Protests in Iraq are Turning up the Heat on Iran

The Strange Triumph of Narendra Modi

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Johnson Hopes to End Political Stalemate before Christmas

Issue 1773- November- 08/11/2019

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1773- November- 08/11/2019

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Senator Elizabeth Warren: The Former Law Professor that Wants to Change the Rules of the Economy www.majalla.com

Protests in Iraq are Turning Up the Heat on Iran www.majalla.com

Editorial

A Weekly Political News Magazine

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The current mass protests in Iraq are largely a revolt against Iran’s control in the country. Despite one of the world’s largest oil producers, corruption within the government has ensured that the public benefits little from the oil wealth. As it is one of the Islamic Republic’s critical regional proxies, Iran is doing all it can to protect its interests. Yasmine El-Geressi presents us with this week’s first cover story, in which she reports on the ongoing protests in Iraq and reflects on the growing frustration among Iraqi people over the Islamic Republic’s interference in the country’s affairs. She also speaks to leading experts on Iraq and Iraqi counterterrorism, who insist that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard are the largest perpetrators of violence against protestors and that Iraqi security forces are attempting to protect citizens against such foreign backed militias.

As it is now November, most people in the UK are focused on their Christmas shopping, or are busy planning family gatherings and/or winter holidays. However, this year many Brits have another thing on their minds, namely the upcoming general election taking place on December 12. As parliament has been dissolved, the parties have all launched their campaigns this week; however policies regarding health, taxation and such are being relegated to the side. As this is the Brexit election, most, if not all, voters will choose based on how they want Brexit to be carried out. In spite of the unpopularity of Johnson’s deal, the most likely outcome of the election is a Tory victory. Ali El Shamy reports on the election, and why the political structure has paved the way for Johnson to continue his premiership, even though smaller parties such as the Lib-Dems and the Brexit Party are rising in the polls. Furthermore, the writer also analyzes why Labour’s neutral stance on Brexit will hurt it, rather than benefit it.

We invite you to read these articles and more on our website eng.majalla.com. As always, we welcome and value our reader’s feedback and we invite you to take the opportunity to leave your comments on our website.

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A Weekly Political News Magazine

34 What a Withdrawal From Afghanistan Would Look Like

Issue 1773- November- 08/11/2019

18 Iran Seeks to Exploit Political Disarray in

Washington, But Trans-Atlantic Unity is Growing

24 The United States Should Fear a Faltering China

28 The Unwinnable Trade War

09 Weary Residents of Pakistani Capital Endure Another Round of Protests

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Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day for better health?

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46 The New Masters of the Universe

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napshot

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Iraqi students pose for selfies with a member of the security forces during ongoing anti-government protests in the central city of Diwaniyah on October 2019 ,31. Iraq's leaders scrambled to produce a solution to mounting protests demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi that have so far left more than 250 dead.

Demonstrations first erupted on October 1 over corruption and unemployment and have since ballooned, with protesters now insisting on a government overhaul. (Getty)

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napshot

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A man evacuates horses as the Easy Fire approaches on October 2019 ,30 near Simi Valley, California. The National Weather Service issued a rare extreme red flag warning for Southern California for gusts that could be the strongest in more than a decade, exceeding 80 mph, as the fast-moving brush fire threatens the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and nearby residential neighborhoods. (Getty)

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eekly news beleaguered government’s base since it was ousted from Sana’a by Houthi rebels in 2014.

The agreement, formally sealed at a signing ceremonyin Riyadh on Tuesday, is short on specifics but is expected to share out ministries equally between the UN-backed government led

by Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the backers of the president of the Southern Transitional Council, Aidarus al-Zoubaidi.

Iran Resumes Uranium Enrichment in New Step Away From Nuclear Deal

Iraq Protests Dig in for Third Week, as Politicians Do the Same

on Thursday and early Friday, with security forces trying to reopen roads blocked by sit-ins, Anti-government protests in Iraq entered their medical sources said. For a week, protesters third week on Friday amid fresh bloodshed, but have cut access to Basra's Umm Qasr port, leaders appeared to have closed rank around which brings in most of Iraq's food and medical the country's embattled premier. More than imports. a dozen demonstrators had died in the capital In Baghdad, six people died facing off against Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra security forces Thursday, a medical source told within 24 hours, medical sources told AFP on AFP. Despite the violence, thousands again Friday. That pushed the death toll since the first flocked to the capital's main protest camp in protests erupted on October 1 closer to 300, Tahrir (Liberation) Square on Friday, including according to an AFP tally kept as officials have members of Iraq's influential tribes. stopped providing updated figures. In Basra, seven protesters were killed in confrontations Yemen Government Signs Power-

Sharing Deal with Separatists

Yemen’s UN-recognised government has signed a Saudi Arabian-brokered power sharing agreement with separatists in the south of the countryafter months of fighting in the area.

The deal aims to create a new, cohesive government capable of challenging the Iranianbacked Houthi forces that control the capital, Sana’a, and the north. The clashes between separatists and government forces – who for years fought on the same side against the Houthis – had raised fears that the country could break apart entirely. IIn August, the separatists took control of Aden, which has served as the

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Iran has resumed uranium enrichment at its underground Fordow facility, taking the next step in its stage-by-stage move away from its nuclear deal with the west. The country’s atomic energy organisation said early on Thursday that uranium gas had successfully been injected into 1,044 centrifuges, in the presence of UN inspectors. The centrifuges have previously spun empty under the terms of the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), when Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, had said on Wednesday the step was reversible and did not specifically say if the injection of gas would be used to speed the enrichment of uranium.

Iran Downs Drone Over Southern Port City of Mahshahr

Iranian forces shot down a drone belonging to a foreign country on Friday, state news agency IRNA reported, quoting an Iranian official. Iranian media earlier reported that the army had shot down a drone over the Gulf port city of Mahshahr in Khuzestan province, without providing further details. The official and Iranian news outlets did not say whether it was a military or civilian drone, or from which country it came. There was no immediate comment from the United States. Iran’s archfoe Israel declined to comment on the incident, with a spokeswoman for the Israeli military saying: “We do not comment on reports from the foreign media”. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said the drone “downed over Iran’s airspace with the army’s domestically made Mersad surface-to-air missile”.

U.S. Diplomats to Star in Public Impeachment Hearings Next Week

Three U.S. diplomats who expressed alarm about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine will serve as star witnesses when Democrats bring their impeachment case against Trump directly to the public with

televised congressional hearings next week, lawmakers said on Wednesday. In a preview of what is to come, lawmakers leading the probe released testimony that showed the top U.S.

placed to drive growth and help struggling regions. With Britons due to vote on Dec. 12, the main parties are drawing up battle lines: Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he alone can deliver Brexit, while Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says only his policies offer real change.

On Thursday, the focus turned to the economy.

Shortly after finance minister Sajid Javid pledged to spend an extra 100 billion pounds on infrastructure over five years, his Labour rival John McDonnell upped the ante with a plan to spend around double that amount.Early spending pledges from the two parties prompted a non-partisan think-tank, the Resolution Foundation, to declare on Monday that Britain appeared to be heading back to 1970s levels of state spending whoever wins.

Weary Residents of Pakistani Capital Endure Another Round of Protests

diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, believed a White House-led effort to pressure Kiev to investigate Ukrainian energy company Burisma was motivated by a desire to help Trump win re-election next year. Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, served on Burisma’s board of directors. Joe Biden is a leading Democratic contender to face Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Televised public hearings featuring U.S. officials testifying in Congress about alleged wrongdoing by Trump could crowd out other issues like the economy and immigration as voters turn their minds to the November 2020 election.

Conservatives and Labour Vow to Spend Big in Battle for Votes in UK Election

Britain’s governing Conservatives vowed on Thursday to spend billions on infrastructure, stepping up an election battle with the main opposition Labour Party over who is best

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Patience is wearing thin among some residents of the Pakistani capital enduring another round of anti-government protests, with tens of thousands of opposition supporters showing no sign of giving up despite the onset of winter rain. Huge crowds descended on Islamabad from various parts of the country a week ago, denouncing the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan as illegitimate and calling for him to step down. It is the first concerted challenge that the cricket star-turned-politician has faced since he won a general election last year promising to end corruption and create jobs for the poor. Khan has dismissed the calls to resign and his government, which the opposition says won power after a fraudulent election with the support of the military, has denounced the protests as a threat to democracy.

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Protests in Iraq are Turning Up the Heat on Iran Despite Promises, the Government in Baghdad Has Yet to Satisfy Demonstrators’ Demands Yasmine El-Geressi Masses of people have taken to the streets of Baghdad and several southern provinces, angry over corruption, poor public services and lack of jobs in the largest protests to hit Iraq since 2005, shaking the foundations of the government. Demonstrators accuse Iran and Iranbacked politicians of of controlling Iraq and harming the country's interests. The protesters are calling for the resignation of key government figures, the dissolution of parliament and provincial councils, electoral reforms,

and a rewrite of the constitution. Since the beginning of October, over 270 Iraqis have been killed and thousands injured. Roads are blocked and schools shut down. Many Iraqis fear an even bigger confrontation could occur between protesters and government security forces that include Iran-backed former militia members.

The protests have exposed long-simmering resentment at Iran’s influence in the country, with protesters targeting Shia political parties and militias with close ties to Tehran.

In a country that is OPEC’s second-largest oil producer,

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Sabah Noori, a spokesman for Iraq's counterterrorism forces, told Majalla that the Iraqi security forces are doing their best to protect the protesters from armed militias who are trying to “turn the peaceful protests to violence to fulfil their agenda.” affairs, climbed the consulate's walls, bringing down an Iranian flag and replacing it with Iraqi flag.

The public are angered by the increasing death toll across the country. Most of those deaths occurred during the first week of the demonstrations, when snipers shot into crowds from Baghdad rooftops. Amnesty international have warned that police are using two variants of military grade gas that are ten times heavier than the standard canisters that shatter skulls when directly fired at protesters.

Jassim Mohamed, a Counterterrorism & Intelligence researcher based in Germany, told Majalla that many protesters blame Iran and the Revolutionary guards for deadly violence against protesters. “It is believed that Iran the Revolutionary Guards, in coordination with the militias, are carrying out organised terrorist acts against demonstrators, such as kidnapping, sniping and killing, to scare the demonstrators,” he said.

He explains that as these protests pose a threat to political parties who are connected to Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as Shia militias, who fear that the uprising will put an end to their powers in Iraq.

Iraqi protesters gather at Tahrir square during ongoing anti-government demonstrations in the capital Baghdad on October 2019 ,31.

(Getty)

impoverished residents complain that powerful Shiite militias tied to Iran have built economic empires, taking control of state reconstruction projects and branching into illicit business activities. In years past, Iraqis have beaten their shoes against portraits of Saddam Hussein in a sign of anger and insult, but now protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square are using their shoes again — slapping them against banners depicting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. At least three people were shot dead when protesters attacked the Iranian consulate in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala on last week. The protesters, who demanded that Iran stop interfering in Iraq's internal

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Tehran has vested strategic interests in Iraq’s political orders being Iran-friendly, as they remain critical in countering the influence of the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other regional actors and therefore it is determined to save its strongholds in Iraq. The arrival of Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleiman, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional security apparatus, in Baghdad last month, signaled Tehran’s concern over the protests.

The day after Soleimani’s visit, the clashes between the protesters and security forces in Iraq became far more violent.

