Iran's Silencing Strategy

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Iran’s Silencing Strategy Vaccine Nationalism Reigns Supreme

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Intimidation is no stranger to the Iranian regime. According to Reporters Without Borders, Iran has been “one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists for the past 40 years.” The recent assassination Of Ruhallah Zam is the latest in a line of 860 journalists that have been arrested or executed. Zam’s execution attracted international condemnation, however, that did not stop other regimes controlled by Iran from carrying out more threatening and assassinations. In this week’s cover story, Hanin Ghaddar looks at intimidation carried out by Iranian proxies across the region, in particular Iraq and Lebanon, and how, while Iran preparing for negotiations with the Biden administration, it is working on a different front –against its own people.

In the age of COVID-19 nobody is safe until everybody is safe. Making vaccines available to those who need them most is the fastest, as well as the fairest, way to bring the pandemic to an end. An international alliance, COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX), has been set to accelerate the development and manufacture of vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world. 180 countries have signed up to the initiative, however, despite commitments and promises of solidarity, many of these countries have prioritised their domestic needs at the expense of the poorer countries. In a special report, we examine the challenges that face this facing this global effort and how nationalism threatens its success.

The assassination of high-ranking IRGC officer Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been downplayed by the Iranian regime.

Fakhrizadeh was killed as he entered Syria.

Iran has good reason to avoid drawing attention to its activities in Syria. The regime has long downplayed its role in that conflict. Tehran contributes to regional instability by propping up a regime in Damascus that brutally represses its people and by funnelling weapons and supplies to its non-state allies and partners in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

Ariane M. Tabatabai examines Tehran’s engagement with Damascus and how the incoming Biden administration will need to accept that its options for countering Iranian influence in Syria are limited, but it can still take some immediate steps to increase its leverage.

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Iran Is in Syria to Stay

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Participants wearing Santa Claus costumes and wearing face protective masks take part in a charity event amid the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic in Pristina, Kosovo, 13 December 2020. The traditional Christmas charity run was cancelled due to measures taken by the government of the Republic of Kosovo to steam the widespread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which causes the Covid-19 disease. /EPA

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Supporters of US President Donald Trump demonstrate in Washington, DC, on December 12, 2020, to protest the 2020 election. Photo by Jose Luis Magana / AFP

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Iran Says it Would Rejoin Nuclear Deal Within an Hour of US Doing So Iran would return to compliance with the nuclear deal within an hour of the US doing so, its president said – but he faced further pressure from the outgoing Trump administration after it sanctioned two Iranian officials over their alleged involvement in the abduction of a former FBI agent. Hassan Rouhani also made clear he was not prepared to discuss any changes to the deal, or any constraints on Iran’s ballistic missile programme. His remarks on Monday, underlining his determination to lift crippling

sors of terrorism, a move that could help the African country get international loans to revive its battered economy and end its pariah status. The US embassy in Khartoum said in a Facebook post that the removal of Sudan was effective as of Monday, and that a notification to that effect, signed by the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, would be published in the federal register. It said the 45-day congressional notification period has lapsed. The designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism dates back to the 1990s, when Sudan briefly hosted the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted militants. The country was also believed to have served as a pipeline for Iran to supply weapons to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Delisting Sudan is also a key incentive for the government in Khartoum to normalise relations with

US sanctions, came ahead of a meeting on Wednesday of the joint commission, the body that brings together the current signatories to the nuclear deal. The commission would be the first chance for Iran and the European signatories to the deal – France Germany and the UK – to discuss a route back into the deal for the US under a new administration led by Joe Biden.

US Ends Sudan’s Pariah Status by Removing Country from Terrorism List Donald Trump’s outgoing administration has removed Sudan from the US list of state spon-

Israel. The two countries have agreed to have full diplomatic ties, making Sudan the third Arab state – after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain – to move to normalise relations with Israel this year. After Sudan, Morocco also established diplomatic ties with Israel.

Macron Tests Positive for COVID-19, Forcing Leaders to Self-isolate President Emmanuel Macron tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, his office said, prompting a track and trace effort across Europe following meetings between the French leader and EU heads of government in recent days.

Macron, 42, was running the country remotely after going into quarantine in the Elysee Palace, the presidency said. His wife Brigitte was also self-isolating. “This diagnosis was made following a PCR test performed at the onset of the first symptoms,” Macron’s office said, declining

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to give further details of his conditions or the symptoms he had. Macron will cancel all upcoming trips including a Dec. 22 visit to Lebanon where the French president has led international efforts to resolve a deep-rooted political crisis. But it was closer to home that Macron’s COVID infection spurred other leaders to take their own tests. Macron joined all but two of the European Union’s 27 leaders at a summit in Brussels late last week to discuss climate change, the EU budget and Turkey.

Turkey Condemns ‘Unjust’ U.S. Sanctions, Threatens Response Turkey on Monday Condemned U.S. Sanctions Over its Purchase of Russian S-400 Missile defences as a “grave mistake” and threatened to retaliate over a move it said would harm ties between the NATO allies. Washington imposed the long-anticipated sanctions on Turkey’s top defence procurement and development body, its chairman and three other employees. Analysts said the targeted move would mostly spare the broader Turkish economy. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called the decision “inexplicable” given that Washington repeatedly rejected Ankara’s offer to form a joint working group to allay U.S. concerns that the S-400s threatened NATO defences. “We call on the United States to revise the unjust sanctions (and) to turn back from this grave mistake as soon as possible,” it said.

“Turkey is ready to tackle the issue through dia-

logue and diplomacy in a manner worthy of the spirit of alliance.” The United States says Turkey’s determination to use the S-400s, acquired from Moscow in 2019, left it with no choice given F-35 jets and other shared defences would be vulnerable to NATO foe Russia. Turkey has said the ground-to-air missiles would not be plugged into NATO systems and pose no threat.

New Coronavirus Strain Spreading in UK Has Key Mutations, Scientists Say British scientists are trying to establish whether the rapid spread in southern England of a new variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 is linked to key mutations they have detected in the strain, they said on Tuesday. The mutations include changes to the important “spike” protein that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus uses to infect human cells, a group of scientists tracking the genetics of the virus said, but it is not yet clear whether these are

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making it more infectious. “Efforts are under way to confirm whether or not any of these mutations are contributing to increased transmission,” the scientists, from the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium, said in a statement. The new variant, which UK scientists have named “VUI – 202012/01” includes a mutation in the viral genome region encoding the spike protein, which - in theory - could result in COVID-19 spreading more easily between people. The British government on Monday cited a rise in new infections, which it said may be partly linked to the new variant, as it moved its capital city and many other areas into the highest tier of COVID-19 restrictions.

U.S. Crosses 300,000 COVID-19 Deaths as Vaccine Rollout Begins The number of coronavirus deaths in the United States crossed 300,000 on Monday, according to Reuters tally, as the hardest hit nation rolled out its first vaccine inoculations on Monday. The staggering death toll comes as the nation begins a historic inoculation campaign using a vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE. Moderna Inc’s vaccine could get approval as soon as this week. The vaccine comes as COVID-19 cases explode across the nation and hospital intensive care units run out of beds. Daily coronavirus cases and deaths have set records multiple times since Thanksgiving holidays with daily fatalities topping 3,000 for the second time last week on Friday, the same day the vaccine got approval from the Food and Drug Administration. It took 27 days to go from 250,000 total U.S. COVID-19 deaths to 300,000 - the fastest 50,000-death jump since the pandemic began. Some models project that deaths could reach 500,000 before vaccines become widely available in the spring and summer.

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Iran’s Silencing Strategy A New Front to its Old Ways 10

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Iran has a long history of assassinations, but it seems that Iran and its proxies are picking up the pace and rushing their silencing strategy while traveling in Iraq, and soon after executed in Tehran.

As Zam’s execution drew immediate international condemnation, other arrests, intimidation, and assassinations were taking place in other countries that the Iranian regime controls; that is, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Iran has a long history of assassinations, but it seems that Iran and its proxies are picking up the pace and rushing their silencing strategy, for fears that stronger and more persistent protests will come post the pandemic, especially with a Biden administration that focuses on human rights issues, including freedom of expression and the right to protest.

When Biden takes over, and the pandemic subsides, Iran might have to hold back its assassinations and intimidation techniques, and prepare for negotiations. Therefore, as the world watches potential military escalation during the remainder of the Trump administration, the Iranian regime is working on a different front – against its own people. They hope that this intense campaign of intimidation could work as a warning against possible return of demonstrations and calls for regime changes in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Ruhollah Zam, a former opposition figure who had lived in exile in France and had been implicated in antigovernment protests, speaks during his trial at Iran’s Revolutionary Court in Tehran on June 2020 ,2. (Getty)

RUHALLAH ZAM

by Hanin Ghaddar * Iranian dissident Ruhallah Zam – a journalist exiled in Paris – was kidnapped and assassinated by the Iranian regime earlier this month.

