InternationalRelations

IR scholars ought to do more to study the experiences of indigenous peoples because they can help to better understand international political phenomena

In the U.S., for example, the War Department was home to the Bureau of Indian Affairs until 1849, treaty-making with Native nations persisted until 1871, the “Indian Wars” lasted until at least 1890, and Native peoples as a class did not receive citizenship rights until 1924. Relations such as these surely offer much to explore for IR scholars.

Indigenous experiences are just as varied as those of other groups and can complement or contrast with existing theories related to the concepts and debates that are central to IR.

bringing indigenous experiences into IR means bringing indigenous people into one’s research through, for example, interviews with current tribe members or through more specifically indigenous methods.

From state formation to civil-military relations and from environmental politics to genocide studies, there is much work from outside of IR that could fruitfully inform our teaching just as much as our scholarship.

The refugee cap was whittled down to 45,000 for 2018 and 30,000 for 2019, over the objections of senior officials in the Department of Defense, who view the program as crucial to rewarding and building allies in U.S. military campaigns oversees.

there are nearly 71 million displaced people around the world, many of them refugees who have been waiting years in limbo for a chance at resettlement

refugee arrivals, which had been temporarily suspended pending the release of the new resettlement numbers, should resume on October 22. While a short suspension is typical, the weeks-long halt has left many refugees who had already booked their flights stranded.

The President’s companion executive order also potentially limits the places where those that are accepted can be resettled. In the order, he said refugees should only be placed where state and local governments agree to receive them.

The administration said refugee resettlement was a drain on government resources but immigration experts said new arrivals, who come with a legal status, often quickly fill jobs and contribute to local tax revenues.

Mark Hetfield, chief executive of Jewish non-profit refugee assistance organization HIAS said the executive order was an attempt by Trump to “allow governors and mayors to imitate his own refugee ban, state by state and town by town.”

“The only game now is out-Faraging Farage,”

Johnson’s entire gambit has been to provoke his opponents in Parliament into forcing him to delay a no-deal Brexit—allowing him to claim that his attempt to implement the 2016 Brexit referendum has been thwarted by an undemocratic, pro-EU Parliament. More, he wants to blame his opponents for forcing him to call the general election that he actually wants. And in that sense, Johnson has succeeded on both counts.

Even the usually pro-Conservative Times newspaper expressed dismay at Johnson’s ruthless bluffing. “Nothing is as it seems. Boris Johnson wanted and intended to lose his historic vote,” wrote Jenni Russell. “Johnson and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, deliberately planned and engineered last night’s defeat, goading the Commons into opposing him; he was lying to his party, parliament and the country when he claimed that he was being pushed into calling an election.”

The Brexit endgame, then, has become a tug of war over what election date will be maximally damaging for the Conservatives and least damaging for Labour

Labour would love to delay the public vote until after Johnson is humiliatingly forced to ask for a Brexit deal—which would be a boost for the Brexit Party and scupper Conservative chances of power.

with a mandatory delay of Brexit fast making its way into law, the only way for Britain to leave the EU now will be for Johnson to persuade a majority of voters to back his radical, no-deal version of Brexit in a general election. And the polls have been showing that public opinion is going in the opposite direction.

Exacerbating this danger is the deliberate and accelerating breakdown of the arms control architecture that for decades provided restraint, transparency, and predictability for each side’s conventional and nuclear forces. In their absence, Russia and the West are assuming and planning for worst-case scenarios. The first crack appeared in 2002, when the United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, signed three decades earlier to prevent Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide defenses against long-range ballistic missiles. Five years later, Russia effectively suspended another landmark agreement, the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and NATO followed suit. The 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—which banned an entire class of destabilizing nuclear-capable missiles on European territory—has been dealt a likely fatal blow with this year’s decisions by Washington to withdraw from the treaty and by Moscow to suspend implementation of it.

The fate of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is also in doubt, with four Republican U.S. Senators writing to President Donald Trump this past spring asking if he would consider “unsigning” the treaty. The future of the 2010 New START treaty is also unclear

At the same time as checks on existing weapons are falling away, new technologies threaten to further destabilize the military balance. Sophisticated cyberattacks could compromise early warning systems or nuclear command-and-control structures, increasing the risk of false alarms. Prompt-strike forces, including delivery systems that pair conventional or nuclear warheads with a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle or cruise missile, can travel at very high speeds, fly at low altitudes, and maneuver to elude defenses. If deployed, they would decrease a defender’s warning and decision time when under attack, increasing the fear of military planners on both sides that a potential first strike could deliver a decisive advantage to the attacker. Then there is the militarization of outer space, a domain that remains virtually unregulated by agreements or understandings: China, Russia, and, most recently, India have built up their antisatellite capabilities, and Washington is mulling a dedicated space force. 