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The government has expressed suspicion that a third party is playing a role in provoking greater violence, through using snipers who shoot to kill. Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan said at a press conference that “malicious hands” were targeting protesters and security forces alike.

Sabah Noori, a spokesman for Iraq's counterterrorism forces, told Majalla that the Iraqi security forces are doing their best to protect the protesters from armed militias who are trying to “turn the peaceful protests to violence to fulfil their agenda” and that they are working closely with the Iraqi counterterrorism unit to stop them.

According to Iraqi Security expert Saeed al-Jayashi “the Iraqi security forces are able to distinguish between the peaceful protestors expressing patriotic demands, and those that want to cause harm.” However, he told Majalla that he holds the government responsible for not doing enough to stop those who are blocking roads and bridges to disrupt public life.

Protesters are now escalating their tactics, saying civil disobedience is their only recourse. On Wednesday, they blocked the entrance to the southern Nassiriya oil refinery, security and oil sources said. They stopped tankers that transport fuel to gas stations from entering the refinery, causing fuel shortages. Thousands have been blocking all roads leading to Iraq’s main Gulf port Umm Qasr, near Basra. Operations at the port, which receives most of Iraq’s imports of grain, vegetable oils and sugar,

Jassim Mohamed, a Counterterrorism & Intelligence researcher told Majalla that these protests pose a threat to political parties who are connected to Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, as well as Shia militias, who fear that the uprising will put an end to their powers in Iraq.

have been at a complete standstill for a week. The Umm Qasr blockade has cost the country more than 6$ billion so far.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE? Prime Minister Abdel Abdul-Mahdi who came to power after elections last year produced a -6month political deadlock as a compromise candidate between populist Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his main political rival Hadi al-Amiri, whose alliance of Iran-backed militias is the second-largest political force in parliament, has promised to resign after a successor is named. Iraq's President Barham Salih has called for early elections after parliament passed a new election law. However, there is no consensus on who would be an acceptable successor to Abdul Mahdi and while protesters have been demanding change that begins with the prime minister, they certainly don’t not end there. While political elites jostled over Abdul Mahdi’s fate, ten of thousands of protesters from across Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divides thronged Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in a show of fury saying his resignation would not be enough and demanded an end to the entire governing

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Iraqi demonstrators set tires ablaze behind the walls protecting the Iranian consulate in the Shiite Muslim shrine city of Karbala, south of Iraq's capital Baghdad, during the night of November ,3 2019. (Getty)

According to Iraqi Security expert Saeed al-Jayashi, “The current political solutions proposed will not bring about the real change that the protesters are demanding.” a destructive blame game amongst the political parties.

“Some political parties blame the government, some shirk their responsibility, and others are still not on the right road to accomplishing what the protesters are demanding.”

system of identity-based, sectarian power-sharing.

Noori told Majalla that the resignation of Abdul-Mahdi is not a reasonable way out of the crisis and that the solution requires “all three components of the government – the president, the parliament and the cabinet –to come together to bring about constitutional amendments that meet the protester’s demands.”

Noori expressed hope that parliament’s move to open-up the constitution to amendments could resolve the current crisis. “I think if we succeed in amending the constitution, we will reach a solution as many of the problems we are facing now in Iraq are tied it.”

According to al-Jayashi, whether the government is dissolved is not the issue, “what’s important is that we focus on meaningful change.”

“The current political solutions proposed will not bring about the real change that the protesters are demanding,” he added.

Al-Jayashi also explained that the protests have sparked

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Under mounting pressure, Iraqi parliament took drastic steps on October 28 to try to abate anti-government protests, voting to dissolve provincial and local councils, cut privileges of top government officials, and form a committee tasked with amending the constitution within four months. The bid to rewrite Iraq’s 2005 constitution has been accepted and promoted by political elites, some of whom were involved it its original drafting. The first meeting of a parliamentary committee formed last month to oversee the drafting took place in Parliament on Tuesday, with officials hoping it would help to meet the public's demands and calm weeks of protests. So far, the plans proposed by the government, which could take months to implement, have had no effect on appeasing frustrated demonstrators.

Although their motivations may not as aligned with those of the protesters, political figures’ support of constitutional change represents an important opportunity in the ongoing protests. There is a belief within the protest movement that the constitution’s lack of legitimacy has resulted in the flawed system, and that, by extension, an amendment to this constitution would be a solution to alleviate many grievances. But as, Marsin Alshamary and Safwan Al-Amin write in The Washington Post, “the same delegitimising factors that existed in forming the constitution in 2005 – being rushed and drafted under foreign influence – arguably still exist in Iraq.”

They added that the current approach being considered by the political elite to rewrite or amend the constitution may fail to meet the constitutional requirements, but “amending and rewriting the constitution in a way that reflects the national consensus meaningfully, on the other hand, would signal to the protesters that their voices are being heard.”

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Johnson Hopes to End Political Stalemate before Christmas

Why Current Circumstances Favor the Tories to win December Election

by Ali El Shamy The next UK general election is only a month away, and all major parties across the country have kick-started their campaigns. In these extraordinary times, we have already witnessed extraordinary occurrences, namely a prorogation

of parliament and a court ruling that deemed it unlawful.

Moreover, this particular election is peculiar for two reasons, first is that this one is fully focused on Brexit and everything else is relegated to the sidelines. While the 2017 snap election was technically the first one since the referendum, party campaigns and manifestos did focus on other issues

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Nevertheless, while most polls predict a Conservative victory, some disagree over the prospects of a large majority or a hung parliament. to pass up. If the Tories are able to secure a convincing victory in the elections then Johnson can argue that the public has backed his deal and therefore parliament should respect the will of the people. Furthermore, no one can continue to argue that Johnson was only elected by a small percentage of the population, so in more ways than one winning this election would be the most important cornerstone in the Prime Minister’s political career.

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson stands in front of the party's fully electric campaign bus, one of the first of its kind, as she visits Sigma Pharmaceuticals on November 2019 ,6 in Watford, England.

(Getty)

besides Brexit. As this is the Brexit election, previous party loyalties might not matter as most voters will make their decision based on their views on Brexit. Another reason why the circumstances of the election are strange is the fact that this is the first December election since 1923, which was called after Tory Prime Minister Bonar Law resigned due to poor health. The result of that election ended in a hung parliament, which Labour exploited to form a coalition with the Liberal Party making Ramsey MacDonald the first ever Labour Prime Minister. While the polls favor Johnson and the Tories this time around, they will no doubt do all they can to prevent Corbyn and the Labour party from latching on to power.

JOHNSON SEEKS PUBLIC BACKING In many ways, this election is a referendum on both Johnson’s premiership and more importantly his Brexit deal. Although his deal is largely unpopular among staunch Brexiters and Remainers, the opportunity of a large victory is too valuable

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Nevertheless, while most polls predict a Conservative victory, some disagree over the prospects of a large majority or a hung parliament. As such, the possibility of a hung parliament will cause anguish among Tories and supporters of Johnson’s deal as this again will be seen as a sign of division among the people reflected on the parliament. Also, this would beg the question of who would join the Tories in a coalition government, both the Lib-Dems and the DUP learned the hard way that forming alliances with the Conservative party often reaps little to no benefits for the smaller party involved. While the Brexit Party has garnered popularity since its inception earlier this year, few polls indicate that it can garner enough support to translate into ample seats in parliament. Furthermore, the Brexit party’s disagreements over Johnson’s deal might hinder the chances of a Tory-Brexit coalition. The fact that cabinet members, namely Jacob-Rees Mogg, have been clashing with the Brexit Party over the Johnson deal makes a prospect of an alliance even less likely. On November 1, Johnson rejected forming an alliance with the Brexit party, stating that it would help give Corbyn the keys to Number 10. If the Brexit party does successfully win seats in parliament, then its MPs will predictably become other vocal opponents towards the government. If that happens then the Tories will have Labour and Brexit MPs opposing the deal, while Lib-Dems will be rejecting Brexit altogether. The only real victory the Tories can afford is one that guarantees a large majority, anything else will feel like a loss.

Finally, to add another thorn to the Tories' side a victory in the election won’t necessarily mean that the public approves of Johnson’s deal, as previously stated in a myriad of political articles the UK’s first past the vote electoral system doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of the public. For instance, if a Tory candidate gains 3,001 and votes in a constituency

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while the opposing Labour candidate gains 3,000 then that means just under half of those who voted reject the Tories and by extension its Brexit deal. However, the voices of those 3,000 constituents won't be heard as the Tory candidate (who presumably supports Johnson's deal) will get into parliament.

BREXIT PARTY HOPES TO TAKE SEATS AWAY FROM TORIES AND LABOUR Having done exceptionally well in the last European Parliament elections, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party are going into its first general election with confidence. Farage has even shown the intention of taking as many votes as he can from the two main parties, after making the staggering announcement that 600 candidates from his party are running in the upcoming election. The jury is still out on how well the Brexit Party can do in the elections, smaller parties do have a precedent of performing well in European elections and then gaining underwhelming results in local elections. The first past the post system doesn’t help matters for these smaller parties, as it tends to favor the two main establishment parties. Back in 2014, UKIP, which was then led by Farage, famously came in first in the European elections defeating both Labour and the Conservatives. Meanwhile during the general election the following year, UKIP only managed to gain one MP in parliament.

Nevertheless, this election is unlike any other election. As this is the Brexit election, a single-issue party like the Brexit Party can do well, especially among staunch leavers who are frustrated with the way the government has handled the negotiation process. The Conservatives should be especially wary of regions, such as the East and West Midlands, which overwhelmingly voted to leave back in 2016, as the Brexit party will probably intensely campaign in these areas. The Brexit party will also look to gain the support of workingclass voters who backed Leave in 2016 and who normally vote for Labour.

In terms of policy, the Lib-Dems are the antithesis to the Brexit Party. While the latter party wants Brexit ASAP and is willing to crash out of the bloc without a deal, the former views this entire quagmire as a big mistake and sees revoking Article 50 (i.e. canceling Brexit) as the only way of alleviating the crisis. The Lib-Dems have also made great breakthroughs in the European elections but again can mean nothing in terms of local elections. The party will seek to attract staunch Remainers, and take away votes from Labour supporters who are unhappy with the party’s neutral stance towards the issue (more on that later). The fact that this is the Brexit election and the party has a clear Brexit message it can stand to do well in the elections. But the Lib-Dems face a similar hurdle to that of the Brexit party, the dreaded first past the vote system.

LIB-DEMS FACE SIMILAR DILEMMA

CORBYN’S POLICY CONFUSES PUBLIC

The Lib-Dems face a similar hurdle to that of the Brexit party, the dreaded first past the vote system.

Throughout this entire saga, it is hard to pinpoint Labour’s precise Brexit stance. While it officially rejects the Conservative’s Brexit policy, it has failed to provide any viable alternatives. It doesn’t reject the result of the 2016 vote but supports a second referendum. As parties launched their campaigns this week, Labour issued a statement on what it intends to do if it wins the election, however, the policy has been criticized for not being straightforward enough.

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Boris Johnson, U.K. prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, reacts during the official launch of the party's general election campaign at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, U.K., on Wednesday, Nov. ,6 2019. (Getty)

As this is the Brexit election, a single-issue party like the Brexit Party can do well, especially among staunch leavers who are frustrated with the way the government has handled the negotiation process.

Essentially, if Labour wins the election, then it will restart negotiations with the EU and get another deal, afterward, it would hold another public referendum in which voters choose between the new deal and remain.

