foreignpolicy--2020-09-08--Trump Has Mocked the U.S. Military His Whole Life

Trump Has Mocked the U.S. Military His Whole Life Perhaps no one was less surprised last week when it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had called American war dead “ losers ” and “ suckers ” than his former high school classmate George M. White .
The 74-year-old retired Army veteran was Trump ’ s superior—the first captain , or highest-ranking cadet—in Trump ’ s 1964 graduating class at the New York Military Academy .
White said he witnessed up close Trump ’ s contempt for military service , discipline , and tradition , as well his ungoverned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by his father Fred Trump ’ s generous donations to the school .
“ No , those remarks absolutely didn ’ t surprise me .
In my dealings with him he was a heartless , obnoxious son of a bitch , ” White told me in an interview over the weekend .
According to White and other former classmates at the academy , Trump ’ s five years there , coupled with the disregard for U.S. military traditions he learned at his father ’ s knee , helps explain a great deal of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those who fought , died , or were wounded in America ’ s wars , as well as his skeptical view of the need for the United States to fight in places like Vietnam and Iraq .
According to the Atlantic magazine , during a trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I , Trump referred to the more than 1,800 U.S. Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “ suckers.
” Indicating that he didn ’ t understand why the United States had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump also reportedly asked aides , “ Who were the good guys in this war ?
” The Atlantic article , portions of which have been corroborated by the Associated Press , the Washington Post , and Fox News , also reported that when Trump aborted a visit to another World War I cemetery , blaming the weather , he remarked , “ Why should I go to that cemetery ?
It ’ s filled with losers.
” In addition , Trump reportedly said that the presence of maimed U.S. veterans would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commenting , “ Nobody wants to see that.
” Trump ’ s comments appeared to be in line with the attitude he reportedly evinced on Memorial Day 2017 , when he visited the grave of 1st Lt. Robert Kelly , the son of his then-homeland security secretary and later chief of staff John Kelly .
Standing at the grave of the younger Kelly , who died in Afghanistan in 2010 , Trump reportedly turned to the secretary and said : “ I don ’ t get it .
What was in it for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House have denied reports about his disdain for the sacrifices of the U.S. military .
“ If people really exist that would have said that , they ’ re lowlifes and they ’ re liars , ” Trump told reporters on Sept. 3 .
“ And I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes .
There is nobody that respects them more.
” In the aftermath of the controversy over his demeaning of U.S. service members , Trump has sought to portray himself as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trigger-happy military service chiefs and will pull out of “ endless wars ” to keep soldiers safe .
“ I ’ m not saying the military is in love with me—the soldiers are , ” Trump said at a news conference Monday .
“ The top people in the Pentagon probably aren ’ t , because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy .
But we ’ re getting out of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re doing.
” Trump is certainly not alone in questioning the wisdom of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and Iraq , which are now widely considered major strategic errors , or even in World War I—a still-debated intervention orchestrated by a formerly pacifist president , Woodrow Wilson .
White , Trump ’ s former superior at the New York Military Academy , said he agrees with the basic idea of the president ’ s opposition to many overseas deployments , saying that if it weren ’ t for Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ d be perfect.
” Since taking office , many of Trump ’ s actions have borne out that oft-repeated skepticism about U.S. military deployments abroad .
In 2018 , he announced an abrupt withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan , even before formally launching peace talks with the Taliban , and said he wanted to leave Syria as well .
In 2019 he was widely criticized for abruptly abandoning Kurdish fighters in Syria who had fought and died to help the United States remove the Islamic State .
This July , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. troops from Germany , with no strategic rationale given .
Against that , Trump has lavished money on the Pentagon since taking office , boosting defense spending in each of the last three years , while he has yet to wind down the “ endless war ” in Afghanistan as promised , with the Taliban moving new forces into place against the U.S.-supported Afghan government .
Trump ’ s attitude toward the military , then , is fundamentally ambivalent : He mocks the very idea of service , sacrifice , or discipline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big parades , and deadly weapons .
He has sought to portray himself as a tough and aggressive leader who understands the military better than generals do , yet he has repeatedly sought to avoid war .
As president , he cultivated a love-hate relationship with the military .
Trump initially picked leading generals as top aides , including retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary , and former Army Lt. Gen. H.R .
McMaster as national security advisor , in addition to Kelly , also a retired Marine general , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he called them America ’ s best , once calling Mattis “ the closest thing to Gen. George Patton that we have , and it ’ s about time.
” But he dismissed the same military advisors later in his first term , calling some of them “ losers ” and “ a bunch of dopes and babies ” because “ we don ’ t win any wars anymore , ” according to the book A Very Stable Genius by the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig .
“ This whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all types of service as about the military , but it was clear to me he saw value in claiming military bona fides , ” said Michael D ’ Antonio , a Trump biographer .
Much of that ambivalence was also on display during Trump ’ s time at the military academy , which he has said in the past gave him an understanding of military service greater than that of actual veterans , as D ’ Antonio recounts .
Trump said that his time at the New York Military Academy gave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of the guys that go into the military , ” D ’ Antonio wrote in his book The Truth About Trump .
White scoffs at the notion that Trump ever had any respect for the military , and he laughed about Trump ’ s efforts to paint his time at the academy as a genuine military initiation .
“ I went into the U.S. Army during Vietnam in 1968 .
I served a tour in Korea , ” said White , whose last name at the time he was attending the New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When I got into basic training I realized very quickly that at the New York Military Academy we were just play-acting .
What we had been taught was a sort of surface military thing.
” But the academy did leave Trump with his love of superficial military grandeur , especially parades and medals .
In 2016 , then-candidate Trump told a supporter who gave him a copy of his Purple Heart : “ I always wanted to get the Purple Heart .
This was much easier.
” “ Like most ex-military , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having real military personnel salute him , ” said Alan Lapidus , a former Trump family architect , who enlisted in the military in 1957 as a combat engineer .
Trump ’ s efforts at heroic self-branding also began at the academy , said White and Sandy McIntosh , another former cadet who knew Trump and his family well .
Trump began wearing decorations and medals he didn ’ t earn , especially for academic or military achievement , and got himself placed at the head of the Columbus Day military parade in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White and McIntosh recall .
“ I did very well under the military system , ” Trump told the Washington Post in January 2016 .
“ I became one of the top guys at the whole school.
” His former classmates disagree .
“ One of the things that struck me was I don ’ t recall him being a good student at all , ” McIntosh said .