the absence of dialogue between Russia and the West—in particular, between civilian and military professionals in the defense and foreign ministries. The current disconnect is unprecedented even when compared with the height of the Cold War

The United States and its NATO allies are now stuck in a retaliatory spiral of confrontation with Russia.

transatlantic discord has damaged the perception of NATO as a strong alliance

By virtue of its vast geography, permanent membership in the UN Security Council, rebuilt military, and immense nuclear forces, Russia can disrupt geopolitical currents in areas vital to the interests of the United States, including Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Arctic. Further clashes and crises are not just possible but probable

The fact that Trump and Putin reportedly agreed to a new dialogue on strategic stability and nuclear dangers at a meeting in Helsinki in July 2018 was a step in the right direction. But their inability to follow through—including at the level of civilian and military professionals, who need the green light from their leaders—underlines how dysfunctional relations have become

the United States and Russia could take more specific steps to reduce the likelihood of a new nuclear arms race—of vital importance for international security, particularly in light of the probable demise of the INF treaty. All nations have an interest in seeing the New START treaty fully implemented and extended through 2026, the maximum five-year extension permitted by the treaty.

Today, decision-makers in Washington and Moscow have only a precious few minutes to decide whether a warning of a possible nuclear attack is real and thus whether to retaliate with a nuclear attack of their own. New technologies, especially hypersonic weapons and cyberattacks, threaten to make that decision time even shorter. The fact that Russian troops are deployed, and routinely conduct military exercises, in Russia’s western regions close to NATO’s boundaries, and NATO troops are deployed, and have recently conducted military exercises, close to Russia’s borders further raises fears of a short-warning attack. Such shrinking decision time and heightened anxieties make the risk of a mistake all too real. Leaders in both Washington and Moscow should clearly direct their military leaders to work together on ways to minimize such fears and increase their decision time

leaders in Moscow, London, and Paris could once again become consumed with fears of a short-warning nuclear attack that could decapitate a nation’s leaders and its command and control, which would greatly increase the risk of false warnings.

Exchanging more information about each side’s operations and capabilities could help ensure that prompt-strike systems, such as modern hypersonic missiles, do not further erode strategic stability. This is primarily a U.S.-Russian issue, but with China’s reported development of hypersonic missile capabilities, addressing it will ultimately require broader engagement. It would also help to offer more transparency on nonnuclear prompt-strike systems and commit to segregating these conventional capabilities from nuclear-weapons-related activities or deployments.

Cyberattacks on nuclear facilities, nuclear command-and-control structures, or early warning systems could cause miscalculations or blunders, such as a false warning of a missile attack or a failure to prevent the theft of nuclear materials. As states continue to develop and refine their ability to attack satellites, the United States and Russia could be blinded in the early stages of a conflict.

the understanding, first articulated in 1985 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Affirming this principle was an important building block to ending the Cold War.

some have suggested abandoning U.S.-Russian talks and waiting for new leadership in both countries. That would be a mistake. Dialogue between the two presidents remains essential: only that can create the political space for civilian and military officials in both nations to engage with one another in discussions that could prevent catastrophe

Washington and Moscow are acting as if time is on their side. It is not.

the Trump administration has stopped at nothing to push the argument that job creation is justification enough for supporting weapons manufacturers to the hilt. Even before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he was already insisting that military spending was a great jobs creator. He’s only doubled down on this assertion during his presidency. Recently, overriding congressional objections, he even declared a national “emergency” to force through part of an arms sale to Saudi Arabia that he had once claimed would create more than a million jobs. While this claim has been thoroughly debunked, the most essential part of his argument — that more money flowing to defense contractors will create significant numbers of new jobs — is considered truth personified by many in the defense industry

In 2012, concerned that those caps on defense spending would cut into their bottom lines, the five top contractors went on the political offensive, making future jobs their weapon of choice. After the Budget Control Act passed, the Aerospace Industries Association — the leading trade group of the weapons-makers — warned that more than one million jobs would be at risk if Pentagon spending were cut significantly. To emphasize the point, Lockheed sent layoff notices to 123,000 employees just before the BCA was implemented and only days before the 2012 election. Those layoffs never actually happened, but the fear of lost jobs would prove real indeed and would last.