However, Labour has not stated which side it would support in the second referendum and would only pick a side after the new deal is struck. This on the fence policy will neither please Brexiters nor Remainers, and will only repel support away from the main opposition party. The one thing Labour can hope for is the possibility that Remainers vote strategically so that pro-remain can gain enough seats in the office to oppose the Tories, but Labour’s neutral stance, as well as the Lib-Dems refusal to join forces with Corbyn, makes such prospects difficult.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage chats with people in the street at the start of a nationwide tour for the 2019 general election, in Whitehaven, Cumbria, north west england on November ,6 2019. (Getty)

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Iran Seeks to Exploit Political Disarray in Washington, But TransAtlantic Unity is Growing Tehran’s Behavior is Oriented Towards Frightening the EU into Offering Additional Concessions 18

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by Joseph Braude Iran seeks to capitalize on distraction within the White House by ramping up its defiance of the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which aimed to curb its nuclear program, by unveiling a new round of uranium enrichment.

In response, Washington has unveiled a new package of sanctions targeting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, while European leaders are signaling their own growing impatience with the drift of Iranian policy.

ROUHANI ANNOUNCES ENRICHMENT On November 5, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that Iran would resume enrichment at 1,044 centrifuges. He also noted that Tehran was open to reversing these measures if European nations devise a mechanism for evading US sanctions and enabling the sale of Iranian crude oil. “All of the steps Iran has taken to reduce its commitments to the nuclear deal are reversible,” Rouhani said, adding that “Iran will uphold all of its commitments under the deal when the remaining signatories – France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China – do the same.”

In this January ,13 2015, file photo released by the Iranian President›s Office, President Hassan Rouhani visits the Bushehr nuclear power plant just outside of Bushehr, Iran (AP)

Rouhani’s declaration built on earlier escalation announced by the chief of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, who informed state television on November 4th that Iran was scaling back its commitments to the 2015 nuclear accord still further with a new round of enrichment. «Today, we are witnessing the launch of the array of 30 IR6- centrifuges,» Salehi announced, boasting that the move would show Iran›s «capacity and determination.” On the same day, Iranian authorities also noted that Tehran’s enriched uranium production has reached five kilograms per day, up from 450g in September. If corroborated, this would mean Iran’s enrichment capacity has grown at a geometric pace, surpassing by tenfold its level two months ago when Iran abandoned a previous round of JCPOA commitments.

THE WEST RESPONDS Officials in Washington have taken a dim view of Iran’s latest escalation. «We see this as a continuation of nuclear blackmail,» as one senior U.S. official described it. Other officials highlighted Rouhani’s explicit offer of a quid pro quo with Europe — facilitated sanctions evasion

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If corroborated, this would mean Iran’s enrichment capacity has grown at a geometric pace, surpassing by tenfold its level two months ago when Iran abandoned a previous round of JCPOA commitments. in exchange for return to JCPOA restrictions — as evidence that Tehran’s behavior is fundamentally oriented towards frightening the EU into offering additional concessions. While President Trump has yet to comment on the matter, noting that he was “looking into it”, other administration officials have characterized Iran’s expansion of enrichment as «a big step in the wrong direction,» and called on other nations to condemn it.

Washington has not been limited to condemnations alone, however. On Monday, the Treasury Department rolled out a new round of sanctions.

In a statement, Secretary Mnuchin announced the sanctions would target “Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff and nine individuals who are appointees of, or have acted for or on behalf of, Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime’s unelected Supreme Leader whose office is responsible for advancing Iran’s radical agenda.” In a call with reporters, on senior administration official observed, “Our action is specifically focused on further targeting the financial assets of the supreme leader’s inner circle of both military and foreign affairs advisors.”

European officials have struck a slightly different tone, but in substance are no less opposed to Tehran’s latest escalation. The German Foreign Minister flatly declared it “unacceptable.” The French Foreign Ministry condemned the return to enrichment as go[ing] against the Vienna agreement,” and urged Iran “to go back on its decisions which contradict the accord.” And in a similar vein, EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said, “we are concerned by President Rouhani’s announcement today to further reduce Iran’s commitments under the JCPOA,” and warned ominously that “it is increasingly difficult to preserve the JCPOA.”

The Strange Triumph of Narendra Modi

Can India’s Prime Minister Succeed Even as the Economy Plummets?

by Milan Vaishnav When India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, ran for the top job five years ago, he campaigned as the country’s best hope for economic reform. The government he ran against, led by the Congress party, had mismanaged the economy, fallen into paralysis,

and faced one major corruption scandal after another.

Modi convinced voters that he was the answer to their economic woes. He spouted slogans like “minimum government, maximum governance” and promised that the “government has no business to be in business.”

On the strength of such promises, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a sweeping general election

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victory in 2014 and followed that with a landslide reelection in 2019.

Modi has enjoyed remarkable political success in that time. Public opinion surveys show that he is as popular today as he was five years ago. He has created the most powerful, centralized prime ministerial office since that of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 35 years ago, concentrating many cabinet functions in the hands of close aides. Modi’s party has secured a second straight parliamentary majority and radically expanded its grip on India’s states: today, two-thirds of all state governments rest with the BJP or its allies.

If current projections hold, the BJP and its allies could occupy a majority in India’s upper house of parliament—which must confirm major legislation passed in the lower house—by the end of next year.

SINS OF OMISSION AND COMMISSION

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he delivers his speech at the opening day the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2018 annual meeting, on January ,23 2018 in Davos, eastern Switzerland. (Getty)

The Modi government made some important economic reforms in its first term. Following nearly two decades of debate, New Delhi adopted a sweeping indirect tax known as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which economists liken to India signing a free trade agreement with itself. For decades, thanks to a patchwork of statespecific tax regimes and border levies, firms in India often had an easier time exporting goods and services abroad than exchanging them across state borders. The GST, at least in theory, creates uniformity across state lines. Moreover, the government has pushed through an ambitious bankruptcy code, which is meant to facilitate “creative destruction” by making it easier for loss-making firms to wind down their operations.

Despite initial resistance from members of his own political party, Modi persisted with a biometric identification scheme established by his predecessor in order to root out corruption in the delivery of welfare benefits. With that initiative, and by investing in the public provision of private goods like gas connections, toilets, and housing, Modi has gradually overhauled India’s creaky welfare state. Many Indians now feel that the country’s once-maligned bureaucracy, which they have long viewed as a problem, can finally be part of the solution.

But coupled with a global economic slowdown, Modi’s policies have only managed to produce underwhelming growth, encourage little investment, and, according to a recent study, lose jobs at a time when India desperately needs to create jobs for its young workforce. India’s GDP growth has slumped so much over the last five quarters that domestic and

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Modi touted These problems include burdensome compliance procedures, a worrying rise in fraudulent tax invoices, and a confusing structure of tax rates. international agencies have significantly slashed their economic forecasts. Growth slipped to a six-year low of around five percent between April and June of this year. New private investments have dived to a -16year low. Even private consumption expenditure, the single engine that previously powered the skittish Indian economy, tanked to a nearly five-year low of 3.1 percent.

The much-anticipated GST actually has coincided with a shortfall in government revenues for at least two reasons. For starters, consumer demand in the economy has plummeted, meaning that there are simply fewer economic transactions to tax.

Compounding the situation, however, are problems in the implementation of the new tax regime, which is not at all the “good and simple tax” that Modi touted.

These problems include burdensome compliance procedures, a worrying rise in fraudulent tax invoices, and a confusing structure of tax rates.

Some of the government’s larger economic missteps were sins of omission. The public sector dominates India’s banking system. By failing to trim back its role, the government left conflicts of interest and cases of dodgy governance unchecked. Similarly, the government’s refusal to meaningfully divest itself of state-owned companies has encumbered the budget.

For instance, just days ago, the government announced plans to spend 6$ billion of public money to try to revive two struggling state-owned telecommunications companies. At a time when India is facing a massive fiscal crunch and needs to cut expenditure on public investment, this plan is misguided.

The Modi government also committed serious sins of commission. Chief among these was “demonetization”— the abrupt invalidation of highdenomination currency notes in an attempt to cleanse the economy of untaxed cash, known as “black

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money.” By some estimates, the move cut India’s GDP by two percent and cost 1.5 million jobs. India’s reserve bank calculated that demonetization entirely failed in its goal of purging black money from the economy: more than 99 percent of invalidated currency nonetheless found its way into banks. Economists are still assessing the damage inflicted by this radical policy—a difficult task given the scarcity of reliable data from India’s vast informal economy.

However, the faltering economy did little to undermine Modi’s 2019 reelection bid. A military standoff with Pakistan buoyed nationalist fervor, and as a result the BJP actually increased its parliamentary tally—making it the first non-Congress government in India’s post-independence history to win reelection.

Millions of Indians saw Modi as decisive, muscular, and incorruptible, embracing his campaign slogan of “Modi hai to mumkin hai” (With Modi, anything is possible). BJP voters seemed to believe him when he reminded them that he could not undo 65 years of lackluster economic performance in one five-year term.

But Indian voters will not suspend their disbelief forever. Modi faces a mounting economic crisis in his second term. The International Monetary Fund recently proclaimed that India’s growth slowdown is “more pronounced” than it had previously anticipated, while the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s foresees a deep, broad-based decline.

BIG TROUBLES IN A BIG TENT The BJP issued a new budget in July 2019, fresh off its electoral win. But the plan not only failed to

India’s participation in a proposed free trade agreement with ASEAN member states and affiliates. The grassroots group has regularly lobbied the government to limit foreign trade

offer a credible package of policies to counteract the downturn—it actually made matters worse. The budget stoked, rather than soothed, foreign investors’ fears. It instituted new taxes, both on international investments and on startup investors. The government followed up the budget with a bill that stipulated criminal penalties for CEOs who violated a corporate social responsibility law. Over the last three months, in dribs and drabs, the Finance Ministry has systematically rolled back nearly all of these controversial proposals.

And the government hurriedly advanced one major announcement: it slashed corporate tax rates to encourage greater investment—a move that it promised in 2015 but never implemented.

The Modi government’s struggles to come to grips with the economy contrast with its decisive and robust actions in other areas. The ruling party has moved with alacrity in executing its Hindu nationalist social-cultural agenda, such as by gutting Kashmir’s

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Indian labourers prepare to carry a large basket container of vegetables to a wholesale market in Kolkata on March ,16 2018. (Getty)

accountable to its grassroots workers—referred to in India as “cadres.” The BJP is one of the few nationwide, cadre-based political outfits in India— and many of its rank-and-file members are highly suspicious of liberalizing economic reform. In setting its economic agenda, the BJP has to be careful not to alienate the Hindu nationalist base that has powered its electoral triumphs.

In early October, one of BJP’s affiliated grassroots groups announced a ten-day nationwide protest against India’s participation in a proposed free trade agreement with ASEAN member states and affiliates. The grassroots group has regularly lobbied the government to limit foreign trade, curb foreign direct investment, and abandon the privatization of the public sector. Yet the BJP also appeals to many middle-class voters who have enjoyed the fruits of economic liberalization and who nudge the party in a more market-friendly direction. The policy initiatives that emerge, unsurprisingly, have an air of indecision and equivocating.

TURNING THE CORNER The Modi government’s recent moves—including the partial rollback of policies that upset business leaders and the introduction of a long-awaited corporate tax cut—signal an acknowledgement that India is in the grips of a severe slowdown. That slump is at least partly of the government’s own making.

semi-autonomy in August and abolishing an Islamic practice of instant divorce in July. The government is even rumored to be working on a bill banning religious conversion, timed for the next session of parliament.