“ I was two years younger than him and he asked me to go over his essays for him and improve them .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the nature of his disability .
I think his grades were mostly in the D-plus or C-minus range.
” Both White and McIntosh said the incorrigible and arrogant behavior and insubordination that had prompted Trump ’ s parents to send him to the military academy in the first place continued at the school .
What they witnessed tends to corroborate Too Much and Never Enough : How My Family Created the World ’ s Most Dangerous Man , the recent family tell-all by Trump ’ s niece Mary Trump .
She reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described as a “ high-functioning sociopath , ” helped turn his son into an entitled , self-aggrandizing narcissist whom no one could control .
According to White , who is the same age as Trump , “ my mother was confronted by Mrs. Trump on three separate occasions at the academy and what she said validates what Mary Trump wrote in that book .
She cornered my mother and all she talked about was how she couldn ’ t control Donald and he wouldn ’ t listen to her .
She was distraught @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a magic solution to make Donald listen.
” Instead , White said , Trump regularly ignored the orders given by him and other superiors .
“ The most significant incident , which I got into big trouble for , was when we were taking a picture in May of 1964 , and Donald Trump refused to draw his sword .
I ’ m the first captain and I order present arms and there are five guys behind me and they draw .
But he refuses .
I hear behind me , ‘ Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The picture gets taken .
… He was defying a direct order , showing his defiance , ” White said .
“ He was ‘ being Trump , ’ showing that his ego was more powerful than anybody ’ s .
He later showed that picture around to show how defiant he was because he didn ’ t draw the sword.
” White and McIntosh also believe that Trump inflated his grades and that his father ’ s influence—and deep pockets—were responsible for bumping him up from lowly supply sergeant to cadet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump was over-privileged , ” White said .
“ His father was rich , and he was protected .
His father always considered him a genius .
Trump was developing this alternative reality even then , and it was allowed to flourish because he was allowed to by the school supervisors .
They directly ordered me to stay away from Trump .
Everybody knew Fred was pulling out his checkbook.
” Trump ’ s apparent disdain for the military continues a long family tradition .
His grandfather left Germany to avoid military service @ @ @ @ @ @ @ father never served .
According to Mary Trump ’ s book , both Fred Trump Sr. and Donald Trump harshly criticized the decision by her father , the president ’ s older brother , Fred Trump Jr. , to join the U.S. Air National Guard .
Trump himself sought multiple draft deferments to avoid the Vietnam War .
A number of Trump biographers have confirmed that Trump evaded the Vietnam draft , and he himself has admitted to the Washington Post , “ I had a lot of deferments , ” and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avoiding service .
“ Like many in his generation , he avoided serving in the Vietnam War by getting a bogus medical deferment , in his case for bone spurs , a condition widely considered permanent that somehow never interfered with his playing sports and apparently disappeared when he was no longer draft-eligible , ” said another of his biographers , Gwenda Blair .
“ What makes Trump different is that rather than justifying this subterfuge by questioning the war ’ s legitimacy , he impugned the intelligence and bravery of those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labelling one of the most famous veterans , John McCain , a loser because he was captured and spent more than five years in a POW camp.
” But this has always been a family affair , Blair said .
“ Trump was only following in the footsteps of his own grandfather , ” she said .
“ Many decades earlier , at the end of the nineteenth century , Friedrich Trump dodged mandatory military service in Germany by emigrating to the U.S. when he was too young to serve and returning to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” For classmates like White , Trump ’ s reported remarks are simply an echo of that long family tradition .
“ It ’ s real simple .
His grandfather dodged the draft in Germany and his father never went in .
And when I came back from Korea , in 1972 , I ran into him in New York City and told him where I ’ d been , he didn ’ t give a flying ripshit that I ’ d been to Korea .
He made barfing noises , ” White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holy shit , you are a piece of work .
’ ”

Perhaps no one was less surprised last week when it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had called American war dead “losers” and “suckers” than his former high school classmate George M. White.
Perhaps no one was less surprised last week when it was reported that U.S. President Donald Trump had called American war dead “losers” and “suckers” than his former high school classmate George M. White.
The 74-year-old retired Army veteran was Trump’s superior—the first captain, or highest-ranking cadet—in Trump’s 1964 graduating class at the New York Military Academy. White said he witnessed up close Trump’s contempt for military service, discipline, and tradition, as well his ungoverned sense of entitlement, all helped along by his father Fred Trump’s generous donations to the school.
“No, those remarks absolutely didn’t surprise me. In my dealings with him he was a heartless, obnoxious son of a bitch,” White told me in an interview over the weekend.
According to White and other former classmates at the academy, Trump’s five years there, coupled with the disregard for U.S. military traditions he learned at his father’s knee, helps explain a great deal of the president’s reported contempt for those who fought, died, or were wounded in America’s wars, as well as his skeptical view of the need for the United States to fight in places like Vietnam and Iraq.
According to the Atlantic magazine, during a trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 U.S. Marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers.” Indicating that he didn’t understand why the United States had intervened at all in Europe in 1917, Trump also reportedly asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?”
The Atlantic article, portions of which have been corroborated by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and Fox News, also reported that when Trump aborted a visit to another World War I cemetery, blaming the weather, he remarked, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In addition, Trump reportedly said that the presence of maimed U.S. veterans would upset spectators at a military parade, commenting, “Nobody wants to see that.”
Trump’s comments appeared to be in line with the attitude he reportedly evinced on Memorial Day 2017, when he visited the grave of 1st Lt. Robert Kelly, the son of his then-homeland security secretary and later chief of staff John Kelly. Standing at the grave of the younger Kelly, who died in Afghanistan in 2010, Trump reportedly turned to the secretary and said: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
Trump and the White House have denied reports about his disdain for the sacrifices of the U.S. military. “If people really exist that would have said that, they’re lowlifes and they’re liars,” Trump told reporters on Sept. 3. “And I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more.”
In the aftermath of the controversy over his demeaning of U.S. service members, Trump has sought to portray himself as an anti-war candidate who has faced down trigger-happy military service chiefs and will pull out of “endless wars” to keep soldiers safe.
“I’m not saying the military is in love with me—the soldiers are,” Trump said at a news conference Monday. “The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t, because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.”
Trump is certainly not alone in questioning the wisdom of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and Iraq, which are now widely considered major strategic errors, or even in World War I—a still-debated intervention orchestrated by a formerly pacifist president, Woodrow Wilson. White, Trump’s former superior at the New York Military Academy, said he agrees with the basic idea of the president’s opposition to many overseas deployments, saying that if it weren’t for Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward the military, “he’d be perfect.”