Zam is known for his work that inspired much of the economic protests in 2017, and the Iranian authorities have been trying to track him for a long time, until they finally did. He was abducted

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Zam’s execution happened very fast. It occurred four days after the Iranian Supreme Court upheld his death sentence. Earlier this year, a court sentenced Zam to death due to charges of espionage or an attempt to overthrow the Iranian government.

Zam was an activist who was known for running

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an online opposition news website, called Amad News, and had over a million followers on his Telegram channel. He is the son of a reformist Shiite cleric, Mohammad Ali Zam, who served in government back in the 1980s, and allegedly did not support his son’s work and efforts against the Iranian regime.

But most importantly, Zam’s website and Telegram feed played a significant role in the antigovernment protests that broke out across Iran in 2017. Back then, around 5,000 people were detained and 25 killed in the demonstrations.

Zam used his outlets to share information about the protests, including timings and locations of the demonstrations, in an attempt to gather more people in the streets. Since then, the Iranian regime decided that this man is dangerous.

Several activists and advocacy groups have condemned Zam’s execution. According to Reporters Without Borders, Iran has been “one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists for the past 40 years.” At least 860 journalists have been arrested or executed in the country since 1979.

Zam is one of three opposition figures apparently detained in intelligence operations abroad.

In late July, a California-based opposition figure was also abducted while in Dubai, and another Farajollah Chaab – was abducted while visiting Turkey.

INTIMIDATION ACROSS THE REIGON The international pressure worked to a certain extent – not to save Zam’s life, unfortunately but at least to send a strong message to Iran. Two days before it was supposed to launch, France and other European countries withdrew from the Europe-Iran business forum, which later that day, declared in a separate statement, that they were postponing the event.

A few days later, Hussein Khattab, a reporter for the Arabic TRT, was assassinated in the Syrian city of Al-Bab on Dec. 12. Meanwhile, another Iraqi activist, Salah al-Iraqi, was shot dead, according to local Iraqi reports. Al-Iraqi was known for his active role in the anti-government protests that erupted in Baghdad and the Shia-majority south last October, and for

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Lebanese youths gather around the Revolution fist, symbol of Lebanon’s October 2019 uprising. (Getty)

his criticism of the Iranian regime’s influence in Iraq.

Iraq has recently witnessed many assassinations and assignation attempts against activists and journalists who were involved in the protests. In addition, around 600 people were killed in protest-related violence since October 2019 - at the hands of militias supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

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International Human Rights organizations have repeatedly called the Iraqi authorities to protect protestors and activists, and hold those behind the violence responsible. Alas, all promises and efforts have not lead to substantial protective mechanisms.

In response, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called, yet again, the authorities to increase their efforts. The authorities’

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“failure” to bring the perpetrators to justice was “perpetuating and further entrenching decades of impunity that have left brave individuals without the most basic protection”, the groups said.

INCREASED OPPRESSION IN LEBANON Lebanon is also witnessing an intensified wave of intimidation and persecution. Since the protests of October 2019, many journalists and activists were attacked – verbally and physically –

by Hezbollah’s media army and street thugs, and a number were arrested and interrogated by state security institutions. But recently, these attacks are taking a more serious tone and the victims fear for their lives.

A couple of weeks ago, Mariam Seif – a journalist who lives in Hezbollah’s stronghold of Beirut’s southern Suburbs, has been threatened

by Hezbollah members for a while. But recently, these threats have increased. Seif reported on her twitter account that she has received a message from a Hezbollah member that indicated that she and her family will be dead if they step outside their house in Dahiyeh (the Southern Suburbs of Beirut).

This came after Seif’s brother was physically attacked by the same people but no action was taken by the authorities to hold the assailant responsible, because he was protected by Hezbollah.

According to Seif and her family, the attempts are made to force them to leave the area and

At least 860 journalists have been arrested or executed in Iran since 1979

move out of Dahiyeh. Accordingly, Seif went to the police to file a complaint – instead, she was detained and interrogated, and was denied her right to have her lawyer present. To make things clear to Seif and her family, Hezbollah had the nephew of Hezbollah politician Amin Sherry present at the police station to support the assailant.

As this incident continue to unfold, Kinda AlKhatib, a Lebanese activist from Tripoli was sentenced to three years in prison, after six months of detention, for “collaborating with the enemy, entering the occupied Palestinian territories, and dealing with Israeli spies and those working for Israel’s interests.” However, according to Al-Khatib’s lawyer and family members, she was falsely accused because the military court could not prove that she has actually entered Israel or that she had been in touch with Israeli spies. In fact, Al-Khatib has been very active during the protests of October 2019, and had regularly criticized Hezbollah and President Michel Aoun on her social media accounts.

Zam, Khattab, al-Iraqi, Seif, and al-Khatib are not the first and unfortunately, will not be the last victims of Iran’s oppression machine. The more Iran and its regional proxies are pressured, and the harder they feel the pressure, the more violent they will become.

Their violence will not be targeted against the US, Israel, or the West in general. It will rather be directed against their own people in the countries it controls: dissidents, activist and journalists. Iran is weaker today because its constituencies in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon no longer believe in its rhetoric and goals, and this is the Iranian regime’s most fearful nightmare. * Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Geduld Program on Arab Politics.

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Vaccine Nationalism Reigns Supreme Global Equitable Access to COVID19- Vaccine is in Big Trouble Despite Promises of Solidarity 16

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Majalla - London At this historic moment in time, the COVID19global pandemic has already caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and disrupted the lives of billions more. Introduction of a vaccine is essential to reducing the tragic loss of life and helping to get the pandemic under control as well as prevent the loss of US$ 375 billion to the global economy every month.

Global equitable access to a vaccine, particularly protecting health care workers and those most-at-risk, is the only way to mitigate the public health and economic impact of the pandemic. But at a time where nationalism is gaining foot, and global cooperation is eroding, there needs to be a way we ensure rich countries don›t stockpile the shots, leaving poor countries out in the cold. It›s a goal that the COVID19- Vaccine Global Access (COVAX), an international alliance established to ensure that all countries have equal access to the vaccine, believes it can achieve if governments are willing to work together. But despite commitments and talk of solidarity, it appears that vaccine nationalism, in which countries prioritise their domestic needs at the expense of others, reigns supreme.

AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT

A person wearing a protective mask sits waiting at a rapid-antigen methodology Covid19- test site set up in Ahmedabad, India. (Getty)

More than 180 countries have signed up to COVAX, which is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations ( CEPI) and The World Health Organisation (WHO), representing nearly %90 of the global population.

«By pooling financial and scientific resources, these participating economies will be able to insure themselves against the failure of any individual vaccine candidate and secure successful vaccines in a cost-effective, targeted way,» the WHO explained in a news release.

The goal of COVAX is to have 2 billion doses to distribute by the end of 2021, which should be enough to help countries vaccinate %20 of their populations and end the acute phase of the pandemic. Funding needed to meet this initial target is estimated at 4.9$ billion in addition to 2.1$ billion already raised. So far, Britain and European Union countries are the main

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At a time where nationalism is gaining foot and global cooperation is eroding, there needs to be a way we ensure rich countries don’t stockpile the shots donors to COVAX. The European Union has announced this month it will contribute an additional 500€ million in grant funding to support the COVAX Facility to secure access to the future COVID19- vaccine in low and middle-income countries. The funds will complement the 400€ million in guarantees the EU already committed for COVAX. The facility is also receiving funds from private donors, mainly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that as the virus spreads in Europe and other parts of the world, «equitably sharing of vaccines is the fastest way to safeguard high-risk communities, stabilise health systems and drive a truly global economic recovery.»

THE LIMITS OF SOLIDARITY While participation in COVAX can be considered as an insurance plan even for the richest countries, the U.S. and Russia have both opted out of the project—a decision that, in the case of Washington, was prompted by the participation of the World Health Organization, which the U.S. withdrew from this year. China had also initially missed the deadline for joining the initiative.

This is far from being COVAX›s only challenge. There is also the paradox that countries with greater resources who have committed to COVAX have simultaneously negotiated their own bilateral commitments with manufacturers, thus rendering their contributions as merely symbolic while also undermining the initiative›s goal of equal distribution.

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Through these direct deals with vaccine developers for advance purchases of anticipated COVID19- vaccines, high-income countries have bought up the vast majority of the world›s vaccine supply, with many countries claiming enough to inoculate their population several times over. Data collected by the People›s Vaccine Alliance shows that rich nations representing just %14 of the world›s population have bought up %53 of all the most promising vaccines so far, with Canada topping the chart with enough doses to vaccinate each Canadian five times. The group said that so far all of Moderna›s vaccine doses and %96 of Pfizer/ BioNTech›s have been bought up by rich countries.