The BJP cannot rely on the same kind internal consensus to propel its economic policies as it does its cultural ones. Modi’s party belongs to a broad constellation of right-wing Hindu nationalist organizations, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar, which includes economic nationalists, libertarians, and everyone in between. What unifies the so-called right in India is not market economics but cultural conservatism. The BJP high command, therefore, must try to reconcile several—often contradictory— economic ideologies.

The opposition Congress party, too, boasts a big economic tent, housing both socialists and free market advocates. But the BJP, unlike the Congress, is very

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For the time being, waging a culture war and appealing to muscular nationalism has inoculated the BJP from its economic troubles. Voters have not punished Modi for poor performance in managing the economy—yet.

But the political capital Modi invests in sowing social divisions will eventually serve to undermine economic growth.

Already this October, the BJP’s majority slipped in two states that suffer from rising unemployment and rural distress. Bad economic news fills the papers, from the sales slump that is hampering India’s festival season to the inability of informal laborers to pay back loans. Voters will soon demand that the BJP live up to its promise of delivering incomes, jobs, and economic mobility—especially in a country where the median age is 27 and one million young people enter the labor market each month, only to struggle to find jobs commensurate with their aspirations. Modi knows a thing or two about frustrated aspirations: after all, economic anxiety helped catapult him to power in the first place.

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The United States Should Fear a Faltering China Beijing’s Assertiveness Betrays Its Desperation

by Michael Beckley The defining geopolitical story of our time is the slow death of U.S. hegemony in favor of a rising China. Harbingers of Beijing’s ascent are everywhere. China’s overseas

investments span the globe. The Chinese navy patrols major sea lanes, while the country colonizes the South China Sea in slow motion. And the government cracks down on dissent at home while administering a hefty dose of nationalist propaganda.

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Beijing’s newfound assertiveness looks at first glance like the mark of growing power and ambition. But in fact it is nothing of the sort. China’s actions reflect profound unease among the country’s leaders, as they contend with their country’s first sustained economic slowdown in a generation and can discern no end in sight. China’s economic conditions have steadily worsened since the 2008 financial crisis. The country’s growth rate has fallen by half and is likely to plunge further in the years ahead, as debt, foreign protectionism, resource depletion, and rapid aging take their toll.

China’s economic woes will make it a less competitive rival in the long term but a greater threat to the United States today.

When rising powers have suffered such slowdowns in the past, they became more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad. China seems to be headed down just such a path.

RED FLAGS In March 2007, at the height of a years-long economic boom, then Premier Wen Jiabao gave an uncharacteristically gloomy press conference. China’s growth model, Wen warned, had become “unsteady, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.”

The warning was prescient: in the years since, China’s official gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has dropped from 15 percent to six percent—the slowest rate in 30 years. The country’s economy is now experiencing its longest deceleration of the post-Mao era.

Aerial view of Shanghai from Pudong in Shanghai on October 2016 ,12 in China.

(Getty)

A growth rate of six percent could still be considered spectacular.

By way of contrast, consider that the U.S. economy has been stuck at a rate of around two percent. But many economists believe that China’s true rate is roughly half the official figure.

Moreover, GDP growth does not necessarily translate into greater wealth. If a country spends billions of dollars on infrastructure projects, its GDP will rise. But if those projects consist of bridges to nowhere, the country’s stock of wealth will remain unchanged or even decline. To accumulate wealth, a country needs to increase its productivity—a measure that has actually dropped in China over the last decade. Practically all of China’s GDP growth has resulted from the government’s pumping capital into the economy. Subtract government stimulus spending, some economists argue, and China’s economy may not be growing at all.

The signs of unproductive growth are easy to spot. China has built more than 50 ghost cities—sprawling metropolises of empty offices, apartments, malls, and airports. Nationwide, more than 20 percent of homes are vacant. Excess capacity in major industries tops 30 percent: factories sit idle and goods rot in warehouses.

Total losses from all this waste are difficult to calculate, but China’s government estimates that it blew at least 6$ trillion on “ineffective investment” between 2009 and 2014 alone. China’s debt has quadrupled in absolute size over the last ten years and currently exceeds 300 percent of its GDP. No major country has

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China is losing access to foreign markets and technology. Water has become scarce, and the country is importing more food and energy than any other nation, having decimated its own natural endowments. ever racked up so much debt so fast in peacetime.

Worse still, assets that once propelled China’s economic ascent are fast turning into liabilities. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the country enjoyed expanding access to foreign markets and technology. China was nearly self-sufficient in food, water, and energy resources, and it had the greatest demographic dividend in history, with eight working-age adults for every citizen aged 65 or older. Now China is losing access to foreign markets and technology. Water has become scarce, and the country is importing more food and energy than any other nation, having decimated its own natural endowments. Thanks to the one-child policy, China is about to experience the worst aging crisis in history, because it will lose 200 million workers and young consumers and gain 300 million seniors in the course of three decades. Any country that has accumulated debt, lost productivity, or aged at anything close to China’s current clip has lost at least one decade to near-zero economic growth. How will China handle the coming slump?

WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE When fast-growing great powers run out of economic steam, they typically do not mellow out. Rather, they become prickly and aggressive. Rapid growth has fueled their ambitions, raised their citizens’ expectations, and unnerved their rivals. Suddenly, stagnation dashes those ambitions and expectations and gives enemies a chance to pounce. Fearful of unrest, leaders crack down on domestic dissent. They search feverishly for ways to restore steady growth and keep internal opposition and foreign predation at bay. Expansion presents one such opportunity—a chance to seek new sources of wealth, rally the nation around the ruling regime, and ward off rival powers.

The historical precedents are plentiful. Over the past 150 years, nearly a dozen great powers experienced rapid economic growth followed by long slowdowns. None accepted the new normal quietly. U.S. growth plummeted in the late nineteenth century, and Washington reacted by violently suppressing labor strikes at home while pumping investment and exports into Latin America and East Asia, annexing territory there and building

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a gigantic navy to protect its far-flung assets. Russia, too, had a late-nineteenth-century slowdown. The tsar responded by consolidating his authority, building the Trans-Siberian Railway, and occupying parts of Korea and Manchuria. Japan and Germany suffered economic crises during the interwar years: both countries turned to authoritarianism and went on rampages to seize resources and smash foreign rivals. France had a postwar boom that fizzled in the 1970s: the French government then tried to reconstitute its economic sphere of influence in Africa, deploying 14,000 troops in its former colonies and embarking on a dozen military interventions there over the next two decades.

As recently as 2009, world oil prices collapsed, which led a stagnating Russia to pressure its neighbors to join a regional trade bloc. A few years later, that campaign of coercion spurred Ukraine’s Maidan revolution and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

The question, then, is not whether a struggling rising power will expand abroad but what form that expansion will take. The answer depends in part on the structure of the global economy. How open are foreign markets? How safe are international trade routes? If circumstances allow it, a slowing great power might be able to rejuvenate its economy through peaceful trade and investment, as Japan tried to do after its postwar economic miracle came to an end in the 1970s. If that path is closed, however, then the country in question may have to push its way into foreign markets or secure critical resources by force—as Japan did in the 1930s. The global economy is more open today than in previous eras, but a global rise in protectionism and the trade war with the United States increasingly threaten China’s access to foreign markets and resources. China’s leaders fear, with good reason, that the era of hyperglobalization that enabled their country’s rise is over.

The structure of a country’s home economy will further shape its response to a slowdown. The Chinese government owns many of the country’s major firms, and those firms substantially influence the state. For this reason, the government will go to great lengths to shield companies from foreign competition and help them conquer overseas markets when profits dry up at home.

State propaganda blames setbacks, such as the 2015 stock market collapse and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, on Western meddling. These are not the actions of a confident superpower.

A state-led economy like China’s is unlikely to liberalize during a slowdown. Doing so would require eliminating subsidies and protections for state-favored firms, reforms that risk instigating a surge in bankruptcies, unemployment, and popular resentment.

Liberalization also could disrupt the crony capitalist networks that the regime depends on for survival. Instead, regimes like China’s usually resort to mercantilist expansion, using money and muscle to carve out exclusive economic zones abroad and divert popular anger toward foreign enemies. The most aggressive expanders of all tend to be authoritarian capitalist states, of which China is clearly a prime example.

TROUBLE AHEAD China’s recent behavior is a textbook response to economic insecurity. Back in the 1990s and the early years of this century, when the country’s economy was booming, China loosened political controls and announced to the world its “peaceful rise,” to be pursued through economic integration and friendly diplomatic relations. Compare the situation today: labor protests are on the rise, elites have been moving their money and children out of the country en masse, and the government has outlawed the reporting of negative economic news. President Xi Jinping has given multiple internal speeches warning party members of the potential for a Soviet-style collapse. The government has doubled

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Pro-democracy protesters react as police fire teargas during a demonstration in Wan Chai district on November 2019 ,2 in Hong Kong, China.

(Getty)

interest groups—most notably, state-owned enterprises and the military and security services—have developed a vested interest in maintaining China’s current strategy, which funnels money into their coffers. As a result, the government would struggle to extricate itself from foreign entanglements even if it wanted to.

WASHINGTON’S BALANCING ACT The danger to the United States and its allies is clear. Rampant espionage, protectionism, a splintered Internet, naval clashes in the East and South China Seas, and a war over Taiwan are only the more obvious risks that a desperate and flailing China will pose.

U.S. statecraft will need to contain these risks without causing China to lash out in the process. To that end, Washington will have to deter Chinese aggression, assuage China’s insecurities, and insulate the United States from blowback should deterrence and reassurance fail. The inherent tension among these objectives will make the task a very difficult one.

internal security spending over the past decade, creating the most advanced propaganda, censorship, and surveillance systems in history. It has detained one million Uighurs in internment camps and concentrated power in the hands of a dictator for life. State propaganda blames setbacks, such as the 2015 stock market collapse and the 2019 Hong Kong protests, on Western meddling.

These are not the actions of a confident superpower.

China has projected its power abroad throughout this turbulent period—tripling foreign direct investment and quintupling overseas lending in an ambitious attempt to secure markets and resources for Chinese firms. Beijing also has gone out militarily, launching more warships over the past decade than the whole British navy holds and flooded major sea lanes in Asia with hundreds of government vessels and aircraft. It has built military outposts across the South China Sea and frequently resorts to sanctions, ship-ramming, and aerial intercepts in territorial disputes with its neighbors.

If China’s growth slows further in the coming years, as is likely, the Chinese government will probably double down on the repression and aggression of the past decade. When the country’s leaders cannot rely on rapid growth to bolster their domestic legitimacy and international clout, they will be all the more eager to squelch dissent, burnish their nationalist credentials, and boost the economy by any means necessary. Moreover, powerful

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Some initiatives could help strike the proper balance. Instead of deterring Chinese expansionism by sailing provocative but vulnerable naval armadas past China’s coastline, for instance, Washington could deploy mobile antiship and surface-toair missile launchers on allied shores. If the United States joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—and invited China to join, too— Beijing would have the motive and means to reduce its tradedistorting practices without fighting a 1930s-style trade war.

China might spurn the offer, but then the treaty would at least strengthen the commitment of its signatories to the free flow of goods, money, and data. In so doing, it would limit the spread of China’s mercantilist and digital authoritarian policies. The United States could supplement this stance by investing more in scientific research and investigations into specific Chinese companies and investors, so that it can maintain technological superiority without banning Chinese investment and immigration into the United States. These moves would not eliminate the root causes of U.S.-Chinese rivalry, but they would protect U.S. interests while avoiding a slide into a cold or hot war.