Since taking office, many of Trump’s actions have borne out that oft-repeated skepticism about U.S. military deployments abroad. In 2018, he announced an abrupt withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, even before formally launching peace talks with the Taliban, and said he wanted to leave Syria as well. In 2019 he was widely criticized for abruptly abandoning Kurdish fighters in Syria who had fought and died to help the United States remove the Islamic State. This July, Trump also announced the withdrawal of nearly 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany, with no strategic rationale given.
Against that, Trump has lavished money on the Pentagon since taking office, boosting defense spending in each of the last three years, while he has yet to wind down the “endless war” in Afghanistan as promised, with the Taliban moving new forces into place against the U.S.-supported Afghan government.
Trump’s attitude toward the military, then, is fundamentally ambivalent: He mocks the very idea of service, sacrifice, or discipline, but he likes shiny medals, big parades, and deadly weapons. He has sought to portray himself as a tough and aggressive leader who understands the military better than generals do, yet he has repeatedly sought to avoid war.
As president, he cultivated a love-hate relationship with the military. Trump initially picked leading generals as top aides, including retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as defense secretary, and former Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security advisor, in addition to Kelly, also a retired Marine general, at the Department of Homeland Security. Initially he called them America’s best, once calling Mattis “the closest thing to Gen. George Patton that we have, and it’s about time.” But he dismissed the same military advisors later in his first term, calling some of them “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies” because “we don’t win any wars anymore,” according to the book A Very Stable Genius by the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
“This whole thing is as much about his disrespect for all types of service as about the military, but it was clear to me he saw value in claiming military bona fides,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Trump biographer.
Much of that ambivalence was also on display during Trump’s time at the military academy, which he has said in the past gave him an understanding of military service greater than that of actual veterans, as D’Antonio recounts. Trump said that his time at the New York Military Academy gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military,” D’Antonio wrote in his book The Truth About Trump.
White scoffs at the notion that Trump ever had any respect for the military, and he laughed about Trump’s efforts to paint his time at the academy as a genuine military initiation. “I went into the U.S. Army during Vietnam in 1968. I served a tour in Korea,” said White, whose last name at the time he was attending the New York Military Academy was Witek. “When I got into basic training I realized very quickly that at the New York Military Academy we were just play-acting. What we had been taught was a sort of surface military thing.”
But the academy did leave Trump with his love of superficial military grandeur, especially parades and medals. In 2016, then-candidate Trump told a supporter who gave him a copy of his Purple Heart: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.”
“Like most ex-military, I detest his love of having parades and having real military personnel salute him,” said Alan Lapidus, a former Trump family architect, who enlisted in the military in 1957 as a combat engineer.
Trump’s efforts at heroic self-branding also began at the academy, said White and Sandy McIntosh, another former cadet who knew Trump and his family well. Trump began wearing decorations and medals he didn’t earn, especially for academic or military achievement, and got himself placed at the head of the Columbus Day military parade in New York City as a cadet, White and McIntosh recall. “I did very well under the military system,” Trump told the Washington Post in January 2016. “I became one of the top guys at the whole school.”
His former classmates disagree. “One of the things that struck me was I don’t recall him being a good student at all,” McIntosh said. “I was two years younger than him and he asked me to go over his essays for him and improve them. It was the only time I got to see the nature of his disability. I think his grades were mostly in the D-plus or C-minus range.”
Both White and McIntosh said the incorrigible and arrogant behavior and insubordination that had prompted Trump’s parents to send him to the military academy in the first place continued at the school. What they witnessed tends to corroborate Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, the recent family tell-all by Trump’s niece Mary Trump. She reported that Fred Trump Sr., whom she described as a “high-functioning sociopath,” helped turn his son into an entitled, self-aggrandizing narcissist whom no one could control.
According to White, who is the same age as Trump, “my mother was confronted by Mrs. Trump on three separate occasions at the academy and what she said validates what Mary Trump wrote in that book. She cornered my mother and all she talked about was how she couldn’t control Donald and he wouldn’t listen to her. She was distraught. She pressed my mother to find a magic solution to make Donald listen.” Instead, White said, Trump regularly ignored the orders given by him and other superiors.
“The most significant incident, which I got into big trouble for, was when we were taking a picture in May of 1964, and Donald Trump refused to draw his sword. I’m the first captain and I order present arms and there are five guys behind me and they draw. But he refuses. I hear behind me, ‘Trump, draw your sword.’ Donald refuses. The picture gets taken. … He was defying a direct order, showing his defiance,” White said. “He was ‘being Trump,’ showing that his ego was more powerful than anybody’s. He later showed that picture around to show how defiant he was because he didn’t draw the sword.”
White and McIntosh also believe that Trump inflated his grades and that his father’s influence—and deep pockets—were responsible for bumping him up from lowly supply sergeant to cadet captain in his senior year.
“Trump was over-privileged,” White said. “His father was rich, and he was protected. His father always considered him a genius. Trump was developing this alternative reality even then, and it was allowed to flourish because he was allowed to by the school supervisors. They directly ordered me to stay away from Trump. Everybody knew Fred was pulling out his checkbook.”
Trump’s apparent disdain for the military continues a long family tradition. His grandfather left Germany to avoid military service in the late 1800s, while his father never served. According to Mary Trump’s book, both Fred Trump Sr. and Donald Trump harshly criticized the decision by her father, the president’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr., to join the U.S. Air National Guard. Trump himself sought multiple draft deferments to avoid the Vietnam War. A number of Trump biographers have confirmed that Trump evaded the Vietnam draft, and he himself has admitted to the Washington Post, “I had a lot of deferments,” and he “always felt somewhat guilty” about avoiding service.
“Like many in his generation, he avoided serving in the Vietnam War by getting a bogus medical deferment, in his case for bone spurs, a condition widely considered permanent that somehow never interfered with his playing sports and apparently disappeared when he was no longer draft-eligible,” said another of his biographers, Gwenda Blair. “What makes Trump different is that rather than justifying this subterfuge by questioning the war’s legitimacy, he impugned the intelligence and bravery of those who did fight, calling them suckers and labelling one of the most famous veterans, John McCain, a loser because he was captured and spent more than five years in a POW camp.”
But this has always been a family affair, Blair said. “Trump was only following in the footsteps of his own grandfather,” she said. “Many decades earlier, at the end of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Trump dodged mandatory military service in Germany by emigrating to the U.S. when he was too young to serve and returning to Germany just after he turned too old.”