Pentagon spending was actually higher in 2018 than in 2012

From 2012 to 2018, overall employment at Lockheed actually fell from 120,000 to 105,000, according to the firm’s filings with the SEC and the company itself reported a slightly larger reduction of 16,350 jobs in the U.S. In other words, in the last six years Lockheed dramatically reduced its U.S. workforce, even as it hired more employees abroad and received more taxpayer dollars

where is all that additional taxpayer money actually going, if not job creation? At least part of the answer is contractor profits and soaring CEO salaries. In those six years, Lockheed’s stock price rose from $82 at the beginning of 2012 to $305 at the end of 2018, a nearly four-fold increase. In 2018, the company also reported a 9% ($590 million) rise in its profits, the best in the industry. And in those same years, the salary of its CEO increased by $1.4 million

From 2012 to 2018, the unemployment rate in the U.S. plummeted from roughly 8% to 4%, with more than 13 million new jobs added to the economy. Yet, in those same years, three of the five top defense contractors slashed jobs. In 2018, the Pentagon committed approximately $118 billion in federal money to those firms, including Lockheed — nearly half of all the money it spent on contractors. This was almost $12 billion more than they had received in 2012. Yet, cumulatively, those companies lost jobs and now employ a total of 6,900 fewer employees than they did in 2012, according to their SEC filings.

In addition to the reductions at Lockheed, Boeing slashed 21,400 jobs and Raytheon cut 800 employees from its payroll. Only General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman added jobs — 13,400 and 16,900 employees, respectively — making that total figure look modestly better. However, even those “gains” can’t qualify as job creation in the normal sense, since they resulted almost entirely from the fact that each of those companies bought another Pentagon contractor and added its employees to its own payroll

“the aerospace and defense (A&D) sector scored record revenues and profits in 2018” with an “operating profit of $81 billion, surpassing the previous record set in 2017.” According to the report, Pentagon contractors were at the forefront of these profit gains. For example, Lockheed’s profit improvement was $590 million, followed closely by General Dynamics at $562 million. As employment shrank, CEO salaries at some of these firms only grew. In addition to compensation for Lockheed’s CEO jumping from $4.2 million in 2012 to $5.6 million in 2018, compensation for the CEO of General Dynamics increased from $6.9 million in 2012 to a whopping $20.7 million in 2018.

weapons-making outfits spend more than $100 million on lobbying yearly, donate tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of members of Congress every election season, and give millions to think tanks annually

research has repeatedly shown that, even with this supposed “multiplier effect,” defense spending produces fewer jobs than just about anything else the government puts our money into. In fact, it’s about 50% less effective at creating jobs than if taxpayers were simply allowed to keep their money and use it as they wished

As Brown University’s Costs of War project has reported, “$1 billion in military spending creates approximately 11,200 jobs, compared with 26,700 in education, 16,800 in clean energy, and 17,200 in health care.”

not only are the green energy and education areas vital to the future of the country, they are also genuine job-creating machines. Yet, the government gives more taxpayer dollars to the defense industry than all these other government functions combined.

Reports from the industry’s own trade association show that it has been shedding jobs. According to an Aerospace Industries Association analysis, it supported approximately 300,000 fewer jobs in 2018 than it had reported supporting just three years earlier

add to their army of lobbyists, their treasure trove of campaign contributions, and those think tanks on the take, the famed revolving door that sends retired government officials into the world of the weapons makers and those working for them to Washington

since 2008, as the Project On Government Oversight’s Mandy Smithberger found, “at least 380 high-ranking Department of Defense officials and military officers shifted into the private sector to become lobbyists, board members, executives, or consultants for defense contractors.” 

polls show Britons are cooling to Brexit and are coming to realize that the ultimate irony of the slogan Johnson and other Leavers deployed during the Brexit campaign—“Take Back Control”—is that Britain has relinquished even more control to Brussels. 

Just as Trump pretended he was giving the American people a better NAFTA deal (which now has little chance of congressional passage) and pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—which had been the single most effective means of forcing China to behave better on trade and intellectual property rights—to show that he could do it better alone (he hasn’t), Johnson will take his nation through a similar charade. Egged on by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party—which will threaten him with more Tory defections if he doesn’t keep his word—Johnson will continue to pretend to the British people that they can get better trade deals on their own, when most of the evidence is that instead he will bequeath to them international isolation, ever-rising prices, and permanent economic eclipse. And perhaps the eclipse of the Conservative Party as well.

“Trump will use his relationship to try to get the U.K. to change its views on the Iran nuclear deal,” said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Until now, the U.K. has stood with France and Germany in seeking to rescue the 2015 nuclear pact that Trump rejected last year; if it sides with the United States now, that in turn could create more fissures in the trans-Atlantic alliance. 