Perhaps in a few decades, Chinese power will gradually mellow. Now, however, is a moment of maximum danger, because China is too weak to feel secure or satisfied with its place in the world order but strong enough to destroy it. As China’s economic miracle comes to an end, and Xi’s muchtouted Chinese Dream slips away, the United States must contain China’s outbursts with a careful blend of deterrence, reassurance, and damage limitation. Compared to gearing up for a whole-of-society throwdown against a rising superpower, this mission may seem uninspiring. But it would be smarter—and ultimately more effective.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

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The Unwinnable Trade War Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash—but Especially Americans

by Weijian Shan In late June, the leaders of China and the United States announced at the G20- meeting in Osaka, Japan, that they had reached a détente in their trade war. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that the two sides had set negotiations “back on track.” He put on hold new tariffs on Chinese goods and lifted restrictions preventing U.S. companies from selling to Huawei, the blacklisted Chinese telecommunications giant. Markets rallied, and media reports hailed the move as a “cease-fire.”

That supposed cease-fire was a false dawn, one of many that have marked the on-again, off-again diplomacy between Beijing and Washington. All wasn’t quiet on the trade front; the guns never stopped blazing. In September, after a summer of heated rhetoric, the Trump administration increased tariffs on another 125$ billion worth of Chinese imports. China responded by issuing tariffs on an additional 75$ billion worth of U.S. goods.

The United States might institute further tariffs in December, bringing the total value of Chinese goods subject to punitive tariffs to over half a trillion dollars, covering almost all Chinese

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The numbers suggest that Washington is not winning this trade war.

Although China’s economic growth has slowed, the tariffs have hit U.S. consumers harder than their Chinese counterparts.

The numbers suggest that Washington is not winning this trade war. Although China’s economic growth has slowed, the tariffs have hit U.S. consumers harder than their Chinese counterparts.

With fears of a recession around the corner, Trump must reckon with the fact that his current approach is imperiling the U.S. economy, posing a threat to the international trading system, and failing to reduce the trade deficit that he loathes.

Trump may back away from his self-destructive policy toward China, but U.S.-Chinese competition will continue beyond his tenure as president. Much of the coverage of the conflict makes it seem like a clash of personalities, the capriciousness of Trump against the implacable will of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. But this friction is systemic.

The current costs of the trade war reflect the structural realities that underpin the relationship between the U.S. and Chinese economies. It’s worth tracing that dynamic as the two great powers try to find a new, fitful equilibrium in the years ahead.

Customers line up to purchase Apple's new iPhone 11 series smartphones at an Apple retail store on East Nanjing Road in Shanghai. (Getty)

imports. China’s retaliation is expected to cover 69 percent of its imports from the United States. If all the threatened hikes are put in place, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports of Chinese goods will be about 24 percent, up from about three percent two years ago, and that on Chinese imports of U.S. goods will be at nearly 26 percent, compared with China’s average tariff rate of 6.7 percent for all other countries.

The parties to this trade war may yet step back from the abyss. There have been over a dozen rounds of high-level negotiations without any real prospect of a settlement. Trump thinks that tariffs will convince China to cave in and change its allegedly unfair trade practices. China may be willing to budge on some issues, such as buying more U.S. goods, opening its market further to U.S. companies, and improving intellectual property protection, in exchange for the removal of all new tariffs, but not to the extent demanded by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, China hopes that its retaliatory actions will cause enough economic pain in the United States to make Washington reconsider its stance.

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CONSIDER THE LOBSTERS The trade war has not produced the desired results for the United States. Washington first raised tariffs on Chinese imports in 2018. In the same year, Chinese exports to the United States increased by 34$ billion, or seven percent, year-over-year, while U.S. exports to China decreased by 10$ billion, or eight percent.

In the first eight months of this year, China’s exports to the United States dropped by just under four percent compared with the same period in the previous year, but U.S. exports to China shrank much more, by nearly 24 percent. Instead of narrowing the trade gap, the tariffs have coincided with a widening of the U.S. trade deficit with China: by nearly 12 percent in 2018 (to 420$ billion) and by about another eight percent in the first eight months of this year.

There are at least two reasons why Chinese exports to the United States have not fallen as much as the Trump administration hoped they would. One is that there are no good substitutes for many of the products the United States imports from China, such as iPhones and consumer drones, so U.S. buyers are forced to

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absorb the tariffs in the form of higher prices. The other reason is that despite recent headlines, much of the manufacturing of U.S.-bound goods isn’t leaving China anytime soon, since many companies depend on supply chains that exist only there.

(In 2012, Apple attempted to move manufacturing of its highend Mac Pro computer from China to Texas, but the difficulty of sourcing the tiny screws that hold it together prevented the relocation.)

Some export-oriented manufacturing is leaving China, but not for the United States. According to a May survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, fewer than six percent of U.S. businesses in China plan to return home. Sixty percent of U.S. companies said they would stay in China.

The damage to the economy on the import side is even more pronounced for the United States than it is for China. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and elsewhere found that in 2018, the tariffs did not compel Chinese exporters to reduce their prices; instead, the full cost of the tariffs hit American consumers. As tariffs raise the prices of goods imported from China, U.S. consumers will opt to buy substitutes (when available) from other countries, which may be more expensive than the original Chinese imports but are cheaper than those same goods after the tariffs. The price difference between the pre-tariff Chinese imports and these third-country substitutes constitutes what economists call a “dead-weight loss” to the economy.

Economists reckon the dead-weight loss arising from the existing tariffs on 200$ billion in Chinese imports to be 620$ per household, or about 80$ billion, annually. This represents about 0.4 percent of U.S. GDP. If the United States continues to expand its tariff regime as scheduled, that loss will more than double.

Meanwhile, Chinese consumers aren’t paying higher prices for U.S. imports. A study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics shows that since the beginning of 2018, China has

The uncomfortable truth for Trump is that U.S. trade deficits don’t spring from the practices of U.S. trading partners; they come from the United States’ own spending habits.

raised the average tariff rate on U.S. imports from 8.0 percent to 21.8 percent and has lowered the average tariff rate on all its other trading partners from 8.0 percent to 6.7 percent. China imposed tariffs only on U.S. commodities that can be replaced with imports from other countries at similar prices. It actually lowered duties for those U.S. products that can’t be bought elsewhere more cheaply, such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

Consequently, China’s import prices for the same products have dropped overall, in spite of higher tariffs on U.S. imports.

Beijing’s nimble calculations are well illustrated by the example of lobsters. China imposed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. lobsters in July 2018, precipitating a 70 percent drop in U.S. lobster exports.

At the same time, Beijing cut tariffs on Canadian lobsters by three percent, and as a result, Canadian lobster exports to China doubled. Chinese consumers now pay less for lobsters imported from essentially the same waters.

THE INESCAPABLE DEFICIT Beijing has proved much more capable than Washington of minimizing the pain to its consumers and economy. But the trade war would be more palatable for Washington if its confrontation with China were accomplishing Trump’s goals. The president thinks that China is “ripping off” the United States. He wants to reduce the United States’ overall trade deficit by changing China’s trade practices. But levying tariffs on Chinese imports has had the paradoxical effect of inflating the United States’ overall trade deficit, which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, rose by 28$ billion in the first seven months of this year compared with the same period last year.

The uncomfortable truth for Trump is that U.S. trade deficits don’t spring from the practices of U.S. trading partners; they come from the United States’ own spending habits. The United States has run a persistent trade deficit since 1975, both overall and with most of its trading partners. Over the past 20 years, U.S. domestic expenditures have always exceeded GDP, resulting in negative net exports, or a trade deficit. The shortfall has shifted over time but has remained between three and six percent of GDP. Trump wants to boost U.S. exports to trim the deficit, but trade wars inevitably invite retaliation that leads to significant reductions in exports. Moreover, increasing the volume of exports does not necessarily reduce trade deficits unless it is accompanied by a reduction in the country’s spending in terms of consumption and investment. The right way to reduce a trade deficit is to grow the economy faster than concurrent domestic expenditures, which can be accomplished only by encouraging innovation and increasing productivity. A trade war does the opposite, damaging the economy, impeding growth, and hindering innovation.

Even a total Chinese capitulation in the trade war wouldn’t make

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Lobster catch at harbor Vinalhaven Island Maine New England USA. (Getty)

a dent in the overall U.S. trade deficit. If China buys more from the United States, it will purchase less from other countries, which will then sell the difference either to the United States or to its competitors. For example, look at aircraft sales by the U.S. firm Boeing and its European rival, Airbus. At the moment, both companies are operating at full capacity. If China buys 1,000 more aircraft from Boeing and 1,000 fewer from Airbus, the European plane-maker will still sell those 1,000 aircraft, just to the United States or to other countries that might have bought instead from Boeing. China understands this, which is one reason it hasn’t put higher tariffs on U.S.-made aircraft. Whatever the outcome of the trade war, the deficit won’t be greatly changed.

A RESILIENT CHINA The trade war has not really damaged China so far, largely because Beijing has managed to keep import prices from rising and because its exports to the United States have been less affected than anticipated. This pattern will change as U.S. importers begin to switch from buying from China to buying from third countries to avoid paying the high tariffs. But assuming China’s GDP continues to grow at around five to six percent every year, the

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effect of that change will be quite modest. Some pundits doubt the accuracy of Chinese figures for economic growth, but multilateral agencies and independent research institutions set Chinese GDP growth within a range of five to six percent.

Skeptics also miss the bigger picture that China’s economy is slowing down as it shifts to a consumption-driven model.

Some manufacturing will leave China if the high tariffs become permanent, but the significance of such a development should not be overstated. Independent of the anxiety bred by Trump’s tariffs, China is gradually weaning itself off its dependence on export-led growth. Exports to the United States as a proportion of China’s GDP steadily declined from a peak of 11 percent in 2005 to less than four percent by 2018. In 2006, total exports made up 36 percent of China’s GDP; by 2018, that figure had been cut by half, to 18 percent, which is much lower than the average of 29 percent for the industrialized countries of the Organ-ization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Chinese leaders have long sought to steer their economy away from export-driven manufacturing to a consumer-driven model.

To be sure, the trade war has exacted a severe psychological toll

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on the Chinese economy. In 2018, when the tariffs were first announced, they caused a near panic in China’s market at a time when growth was slowing thanks to a round of credit tightening.

The stock market took a beating, plummeting some 25 percent.

The government initially felt pressured to find a way out of the trade war quickly. But as the smoke cleared to reveal little real damage, confidence in the market rebounded: stock indexes had risen by 23 percent and 34 percent on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, respectively, by September 2019 ,12. The resilience of the Chinese economy in the face of the trade war helps explain why Beijing has stiffened its negotiating position in spite of Trump’s escalation.

China hasn’t had a recession in the past 40 years and won’t have one in the foreseeable future, because its economy is still at an early stage of development, with per capita GDP only one-sixth of that of the United States. Due to declining rates of saving and rising wages, the engine of China’s economy is shifting from investments and exports to private consumption. As a result, the country’s growth rate is expected to slow. The International Monetary Fund projects that China’s real GDP growth will fall from 6.6 percent in 2018 to 5.5 percent in 2024; other estimates put the growth rate at an even lower number. Although the rate of Chinese growth may dip, there is little risk that the Chinese economy will contract in the foreseeable future. Private consumption, which has been increasing, representing 35 percent of GDP in 2010 and 39 percent last year, is expected to continue to rise and to drive economic growth, especially now that China has expanded its social safety net and welfare provisions, freeing up private savings for consumption.