For classmates like White, Trump’s reported remarks are simply an echo of that long family tradition.
“It’s real simple. His grandfather dodged the draft in Germany and his father never went in. And when I came back from Korea, in 1972, I ran into him in New York City and told him where I’d been, he didn’t give a flying ripshit that I’d been to Korea. He made barfing noises,” White said. “I said, ‘Holy shit, you are a piece of work.’”


foreignpolicy--2020-09-09--Emerging Stronger From the Great Lockdown

In its severity , the Great Lockdown of 2020 has naturally evoked comparisons to the Great Depression , which began in 1929 .
But today ’ s crisis is truly like no other .
Although it ’ s too early to make a definitive judgment , we can already say that the severity and speed of the declines in economic output , employment , and consumption during the Great Lockdown were far greater than at the onset of the Great Depression .
In just one month , from March to April , the U.S. unemployment rate roughly tripled to 14.7 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Great Depression for nearly two years .
Equally unique has been the sharp rebound of output , consumption , and employment .
With more than 80 percent of countries easing lockdown restrictions , the global economy has begun to recover from the depths of the downturn .
The speed of this turnaround is also in dramatic contrast to the Great Depression , during which negative growth persisted for four years and the cumulative global contraction far exceeded that which is projected for the Great Lockdown .
The ongoing recovery is the result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as the rapid implementation and unprecedented scale of supportive policies by the world ’ s central banks and governments—a third major distinction from the Great Depression .
This crisis , however , is far from over .
The recovery remains very fragile and uneven across regions and sectors .
To ensure that the recovery continues , it is essential that support not be prematurely withdrawn .
The recovery is the result of the easing of lockdown restrictions as well as the rapid implementation and unprecedented scale of supportive policies by central banks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work , employment rates in many countries have not returned anywhere close to pre-crisis levels .
Job losses have hit younger and lower-skilled workers especially hard .
Globally , the International Labor Organization estimates that the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs were lost in the second quarter of 2020 .
And we know from recent global surveys that next to the virus itself , unemployment is people ’ s highest concern .
The impact on global poverty is expected to be severe , with the World Bank projecting 71 million additional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sustained recovery and emerging stronger from the Great Lockdown will require action on three fronts : First , the health crisis must be brought to an end—durably and everywhere .
Impressive advances in vaccine development raise hopes that this objective can be achieved .
Second , people need to be able to find productive jobs .
This requires preventing excessive firm bankruptcies and creating an environment for job-rich growth .
Finally , our future must be more sustainable and inclusive than our past .
This requires policies to arrest global warming and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face daunting fiscal challenges in trying to reconcile the spending required to fight the crisis with the constraints imposed by higher debt and declining revenues .
Low-income countries will require continued financial support from the international community .
The speed with which countries have committed resources to developing a vaccine is without historical precedent and can only be commended .
As of Sept. 8 , at least 128 vaccines are under development , and 37 have reached human trials .
Historical evidence suggests that an effort of this scale has a 90 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But concerning the vaccine , we must urgently devise multilateral solutions for three looming challenges : timely production , a globally adequate supply , and an equitable distribution .
The human and financial costs of delaying a vaccine will be substantial .
Delaying production until a vaccine has successfully passed all medical trials could add up to 18 months to its distribution in many countries , potentially choking the recovery .
Governments can act now to introduce risk-sharing mechanisms—such as purchase guarantees , financing , or collaboration with public research institutions—in order to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before trials can be successful completed .
Even once a vaccine is found , not every country will have the capacity to produce enough doses to immunize all its citizens .
Advance purchases have financial risks because vaccines may fail , but those risks are trivial compared with the losses imposed by this health crisis on the global economy , which the IMF projects will reach more than $ 12 trillion by the end of 2021 .
A foresighted strategy to provide government support for vaccines will lead to long-run cost savings as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even once a vaccine is found , not every country will have the capacity to produce enough doses to immunize all its citizens .
The world ’ s richer countries have struck agreements to secure doses in advance , potentially squeezing the supply for the rest of the world .
That is why several global organizations have developed COVAX , a risk-sharing scheme for the rapid and fair distribution of vaccines to all countries .
As the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has stressed , cooperation across countries can decisively lower the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The world should act immediately to coordinate manufacturing capacity across regions , significantly increase the resources for production facilities , and commit to subsidizing vaccines for the poorest countries .
Globally synchronized , equitable vaccine distribution is in every country ’ s interest .
An uneven rollout might improve economic conditions in countries that secured the vaccine first but would not shield them from weak demand from trade partners struggling to recover without a vaccine .
Firms must be supported to preserve jobs .
In a standard recession , the goal is to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to restructure insolvent firms so that capital and labor can be used more productively .
But the unique nature of this crisis warrants a fresh , tailored approach .
Firms in virtually all sectors of the economy have been abruptly and simultaneously affected by the crisis , requiring a variety of lifelines to prevent even larger job losses beyond what has already occurred .
Given the severity of the shock , there are likely to be far more insolvent than illiquid firms in the months ahead , with high potential for mass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for insolvent firms .
These are firms that would otherwise be viable in the absence of the pandemic .
If they are pushed into liquidation , the world will suffer large social costs from the loss of organizational and human capital .
At the same time , it is increasingly evident that some sectors requiring close contact between people , such as travel , may fall into prolonged decline .
Many firms in these sectors may no longer be viable .
This will require gradually unwinding the lifelines extended to these firms so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away from such shrinking sectors to growing sectors such as online retail and other e-commerce .
Well-designed government interventions during the next stage of the crisis will require a comprehensive differentiation between viable firms , including those that may be currently insolvent , and unviable firms more permanently affected by the crisis .
Support should be provided to viable businesses and to the employees of unviable business as they are wound down .
Where uncertainty about the path of the crisis makes the assessment difficult , policymakers should err on the side of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some sectors requiring close contact between people , such as travel , may fall into prolonged decline .
Where governments have the fiscal resources , there is a strong argument for equity-like interventions in large and small firms alike .
This includes direct equity injections or junior debt claims for larger firms and grants in return for a temporarily higher future corporate tax rate for small and medium enterprises .
In all countries , steps should be taken to tailor bankruptcy procedures and resolution mechanisms to the needs of the current crisis .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ by amending insolvency laws .
Several countries in the European Union—including the Czech Republic , Germany , and Spain—have suspended firms ’ obligations to file for bankruptcy .