Trump is plainly eager to have Johnson as an ally in his great task of unmaking the international system

we will all be witnessing a bizarre backward version of the so-called special relationship, one premised on undoing a great deal of what the U.K. and the United States accomplished together after World War II, when both nations oversaw the creation of postwar institutions such as the United Nations and Bretton Woods; British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin took the lead in creating NATO (even as an exhausted U.K. bequeathed to the United States the role of stabilizer of the West); and the United States and Britain were the primary progenitors of the global free-trading system

It is true that the rise of both Johnson and Trump was a response to a real need for redress in the U.S. and U.K.-conceived international system. Go-it-alone nationalism did not come out of nowhere; both countries staked everything on globalization and free trade—particularly in the financial sector—and the middle class in both the United States and Britain had suffered from it. Indeed, Britain did even worse than the United States after the 2008 crash, and the Brussels bureaucracy had grown irritatingly intrusive. It’s probably surprising that it took this long for a backlash like Brexit to occur. But pointing out serious flaws in the system is not an argument for junking it altogether. And that’s where the new special relationship may be headed for trouble.

surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE’s efforts to monitor opponents

Various reports have highlighted the ongoing cyber arms race in the Middle East, as the Emirates and other nations attempt to sweep up hacking weapons and personnel faster than their rivals. The Reuters investigation is the first to reveal the existence of Project Raven, providing a rare inside account of state hacking operations usually shrouded in secrecy and denials.

While this activity raises ethical dilemmas, U.S. national security lawyers say the laws guiding what American intelligence contractors can do abroad are murky. Though it’s illegal to share classified information, there is no specific law that bars contractors from sharing more general spycraft knowhow, such as how to bait a target with a virus-laden email.

The hacking of Americans was a tightly held secret even within Raven, with those operations led by Emiratis instead. Stroud’s account of the targeting of Americans was confirmed by four other former operatives and in emails reviewed by Reuters.

Stroud had already made the switch from government employee to Booz Allen contractor, essentially performing the same NSA job at higher pay. Taking a job with CyberPoint would fulfill a lifelong dream of deploying to the Middle East and doing so at a lucrative salary. Many analysts, like Stroud, were paid more than $200,000 a year, and some managers received salaries and compensation above $400,000.

Providing sensitive defense technologies or services to a foreign government generally requires special licenses from the U.S. State and Commerce Departments. Both agencies declined to comment on whether they issued such licenses to CyberPoint for its operations in the UAE. They added that human rights considerations figure into any such approvals.

“Some days it was hard to swallow, like [when you target] a 16-year-old kid on Twitter,” she said. “But it’s an intelligence mission, you are an intelligence operative. I never made it personal.”

the program took aim not just at terrorists and foreign government agencies, but also dissidents and human rights activists. The Emiratis categorized them as national security targets

the UAE has been accused of suppressing free speech, detaining dissidents and other abuses by groups such as Human Rights Watch. The UAE says it is working closely with Washington to fight extremism “beyond the battlefield” and is promoting efforts to counter the “root causes” of radical violence. Raven’s targets eventually would include militants in Yemen, foreign adversaries such as Iran, Qatar and Turkey, and individuals who criticized the monarchy, said Stroud and eight other former Raven operatives. Their accounts were confirmed by hundreds of Raven program documents reviewed by Reuters.

Reached by phone in London, Donaghy, now a graduate student pursuing Arab studies, expressed surprise he was considered a top national security target for five years. Donaghy confirmed he was targeted using the techniques described in the documents. “I’m glad my partner is sitting here as I talk on the phone because she wouldn’t believe it,” he said. Told the hackers were American mercenaries working for the UAE, Donaghy, a British citizen, expressed surprise and disgust. “It feels like a betrayal of the alliance we have,” he said.

Mansoor was convicted in a secret trial in 2017 of damaging the country’s unity and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He is now held in solitary confinement, his health declining, a person familiar with the matter said. Mansoor’s wife, Nadia, has lived in social isolation in Abu Dhabi. Neighbors are avoiding her out of fear security forces are watching. They are correct. By June 2017 Raven had tapped into her mobile device and given her the code name Purple Egret, program documents reviewed by Reuters show. To do so, Raven utilized a powerful new hacking tool called Karma, which allowed operatives to break into the iPhones of users around the world.

Karma was particularly potent because it did not require a target to click on any link to download malicious software. The operatives understood the hacking tool to rely on an undisclosed vulnerability in Apple’s iMessage text messaging software. In 2016 and 2017, it would be used against hundreds of targets across the Middle East and Europe, including governments of Qatar, Yemen, Iran and Turkey, documents show. Raven used Karma to hack an iPhone used by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, as well as the phones of close associates and his brother.

Emirati security forces viewed human rights advocates as a major threat to “national stability,”

But a 2014 State Department agreement with CyberPoint showed Washington understood the contractors were helping launch cyber surveillance operations for the UAE. The approval document explains CyberPoint’s contract is to work alongside NESA in the “protection of UAE sovereignty” through “collection of information from communications systems inside and outside the UAE” and “surveillance analysis.”