The U.S. economy, on the other hand, has had the longest expansion in history, and the inevitable down cycle is already

China hasn’t had a recession in the past 40 years and won’t have one in the foreseeable future, because its economy is still at an early stage of development, with per capita GDP only one-sixth of that of the United States.

on the horizon: second-quarter GDP growth this year dropped to 2.0 percent from the first quarter’s 3.1 percent. The trade war, without taking into account the escalations from September, will shave off at least half a percentage point of U.S. GDP, and that much of a drag on the economy may tip it into the anticipated downturn. (According to a September Washington Post poll, 60 percent of Americans expect a recession in 2020.) The prospect of a recession could provide Trump with the impetus to call off the trade war. Here, then, is one plausible way the trade war will come to an end. Americans aren’t uniformly feeling the pain of the tariffs yet. But a turning point is likely to come when the economy starts to lose steam.

If the trade war continues, it will compromise the international trading system, which relies on a global division of labor based on each country’s comparative advantage. Once that system becomes less dependable—when disrupted, for instance, by the boycotts and hostility of trade wars—countries will start decoupling from one another.

China and the United States are joined at the hip economically, each being the other’s biggest trading partner. Any attempt to decouple the two economies will bring catastrophic consequences for both, and for the world at large. Consumer prices will rise, world economic growth will slow, supply chains will be disrupted and laboriously duplicated on a global scale, and a digital divide— in technology, the Internet, and telecommunications—will vastly hamper innovation by limiting the horizons and ambitions of

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economic development, which represents an alternative and a threat to liberal market systems, is ahistorical nonsense. China has achieved rapid growth in the past 40 years by moving away from the old system of state control of the economy and embracing the market. Today, the market plays a dominant role in resource allocation, and the private sector accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy.

However, the government-controlled sector remains too big, inefficient, wasteful, and moribund, more of a bane than a boon to the economy. It is also a source of growing friction between China and the West, which fears, with good reason, that Chinese government subsidies and support unfairly advantage stateowned firms. This arrangement needs to change, both for China and for its trading partners.

technology firms.

SILVER LININGS Trump’s trade war does not seem to simply seek to reduce the trade deficit. Rather, his administration sees the tariffs as a means to slow China’s economic rise and check the growing power of a geopolitical competitor. At the heart of this gambit is the notion that China’s system of government involvement in economic activities represents a unique threat to the United States. Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, has insisted that the purpose of the tariffs is to spur China to overhaul its way of doing business.

Ironically, it is China’s private sector that has been hardest hit by the trade war, as it accounts for 90 percent of Chinese exports (43 percent of which are from foreign-owned firms). If the trade war persists, it will weaken the private sector. China may well agree to commit to purchasing large quantities of U.S. goods as part of a settlement. But such purchases can be made only by the government, not by the private sector. The United States should recognize that securing such a commitment would basically compel the Chinese government to remain a large presence in economic affairs. The trade policy of the Trump administration threatens to undermine its own stated objectives.

U.S. officials should reconsider their analysis of the Chinese economy. To think that there is a unique “China model” of

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China can maintain its economic momentum only by structurally reforming its economy to move in the direction of a freer, more open market. If it fails to do so, its growth will hit a ceiling and its rise will be curtailed. U.S. negotiators should push China to further trim its state-owned sector, to guarantee equal access to its market for trade and investment, and to develop a better regime of intellectual property protection. These measures would accelerate the trajectory of reform that China embarked on 40 years ago, which has led to the rise of a vibrant private sector in China and the country’s economic integration with the global market. Speeding up this process will not be painless and will be resisted by vested interests in China. But such changes will benefit China as well as its trading partners, including the United States. Beijing and Washington should share these objectives in their trade negotiations. If they succeed in meeting these goals, both sides will win the trade war.

It is in the best interests of both countries to move away from zero-sum thinking and put an end to the ad hoc decoupling that the trade war has threatened. The best path forward is not to close but to tear down existing barriers and further open up trade. To maintain its global primacy and technological leadership, the United States needs China—the biggest and fastest-growing consumer market in the world. To sustain the momentum of its economic ascent, China needs to further its reforms and continue opening up to the world market.

Ultimately, a mix of cooperation and competition within a rules-based system will lead to the greatest prosperity for both countries and for the world economy, as all trading nations have learned throughout history.

WEIJIAN SHAN is Chair and CEO of PAG, a Hong Kong–based private equity firm, and the author of Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America. This article is part of a project of the Library of Congress’ John W. Kluge Center, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

This article was originally published in the November/December 2019 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine and on ForeignAffairs.com.

What a Withdrawal From Afghanistan Would Look Like

by Carter Malkasian Over the past two years, a bipartisan consensus has emerged that the United States should leave Afghanistan. This summer, President Donald

Trump repeatedly claimed that he wanted out.

So did the Democratic presidential candidates.

During a September debate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren promised to bring troops home without any deal with the Taliban,

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and former Vice President Joe Biden was just as strident, declaring, “We don’t need those troops there. I would bring them home.” But advocates of the mission argue that a full withdrawal courts disaster, paving the way for terrorist groups to reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan.

That distaste for remaining in Afghanistan is widespread is unsurprising after 17 years of war. And U.S. involvement in active military operations in Afghanistan has greatly decreased since 2010 and 2011, when nearly 100,000 U.S. troops were deployed. The remaining 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan support local security forces with airstrikes, surveillance, and advising.

Afghan soldiers and police do the frontline work of defending cities against the Taliban, while U.S. special operations devote significant effort to battling al Qaeda and ISIS. The United States has fought a relentless campaign against these groups, and many opponents of the effort can endure it no longer.

But what will actually happen if the United States pulls out of Afghanistan without a peace deal?

Whether disaster will follow or the consequences will be manageable, U.S. policymakers should take the measure of the course of action now— lest they find themselves unwilling to bear the risks of withdrawal.

THE MESSY AFTERMATH

In this photograph taken on January 2018 ,3, an Afghan commando force keeps watch during ongoing US-Afghan military operation against Islamic State militants in Achin district of Nangarhar province.

(Getty)

A Taliban advance would likely follow a U.S. withdrawal. The events of the years 2014 to 2016 offer a cautionary tale. During those years, the United States minimized airstrikes, because it believed that doing so could allow the Afghans to learn to fight on their own. Instead, the Taliban all but captured several provinces, including Kunduz and Helmand. Heavy casualties and desertions thinned the ranks of the Afghan military and police. In 2016, the United States went back to permitting airstrikes and thus stemmed the Taliban advance.

Advocates of the mission argue that a full withdrawal courts disaster, paving the way for terrorist groups to reestablish a safe haven in Afghanistan. in support of Afghan forces. All U.S. drones and troops would depart, including special operations forces and advisers. U.S. allies and coalition partners would undoubtedly pull out their 8,700 troops, too. Washington could continue to provide funding to the Afghan military at a reduced level, but Congress would be sorely tempted to eliminate such support once U.S. troops were out of harm’s way. Just how long a withdrawal would take is a matter of debate: the Obama administration once planned for a timeline of 30 months, but some have called for one that is even shorter.

Toward the end of the withdrawal process, the balance of military force within the country would tip. The Taliban’s leader, Mawlawi Haibatullah, would probably attack provincial centers such as Kunduz and Lashkar Gah. The Afghan army and police would not be able to defend these cities without U.S. air support. The following year, Haibatullah could escalate, striking big cities such as Kandahar and Jalalabad. Afghan special operations forces, the National Directorate of Security, and certain hard-bitten tribal leaders would fight tooth and nail. But chances are good that a significant number of soldiers and police would flee, leaving the Taliban tide to overwhelm the big provincial cities’ defenses.

Kabul itself could then spontaneously fall. Once tribal leaders, police, soldiers, and farmers sense which way the wind is blowing, the whole edifice of the Afghan state could collapse. Such was the sequence of events in 2001 and many times If the president decides, whether in 2021 or before, as Professor Thomas Barfield writes in before, to fully withdraw from Afghanistan, those Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History: airstrikes would cease. The United States would “The war did not have any decisive battles. Just close all its bases and stop conducting surveillance as the Taliban had come to power by persuading people that they were winners without fighting . .

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olitics

. they lost the war in a reverse process.”

But Kabul also stands a decent chance of surviving. Afghanistan’s army might concentrate on defending the capital, and Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara warlords—who once made up the Northern Alliance—could mobilize militias to help. Outside powers could oppose the Taliban: Russia, in defense of long-standing Uzbek and Tajik friends; Iran, to protect the Shiite Hazaras; and India, in order to contain Pakistani influence.

None of these countries can be assumed to step in fully behind the government, but a total Taliban victory would be in none of their interests.

Regardless of Kabul’s fate, however, the Taliban would control at least half the country, including several cities, fertile croplands, and mineral deposits. Under such circumstances, al Qaeda, ISIS, and like-minded groups would gain access to territory and resources. Other foreign terrorists would join them in Afghanistan, where a perceived Taliban victory over the United States would serve as a beacon to foreign extremists.

A BEACON FOR TERRORISTS There is scant evidence that the Taliban intends to attack the United States, even if it winds up in charge of all of Afghanistan. Its leaders may even discourage terrorist groups from causing trouble.

But the group is unlikely to physically prevent others on its territory from planning, preparing, and coordinating terrorist attacks—especially if

The experience of ISIS in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017 offers an example of what can happen when a terrorist group has lots of territory.

there is no peace deal. Over the years, former and current Taliban members have admitted to me that they think of al Qaeda as a friend and feel they should not be asked to turn on it. In August, Taliban spokesman Sohail Shaheen claimed he knows of no proof that al Qaeda was responsible for 11/9. Some commentators argue that U.S. retaliation for 11/9 would compel the Taliban to break with al Qaeda. But many Taliban believe that they have defeated the United States. In their minds, they are the ones who taught us the lesson.

ISIS is a different matter, because the Taliban actively fights it. After a U.S. withdrawal, ISIS would be free from U.S. bombardment. The Taliban might then escalate its attacks against the group, or it could simply try to hold it off by maintaining a strong front against it. To that end, Taliban leaders would be wary of distancing

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A general view of damage at the site of a suicide attack near a guesthouse on December 2009 ,15 in Kabul, Afghanistan.

(Getty)

of a post-withdrawal threat are unknowable.

Furthermore, U.S. homeland defenses are much stronger than they were in 2001 and might foil a terrorist plot of a scale similar to that of 11/9. Why should the United States worry about an undefined threat that could issue from Afghanistan someday in the future?

The United States could instead refocus its efforts on resiliency, or the ability to endure an attack and its losses. But the time might not be right for such a mindset, and the shift might not be politically expedient. The right peace deal could make such a stance unnecessary. Still, the United States should recognize that the most direct route out of Afghanistan is to live with the threat of terrorism.

A TALIBAN RULE If the United States withdraws from Afghanistan without a peace deal, the Afghan people will be the most affected. In the first year after a U.S. exit, Afghans would likely suffer an upsurge in violence as Taliban offensives intensified. Life in areas coming under Taliban control would be oppressive. The Taliban has recently tried to soften its policies, but as the terrorist organization expands its presence, women will most likely lose the freedom they have gained, the press will be silenced, and Afghans who have fought the Taliban will face retribution. themselves from al Qaeda, a potential ally in fighting ISIS. The experience of ISIS in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017 offers an example of what can happen when a terrorist group has lots of territory.