The U.S. CARES Act , which amended the U.S. bankruptcy code to assist small businesses , is another example .
Policymakers should complement solvency support with hiring subsidies and programs to reskill affected workers .
But the reallocation to new sectors will not be seamless .
Displaced workers should be supported during the transition , for example by expanding the scope and duration of unemployment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flexibly for the swift reabsorption of displaced workers .
The abrupt rise in remote work arrangements is a clear signal to invest in a large and inclusive expansion of broadband internet connectivity and to subsidize enhanced data subscription packages—especially where internet penetration remains low—in order to more effectively prepare the labor force of the future .
In emerging markets and other developing economies where the informal sector is large and labor market institutions are small or nonexistent , policies can be geared toward expanding employment in the formal sector through targeted hiring subsidies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opportunity to maintain income for low-income workers , including through labor-intensive green jobs in soil and water conservation , reforestation and flood protection , and the retrofitting of buildings to make them more energy efficient .
A two-pronged approach to mitigation can help make faster progress toward our shared goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions .
The first prong is a green investment push that supports a quick recovery .
The second element is to embark on a clear path toward higher carbon prices that incentivize firms and households to switch to low-carbon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of the revenues required for green investment and reducing public debt .
Coordinating carbon pricing across countries , ideally through an agreement that sets a carbon price floor for major emitters , will make it more effective in reducing emissions at minimum cost .
Governments can also reorient policies toward making economies more resilient to the catastrophic effects of climate change .
This requires prioritizing investment in smart infrastructure and other adaptation strategies—such as energy-efficient buildings , district cooling systems , floodwater management systems , storm shelters , embankments , and drought-resistant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shocks weigh heavily on agricultural productivity and food security in some regions , well-designed safety nets are also critical .
Together with climate change mitigation strategies , these investments in resilience can support green , job-intensive , and innovation-driven growth .
The pandemic has exacerbated inequality by its disproportionate impact on low-skilled workers , women , youths , and those already living on the margins of society The pandemic has exacerbated inequality of income and opportunity by its disproportionate impact on low-skilled workers , women , youths , and those who were already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In addition , young children , especially those from poor households , may suffer permanent losses in building up their human capital from a lack of schooling , adequate nutrition , and medical access .
These losses will have lifelong implications , further raising inequality and lowering social mobility .
Left unchecked , growing disparities will lead to long-lasting grievances and ultimately to social unrest .
Governments must address rising inequities with comprehensive and wide-ranging actions .
They must ensure the provision of essential health services , widen social safety nets , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vaccine as soon as it becomes available .
They must preserve access to schooling with measures to ensure that all school-age children benefit from distance learning .
Reliable access to affordable food for the hardest-hit households is critical and will involve protecting local food supply chains and , at the global level , coordinating food security policies and disavowing food protectionism .
Developing countries have made progress in reducing poverty and improving people ’ s access to basic services .
This decades-long work must not be undone .
Governments must remain committed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Goals and prioritize policies that support inclusive growth .
To ensure that developing countries can finance critical spending , concessional credit must be made available for a prolonged period .
The global financial safety net should be strengthened—and in some cases , global coordination will be required to reprofile or restructure debt .
In all these areas , vulnerable countries can count on the IMF ’ s continued support and policy advice .
The fund has already provided emergency financing at unprecedented speed and scale to 75 countries , including 47 low-income countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ further support to a wider range of middle-income countries .
Our lending commitments have now reached about $ 270 billion , a third of which has been approved since March .
We have an additional $ 730 billion in lending capacity that we can put at the service of our member countries should the need arise .
This crisis has tested people and governments around the world in previously unimaginable ways .
The human toll has been tragic , with some 900,000 deaths worldwide as of September .
Yet there has been remarkable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in government policies , and in everyday living—all of which has made it possible to restart the world economy .
A major financial crisis has been avoided so far .
Vaccines are being developed at historic speed , and remote work in the knowledge economy and telemedicine have made the impossible possible .
The world ’ s collective reaction to this crisis should give us confidence that we can build a more prosperous , sustainable , and equitable future .
And we must aspire to no less .

For more than six months, the world has grappled with the severe health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global economic activity collapsed in the second quarter of 2020, when about 85 percent of the global economy was in lockdown for several weeks. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) first stated in its April World Economic Outlook , this is without historical parallel.
For more than six months, the world has grappled with the severe health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global economic activity collapsed in the second quarter of 2020, when about 85 percent of the global economy was in lockdown for several weeks. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) first stated in its April World Economic Outlook, this is without historical parallel.
In its severity, the Great Lockdown of 2020 has naturally evoked comparisons to the Great Depression, which began in 1929. But today’s crisis is truly like no other. Although it’s too early to make a definitive judgment, we can already say that the severity and speed of the declines in economic output, employment, and consumption during the Great Lockdown were far greater than at the onset of the Great Depression. In just one month, from March to April, the U.S. unemployment rate roughly tripled to 14.7 percent, a level not reached in the Great Depression for nearly two years.
Equally unique has been the sharp rebound of output, consumption, and employment. With more than 80 percent of countries easing lockdown restrictions, the global economy has begun to recover from the depths of the downturn. The speed of this turnaround is also in dramatic contrast to the Great Depression, during which negative growth persisted for four years and the cumulative global contraction far exceeded that which is projected for the Great Lockdown.
The ongoing recovery is the result of the easing of lockdown restrictions as well as the rapid implementation and unprecedented scale of supportive policies by the world’s central banks and governments—a third major distinction from the Great Depression. This crisis, however, is far from over. The recovery remains very fragile and uneven across regions and sectors. To ensure that the recovery continues, it is essential that support not be prematurely withdrawn.
The recovery is the result of the easing of lockdown restrictions as well as the rapid implementation and unprecedented scale of supportive policies by central banks and governments.
Even as people return to work, employment rates in many countries have not returned anywhere close to pre-crisis levels. Job losses have hit younger and lower-skilled workers especially hard. Globally, the International Labor Organization estimates that the equivalent of 400 million full-time jobs were lost in the second quarter of 2020. And we know from recent global surveys that next to the virus itself, unemployment is people’s highest concern. The impact on global poverty is expected to be severe, with the World Bank projecting 71 million additional people falling into extreme poverty.
Securing a sustained recovery and emerging stronger from the Great Lockdown will require action on three fronts: First, the health crisis must be brought to an end—durably and everywhere. Impressive advances in vaccine development raise hopes that this objective can be achieved. Second, people need to be able to find productive jobs. This requires preventing excessive firm bankruptcies and creating an environment for job-rich growth. Finally, our future must be more sustainable and inclusive than our past. This requires policies to arrest global warming and reverse rising inequality.