The group - which includes organisations such as Oxfam and Amnesty International say that COVAX signatories including Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union, are undermining the pact through these side deals for large vaccine shipments. As things stand 67 poorer countries will be able to vaccinate only one in 10 people against the virus next year, with five of those - Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ukraine - reporting 1.5 million coronavirus cases between them.

WHO director-general has repeatedly warned against so-called «vaccine nationalism», saying «no-one is safe until everyone is safe».

But senior officials at the organisation have

High-income countries have bought up the vast majority of the world’s vaccine supply, with many countries claiming enough to inoculate their population several times over.

acknowledged privately that the COVAX facility is flawed, despite publicly lauding its success. «The whole call for global solidarity has mostly been lost,» said Dr. Katherine O›Brien, WHO›s vaccines chief, during a recent internal discussion, a recording of which was obtained by the AP. COVAX has also banked on cheaper and easier to transport vaccines such as the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, rather than vaccines from frontrunners Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna that use more expensive new mRNA technology, further impeding their ability to fairly allocate the vaccine through

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Boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID19- vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo manufacturing plant on December 2020 ,13 in Portage, Michigan.

(Getty)

the initiative. The People›s Vaccine Alliance said that while the Oxford/AstraZeneca had «in welcome contrast» pledged to provide %64 of their doses to people in developing nations, that supply would likely still only reach %18 of the world›s population next year at most.

Internal documents leaked to Reuters this week paint an even bleaker picture for the equitable distribution of the vaccine. Gavi says the COVAX programme is struggling from a lack of funds, supply risks and complex contractual arrangements, which could make it impossible to achieve its goals. «The risk of a failure to establish a successful COVAX facility is very

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The failure of the COVAX could leave some people without access to vaccines until 2024, one of the documents says. high,» says an internal report to the board of Gavi. The failure of the facility could leave some people without access to vaccines until 2024, one of the documents says.

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Iran Is in Syria to Stay The U.S. Needs to Accept that its Options for Countering Iran’s Influence are Limited

By Ariane M. Tabatabai

The news came just days after another high-ranking IRGC officer, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, whom intelligence Early last week, Iraqi officials announced that an agencies have long viewed as the mastermind behind airstrike had killed a commander in Iran’s Islamic Iran’s previous covert nuclear weapons program, Revolutionary Guard Corps as he entered Syria from was assassinated near Tehran. Although Israel has, Iraq on November 29 with a consignment of weapons. characteristically, remained silent, its intelligence

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organization is widely suspected of both killings.

Iranian officials were quick to blame Fakhrizadeh’s death on Israel and to promise retaliation. But they have refused to acknowledge that an attack on IRGC forces near the Iraqi-Syrian border —let alone one that killed a senior commander—even took place. A day after Fakhrizadeh’s funeral procession was broadcast on state television, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry derided reports of an IRGC general’s killing in Syria as “media propaganda.”

Iran has good reason to avoid drawing attention to its activities in Syria. The regime has long downplayed its role in that conflict. In recent days, American analysts have largely focused on whether Iran’s promised revenge for Fakhrizadeh’s killing could derail U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s hopes of reviving the Iran nuclear deal. But Tehran’s engagement with Damascus remains a danger to regional stability. Tensions between Iran and Israel over Syria are escalating rapidly and may force the Biden administration to act there soon after taking office.

LIMITED LEVERAGE

Syrian demonstrators look at a poster bearing the portraits of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (Getty)

For several years, Israel has made a habit of periodically striking Iranian positions in Syria. In recent months, Israel has targeted high-level Iranian assets with hits that have heightened tensions between Iran and the United States. News media have reported that U.S. President Donald Trump gave his hawkish secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, carte blanche to punish Iran, so long as the attacks don’t “start World War III.” The White House has not confirmed these reports, but they appear to feed the Iranian government’s anxiety that the United States will continue to greenlight Israeli actions or even take matters into its own hands, targeting Iranian assets.

Biden has indicated that countering Iran’s presence and influence in Syria will be a priority for his administration. Tehran contributes to regional instability by propping up a regime in Damascus that brutally represses its people and by funneling weapons and supplies to its nonstate allies and partners in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. The Trump administration correctly identified the problem but pursued an all-or-nothing policy that vastly overestimated Washington’s leverage over Tehran.

This approach has only entrenched and expanded the Islamic Republic’s influence in Syria. To turn the tide

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Tehran contributes to regional instability by propping up a regime in Damascus that brutally represses its people in the other direction, Biden’s foreign policy team will need to work with partners in the region and in Europe and recognize that Iran will almost certainly maintain a degree of influence in Syria. U.S. leverage in Syria is limited, but it includes airpower, a presence in the country’s northeast region, and control over those areas’ oil fields. U.S. leverage also includes the prospect of sanctions relief, which both Iran and Syria desperately need.

IRAN AND SYRIA Since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s relations with its Arab neighbors have been rocky at best.

During the 88-1980 Iran-Iraq War, virtually all Arab states in the region sided with Saddam Hussein. Syria was a notable exception, supporting Iran. Throughout the two decades that followed, Hafez al-Assad and his son and successor, Bashar, remained among the Islamic Republic’s only loyal friends in the region.

When unrest started to brew in Syria in 2011, Iran lent the Assad regime a hand in crushing it. What Tehran may have initially intended as a quick campaign soon became a full-blown military intervention that included, at its height, members of Iran’s IRGC as well as conventional military forces. Iran would also gradually mobilize its nonstate allies and partners to support Assad. The real number of Iranian and Iranianbacked forces still operating in Syria is difficult to estimate from publicly available information. Many Iranian forces have left the country as Assad has cemented his grip, but a number of commanders and operatives have stayed on to secure Iran’s interests and oversee continued operations.

Tehran sees Syria as a critical piece of its “axis of resistance” and an important route for the transfer of arms and other supplies to Lebanese Hezbollah.

A post-Assad government might not favor Iran’s influence and might even be more Sunni in composition, therefore aligning with Iran’s regional

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rivals, such as Saudi Arabia. With few allies in the region, Iran sees a friendly government in Syria as vital to its survival and power.

USING ALL CHANNELS The incoming Biden administration will need to accept that its options for countering Iranian influence in Syria are limited, but it can still take some immediate steps. For instance, the SDF currently faces a ceaseand-desist order from Washington on talking to the Syrian regime. The new administration should remove this roadblock and allow for greater SDF engagement, with Russia as an intermediary. If there is one regional player that is vehemently opposed to Iranian influence in Syria, it is the SDF: Iranian-backed militias have relentlessly harassed the SDF along the Euphrates River and populations in the cities of Deir ez-Zor and Qamishli. The SDF, particularly if it negotiates alongside Russia, could help remove Iranian-linked militias from areas that the United States and others are working to stabilize.

The United States has long maintained a diplomatic channel with Russia regarding Syria. While recognizing Russia’s limited influence and will to engage Iran, the United States should continue to work with Russia where interests align. Both Moscow and Tehran seek to declare Assad’s victory and capitalize on it; the United States should leverage the growing gap between Russia and Iran. The United States can press Russia to help remove Iranian forces and their affiliated militias from areas along the Euphrates River valley and from areas within striking distance of Israel. In exchange, it can offer to cede to Moscow areas that are not important to the United States but that Russia deems critical to its objectives

Biden has indicated that countering Iran’s presence and influence in Syria will be a priority for his administration

of reestablishing the Assad regime’s control over all of Syria, such as the U.S. base in al-Tanf.

The United States should also work with Ankara and Moscow to box out Tehran. One possibility is to establish trilateral discussions regarding terrorist cells in Idlib, the last remaining stronghold of the Syrian opposition and apparently home to some members of ISIS and al Qaeda, among other violent extremist groups. The task will not be simple. U.S.Turkish relations are in disrepair, Moscow and Ankara fundamentally disagree on which groups should be labeled as terrorists, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shown himself willing to provoke conflict from eastern Europe to North Africa. Nonetheless, Washington can reinforce a U.S.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (R), President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) pose for a photo as they attend the 4th trilateral summit on Syria (Getty)

position in Syria’s northeast while working to root out terrorist cells and reinserting itself as a critical player in future Syrian diplomatic efforts.

The United States should continue to work closely with Israel to ensure both that Israel has the freedom to eradicate threats near its border with Syria and that it holds a stake in any negotiations regarding Iran and its affiliates. The United States may be able to use the talks it has separately with Israel and with Russia as a springboard to a trilateral negotiation, in which the United States and Israel can hold Russia accountable for any promises it makes. The trilateral discussions may also prove useful for sharing intelligence on Iranian weapons movements and potential threats to Israel.