Control of Raqqa, Mosul, and other cities supplied ISIS with the space it needed to hide, meet, train, organize, and spread propaganda—all at a time when the group was under tremendous U.S. military pressure. The period when ISIS held the most territory coincided with 35 ISIS-linked attacks in Europe and the United States, which killed or injured roughly 2,000 people.

After a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan without a deal, al Qaeda and other terrorist groups could mount or inspire more attacks on the United States. But the exact nature and dimensions

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Over the long term, however, the ledger might balance out. If the Taliban takes over the country, violence would cease in areas under its control.

That could make up for the loss of freedom and economic development. Afghans would be oppressed and deprived, but alive. By contrast, if the United States stays, war and all its effects— from airstrikes to suicide bombings—would persist, possibly indefinitely.

A U.S. withdrawal would not necessarily be disastrous for Afghanistan. It would, however, entail real risks that would require the United States to accept a degree of resiliency. Policymakers must decide how much risk they are willing to assume at this delicate point in U.S. history.

This article was originally published on ForeignAffairs.com.

A Weekly Political News Magazine

Issue 1773- November- 08/11/2019

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Senator Elizabeth Warren: The Former Law Professor that Wants to Change the Rules of the Economy www.majalla.com

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Do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day for better health?

A New Study Says You Might Not Have to Walk Far to See Benefits 40

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Researchers found that in older women, taking as few as 4,400 steps per day was associated with a %41 lower risk of dying during the study period when compared with women who walked 2,500 steps a day or fewer. when compared with women who walked 2,500 steps a day or fewer. In addition, it didn›t seem to matter if the women took those steps power walking or just moving around the house.

«I›m not discounting 10,000 steps a day,» says the study lead author, Dr. I-Min Lee, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. «For those who can get to 10,000 steps per day, that›s fantastic.» But the idea that older women can see health benefits with a more modest number of steps was a welcome surprise.

by Harvard Women›s Health Watch If you›ve invested in a fitness tracker, chances are you›ve heard that you should take 10,000 steps a day for better health. If that sounds daunting, there›s good news: a study published online May 29 by JAMA Internal Medicine found that you may able to reap health benefits by taking half that number of steps each day.

Researchers found that in older women, taking as few as 4,400 steps per day was associated with a %41 lower risk of dying during the study period

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Meeting exercise requirements with steps: How the numbers add up Federal guidelines currently recommend that adults get at least 150 minutes each week of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking. So how does that translate to steps?

Authors of the May 29 study in JAMA Internal Medicine estimate that it would take about 17,000 steps to meet that mark.

This number is from a 2005 study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, which calculated steps by female participants in a six-month supervised walking program. At the start of the study, the women walked an average of 4,600 steps each day in the course of their normal activity. Women who met the -150minute guideline took an additional 16,400 steps per week during their walks. Divided over seven days, this meant that they walked 2,300 steps per

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day when exercising. Combined with the 4,600 daily steps at baseline, this would add up to nearly 7,000 steps per day to meet the goal.

WHY 10,000?

You might wonder where that -10,000steps-a-day number came from in the first place. The answer to that question isn›t totally clear. «The number likely originated as a marketing tool,» says Dr. Lee. «In 1965, a Japanese business, the Yamasa Clock and Instrument Company, sold a pedometer called Manpo-kei, which means 10,000 steps meter› in Japanese.» The company may have chosen that number because the number 10,000, written in Japanese, looks like a person walking.

While that 10,000 number has been circulated widely, there was really no scientific evidence backing it, which is why Dr. Lee and her colleagues wanted to take a closer look. They looked at 16,741 women (average age 72) who participated in the Women›s Health Study. Between 2011 and 2015, each woman wore a device for seven days to track her movement. The researchers hoped to answer two main questions: • How many steps a day were associated with longer life?

• Did step intensity matter?

TRACKING STEPS AND LIFE Researchers tracked deaths in the study group through December 2017 based on reports from family members or postal records, and then confirmed deaths using death certificates or the National Death Index. They found that death rates were highest among the most sedentary women in the study but were lower among women who reached 4,400 steps a day. Rates continued to decline in women who took steps beyond that number up to 7,500 steps a day. After that the mortality rates leveled off, says Dr. Lee. «Taking 4,400 steps a day should be very doable for most women,» says Dr. Lee. The average woman over age 60 takes about 4,000 steps a day, so reaching 4,400 isn›t much of a leap. «The most inactive women in our study took about 2,700

steps a day,» she says.

This means that even sedentary women can meet the goal by adding around 2,000 steps a day, which is approximately a mile.

Quick ways to squeeze in more steps during your daily activities without working out Making some very simple changes to your daily routine can help you get in a good number of extra steps. Here are some ideas: • Stand up and move. Get up during commercial breaks and walk in place while watching television.

• Make more trips. Instead of bringing laundry downstairs all at once, bring a little down at a

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time.

• Don›t park close to the entrance. Get in the routine of parking in a spot that is farther away from the entrance of the place you are visiting.

• Choose active leisure activities. Walk your dog, play actively with your grandchildren, garden, or go ballroom dancing.

• Plan ahead. Take time to strategize about where you›re going in order to find ways to achieve added movement.

PUTTING FINDINGS INTO ACTION Ultimately, Dr. Lee says, women can take two

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lessons from this study: Even small increases in your movement pay off.

«Just adding a very modest number of steps a day -- say, an extra 2,000 steps -- can be very beneficial. One does not need to get to 10,000 steps a day,» explains Dr. Lee. Any type of movement counts. All steps count, so these extra 2,000 steps could be steps you take doing a whole range of activities in daily life, and not necessarily for exercise. Clean the house, run errands at the mall, or take a quick walk on the treadmill. Adding extra steps can be as simple as changing your daily habits.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren: The Former Law Professor that Wants to Change the Rules of the Economy Majalla - London Elizabeth Warren was born in 1949, in Okalahoma, US. Her father worked mainly as a maintenance man and her mother did catalogorder work. At age 16 she became a state debate champion and graduated high school and attended George Washington University, Washington, D.C., though she graduated from the University of Houston (B.S. in speech pathology, 1970) after having married her high-school sweetheart, mathematician Jim Warren, at age 19 and moved to Texas. She was the first member of her family to graduate from college and spent most of her early life on what she referred to as "the ragged edge of the middle class."

After teaching at the University of Texas, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University, Warren, an expert in bankruptcy law, was selected to lead the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in the 1990s. In 1996, she changed her affiliation from Republican to Democratic. Warren has authored 11 books about the economy, the middle class, and personal finance. He books include two co-written with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke" and "All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan."

In 2008, she was appointed by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) to serve as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, created during the economic recession to oversee the Treasury and evaluate market transparency.

Warren left the role in 2010 to serve as a

special adviser to President Barack Obama on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her breakout moment came with a September 2011 speech that went viral, in which she argued against the idea that taxing the wealthy is class warfare. Warren won the 2012 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts with 53 percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Scott Brown (R). She was the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate representing Massachusetts.

On her website, Warren told her constituents: "I won't just be your senator, I will also be your champion." She quickly gained a reputation for her unforgiving questioning of big banking executives and regulators.

In June 2016, Warren endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

She also went on the attack in her critiques of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“When Donald says he’ll make America great, he means greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump. That’s who Donald Trump is… And you have to watch out for him, because he’ll crush you into the dirt.” After the election of Trump to the presidency, Warren because an outspoken critic and the voice of opposition of his administration.

She joined the Women’s March for America a day after his inauguration and has opposed many of his policies and has spoken publically about perceived conflicts of interest and misconduct by Trump himself. She also was a vocal opponent of many of the president's cabinet nominees, including Senator Jeff Sessions. In 2018, Warren won re-election by a landslide, taking %60 of the vote. Soon afterwards, news broke that she had formed an exploratory committee to run for

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president in 2020; she confirmed her candidacy in February 2019.

Warren positions herself as a direct contrast to the Trump-led Republican party of the current era and has made steady gains in the national polls.

She has released many policy proposals on many topics, but her signature initiative and top priority addresses political corruption, which she sees as the connective tissue linking many social ills.

Warren wants to cover tuition at public colleges and eliminate student-loan debt for millions of Americans. Her plan would create a one-time cost of 640$ billion to the federal government and ultimately be paid for an “Ultra Millionaire Tax,” an annual %2 tax on the estimated 75,000 families with 50$ million or more in wealth.

She has publically criticised big tech companies saying that they have “too much power – too much over our economy, our society, and our democracy.” Through the policy, she would “unwind tech mergers that illegally undermine competition.” Pressured to describe how she intended to pay for a "Medicare for all" program to provide free health care for Americans, Warren revealed a 20.5$ trillion health care proposal in early November. Under her plan, employers would continue contributing toward overall coverage expenses (though employees would trade in their company insurance for the government one), with additional funds to be raised through an altered income tax policy and the taxing of financial transactions like stock trades. The senator frames the United States’ foreign involvement as an opportunity to defend democracy and question the role of capitalism in exacerbating inequalities worldwide.

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B

ook Reviews

The New Masters of the Universe Big Tech and the Business of Surveillance

by Paul Starr The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Shoshana Zuboff. PublicAffairs, 704 .2019pp.

In his 1944 classic, The Great Transformation, the economic historian Karl Polanyi told the story of modern capitalism as a “double movement” that led to both the expansion of the market and its restriction.

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, old feudal restraints on commerce were abolished,

and land, labor, and money came to be treated as commodities. But unrestrained capitalism ravaged the environment, damaged public health, and led to economic panics and depressions, and by the time Polanyi was writing, societies had reintroduced limits on the market.

Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emerita at the Harvard Business School, sees a new version of the first half of Polanyi’s double movement at work today with the rise of “surveillance capitalism,” a new market form pioneered by Facebook and Google. In The Age of

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Surveillance Capitalism, she argues that capitalism is once again extending the sphere of the market, this time by claiming “human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” With the rise of “ubiquitous computing” (the spread of computers into all realms of life) and the Internet of Things (the connection of everyday objects to the Internet), the extraction of data has become pervasive. We live in a world increasingly populated with networked devices that capture our communications, movements, behavior, and relationships, even our emotions and states of mind. And, Zuboff warns, surveillance capitalism has thus far escaped the sort of countermovement described by Polanyi.

Zuboff’s book is a brilliant, arresting analysis of the digital economy and a plea for a social awakening about the enormity of the changes that technology is imposing on political and social life. Most Americans see the threats posed by technology companies as matters of privacy. But Zuboff shows that surveillance capitalism involves more than the accumulation of personal data on an unprecedented scale. The technology firms and their experts—whom Zuboff labels “the new priesthood”—are creating new forms of power and means of behavioral modification that operate outside individual awareness and public accountability. Checking this priesthood’s power will require a new countermovement—one that restrains surveillance capitalism in the name of personal freedom and democracy.

THE RISE OF THE MACHINES A reaction against the power of the technology industry is already underway. The U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are conducting antitrust investigations of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. In July, the FTC levied a 5$ billion fine on Facebook for violating promises to consumers that the company made in its own privacy policies (the United States, unlike the European Union, has no general law protecting online privacy). Congress is considering legislation to limit technology companies’ use of data and roll back the broad immunity from liability for user-generated content that it granted them in the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This national debate, still uncertain in its ultimate impact, makes Zuboff’s book all the more timely and relevant.