Many countries will face daunting fiscal challenges in trying to reconcile the spending required to fight the crisis with the constraints imposed by higher debt and declining revenues. Low-income countries will require continued financial support from the international community.
Though the world has learned to live with the virus, a full recovery is unlikely without a permanent medical solution. Lingering uncertainty about the virus and the fear of recurring outbreaks are weighing on mobility and the confidence of consumers and businesses. The availability of a vaccine, or therapies with proven success in treating COVID-19, will materially lift the global outlook.
The speed with which countries have committed resources to developing a vaccine is without historical precedent and can only be commended. As of Sept. 8, at least 128 vaccines are under development, and 37 have reached human trials. Historical evidence suggests that an effort of this scale has a 90 percent chance of developing a successful product.
But concerning the vaccine, we must urgently devise multilateral solutions for three looming challenges: timely production, a globally adequate supply, and an equitable distribution.
The human and financial costs of delaying a vaccine will be substantial. Delaying production until a vaccine has successfully passed all medical trials could add up to 18 months to its distribution in many countries, potentially choking the recovery. Governments can act now to introduce risk-sharing mechanisms—such as purchase guarantees, financing, or collaboration with public research institutions—in order to prompt private firms to commit to production before trials can be successfully completed.
Even once a vaccine is found, not every country will have the capacity to produce enough doses to immunize all its citizens.
Advance purchases have financial risks because vaccines may fail, but those risks are trivial compared with the losses imposed by this health crisis on the global economy, which the IMF projects will reach more than $12 trillion by the end of 2021. A foresighted strategy to provide government support for vaccines will lead to long-run cost savings as economies recover faster than they would otherwise.
Even once a vaccine is found, not every country will have the capacity to produce enough doses to immunize all its citizens. The world’s richer countries have struck agreements to secure doses in advance, potentially squeezing the supply for the rest of the world. That is why several global organizations have developed COVAX, a risk-sharing scheme for the rapid and fair distribution of vaccines to all countries.
As the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has stressed, cooperation across countries can decisively lower the risk of an inadequate vaccine supply. The world should act immediately to coordinate manufacturing capacity across regions, significantly increase the resources for production facilities, and commit to subsidizing vaccines for the poorest countries.
Globally synchronized, equitable vaccine distribution is in every country’s interest. An uneven rollout might improve economic conditions in countries that secured the vaccine first but would not shield them from weak demand from trade partners struggling to recover without a vaccine.
Next, we must ensure that workers have quick access to productive work opportunities. Job loss has been shown to be associated with long-lasting damage to productivity, wages, and human capital.
Firms must be supported to preserve jobs. In a standard recession, the goal is to provide liquidity to solvent but illiquid firms and to restructure insolvent firms so that capital and labor can be used more productively. But the unique nature of this crisis warrants a fresh, tailored approach. Firms in virtually all sectors of the economy have been abruptly and simultaneously affected by the crisis, requiring a variety of lifelines to prevent even larger job losses beyond what has already occurred.
Given the severity of the shock, there are likely to be far more insolvent than illiquid firms in the months ahead, with high potential for mass bankruptcies in the absence of widespread support for insolvent firms. These are firms that would otherwise be viable in the absence of the pandemic. If they are pushed into liquidation, the world will suffer large social costs from the loss of organizational and human capital. At the same time, it is increasingly evident that some sectors requiring close contact between people, such as travel, may fall into prolonged decline. Many firms in these sectors may no longer be viable. This will require gradually unwinding the lifelines extended to these firms so that labor and capital may be reallocated away from such shrinking sectors to growing sectors such as online retail and other e-commerce.
Well-designed government interventions during the next stage of the crisis will require a comprehensive differentiation between viable firms, including those that may be currently insolvent, and unviable firms more permanently affected by the crisis. Support should be provided to viable businesses and to the employees of unviable businesses as they are wound down. Where uncertainty about the path of the crisis makes the assessment difficult, policymakers should err on the side of caution.
It is increasingly evident that some sectors requiring close contact between people, such as travel, may fall into prolonged decline.
Where governments have the fiscal resources, there is a strong argument for equity-like interventions in large and small firms alike. This includes direct equity injections or junior debt claims for larger firms and grants in return for a temporarily higher future corporate tax rate for small and medium enterprises.
In all countries, steps should be taken to tailor bankruptcy procedures and resolution mechanisms to the needs of the current crisis. Policymakers in many countries have reacted swiftly by amending insolvency laws. Several countries in the European Union—including the Czech Republic, Germany, and Spain—have suspended firms’ obligations to file for bankruptcy. The U.S. CARES Act, which amended the U.S. bankruptcy code to assist small businesses, is another example.
Policymakers should complement solvency support with hiring subsidies and programs to reskill affected workers. But the reallocation to new sectors will not be seamless. Displaced workers should be supported during the transition, for example by expanding the scope and duration of unemployment insurance. Labor market institutions should act flexibly for the swift reabsorption of displaced workers. The abrupt rise in remote work arrangements is a clear signal to invest in a large and inclusive expansion of broadband internet connectivity and to subsidize enhanced data subscription packages—especially where internet penetration remains low—in order to more effectively prepare the labor force of the future.
In emerging markets and other developing economies where the informal sector is large and labor market institutions are small or nonexistent, policies can be geared toward expanding employment in the formal sector through targeted hiring subsidies. Public works programs present an additional opportunity to maintain income for low-income workers, including through labor-intensive green jobs in soil and water conservation, reforestation and flood protection, and the retrofitting of buildings to make them more energy efficient.
Long-term challenges such as climate change, inequality, and sustainable development remain as important as ever. The current phase of low energy prices presents policymakers an opportunity to remove distortionary, environmentally damaging, and often regressive fuel subsidies, freeing up these funds for more productive uses. To boost the recovery, governments can accelerate green investment and implement well-sequenced climate change mitigation strategies.
A two-pronged approach to mitigation can help make faster progress toward our shared goal of lowering greenhouse gas emissions. The first prong is a green investment push that supports a quick recovery. The second element is to embark on a clear path toward higher carbon prices that incentivize firms and households to switch to low-carbon activities and energy sources while also generating some of the revenues required for green investment and reducing public debt. Coordinating carbon pricing across countries, ideally through an agreement that sets a carbon price floor for major emitters, will make it more effective in reducing emissions at minimum cost.