“It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,”

Under DarkMatter, Project Raven continued to operate in Abu Dhabi from the Villa, but pressure escalated for the program to become more aggressive. Before long, senior NESA officers were given more control over daily functions, former Raven operatives said, often leaving American managers out of the loop. By mid-2016, the Emirates had begun making an increasing number of sections of Raven hidden from the Americans still managing day-to-day operations. Soon, an “Emirate-eyes only” designation appeared for some hacking targets.

Stroud began searching a targeting request list usually limited to Raven’s Emirati staff, which she was still able to access because of her role as lead analyst. She saw that security forces had sought surveillance against two other Americans. When she questioned the apparent targeting of Americans, she received a rebuke from an Emirati colleague for accessing the targeting list, the emails show. The target requests she viewed were to be processed by “certain people. You are not one of them,” the Emirati officer wrote.

Days later, Stroud said she came upon three more American names on the hidden targeting queue.

occupations were listed: journalist

When Stroud kept raising questions, she said, she was put on leave by superiors, her phones and passport were taken, and she was escorted from the building. Stroud said it all happened so quickly she was unable to recall the names of the three U.S. journalists or other Americans she came across in the files. “I felt like one of those national security targets,” she said. “I’m stuck in the country, I’m being surveilled, I can’t leave.” After two months, Stroud was allowed to return to America. Soon after, she fished out the business card of the FBI agents who had confronted her at the airport. “I don’t think Americans should be doing this to other Americans,” she told Reuters. “I’m a spy, I get that. I’m an intelligence officer, but I’m not a bad one.”

By directly acquiring mines, accumulating equity stakes in natural-resource companies, making long-term agreements to buy mines’ current or future production (known as “off-take agreements”), and investing in new projects under development, Chinese firms traded much-needed capital for outright control or influence over large shares of the global production of these resources. Despite China’s slowing growth and a major pullback in its foreign direct investment in other sectors, the government has maintained robust financial support for resource acquisition; mergers and acquisitions in metals and chemicals hit a record high in 2018.

China lacks significant reserves of three resources vital to its tech ambitions: cobalt, platinum-group metals, and lithium. It has successfully employed two strategies to secure control of them. One is driven by China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which use development finance and infrastructure investment to embed themselves in higher-risk countries, establishing close ties with government leaders. The second is investment by state-linked private firms in market-based economies. Both strategies have shown agility and an ability to effectively adapt to local circumstances to achieve the same end.

Chile is home to 57 percent of the world’s known lithium reserves, the world’s largest known concentration, and SQM controls roughly half the country’s production

DRC is home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production and half of its known reserves. Those resources are the prime target of investors for the booming battery industry. Over a decade of steady engagement, China has staked out a dominant position by developing strong political ties and investing in production assets and related infrastructure

China’s SOEs and private firms have made at least eight major equity and off-take plays in platinum-group metals in the Bushveld Complex. Such investments in South Africa’s highly concentrated and strategic resource deposits have helped make metals the country’s leading source of export growth, with nearly 50 percent of its metal exports going to China—tying South Africa’s economic welfare directly to Chinese investment.

the three countries where nearly 90 percent of global lithium production and more than three-quarters of the world’s known lithium reserves are located: Chile, Argentina, and Australia. In just six years, China has come to dominate the global market: More than 59 percent of the world’s lithium resources are now under its control or influence

China now owns or has influence over half of the DRC’s cobalt production, and has a massive stake in its mining industry. Six months ahead of the presidential elections, the event also sent a strong message to candidates about China’s deep investment in copper and cobalt mining—which constitutes 80 percent of the DRC’s export revenue and thousands of jobs—and its capacity to influence the future of the DRC’s economy

Natural resources are abundant in China; it is the No. 1 producer and processor of at least ten critical minerals and metals that are essential to high-tech industries and upon which China’s commercial and strategic competitors depend. To reinforce its strength, Chinese firms are acquiring mines and output from the next-largest producers and reserves, giving China both an economic edge in the next high-tech industrial revolution and increasing geopolitical power.

In a cash-strapped industry, Chinese firms are financing mine expansion and new development in exchange for a guaranteed supply of lithium in both mature and emerging markets. In Argentina, where President Mauricio Macri is eliminating mineral export taxes, reducing corporate tax rates, and allowing profit repatriation, China is establishing a dominant position in the nascent sector with “streaming deals,” which provide development capital in exchange for future lithium yields to help projects get off the ground. Chinese firms, led by Ganfeng, have stakes in 41 percent of the country’s major planned projects that account for 37 percent of Argentina’s reserves. This raw-material strategy is already coming to fruition: Lithium export volumes from Argentina to China rose nearly fourfold from 2015 to 2017, and China has secured access to the country's lithium for the longer term.