The rise of surveillance capitalism also has an international dimension. U.S. companies have long

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In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, she argues that capitalism is once again extending the sphere of the market, this time by claiming “human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” dominated the technology industry and the Internet, arousing suspicion and opposition in other countries.

Now, chastened by the experience of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Americans are getting nervous about stores of personal data falling into the hands of hostile foreign powers.

In July of this year, there was a viral panic about FaceApp, a mobile application for editing pictures of faces that millions of Americans had downloaded to see projected images of themselves at older ages. Created by a Russian firm, the app was rumored to be used by Russian intelligence to gather facial recognition data, perhaps to create deepfake videos—rumors that the firm has denied. Early last year, a Chinese company’s acquisition of the gay dating app Grindr stirred concern about the potential use of the app’s data to compromise individuals and U.S. national security; the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has since ordered the Chinese firm to avoid accessing Grindr’s data and divest itself entirely of Grindr by June 2020. It is not hard to imagine how the rivalry between the United States and China could lead not only to a technology divorce but also to two different worlds of everyday surveillance.

According to Zuboff, surveillance capitalism originated with the brilliant discoveries and brazen claims of one American firm. “Google,” she writes, “is to surveillance capitalism what the Ford Motor Company and General Motors were to mass-production-based managerial capitalism.” Incorporated in 1998, Google soon came to dominate Internet search. But initially, it did not focus on advertising and had no clear path to profitability. What it did have was a groundbreaking

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ook Reviews

insight: the collateral data it derived from searches— the numbers and patterns of queries, their phrasing, people’s click patterns, and so on—could be used to improve Google’s search results and add new services for users. This would attract more users, which would in turn further improve its search engine in a recursive cycle of learning and expansion.

Google’s commercial breakthrough came in 2002, when it saw that it could also use the collateral data it collected to profile the users themselves according to their characteristics and interests. Then, instead of matching ads with search queries, the company could match ads with individual users. Targeting ads precisely and efficiently to individuals is the Holy Grail of advertising. Rather than being Google’s customers, Zuboff argues, the users became its rawmaterial suppliers, from whom the firm derived what she calls “behavioral surplus.” That surplus consists of the data above and beyond what Google needs to improve user services. Together with the company’s formidable capabilities in artificial intelligence, Google’s enormous flows of data enabled it to create what Zuboff sees as the true basis of the surveillance industry—“prediction products,” which anticipate what users will do “now, soon, and later.” Predicting what people will buy is the key to advertising, but behavioral predictions have obvious value for other purposes, as well, such as insurance, hiring decisions, and political campaigns.

Zuboff’s analysis helps make sense of the seemingly unrelated services offered by Google, its diverse ventures and many acquisitions. Gmail, Google Maps, the Android operating system, YouTube,

The technology firms and their experts—whom Zuboff labels “the new priesthood”—are creating new forms of power and means of behavioral modification that operate outside individual awareness and public accountability.

Google Home, even self-driving cars—these and dozens of other services are all ways, Zuboff argues, of expanding the company’s “supply routes” for user data both on- and offline. Asking for permission to obtain those data has not been part of the company’s operating style. For instance, when the company was developing Street View, a feature of its mapping service that displays photographs of different locations, it went ahead and recorded images of streets and homes in different countries without first asking for local permission, fighting off opposition as it arose.

In the surveillance business, any undefended area of social life is fair game.

This pattern of expansion reflects an underlying logic of the industry: in the competition for artificial intelligence and surveillance revenues, the advantage goes to the firms that can acquire both vast and varied streams of data. The other companies engaged in surveillance capitalism at the highest level—Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and the big telecommunications companies—also face the same expansionary imperatives. Step by step, the industry has expanded both the scope of surveillance (by migrating from the virtual into the real world) and the depth of surveillance (by plumbing the interiors of individuals’ lives and accumulating data on their personalities, moods, and emotions).

The surveillance industry has not faced much resistance because users like its personalized information and free products. Indeed, they like them so much that they readily agree to onerous, one-sided terms of service.

When the FaceApp controversy blew up, many people who had used the app were surprised to learn that they had agreed to give the company “a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you.”

But this wasn’t some devious Russian formulation.

As Wired pointed out, Facebook has just as onerous terms of service.

Even if Congress enacts legislation barring companies from imposing such extreme terms, it is unlikely to resolve the problems Zuboff raises. Most people are probably willing to accept the use of data to

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The more power major technology platforms exercise over politics and society, the more opposition they will provoke— not only in the United States but also around the world.

personalize their services and display advertising predicted to be of interest to them, and Congress is unlikely to stop that. The same processes of personalization, however, can be used to modify behavior and beliefs. This is the core concern of Zuboff’s book: the creation of a largely covert system of power and domination.

MAKE THEM DANCE From extracting data and making predictions, the technology firms have gone on to intervening in the real world. After all, what better way to improve predictions than to guide how people act? The industry term for shaping behavior is “actuation.” In pursuit of actuation, Zuboff writes, the technology firms “nudge, tune, herd, manipulate, and modify behavior in specific directions by executing actions as subtle as inserting a specific phrase into your Facebook news feed, timing the appearance of a BUY button on your phone, or shutting down your car engine when an insurance payment is late.”

Evidence of the industry’s capacity to modify behavior on a mass scale comes from two studies conducted by Facebook. During the 2010 U.S.

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congressional elections, the company’s researchers ran a randomized, controlled experiment on 61 million users. Users were split up into three groups. Two groups were shown information about voting (such as the location of polling places) at the top of their Facebook news feeds; users in one of these groups also received a social message containing up to six pictures of Facebook friends who had already voted. The third group received no special voting information. The intervention had a significant effect on those who received the social message: the researchers estimated that the experiment led to 340,000 additional votes being cast. In a second experiment, Facebook researchers tailored the emotional content of users’ news feeds, in some cases reducing the number of friends’ posts expressing positive emotions and in other cases reducing their negative posts. They found that those who viewed more negative posts in their news feeds went on to make more negative posts themselves, demonstrating, as the title of the published article about the study put it, “massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks.”

The 2016 Brexit and U.S. elections provided realworld examples of covert disinformation delivered via Facebook. Not only had the company previously allowed the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest personal data on tens of millions of Facebook users; during the 2016 U.S. election, it also permitted microtargeting of “unpublished page post ads,” generally known as “dark posts,” which were invisible to the public at large. These were delivered to users as part of their news feeds along with regular content, and when users liked, commented on, or shared them, their friends saw the same ads, now personally endorsed. But the dark posts then disappeared and were never publicly archived. Microtargeting of ads is not inherently illegitimate, but journalists are unable to police deception and political opponents cannot rebut attacks when social media deliver such messages outside the public sphere. The

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delivery of covert disinformation on a mass basis is fundamentally inimical to democratic debate.

Facebook has since eliminated dark posts and made other changes in response to public criticism, but Zuboff is still right about this central point: “Facebook owns an unprecedented means of behavior modification that operates covertly, at scale, and in the absence of social or legal mechanisms of agreement, contest, and control.” No law, for example, bars Facebook from adjusting its users’ news feeds to favor one political party or another (and in the United States, such a law might well be held unconstitutional). As a 2018 study by The Wall Street Journal showed, YouTube’s recommendation algorithm was feeding viewers videos from ever more extreme fringe groups. That algorithm and others represent an enormous source of power over beliefs and behavior.

Surveillance capitalism, according to Zuboff, is moving society in a fundamentally antidemocratic direction. With the advent of ubiquitous computing, the industry dreams of creating transportation systems and whole cities with built-in mechanisms for controlling behavior. Using sensors, cameras, and location data, Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, envisions a “for-profit city” with the means of enforcing city regulations and with dynamic online markets for city services. The system would require people to use Sidewalk’s mobile payment system and allow the firm, as its CEO, Dan Doctoroff, explained in a 2016 talk, to “target ads to people in proximity, and then obviously over time track them through things like beacons and location services as well as their browsing activity.” One software developer for an Internet of Things company told Zuboff, “We are learning how to write the music, and then we let the music make them dance.”

It is not hard to imagine how the rivalry between the United States and China could lead not only to a technology divorce but also to two different worlds of everyday

Such aspirations imply a radical inequality of power between the people who control the play list and the people who dance to it. In the last third of her book, Zuboff takes her analysis up a level, identifying the theoretical ideas and general model of society that she sees as implicit in surveillance capitalism. The animating idea behind surveillance capitalism, Zuboff says, is that of the psychologist B. F. Skinner, who regarded the belief in human freedom as an illusion standing in the way of a more harmonious, controlled world. Now, in Zuboff’s view, the technology industry is developing the means of behavior modification to carry out Skinner’s program.

The emerging system of domination, Zuboff cautions, is not totalitarian; it has no need for violence and no interest in ideological conformity. Instead, it is what she calls “instrumentarian”—it uses everyday surveillance and actuation to channel people in directions preferred by those in control. As an example, she describes China’s efforts to introduce a social credit system that scores individuals by their behavior, their friends, and other aspects of their lives and then uses this score to determine each individual’s access to services and privileges. The Chinese system fuses instrumentarian power and the state (and it is interested in political conformity), but its emerging American counterpart

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With the advent of ubiquitous computing, the industry dreams of creating transportation systems and whole cities with built-in mechanisms for controlling behavior. and she has little to say about specific alternatives herself. Prophecy you will find here; policy, not so much. She rightly argues that breaking up the big technology companies would not resolve the problems she raises, although antitrust action may well be justified for other reasons. Some reformers have suggested creating an entirely new regulatory structure to deal with the power of digital platforms and improve “algorithmic accountability”—that is, identifying and remedying the harms from algorithms. But all of that lies outside this book.

may fuse instrumentarian power and the market.

NO FUTURE? The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a powerful and passionate book, the product of a deep immersion in both technology and business that is also informed by an understanding of history and a commitment to human freedom. Zuboff seems, however, unable to resist the most dire, over-the-top formulations of her argument. She writes, for example, that the industry has gone “from automating information flows about you to automating you.” An instrumentarian system of behavior modification, she says, is not just a possibility but an inevitability, driven by surveillance capitalism’s own internal logic: “Just as industrial capitalism was driven to the continuous intensification of the means of production, so surveillance capitalists are . . . now locked in a cycle of continuous intensification of the means of behavioral modification.”

As a warning, Zuboff’s argument deserves to be heard, but Americans are far from mere puppets in the hands of Silicon Valley. The puzzle here is that Zuboff rejects a rhetoric of “inevitabilism”—“the dictatorship of no alternatives”—but her book gives little basis for thinking we can avoid the new technologies of control,

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The more power major technology platforms exercise over politics and society, the more opposition they will provoke—not only in the United States but also around the world. The global reach of American surveillance capitalism may be only a temporary phase. Nationalism is on the march today, and the technology industry is in its path: countries that want to chart their own destiny will not continue to allow U.S. companies to control their platforms for communication and politics.

The competition of rival firms and political systems may also complicate any efforts to reform the technology industry in the United States. Would it be a good thing, for example, to heavily regulate major U.S. technology firms if their Chinese rivals gained as a result? The U.S. companies at least profess liberal democratic values. The trick is passing laws to hold them to these values. If Zuboff’s book helps awaken a countermovement to achieve that result, we may yet be able to avoid the dark future she sees being born today.

PAUL STARR is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author of Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies.

This article was originally published in the November/ December 2019 issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine and on ForeignAffairs.com.