkans who lost loved ones during the wars of the 1990s and who now have a chance to recover their family members’ remains due to DNA testing. Some families have received only individual bones or fragments due to conditions in the mass graves, which has produced mixed reactions from those seeking definitive answers about their family members’ fates. Overall, however, the International Commission on Missing Persons has identified 24,914 of the roughly 35,000 missing people from the Balkan wars.

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

The Doomsday Clock, which measures expert opinion on the direness of existential threats like nuclear war and climate change, ticked [[link removed]] closer to midnight than it ever has before last week. If the clock gets there it means that, like Cinderella’s carriage, Earth has become an unlivable pumpkin of a planet. How did we end up with such a potent metaphor for a warning system? Well… [[link removed]]

Some say the opposite of soft power is hard power, but they’re wrong. The opposite of soft power is having coffee [[link removed]] so bad that it breaks a deadlock in Mideast peace talks.

The Guardian identified the leader of the violent neo-Nazi group The Base through an investigation that hinged in part on a land purchase the group made under the name of a cutout company called Base Global. The Base is scary, but calling your terrorist group’s cutout company the name of your terrorist group is objectively hilarious [[link removed]].

The Washington Post’s TikTok channel has reached the absolute height [[link removed]] of the form, even as the paper’s other departments have apparently decided that tweeting [[link removed]] reported facts is a punishable offense.

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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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