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The Biden administration will inherit a complicated file on the Middle East, not least because of the tensions between Iran and Israel, including over Syria. The current U.S. policy to address Iran’s role in Syria overestimates the United States’ influence and its ability to roll back that of Iran. A new U.S. administration must accept that for the time being, Iran will neither fully leave Syria nor completely lose its influence there. But a realistic, incremental U.S. policy in Syria will help the United States lower tensions and mitigate its losses.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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Big Tech Can Help Bring War Criminals to Justice Protecting Human Rights is a Responsibility of Social Media Companies

By Alexa Koenig The video starts innocuously. A soldier in camouflage pants and a black shirt speaks to men who are mostly out of frame, punctuating his words with waves of his right hand. A pistol dangles from his

left hand, and another man kneels behind him, hands behind his head. But a minute into the video, the soldier in the black shirt suddenly pivots and shoots.

The kneeling figure slumps forward as the soldier strides toward him, shooting the prisoner twice more in the head.

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More than three years later, this footage is a central piece of evidence in a novel case pending before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Prosecutors in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the man in the black shirt, Libyan militia commander Mahmoud al-Werfalli, after videos documenting his role in the killing of 33 people surfaced online. The evidence against Werfalli, unlike that presented in any other case in the court’s history, is based primarily on social media documentation. Without the videos, prosecutors would have no case.

Although the Werfalli videos have grabbed headlines, they are hardly unique. Evidence of the world’s most egregious crimes, including genocide, torture, and the destruction of cultural heritage property, circulates in real time on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Understandably, these companies often remove the most graphic content from public view. But human rights advocates and reporters have long argued that destroying such evidence undermines future prosecutions and denies victims the justice they deserve.

Instagram, Messenger and Facebook icons are seen displayed on a phone screen /Getty

As a result, social media companies face a dilemma: they need to prevent their platforms from becoming superspreaders of harmful content, while simultaneously preserving access to evidence of mass atrocities. A viable solution would be socalled evidence lockers—freestanding repositories for potential evidence found on social media, operated by external nonprofits or by social media companies themselves. Such archives already exist in other legal fields, but tech firms, in conjunction with human rights organizations, need to build on this tested model to create specific vaults for war crimes documentation.

EVIDENCE VAULTS Evidence lockers aren’t a new idea. Archives exist to preserve evidence of a range of criminal activities, including terrorism, child pornography, and antiquities trafficking—cataloging material that has evidentiary, historic, or research value but that social media companies or the uploader might remove from public view. Established vaults vary according to who holds the content

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War crimes are unique in that governments are often implicated in the violence and are therefore unable or unwilling to hold themselves accountable and who submits material (social media companies or external parties), whether firms are legally compelled to preserve the content, and who can access the archive.

When designing vaults for war crimes evidence, the first priority should be allowing content to be stored for long periods of time, given the often significant lag between the commission of atrocities and the start of legal investigations. Since evidence is often highly sensitive, vaults also need to include clear and consistent safeguards around who can access and view the stored information.

Those designing systems for archiving content should also consider how to prevent repositories from reflecting old colonial paradigms, where institutions echo the interests and preferences of Western backers to the detriment of other countries. Critics of the ICC, for instance, often cite its almost exclusive focus on crimes committed in Africa. To avoid that kind of bias, potential evidence lockers need to preserve content regardless of politics or geography. Ideally, laws would protect the underlying data by standardizing what content is safeguarded and also resolve tensions between access and privacy, intellectual property concerns, and national security considerations.

In a departure from previous practices, war crimes evidence lockers should give human rights groups and international organizations a say in what gets preserved. Typically, governments and companies determine these matters. For instance, neither the ICC nor the existing UN mechanisms documenting atrocities in Syria and Myanmar currently have clear authority to require that companies preserve evidence.

This needs to change. War crimes are unique in that governments are often implicated in the vio-

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lence and are therefore unable or unwilling to hold themselves accountable. By giving human rights and humanitarian institutions a way to request that evidence be preserved until courts or other legal actors have an opportunity to intervene, social media companies can ensure that crucial material is protected from destruction.

WHY COMPANIES CARE Absent an act of Congress requiring social media firms to establish evidence repositories, why would companies such as Facebook and Twitter do so? It is likely easier for them to simply delete content and avoid the complex bureaucracy of law enforcement, human rights organizations, and international tribunals.

International norms provide one answer. According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, social media companies are expected to respect and protect human rights, avoid activities that cause or contribute to abuses, and prevent or mitigate violations of these norms linked to their operations. Preserving social media content and sharing that data with relevant authorities arguably falls within these guidelines.

Indeed, several major tech companies—including Microsoft and Facebook—have expressed support for these principles and announced steps to better align their practices with them.

But firms also have material incentives to participate. Legislators, advertisers, company employ-

Another challenge is figuring out how to make content available to war crimes investigators while protecting the privacy of users who posted the data

ees, and users have lobbied companies to do a better job of supporting human and civil rights. For example, civil rights groups recently launched a campaign under the hashtag #StopHateForProfit to pressure Facebook to address hate speech and misinformation on its platform. Google employees also protested the company’s involvement in Project Maven, a Pentagon-based initiative that would refine the use of artificial intelligence for a range of military purposes, including drone strikes. Google ultimately withdrew from the project. The threat of regulation, loss of ad revenue, damage to employee morale, and negative publicity are strong incentives for companies to improve their records on holding war criminals to account.

To their credit, several companies have already begun engaging with human rights organizations to explore the possibility of establishing

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Mahmoud al-Werfalli speaking in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi /Getty

looking at past efforts to combat illegal activities.

Firms could, for example, rely on definitions used by official bodies such as the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights or focus primarily on clear cases of abuse, such as mass killings or the use of chemical weapons, that lend themselves well to detection by both human moderators and machines.

Another challenge is figuring out how to make content available to war crimes investigators while protecting the privacy of users who posted the data as well as those depicted in their posts—a simultaneous legal and ethical concern. One way to address these privacy issues is to err on the side of caution, preserving the data but then limiting who can access it and under what terms.

A DIGITAL LEGACY On December 1, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in partnership with UC Berkeley School of Law’s Human Rights Center, will launch the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations.

The protocol, part of a global effort to set standards for the use of online content in international criminal cases, reflects a growing recognition that online information has the power to strengthen accountability for human rights violations worldwide. The Werfalli case is just one example. On war crimes evidence lockers. Social media firms, October 5, human rights groups filed a historic encouraged by human rights researchers, have case in Germany accusing the Syrian regime of floated the idea of contributing data to an inde- Bashar al-Assad of war crimes. Their argument pendent repository or simply retaining the infor- relied on both traditional evidence and informamation themselves. At a minimum, many of these tion sourced from social media. Several other companies recognize that they have a moral, and cases currently before European courts rely on a in some cases a legal, obligation to protect the similar combination of evidence. public from harmful content while ensuring that important information remains available for inter- As evidence gathered from social media becomes more widely used in war crimes cases, companational justice efforts. nies and human rights organizations must devise Still, challenges remain. One is identifying what a thoughtful system for preserving irreplaceable content should qualify for preservation. Like “ter- content. Without such a system, even mass atrocirorism” and “hate speech,” “war crime” can be ties that are documented in real time on social mean uncomfortably slippery term. This makes it dia will risk going unpunished. hard to automatically detect relevant content; algorithms don’t play well with ambiguity. Still, advocates and companies can solve that problem by

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This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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How to Prepare for a National Security Crisis

Biden’s Administration Must Take this Opportunity to Look Ahead

By Paul B. Stares

COVID-19 pandemic, the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden has even more reason than No new administration wants unexpected foreign cri- usual to want to focus on matters at home. The world, ses to distract it from addressing its domestic priori- however, is rarely so accommodating. Every adminties. Given the pressing need to manage the ongoing istration since the end of the Cold War has had to manage on average 15 foreign crises—defined here

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as intense periods of high-level deliberation triggered by a threatening development overseas that might warrant sending U.S. armed forces into harm’s way—during each four-year term.

Not all foreign crises are created equal. Some come and go quickly with no lasting consequences; others fester to become major problems or come out of nowhere and cause immediate harm. Not surprisingly, U.S. presidents and senior officials have often lamented that they should have gotten (or heeded) warnings of a particular crisis earlier. In many cases, moreover, they have regretted the decisions they subsequently made or did not take.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden walks to announce U.S. Army General Lloyd Austin as his choice to be Secretary of the Department of Defense (Getty)

The recommendations for better anticipating and managing foreign crises offered by J. Peter Scoblic and Philip E. Tetlock (“A Better Crystal Ball”) and Elke U. Weber (“Heads in the Sand,” both articles in Foreign Affairs, November/December 2020) are thus welcome. Yet good ideas mean nothing if they never get implemented, as Scoblic and Tetlock acknowledge. The opportunity to initiate organizational changes that improve U.S. preparedness to foresee and respond to threatening developments overseas does not come often, usually at the very start of an administration or after a particularly egregious intelligence or policy failure. Taking advantage of the former is obviously preferable to waiting for the latter.