This same strategy, combined with asset acquisition, has also been successful in Australia, whose proximity to China, significant lithium reserves, and broad political support for mining investment have attracted Chinese investment. Tianqi and Ganfeng have established stakes in 91 percent of the lithium mining projects underway and 75 percent of the country’s reserves, including some of the world’s largest.

Though the final agreement included restrictions on Tianqi’s board and committee participation and its access to SQM’s sensitive data, Tianqi’s equity position still confers considerable influence over SQM.

Perhaps the best-known example both of China’s natural-resource dominance and its willingness to exploit it is rare-earth elements, a group of 17 elements that (despite their name) are commonly found, but rarely in concentrations that can be economically extracted. They are important materials for the defense, aerospace, electronics, and renewable energy industries. Over the past two decades China has produced more than 80 percent of the world’s production of rare-earth elements and processed chemicals. In 2010 it cut off exports to Japan amid rising tensions over the East China Sea, and the following year it imposed export quotas that threw governments and manufacturers into a panic. But with the exception of Japan, the attention to this critical vulnerability was short-lived, and little action was taken by other countries reliant on imports to diversify their resources or develop minerals action plans of their own.

China declared rare-earth elements a strategic resource in 1990 and prohibited foreign investment in the sector. Six state-owned enterprises control the industry, and the government cut production quotas in 2018 by 36 percent. With global demand for rare-earth elements projected at a compound average growth rate of more than 17 percent to 2025, a supply crunch is likely approaching—and China is already securing other nations’ supplies

While Russia strictly limits foreign participation in rare-earth element development, Chinese firms have accumulated off-take agreements and stakes in rare-earth element mines in Australia and Brazil

in 2017, China’s Shenghe Resources and two U.S. private equity firms acquired the sole U.S. and North American rare-earth element producer and processor, Molycorp, and its idled mining operations at Mountain Pass, California.

In 2016, China’s Yellow Dragon Holdings Ltd. co-invested with Bushveld Minerals, the primary vanadium developer in South Africa’s massive Bushveld Complex, to acquire Strategic Minerals, which owned the Vametco vanadium mine and plant. Yellow Dragon subsequently increased its investment in Bushveld Minerals and has become the fifth-largest shareholder. The holdings deepen China’s influence over South Africa’s vanadium resources and its role in the country’s emerging high-tech sector

China’s position is even stronger in graphite, a crystalline form of the element carbon whose high conductivity makes it a major component in electrodes, batteries, and solar panels, as well as industrial products such as steel and composites. For the last 20 years, China has been the leading global supplier of graphite, representing nearly 70 percent of the world’s production in 2018 and 24 percent of its reserves. While synthetic graphite, which is produced from petroleum coke, is an alternative, unfavorable economics constrain its use

New projects are concentrated in Mozambique, where the world’s largest graphite mine and fourth-largest known reserves are located. Already, Chinese firms have secured off-take agreements with the three major developers in Mozambique for the majority of their graphite production, and they are financing new development.

Japan is 90 percent reliant on China for its graphite

This resource consolidation could determine whether China is able to overcome the last major hurdle to achieving its ambitions: a competitive semiconductor industry.

Semiconductors can be pure elements or compounds and altered with impurities to improve their conductivity. Several materials are now being used to improve speed and performance, including rare-earth elements, graphite, indium, gallium, tantalum, and cadmium. China is the dominant producer of five out of the six, controls more than 75 percent of the world’s supply of three, and is consolidating control over them all

Should China succeed technologically, its capacity to scale production and flood markets (as it has already done with solar panels and wind turbines) has serious implications not only for leading semiconductor producers, but also for national security, if Chinese-manufactured chips are embedded in the devices upon which our data-driven lives, our economies, and our defense systems increasingly depend. While government and industry officials have started to restrict semiconductor sales and scrutinize Chinese acquisition of technology firms—e.g., the United States’ temporary ban on selling semiconductors to ZTE, or the recent flare-up over Huawei —such moves are strengthening China’s resolve to develop its domestic industry. More attention should be paid to its efforts to consolidate critical raw materials and the computing power they confer.

In April, U.S. government officials announced plans to meet with lithium industry leaders and automakers with the intention of developing a national electric-vehicle supply chain strategy. It is a start.

Malinowski said governments like China could take advantage of possible U.S. flexibility to actually further their repressive practices in the name of “economic and social rights,” which is a term China often uses to justify its practices. For example, the State Department says China practices widespread Internet censorship to prevent disruptions to the “economic or social order,” according to the most recent human rights report.