Governments can also reorient policies toward making economies more resilient to the catastrophic effects of climate change. This requires prioritizing investment in smart infrastructure and other adaptation strategies—such as energy-efficient buildings, district cooling systems, floodwater management systems, storm shelters, embankments, and drought-resistant crops. As climate change and weather shocks weigh heavily on agricultural productivity and food security in some regions, well-designed safety nets are also critical. Together with climate change mitigation strategies, these investments in resilience can support green, job-intensive, and innovation-driven growth.
The pandemic has exacerbated inequality by its disproportionate impact on low-skilled workers, women, youths, and those already living on the margins of society.
The pandemic has exacerbated inequality of income and opportunity by its disproportionate impact on low-skilled workers, women, youths, and those who were already living on the margins of society. In addition, young children, especially those from poor households, may suffer permanent losses in building up their human capital from a lack of schooling, adequate nutrition, and medical access. These losses will have lifelong implications, further raising inequality and lowering social mobility. Left unchecked, growing disparities will lead to long-lasting grievances and ultimately to social unrest.
Governments must address rising inequities with comprehensive and wide-ranging actions. They must ensure the provision of essential health services, widen social safety nets, and enable a rapid and fair distribution of a vaccine as soon as it becomes available. They must preserve access to schooling with measures to ensure that all school-age children benefit from distance learning. Reliable access to affordable food for the hardest-hit households is critical and will involve protecting local food supply chains and, at the global level, coordinating food security policies and disavowing food protectionism. Developing countries have made progress in reducing poverty and improving people’s access to basic services. This decades-long work must not be undone. Governments must remain committed to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and prioritize policies that support inclusive growth.
A sustainable future requires sustainable finances. This crisis has put great demand on fiscal resources, and many countries will be challenged by rising debt levels that could trigger debt distress. To keep debt sustainable, governments may need to make tough choices on spending during the crisis while ensuring their interventions are designed for maximum efficiency. Over the medium term, many countries will have to increase their revenue—including through greater tax compliance, progressive taxes for individuals as well as companies that have made windfall profits during the crisis, and by reducing poorly targeted and wasteful spending. There has been remarkable adaptation and innovation in medicine and technology, in government policies, and in everyday living.
To ensure that developing countries can finance critical spending, concessional credit must be made available for a prolonged period. The global financial safety net should be strengthened—and in some cases, global coordination will be required to reprofile or restructure debt. In all these areas, vulnerable countries can count on the IMF’s continued support and policy advice. The fund has already provided emergency financing at unprecedented speed and scale to 75 countries, including 47 low-income countries, and we are ready to provide further support to a wider range of middle-income countries. Our lending commitments have now reached about $270 billion, a third of which has been approved since March. We have an additional $730 billion in lending capacity that we can put at the service of our member countries should the need arise.
This crisis has tested people and governments around the world in previously unimaginable ways. The human toll has been tragic, with some 900,000 deaths worldwide as of September.
Yet there has been remarkable adaptation and innovation in medicine and technology, in government policies, and in everyday living—all of which has made it possible to restart the world economy. A major financial crisis has been avoided so far. Vaccines are being developed at historic speed, and remote work in the knowledge economy and telemedicine have made the impossible possible.
The world’s collective reaction to this crisis should give us confidence that we can build a more prosperous, sustainable, and equitable future. And we must aspire to no less.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-09--Cuba’s Government Needs to Look Within as It Denounces U.S. Racism

Cuba ’ s Government Needs to Look Within as It Denounces U.S. Racism Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959 , the Cuban government has consistently criticized the United States for failing to address institutionalized racism .
During his famed trip to New York in 1960 to attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting , Fidel Castro complained of unfair treatment in a Midtown Manhattan hotel and ended up at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem , meeting with Malcolm X and making no bones about standing with African Americans in their fight for racial equality .
Cuba has also famously given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the FBI , most famously Assata Shakur ( who still lives there ) and dozens of Black Panthers , including Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver .
In recent months , Cuban state-sponsored news stations have provided extensive coverage of the protests provoked by the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May , and the nation ’ s highest officials , including President Miguel Díaz-Canel , have condemned continuing racial violence against Black Americans .
But when it comes to incidents involving Black Cubans , the media there tends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ details .
Cuba has its own problematic history of racism that has been obscured , both by its long-standing nationalist discourse—the notion that racism can ’ t exist in a nation with a large population of mixed-race people—as well as its socialist orientation that views race as reducible to class .
According to the most recent census count from 2012 , Cuba is 64 percent white , 27 percent mulato ( of mixed African and European ancestry ) , and 9 percent Black .
Nonetheless , Cuba scholars have long been skeptical of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believing the state undercounts nonwhite Cubans .
Leadership within the Cuban government has historically been mostly white , though former President Raúl Castro took steps to address this issue when he made way for the current president , Díaz-Canel , in 2018 .
However , when it comes to racialized police incidents in Cuba—including the very common racial profiling of Black Cubans on the streets of Havana—the government tends to deny the existence of differential treatment .
Anger among anti-racism activists has recently flared , after the Cuban police killed a 27-year old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Guanabacoa , just outside Havana , on June 24 .
Two officers claimed they saw him stealing auto parts at a bus stop and pursued him when he began to run .
One of them , a Black officer , ultimately shot Hernández in the back after he allegedly began throwing rocks at them .
The government was forced to acknowledge the police killing of Hernández a few days after his aunt publicized the details of his death on Facebook .
Nonetheless , as activists were organizing a protest in Havana following Hernández @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were detained by the police in order to thwart the event , including various outspoken artists , such as Tania Bruguera , as well as independent journalists ; some also had their internet service cut off .
This is a common tactic used by Cuban state officials to silence dissent on a wide range of issues .
The government also issued the equivalent of a # BlueLivesMatter PR campaign with the Twitter hashtag # HeroesDeAzul ( Heroes in Blue ) , a tone-deaf and hypocritical message , given the government ’ s simultaneous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , while there was never legal segregation in Cuba , even before the revolution , there was resistance from white Cubans to the growing political power and enfranchisement of Black and mixed-race Cubans in the early 20th century .
In 1908 , as a response to the continuing inequalities faced by Afro-Cubans after independence in 1898 , the Independent Party of Color was formed , largely by veterans of the independence wars with Spain .
The party was the first explicitly Black political party in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the Americas and which became the second independent republic ( after the United States ) in the region in 1804 .