Accordingly, the Biden administration should take the following steps early on to lessen the risk of the United States being blindsided and repeatedly whipsawed by foreign crises.

The Biden administration should take steps early on to lessen the risk of the United States being blindsided and repeatedly whipsawed by foreign crises. makers it is intended to help. More accurate forecasts about a potential geopolitical event mean little if its probable consequences are not also clear—the equivalent of predicting that it will rain tomorrow without also conveying that the rain will cause major flooding.

Nor is greater precision helpful if decision-makers can’t take advantage of it. Accordingly, finding the right time horizon for forecasting—not too close to the present and not too far into the future—is crucial.

A traffic report that warns about likely congestion from an accident in time for an alternative route to be taken is clearly better than one that comes too late.

Generating useful forward-looking national security risk assessments should ideally be a collaborative effort of intelligence analysts and policymakers. Policymakers need unbiased and dispassionate analysis from the intelligence community, which in turn has to appreciate and respond to their interests and needs.

This requires a mediating body to facilitate interaction while minimizing potential analytic bias and politicization. One solution is to establish a Joint Assessments Committee at the National Security Council First, it should institute regular “horizon scanning” (NSC) made up of senior policy and intelligence offor emerging national security risks. Currently, the ficials who ensure the regular production of forwardbulk of U.S. intelligence collection and analysis suplooking estimates. Ideally, this committee would also ports the immediate operational needs of busy policyproduce and maintain a “watch list” of plausible conmakers and military commanders in the field. There tingencies that pose a significant risk to U.S. interis little demand for forward-looking assessments—esests, reviewed and updated every six months. And to pecially long-term ones—given all the uncertainties ensure that the committee has the necessary authorthat attend such analysis. It is no wonder, therefore, ity to direct the bureaucracy and that its findings are that the United States so often fails to anticipate forheard at the highest level, the national security adviser eign events. and the director of the Office of National Intelligence should serve as joint chairs.

Scoblic and Tetlock offer various foresight techniques—such as better scenario planning and probaSuch peering into the future is valuable only if it helps bilistic forecasting—that would help overcome strateto stimulate and guide an effort to mitigate the risk gic myopia. But such analysis will make a difference posed by the most worrisome contingencies. The U.S. only if it is compelling and actionable to the decisiongovernment, however, is currently not organized or,

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for that matter, predisposed to respond to forwardlooking assessments. Remarkably, only the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security carry out regular contingency planning for potential military operations and catastrophic domestic events respectively. Most other departments and agencies will only turn their attention to prospective foreign crises when they have already started to materialize.

So along with regular horizon scanning, the second initiative of the new administration should be to establish a routine contingency-planning process that involves all relevant civilian agencies. Such planning will be effective, however, only if it operates with the imprimatur of the president and there exists a suitably empowered focal point at the NSC to oversee it. Contingency planning is often resisted on grounds that it rarely anticipates precisely how and when events play out. But that critique misses the value of contingency planning done well. Discussing crisis-response options in advance, particularly those that may involve the use of force or involve third parties, often exposes specific challenges or requirements, which is clearly preferable to discovering them in the high-pressure circumstances of a real crisis. Developing a flexible “playbook” of measures rather than a fixed plan is also desirable so that decision-makers can adapt quickly.

Finally, the administration should commit to upgrading the general readiness of senior officials to manage crises. Given the press of daily events, there is little incentive for policymakers to devote much if any time to issues that may never arise or to become familiar

Whatever valuable lessons or insights are acquired by policymakers during their time in office are rarely if ever passed along to their successors

with crisis arrangements until they absolutely have to. Moreover, political appointees who typically occupy the senior crisis-management positions in the U.S. government receive little or no preparation for what they may encounter while in office. They essentially learn as they go along. Consequently, the management of crises is almost invariably ad hoc and improvised. Policymakers scramble to make sense of what is happening, what is at stake, and what to do in response. This approach has worked sometimes, but there are many cases when it clearly did not. Moreover, whatever valuable lessons or insights are acquired by policymakers during their time in office are rarely if ever passed along to their successors. There is certainly no systematic effort to capture and convey “best practices” and “lessons learned” to subsequent generations of decision-makers.

This general deficiency will persist so long as there

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Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab arrives for a COBRA meeting at 10 Downing street in central London (Getty)

is no government-wide effort to professionalize crisis management, including, for instance, adopting the methods to minimize psychological and institutional biases that Weber highlights in her essay. In the meantime, a dedicated and permanent directorate staffed by civil servants should be established at the NSC to enhance crisis preparedness, including organizing and managing exercises, and to provide support when crises arise. (The British government’s COBRA emergency management arrangements provide a useful model.) This directorate would also oversee the staff of the White House’s Situation Room, which currently provides only communications and technical support.

These initiatives are more likely to gain traction if they are incorporated into the presidential directive laying out the organization, membership, and working

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practices of the NSC that every administration issues when it takes office. The last time crisis-prevention and contingency-planning functions were explicitly identified and assigned to specific elements of the NSC was during the administration of President Bill Clinton—a legacy of the Cold War, when virtually every administration emphasized crisis preparedness in its NSC organizational directive. The relevant documents for the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump administrations since then barely mention it. As the world grows more complex and challenging, it is essential that the Biden administration elevate the importance of crisis preparedness once again and lend it the authority and resources it deserves.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The U.S. Can’t Check China Alone Dated Cold War Formulas Will Never be the Answer

By Odd Arne Westad

the service of its authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions. Seeking to elucidate “the intellectual In mid-November, the State Department’s Policy sources of China’s conduct,” the document is clearly Planning Staff released a -74page report arguing that meant to evoke “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” the China aims to fundamentally revise the world order in seminal article that the first director of policy planning,

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George Kennan, wrote in Foreign Affairs under the byline “X” in 1947. The new report, intended as a blueprint for China policy in the second Trump term that was not to be, raises problems that remain relevant for the incoming Biden administration. But it has far less to say when it comes to solutions.

The Trump administration’s report correctly sees China as the greatest challenge to the United States since the end of the Cold War, showing how Beijing has grown more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad. It also rightly recognizes how China has tried to gain an advantage by applying economic pressure and conducting espionage—as well as by exploiting the naiveté that causes many foreigners to miss the oppressive nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The U.S. removed the currency manipulator label it imposed on China last summer, a sign of easing tensions between the economic powers (Getty)

Last year, in an essay in Foreign Affairs (“The Sources of Chinese Conduct,” September/October 2019), I discussed policymakers’ attempts to come up with an updated version of Kennan’s policy of containment and assessed the parallels between the Soviet Union then and China today. As I argued then, the differences between the Cold War and the current challenge are greater than the similarities, and although officials should learn from previous policy, they must not be constrained by it. Indeed, the greatest weakness of the Trump administration’s report is its inability to break free of what has hobbled U.S. policy toward China up to now: an attempt to apply twentieth-century remedies to twenty-first-century problems. Although the administration’s diagnosis may be close to the mark, the treatment proposed is destined to fail.

WHAT MAKES CHINA TICK China’s foreign policy today is driven by a toxic mix of nationalism and past grievances, but it is also infused with pragmatism and patience. Powered by its extraordinary economic growth, China continuously seeks to test the ability of any foreign country to stand up to its interests as defined by the CCP. As the State Department’s report recognizes, this policy in no way excludes limited cooperation with other countries.

Nor is this kind of foreign policy behaviour unknown elsewhere; nationalism in various forms is on the rise around the world. But China is unique both in terms of its size and its future potential. It is also a repressive dictatorship, a system of government that makes other

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Powered by its extraordinary economic growth, China continuously seeks to test the ability of any foreign country to stand up to its interests countries fear it even more.

What are the aims of the CCP’s current leaders?

Two stand out. The first and most important is to continue China’s economic rise so that the country becomes stronger domestically and the CCP’s rule— already based largely on economic success—remains entrenched at home. The second is to establish China as the predominant power within much of Asia, including the western Pacific, Central Asia, eastern Russia, the Himalayas, and the Indian Ocean.

Its policies elsewhere, so far, are largely reactive and opportunistic. But within this crucial zone— crucial not just for China but also for the rest of the world—it has moved closer and closer to obtaining the supremacy it so desperately wants. This process has been aided by the weakness of Russia, the long malaise of Japan, and the waywardness of U.S. foreign policy. But these factors were not responsible alone; China’s behaviour is driven mainly by domestic factors. Blaming Chinese expansionism on the United States’ mistakes, as the State Department’s report does, is not just self-centered and therefore faulty but also analytically dangerous.