Two have previously defended the regimes in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, all of which stand accused of human rights abuses by international standards.

In 2018, commissioner Russell Berman, a Stanford University professor of comparative literature and German studies, downplayed the outcry over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying the reaction was politically motivated

Last year, another commission member, Hamza Yusuf, praised the UAE, calling it “a country that is committed to tolerance…. This is a country that is committed to civil society. It is one of the safest countries on the earth.” Contrary to Yusuf’s assertion, the UAE also stands accused of numerous human rights abuses perpetrated on its own citizens.

Asked about Berman’s Khashoggi comments, a senior administration official referred to President Donald Trump’s latest comments about the matter at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. During a press conference there, Trump said he was “very unhappy” about Khashoggi’s murder but said “nobody, so far, has pointed directly a finger at the future King of Saudi Arabia,” contradicting the assessment of his own intelligence agency.

Michael Posner, who served at State from 2009 to 2013. Posner expressed doubt that any one commissioner’s personal views would affect the department’s overall policies, but said that their ruminations on long-standing positions held at each of the agency’s many bureaus could muddle the State Department’s overall message.

The official noted that the commission is part of the Policy Planning Staff, a clearinghouse for independent analysis and advice for the secretary of state, arguing that its position means it will not play a role in policy-making

These commissions do not need congressional approval or appropriations of funds. Instead, they are enacted with a “timely notice” in the Federal Register, per a 1972 law, which also says advisory committees may not make policy, leaving such decisions up to the president or “an officer of the federal government.”

Some human rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have also expressed concern that the commission’s goal of refocusing on “unalienable rights” is actually an attempt to narrow the rights the government has to protect, including abortion rights and protections for the LGBTQ community.

The underlying assumption behind all of these policies is that U.S. pressure—you know, what Pompeo likes to call “swagger”—will eventually force acknowledged adversaries to do whatever it is the United States demands of them, and that other states won’t find ways to evade, obstruct, divert, dilute, hedge, hinder, or otherwise negate what Washington is trying to do. It assumes we are still dwelling in the unipolar moment and that all that matters is the will to use the power at America’s disposal.

this approach denies that there are any real trade-offs between any of these objectives

it is not hard to understand why hawks think they can get away with this approach to foreign policy, at least in the short term. Despite many recent missteps, the United States is still very powerful. Its active assistance is still something that some other states want, and its “focused enmity” is something no state can completely ignore. The United States is still a vast and valuable market, the dollar remains the world’s main reserve currency, and the ability to cut other states or financial institutions off from the infrastructure of global finance gives Washington unusual leverage. Many U.S. allies are accustomed to deferring to Washington and are understandably reluctant to do anything that might encourage the United States to withdraw support. Trump and company can also count on the support of authoritarian soul mates in the European right (including the present rulers in Poland and Hungary), as well as America’s morally compromised allies in the Middle East

there are even more potent reasons why this bullying approach has produced no major foreign-policy successes so far and is unlikely to yield significant success in the future. First of all, even much weaker states are loath to succumb to blackmail, for one very good reason: Once you’ve shown you can be coerced, there may be no end to subsequent demands. Moreover, when the United States insists on complete capitulation (i.e., by calling for total North Korean disarmament or regime change in Iran), it gives the target state zero incentive to comply. And given Trump’s amply demonstrated dishonesty and fickle approach to diplomacy, why would any foreign leader believe any assurances he (or Pompeo) might give? Put all this together, and you have a perfect recipe for “no deal.”

Should Iran eventually restart its nuclear weapons program—which has been in abeyance for more than a decade—the rest of the world is not going to suddenly line up behind the United States and support more forceful action. Why? Because everyone knows that it was the United States—not Iran—that killed the deal, and there won’t be a ton of sympathy for America when it starts bleating about Iran’s response. America’s Middle East clients will no doubt be happy if Washington decides to fight another war on their behalf, but don’t count on a lot of help from them or from anyone else

other states are starting to develop workarounds designed to limit U.S. leverage, most notably by designing financial arrangements outside the network of institutions that Washington has been using to coerce allies and adversaries into compliance. As Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman recently wrote in FP, “instead of leading states and businesses to minimize contact with the targets of U.S. sanctions,”  the Trump administration’s strong-arm tactics “may lead states and businesses to minimize their contact with the U.S.-led global financial system and to start to construct their own workarounds. Over time, those workarounds might even begin to accumulate into an effective alternative system.”