The only possible way forward for U.S. strategy is to exploit the contradictions between the CCP’s two main aims: maintaining economic growth and conducting an expansionist foreign policy. As the report concludes, some of this contradiction will be laid bare on its own as the rest of the world wakes up to the true nature of the Chinese regime. But the United States should do more to force China to choose between these two goals. The Biden administration should go beyond what the Obama and Trump administrations did to assist Asian countries that want to resist Chinese pressure. It should increase the United States’ military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific and develop policies on trade, investment, and technology that reward

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China’s compliance with bilateral and multilateral agreements and punish its infringements.

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW One key lesson from the twentieth century that remains valid today is that the United States cannot do any of this without broad cooperation from international allies and friends. Going it alone today would exceed U.S. capabilities, much more so than would have been the case when the Cold War began. Back then, the United States counted for almost 50 percent of global GDP, and it still needed allied support to succeed.

Today, the U.S. share is less than half of that, and without a revitalization of the American economy, it is set to decline even further.

And yet the report suggests that it is now in the United States’ interests to destroy and then selectively rebuild existing international institutions. Given the current economic balance of power, this idea is sheer madness. So is the Trump administration’s reluctance to cherish and support regional organizations, such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which serve as anchors of pluralism and international cooperation. Moreover, it would without a doubt be in the United States’ interest to seek other opportunities for cooperation, such as trying to get Russia to engage more broadly with the West, without refraining from criticizing Moscow’s international behavior.

This is not the Cold War, in which the United States’ opponent was more or less self-isolated and reaped the grim rewards of its confinement. Unlike the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the CCP

This is not the Cold War, in which the United States’ opponent was more or less self-isolated and reaped the grim rewards of its confinement

wants its country to “go out,” as it puts it, and engage more with the rest of the world in order to further its aims. To counter such Chinese policies, the United States needs to not only have specific strategic and institutional responses. It also, more fundamentally, needs to reformulate an answer to the question of why it should have a strong global position while other powers should wield less influence. For much of the twentieth century, the answer was obvious: the United States was economically, technologically, and militarily preeminent, and it was willing to create alliances and international institutions through which other countries could advance their own interests.

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Pedestrians wait at zebra crossing as a large screen shows a live news report about the US presidential election (Getty)

Little of this is obvious today. To make matters worse, the U.S. political system’s debilitating partisanship and utter inability to handle the COVID19- pandemic have laid bare American weaknesses for all to see.

Right now, for people around the world, it is almost impossible to imagine U.S. policies and institutions as worthy of emulation.

It is deeply worrying that a strategic report calling for U.S. policies that will “secure freedom� almost completely ignores the most basic fact about the current situation, which is that the United States can compete effectively with China only through fundamental

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reform at home. The United States needs better health care. It needs better infrastructure. It needs better-paid jobs for ordinary people and affordable education that prepares them for a profoundly changed workplace.

And in order to achieve all of this, it needs a strong, competent, and capable government, based on at least a limited political consensus about what kind of nation the United States wants to be. Without such rebuilding at home, any attempt at competing abroad will be futile.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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What Will Happen to Cities in 2021 ?

The Future of the Economy is Not Some Destination Toward Which we have Been Helplessly Hurled by the Pandemic

By Derek Thompson

vaccinated by June, and another 30 percent may have acquired natural immunity through infection over the The post-pandemic world approaches. According to previous year. some projections, up to half of all Americans could be Next summer could be surprisingly unburdened by

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the pandemic, which is not the same as saying it will be normal. The world that emerges from our year of plague will be altered, in subtle and dramatic ways.

No one should be overconfident about exactly how the pandemic will change lives in the long run. But there are little augurs everywhere—headlines, data points, and statistics that portend shifts in the way we work, the look of urban streetscapes, the state of the economy, and the future of media.

THE FUTURE OF WORK The portent: Cities are already looking to slash their public-transit budgets.

The prediction: Cities will feel weird for a while—and the return to downtown offices will be delayed.

A commuter walks along the Thames Path in view of the City of London square mile financial district in London (Getty)

City transit authorities are facing a nightmarish next few years. New York City is discussing “doomsday cuts” to its public transit. Projecting up to 50$ billion in losses, the city is exploring plans that would require layoffs in the thousands, along with an unthinkable 40 percent cut to bus and subway services by 2022.

Facing its own deficit, Washington, D.C., is planning to slash bus services, close 19 train stations, and slow metro service to run every half hour across the network. Boston is also preparing to decrease the frequency of its service and eliminate several stops.

These cuts are a reminder that although the biological stage of the pandemic might come to an end in 2021, the infrastructural aftershocks will be with us for a while. Without reliable public transit, a modern city simply cannot function properly. Students can’t get to school, the majority of employees who can’t do their job from home can’t get to work, and retailers in central business districts are left hawking their merchandise along empty streets.

The future of transit also has important implications for the future of work. If workers and bosses acknowledge that getting to the office in major cities is going to be a horror show through 2021, this will reinforce the way they think about the benefits of remote work. Imagine being a boss in July 2021 and demanding that your employees suddenly switch from avoiding crowds for 18 months to waiting on a crowded subway platform every day of the week.

There is no worse way to reintroduce the notion of a congenial commuting and office experience.

The majority of Americans drive to work, rather than

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Although the biological stage of the pandemic might come to an end in 2021, the infrastructural aftershocks will be with us for a while rely on urban transit. But the cities that depend on urban transit often contain the headquarters or major hubs of companies whose decisions will help shape the future of work. For that reason, these changes could have an outsized effect on the labour market, over all. The decimation of urban transit could delay the downtown office’s official comeback and prolong the remote-work experiment. This could be a self-reinforcing cycle, in which transit cuts lead to increased remote work among white-collar employees, whose avoidance of rush-hour subways and buses leads to a lower baseline of transit revenue.

THE FUTURE OF CITIES The portent: Seems like everybody really loved all that outdoor dining space in the streets, huh?

The prediction: The rise of the “-15minute city.”

The decimation of transit might initially seem like good news for cars. After all, if you need to get from Point A to Point B in a city, and bus service is pinched, and the subway is running only every half hour, that sounds like an ideal scenario for Uber or Lyft.

But while the pandemic is squashing subways and buses, it’s also squeezing cars out of downtown areas.

Over the summer, many cities shut down vehicle access on streets to give more outdoor space to restaurants.

Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, is urging cities to make these changes permanent.

“Transportation planning used to be stuck in its ways, and nothing changed for years and years,” she told Chicago’s Daily Herald. “Now, things are changing overnight.” Sadik-Khan currently chairs the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which released a June report calling on cities to restrict the presence of cars in downtown areas, with narrowed vehicle lanes, fewer curbside parking spots, and more open space for pedestrians. “Today, people-focused

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streets are a proven global best practice,” she wrote in the report, “from Berlin to Brussels to Bogotá and from Minneapolis to Mexico City to Milan.”

The modern city was designed, or redesigned, to accommodate the automobile in the 20th century.

But the latest trend in urban-planning circles is the dream of the “-15minute city,” an effort to redesign urban neighborhoods as micro-cities, where all of our needs (living, working, shopping, entertainment) exist within a -15minute trip by foot or bike. In many places, this would require booting cars out of neighborhoods to clear space for parks, outdoor restaurants, and pedestrian thoroughfares.

Visions of the -15minute city are also influencing architects and developers. Scott Meyer, the chief investment officer at PTM Partners, says new multifamily-building projects are looking at incorporating larger fitness centers, co-working spaces, expanded outdoor areas, and even night time options, such as ground-floor speakeasies. The goal is to surround residents with work and leisure options, so that they never have to leave the block.

Depending on how you look at it, this is either the height of convenience or income segregation; after all, it’s easy to imagine all-inclusive projects excluding low-income city residents from once publicly accessible amenities. But either way, it suggests that although the pandemic might end in six months, it could reshape urban planning for years to come.

records, home-buying is on fire, and the national savings rate is at a -45year high.

The last two stats are particularly noteworthy. In almost every recession since the 1970s, national wealth has taken a beating and the housing market has stumbled —or collapsed, as it did in 2007 and 2008.

THE FUTURE OF ECONOMY But today, home prices are setting records while households have lots of money to spend. The national The portent: Savings are historically high, and the personal-savings rate is an average that conceals a lot housing market is on fire. of underlying diversity; for example, upper-middleThe prediction: The 2021 economy could be an class families might have invested the money they absolute juggernaut. would have spent on a winter vacation, whereas many lower-income families get by from week to week on This year has featured the strangest economy ever. unemployment insurance.

GDP has cratered, millions of people have lost their jobs, and small businesses have closed in large But any way you look at it, the combination of a numbers. But total income has increased (thanks to strong housing market and record-high savings government stimulus), the stock market is setting is just about the most ideal starting point for a

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Members of small business owners prior to a ‘Save Small Business’ protest in Los Angeles, California (Getty)

This year has featured the strangest economy ever. GDP has cratered, millions of people lost their jobs, and small businesses have closed in large numbers. But total income has increased something that hadn’t happened since the 1990s.

This was thanks to both higher minimum-wage laws and a low unemployment rate that pushed up wages at the bottom. This holiday season, pray that 2020’s upper-middle-class savings become 2021’s lowermiddle-class raises.

recovery you can hope for. Demand for new homes should stimulate a phalanx of real-estate-adjacent industries, including construction and furniture sales, while the beleaguered leisure and hospitality sector should expect record annual growth as Americans flock back to hotels, bars, and restaurants—provided those establishments can hold on until next year.

Meanwhile low interest rates and a slew of familyforming Millennials should provide a strong tailwind to the recovery, as this cohort looks to buy new space for its growing families.

The likely economic bounce back of 2021 will be good news for everybody. But it should be great news for low-income workers, who will benefit from a retightened labour market. From 2015 to 2019, income growth among the 25 percent of Americans with the lowest household income exceeded every other cohort for four straight years,

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The future of the economy, like the future of cities and work, is not some destination toward which we have been helplessly hurled by the pandemic. The story of 2021 is still being written by 2020’s policy makers. In one version, Washington does just about nothing. State and local governments get no relief, the unemployed don’t get extra income, households don’t get new checks, businesses don’t receive additional support, and next year’s recovery struggles to achieve escape velocity, held back by myopic and spendthrift legislators. In this scenario, next year’s economy would still snap back, but the pandemic’s shadow would extend for months or years over transit, work, downtown restaurants, and more. That uncertain future is a choice.

Another option is available—if the federal government passes a stimulus that includes the measures listed above. In crowded restaurants and bars, in movie theaters and gyms, in homes and schools and offices and subways, Americans could resume their interrupted routines and collectively propel the economy to a historic recovery that makes the beginning of the 2020s much more like the end of the 2010s than many people think possible. In other words, next year could feel astonishingly normal. But, like uncertainty, normal is a choice.

This article was originally published in The Atlantic

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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The Best Movies of 2020

www.majalla.com

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The Best Movies of 2020

And Where to Find Them Majalla - London

of “First Cow” I attended in February, shortly before theaters went dark, or the packed Hollywood premiere of “The Invisible Man,” probably the last moviegoing experience where I could feel the entire audience jump as one. My list includes experiences from last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where I saw “Beanpole” for the first time, and Venice, where “Martin Eden” and “Collective” left their indelible first impressions.

It was the year the movie theaters died — or at least went on indefinite hiatus, with few assurances about if or when they’ll return. And for that reason, by their very absence, they meant more to me than ever.

It’s neither surprising nor coincidental to me that so many of my favorite movies this year were ones that I originally saw in theaters before the pandemic set in, where I could give their beautiful images and Special mention must be made of Sundance, one of the enveloping narratives my undivided, worry-free last major film events to take place before the world changed, and which, like many festivals, is presently attention. gearing up for a 2021 edition like no other. It was at Which is not to say that I didn’t see my share of Sundance 2020 that I saw my two favorite movies terrific movies at home, or that Netflix, Amazon this year, mere days apart. It was also there that I got and other streaming services didn’t keep that great to see my friend Lee Isaac Chung bask in a warm virtual content-a-copia stuffed to overflowing. One of festival embrace for his family drama “Minari” — a my favorite viewing experiences this year involved sweet memory from what now feels like a different waiting for my family to go to bed, turning off the time, though my sincere hope is that happier ones are lights and throwing on “Relic,” a horror picture that still ahead. turned out to be even more moving than it was scary (and it was plenty scary). A new Frederick Wiseman As has become standard practice, I’ve listed my documentary could probably rivet me from an iPhone favorite titles as a series of thematic pairings. Treat them as double bills, or just as another reminder that screen, not that I’m eager to test that theory. art never takes place in a vacuum.

But those precious theatrical experiences are the ones I remain most grateful for — like the press screening 1. “Vitalina Varela” / 2. “Time”

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In “Vitalina Varela,” a gravely haunted story of grief and remembrance from Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, a Cape Verdean woman travels to a Lisbon shantytown to bury the husband who abandoned her years earlier. possessed of the same unflagging courage, fearlessly confronting personal loss without granting it the final word.

(Watch “Vitalina Varela” on Grasshopper Film and “Time” on Amazon Prime Video.)

3. “Nomadland” / 4. “First Cow” Two pitch-perfect stories of the American wilderness, and also two stark requiems for the American Dream.

In “Nomadland,” a widow joins a nationwide migratory movement that offers the company of strangers and the comforts of solitude. In “First Cow,” two lowly travelers build a home and a business together, with some help from a bovine scene stealer. These stories may unfold nearly two centuries apart, but they exist on a moral and political continuum that Chloe Zhao and Kelly Reichardt know more intimately than any filmmakers working today.

Vitalina Varela” is“ gravely haunted story of grief and remembrance from Portuguese film.maker Pedro Costa

(“Nomadland,” which received a weeklong virtual run in December, will be released more widely in February. Watch “First Cow” on streaming platforms.)

In “Vitalina Varela,” a gravely haunted story of grief and remembrance from Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa, a Cape Verdean woman travels to a Lisbon shantytown to bury the husband who abandoned her years earlier. In “Time,” Garrett Bradley’s emotionally overwhelming documentary, a Louisiana woman works tirelessly to free her spouse from a decadeslong prison sentence. Few movie heroes in 2020 projected greater authority, or proved more galvanic in their command of the screen, than Vitalina Varela and Fox Rich — two Black women dwelling worlds apart but

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5. “Martin Eden” / 6. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” The two boldest, most inventive literary adaptations I saw this year, densely packed with ideas and full of formal bravura. Both Pietro Marcello’s sweeping Italian epic and Charlie Kaufman’s shape-shifting puzzler ruthlessly demolish the self-defeating intellectual vanities of men, unwittingly enabled by the women they claim to love. And both follow their

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antiheroes into a dark, solipsistic void — and take us along for the ride just about as far as we can go.

(Watch “Martin Eden” on Kino Marquee and “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” on Netflix.)

7. “City Hall” / 8. “Collective” Sometimes government works; a lot of the time it doesn’t. The ratio is pretty even in Frederick Wiseman’s beautifully expansive Boston symphony “City Hall,” a sprawling yet tightly focused work from a -90year-old master. His indelible influence can be felt amid the meetings and press conferences of “Collective,” Alexander Nanau’s furious expose of the Romanian health care system — a portrait of institutional corruption and journalistic acumen that could hardly feel more devastatingly of the moment.

(Watch “City Hall” through virtual cinemas and “Collective” on streaming platforms.)

9. “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” / 10.

“Beanpole” In Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” two Pennsylvania teenagers travel to New York so that one of them can procure an abortion.

In Kantemir Balagov’s “Beanpole,” a child’s death bleak yet told with the most delicate of human touches. scars two women struggling to carry on in postwar Leningrad. Two wintry stories about the resilience (Watch “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” on and vulnerability of female friendship, unflinchingly streaming platforms and “Beanpole” on streaming platforms.)

Here are 10 honorable mentions (in no particular order):

In “Nomadland,” a widow joins a nationwide migratory movement that offers the company of strangers and the comforts of solitude.

“The Assistant” and “The Invisible Man” Two chilling gaslighting thrillers, stunningly acted

by Julia Garner and Elisabeth Moss, respectively, as women bravely sounding the alarm while a male monster lurks and terrorizes with impunity.

“I Was at Home, But … ” and “Relic”

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Nomadland” tells“ the story of a widow who joins a nationwide migratory movement that offers the company of strangers and the .comforts of solitude

A family home becomes a zone of implacable grief and deep, wormy mystery in both Angela Schanelec’s elliptical, enigmatic drama and Natalie Erika James’ tale of an all-too-relatable haunting.

a commercial system designed to exploit creativity, stifle genius and uphold the bottom line.

“Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove”

Fierce blondes, toxic marriages, dapper menswear.

Also, you can’t spell “The Nest” without “T-E-NE-T.” Coincidence? I think not.

A house-party bliss-out and a stirring courtroom drama showed the dramatic range, political will and sheer cinematic bravura of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology. Film or television, it’s one of the events of the year.

“Mank” and “Tesla” Two dazzling, bursting-at-the-seams biographical fantasias, each one setting a prickly intellect against

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“The Nest” and “Tenet”

And 15 more close to my heart: “Bad Education,” “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” “David Byrne’s American Utopia,” “Driveways,” “The FortyYear-Old Version,” “Fourteen,” “Kajillionaire,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Proxima,” “She Dies Tomorrow,” “Sound of Metal,” “The Vast of Night,” “A White, White Day,” “The Wild Goose Lake” and “Wolfwalkers.”