being a bully encourages adversaries to join forces out of their own self-interest, while giving potential allies more reason to keep their distance. It is no accident that Russia and China continue to move closer together—even though they are not natural allies, and a smarter U.S. approach could give Moscow reasons to distance itself from Beijing—and America’s same bullying impulses are going to push states like Iran even closer to them. Bolton and those of his ilk will probably come up with some trite new moniker for this group—“Axis of Evil” and “Troika of Tyranny” are taken, so perhaps “Triad of Troublemakers” or “Coalition of Chaos”—ignoring the fact that their own policies have helped push these powers together.

a real-world test of two competing visions of contemporary geopolitics. One version sees U.S. power as essentially undiminished and believes that a combination of material capabilities, favorable geography, and entrenched institutional capabilities will allow it to pursue an ambitious and revisionist foreign policy at little cost and with a high probability of success. The second version—to which I subscribe—sees the United States as very powerful and in a privileged position (for various reasons) but also believes there are limits to U.S. power and that it is necessary to set priorities, minimize trade-offs when possible, and collaborate with others on many issues. It also assumes that others cannot be browbeaten into abject capitulation and that effective and durable international agreements require a degree of mutual compromise, even with adversaries

perpetual threat escalation leads to disproportionately spending finite taxpayer resources on the military

a strategic misdiagnosis about what actually threatens the American people—threats that are almost exclusively domestic, including guns, drugs, and noncommunicable diseases

when leaders believe the world is only getting worse and worse, it reduces America’s sense of agency and urgency to use its vast wealth and influence to improve things, both within the United States and abroad. This collective indifference has been made worse by the United States’ ever deepening partisanship, which prevents rational discussions or evidence-based policymaking

The English School is noted for its trademark claim that states can form international societies, not just international systems. That is, states can come together over shared common interests to agree on common rules and create institutions to uphold those rules. When asked what sustains such a society, English School theorists offer two main answers. One is pragmatic: States share basic interests in physical security, stable territorial rights, and the keeping of agreements, and international society is the best means to these ends. This is overlaid, however, by an argument about the cultural prerequisites for international society. Far from seeing culture as complex and contradictory, Martin Wight, one of the school’s founders, held in Systems of States that an international society “will not come into being without a degree of cultural unity among its members.” Modern international society, he argued, had its origins in European civilization, and when decolonization admitted a host of non-Western states, international society had “outrun cultural and moral community.” The idea that pragmatism could only ever sustain a thin social order—and that a common culture was needed to undergird robust bonds, institutions, and practices—focused much of the school’s post-decolonization research on the possibility of international society in a culturally diverse world.

It may seem unfair to expect realism and rational choice to be abreast of current thinking on culture: It is not their game, after all. Yet constructivism and the English School, both of which see culture as core business, fare no better.

On the surface, it might seem like rational choice theory would have even less to say about culture than realism. Yet culture enters rationalist arguments, too, in three ways: when adherents explain the rational choice of norms, when they accommodate cultural preferences, and in their argument that common knowledge is essential to solving coordination problems. The last of these is particularly interesting, as it is here that rationalists express a version of IR’s default conception of culture. Coordination problems exist when actors have common interests but can only realize as much if they coordinate their choices, usually without direct communication.

culturalists, who think that the order will collapse as its Western cultural foundations erode, and liberals, who deny that cultural differences matter, holding that liberal institutions can accommodate states and peoples of diverse cultural complexions.

what if we take seriously the insight that there is no such thing as a unified culture, that all culture is complex and contradictory? We would have to assume, first of all, that the modern order arose under conditions of cultural diversity, not unity. And we would then have to ask how these heterogeneous conditions shaped the order’s evolution and, in turn, how the order’s institutions were constructed to govern and order that diversity

Under international criminal law, you can’t persecute people based on sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics. But fundamentalists around the world are promulgating fear and justifying discrimination with claims that women and LGBTIQ rights advocates want to impose what they call “gender ideology” – a supposed attack on “natural families”, “feminine values” and the male-or-female binary as the will of God.

We spent the first six months organising meetings with experts to work out our legal arguments and reasoning. We held seven briefings to receive feedback from representatives of the International Law Commission, governments, and civil society from around the world. We also distributed a toolkit in four languages to support broad civil society input on the treaty’s gender language and other key provisions.

nearly 600 organisations and academics from more than 100 countries signed our open letter. At least nine other civil society submissions echoed our demands, including from 60 African human rights groups, led by the Southern Africa Litigation Center; 12 transgender rights groups; two intersex rights groups; and Human Rights Watch.

19 governments affirmed that the rights of women and LGBTIQ people are protected under international criminal law and said this treaty must reflect that. No state spoke against gender rights in the treaty process. An astounding 24 UN special rapporteurs and other experts signed another submission echoing our legal reasoning.

the treaty goes to the UN General Assembly this autumn, where states will again debate its language and decide its fate