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Simple Solutions to Soothe Sore, Fragile Gums Try over-the-counter medications, water flossers, and rinses

By Harvard Health

and over-the-counter options.

Gum pain is hard to ignore. The aching, stinging sensation can linger for days and make eating uncomfortable. If the pain is new, you may worry it signals an undiagnosed condition. As you search for answers, you can relieve pain with a number of home remedies

Sore Gum Causes Sore gums have many potential causes. One of the most common is an early (often reversible) stage of gum disease called gingivitis. It happens when build

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up of plaque (a sticky film containing bacteria) irri- blood and cause an infection of the brain, which in tates the gums, making them red, swollen, and prone turn may lead the brain to produce a chemical (called beta-amyloid) to kill the bacteria. Unfortunately, that to bleeding easily. same chemical also increases Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Sore gums also can be caused by: Too-vigorous tooth brushing Irritation from dentures Treating Sore Gums Mouth injury Burns from hot food The following home remedies or over-the-counter An infection at the base of a tooth (an abscess) treatments may temporarily relieve gum pain.

Thrush (an overgrowth of the fungus Candida albi- Over-the-counter painkillers. Ibuprofen (Advil, Mocans) trin) can help reduce gum pain, but check with your Anemia doctor to make sure it won’t interfere with your mediOral herpes (herpes simplex virus) cations. For example, ibuprofen can increase the risk Rare autoimmune skin conditions that cause blisters for internal bleeding if you’re taking a blood thinner in the mouth such as warfarin (Coumadin) or dabigatran (Pradaxa).

Deficiency of a vitamin, C or K Topical gels. Benzocaine gels that you rub on the gum The use of calcium-channel blockers (prescribed to may relieve pain for a short time. (Examples are Oratreat high blood pressure, chest pain, or an irregular jel and Anbesol.) Talk to your dentist or doctor before heartbeat). using the gels; they’re associated with a rare but danMany of the causes of sore gums can also make them gerous side effect called methemoglobinemia, which fragile and more prone to tearing easily. keeps cells from getting oxygen.

Better flossing tools. “If the sore gum is caused by gingivitis or food that’s stuck in your teeth, a water Sore Gum Risks flosser -- such as a Waterpik -- along with regular Some underlying causes of sore gums can have seri- flossing and use of interdental brushes -- can help by ous health consequences. For example, gingivitis can removing bacterial plaque and resolving the inflamprogress to periodontitis -- advanced gum disease that mation,” Dr. Nguyen says. extends well below the gum line. “Periodontitis is rel- Compresses. Apply either hot or cold compresses to atively silent and painless. It can remain undetected sore gums. for many years, until the body cannot adapt anymore Rinses. Swish warm saltwater around your mouth a and we start seeing symptoms such as tooth loss and few times per day. shifting teeth,” says Dr. Thomas Nguyen, an instruc- Herbal remedies. Some people tout herbal remedies, tor in oral medicine, infection, and immunity at the such as drops of clove oil applied directly on the gum, but there is little evidence to suggest that they are Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

If gum disease bacteria get into the bloodstream, they effective at relieving gum pain -- and some can be can infect the heart valves -- a life-threatening situa- harmful.

Diet changes. Munching dry toast, dry cereals, cracktion.

Various studies have linked periodontitis (and some ers, or any hard foods may irritate or abrade fragile of the bacteria that cause it) to high blood pressure, gums. Avoid food with rough textures until your diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, pneumo- gums feel better. nia, and even Alzheimer’s disease. How an infection of the gums might increase the risk of these very dif- How Long Do You Treat It ferent diseases involving organs a long way from the gums is the subject of speculation and study.

Dr. Nguyen says gum pain often goes away after a For example, one bacterium that causes gum disease, few weeks. “For conditions such as ulcers, trauma, Porphyromonas gingivalis, is found more often in the burns, inflammation, or herpes simplex, time will be brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease than in the your best friend. The body will heal on its own after brains of people who don’t have Alzheimer’s. Grow- 14 days,” he notes. But if gum pain persists, see your ing evidence suggests P. gingivalis can travel in the dentist.

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The Voyagers Found a Small Surprise in Interstellar Space Bringing to Light the Influence of Our Sun 48

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When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the notion of doing science so far from our own planet, out in interstellar space, was a distant thought a spacefaring machine can feel something. Even this far out, the sun can still make its presence known.

A team of scientists has detected sudden bursts of cosmic rays around the Voyagers. The bursts, they report, are caused by shock waves emanating from solar eruptions that spew particles out at a million miles an hour. The shock waves take more than a year to reach the Voyagers, but when they do, they excite cosmic-ray electrons nearby. Scientists have observed similar phenomena closer to home, around Earth and our planetary neighbours, but never in interstellar space.

“We’re really discovering that what we thought would be this quiet, pristine interstellar medium is actually disturbed considerably by the sun,” Don Gurnett, a University of Iowa professor emeritus of physics and astronomy, who led the research, told me.

The Voyager 2 mission control room at NASA›s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Getty)

More than 40 years ago, Gurnett designed and built one of the instruments on the Voyager mission that can sense such things. Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed in 2018. But the spacecraft actuBy Marina Koren ally haven’t left the solar system, despite many headlines over the years claiming that they have.

The missions that humankind has sent farthest This might seem, at first glance, a little contrainto space, a pair of NASA spacecraft called the dictory—how can something exist in the space Voyagers, are billions of miles from Earth. The between stars and within the solar system at the last time one of them took a picture of its sur- same time? Aren’t those two different things? roundings was in 1990, after flying by Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus on its way to in- From our perspective, interstellar space begins terstellar space, the mysterious expanse between when sun particles can’t go any farther. The sun stars. This far beyond the planets, there’s not releases a steady current of high-energy particles much to see. in all directions, all the time, and this solar wind encompasses the planets, their moons, and other But there are some things to feel, in the sense that

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celestial bodies in a protective bubble called the heliosphere. Scientists had predicted that the breeze would stop where it met the cold particles of the interstellar medium, which is sprinkled with material left behind by supernovas, the deaths of other stars. But they didn’t know exactly where this sphere of the sun’s influence stopped until 2012, when Voyager 1 detected the beginning of a different cosmic environment. “It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult for solar plasmas to cross that boundary,” Bill Kurth, a research scientist at the University of Iowa and Gurnett’s co-author on the new findings, told me.

This is where the Voyagers are, beyond the heliosphere. Kurth once published a commentary in a science journal that said leaving the heliosphere was more or less the same as leaving the solar system. “I was soundly criticized,” he said, laughing. Because while the solar wind blows quite far—120 astronomical units, with a single unit equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun—our star’s influence extends even deeper. Not through warmth, but through gravity.

The sun’s gravity can keep objects in its orbit far beyond where the heliosphere ends. As the Voyagers continue on their journey, eventually they will enter the Oort cloud, a region of icy objects past Pluto. Because those objects are gravitationally bound to the sun, they still count as ours. This is where the solar system truly ends—past the far edge of the Oort cloud, which is somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 astronomical units away. “Even though Voyager 1’s out and beyond 150 astronomical units, it’s got a long, long ways to go before it gets beyond

At some point in time, the Voyagers could be the only remaining evidence that Earth was around

the Oort cloud,” Kurth says. It will be another few hundred years before the Voyagers reach this region, and tens of thousands more before they pass through to the other side.

When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the notion of doing science so far from our own planet, out in interstellar space, was a distant thought.

NASA was focused on swinging by our neighbouring planets and moons to collect valuable data and beautiful pictures. After the grand tour, the spacecraft just kept going. In the years since, mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have turned off various components on the two spacecraft, from science instruments to heaters, rationing every watt of power to keep the machines going. Someday, engineers may be forced to turn off one of the elements that help the spacecraft communicate with Earth, a process that takes about 20 hours each way. It’s a risky move. “If it does work, then we gain two more watts,” Suzanne Dodd, the Voyager project manager, told me last year. “If it doesn’t, then we lose the mission.»

For now, the Voyagers still call home with dispatches from the unknown. Engineers expect that the spacecraft will go silent sometime in the next decade. Even then, they will keep moving, unlikely to crash into something in the vastness of space. About 5 billion years from now, when our sun dies in a dramatic process that will engulf our entire planet, the Voyagers will probably still be coasting through the galaxy. “At some point in time, the Voyagers could be the only remaining evidence that Earth was around,” Kurth said.

When the Voyagers do finally leave the solar system, they will enter, for the first time, a stretch of space that does not play by the sun’s rules. There, the sun will become just another star in someone else’s night sky. Its warmth or gravity won’t register, but its glow will radiate for light-years.

This article was originally published in The Atlantic.

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This true color image of Saturn was assembled from Voyager 2 Saturn images (Getty)

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