The Cuban government at the time launched a racist smear campaign along with the media , suggesting the Independent Party of Color aimed to start a race war in the vein of the Haitian Revolution .
This culminated in the 1912 massacre of thousands of Afro-Cuban party members and sympathizers , including the party ’ s leaders , by government troops and white militias , with backup from U.S. forces .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1959 , his government set about eliminating discrimination within the public sphere and integrating public spaces such as beaches and parks as well as education and employment .
The government saw Afro-Cubans ’ disproportionate poverty as the main problem and focused on expanding education and health care to the whole population as a means of reducing racialized inequality .
In the space of only three years , Castro announced that racism had been eliminated due to the class restructuring that had taken place in Cuban society .
However , one of the actions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the population was to outlaw organizations structured around racial identity , including the Black social clubs that had sprung up in the 1930s and 1940s in response to the de facto segregation that had existed before the revolution .
Castro essentially prohibited any public discourse on racial difference , and this had a chilling effect on race-based civil rights organizing on the island .
Those who spoke out about the anti-Black racism that of course still existed , such as Carlos Moore , were branded as counterrevolutionaries and often detained , sent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave the island in exile .
One of Cuba ’ s most prominent scholars on racial inequality , Esteban Morales Domínguez , wrote in a 2019 blog post : “ There is a persistent tendency to launch the accusation of ‘ racist ’ to anyone who brings the idea of race to the surface .
… Unfortunately , after many years of silence on the subject , it has come to be a taboo , and today our country is significantly behind other countries when it comes to this question.
” Morales emphasizes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inequality in Cuba has been published not on the island , but by scholars living abroad such as Aline Helg and Alejandro de la Fuente .
This dearth of research is a direct result of pressure by the Cuban government and high-level research institutions and intellectuals on the island to remain silent on the issue so as to avoid divisions among Cubans that would undermine national unity .
In a country that has faced repeated threats to its sovereignty by the United States and that has strived almost singlehandedly to rescue socialism from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1990s , admitting to any form of difference or inequality within the population , the government maintains , threatens to open the door to political unrest .
Despite the government ’ s refusal to acknowledge it , overt racism has persisted in Cuba , something I noticed frequently during my over 15 years of conducting research on the island .
Common expressions include , “ she ’ s Black but has good hair ” implying that a physical feature associated with whiteness—straight hair—offsets the presumed unattractiveness of being Black .
I also had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to conduct academic research on rumba , a music and dance genre that is both historically and currently associated with Blackness and is considered by many Cubans to be a “ low-class ” or “ vulgar ” tradition .
Anti-Black racism is sometimes reinforced by Black and mixed-race Cubans as well as whites : The notion of adelantar ( “ improve the race ” ) by marrying someone white or light-skinned to produce lighter-skinned children is still widespread .
The past few decades have brought about a revived discussion about racial inequality on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the introduction of Western tourism and investment in Cuba in the 1990s , which laid bare the privileging of whiteness , as tourist venues began to explicitly hire white or light-skinned Cubans who , they assumed , would not alienate white Western tourists .
As de la Fuente writes , these assumptions rely on racist stereotypes implying that “ Afro-Cubans are unattractive , dirty , prone to criminal activities , inefficient or lack proper manners and education.
” These notions are widespread among managers in government-run tourist venues .
Notably , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to tourism , Black and mixed-race Cubans were overrepresented in the service sector—when these were jobs were poorly paid and offered no social prestige .
However , in the post-Soviet period , people working in tourism often earn more than highly trained professionals , like doctors and engineers , partly because they earn some or all of their money in dollars .
Black Americans have recounted being mistaken for Cubans while walking on the streets of Havana .
The late Cuba scholar Mark Sawyer , who was African American , wrote , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stops .
My passport was usually enough to redirect police officers ’ questioning to whether I was a Cuban American seeking to cause trouble .
One time , I was accused of shoplifting a Time magazine from the Hotel Nacional.
” Similarly , the Black Cuban intellectual Roberto Zurbano , known for his critique of continuing racism under the revolution , has often discussed the police harassment of Black men on the Havana streets .
In a recent commentary published after the death of Hansel Hernández , Zurbano wrote , “ It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we have experienced hours of police station waiting rooms and holding cells , where I would swear that 80 percent of us don ’ t deserve to be there.
” Zurbano argues that the Cuban police shooting of a Black man , while not necessarily motivated by race , has to be understood within the larger context of racialized poverty in Cuba .
More importantly , Zurbano calls out the hypocrisy of the Cuban government .
“ The problem of race has been relegated to a useless competition with the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results in a lack of focus on our own racial predicament.
” While Zurbano has not been harassed for calling out the government this time , he faced consequences for highlighting continuing racism under the revolution in 2013 , when he was demoted from his position at the influential research center Casa de las Américas following a controversial op-ed he wrote for the New York Times .
There are clear differences between the cases of Hansel Hernández and George Floyd : Unlike Derek Chauvin , who strangled Floyd , the police officer who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnessed the victim allegedly committing a crime ; and he claimed that Hernández provoked him by throwing rocks .
However , as the Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez points out , in both cases , authorities “ criminalized the victim , ” using their prior criminal records to suggest they may have deserved their fate .
The fact that racism operates differently in the United States and Cuba doesn ’ t mean it is less harmful .
Cubans may express racist sentiments more openly , but the island is also a vastly more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of criminality and second-class treatment that both Black Cubans and Black Americans are subjected to are similar .
And , just as in the United States , Black Cubans are disproportionately poor , incarcerated , and underrepresented in positions of power .
There is ample research contradicting the government ’ s long-standing claims to have eliminated racial inequality in Cuba , not to mention the ways tourism and family remittances have widened the gap between white and nonwhite Cubans in recent decades .
If the Cuban government wants to continue claiming moral superiority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repeatedly over the past six decades—it must first look inward and acknowledge its own racist past and present .

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Cuban government has consistently criticized the United States for failing to address institutionalized racism. During his famed trip to New York in 1960 to attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting, Fidel Castro complained of unfair treatment in a Midtown Manhattan hotel and ended up at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, meeting with Malcolm X and making no bones about standing with African Americans in their fight for racial equality. Cuba has also famously given refuge to several high-profile Black nationalists sought by the FBI, most famously Assata Shakur (who still lives there) and dozens of Black Panthers, including Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.
Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Cuban government has consistently criticized the United States for failing to address institutionalized racism. During his famed trip to New York in 1960 to attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting, Fidel Castro complained of unfair treatment in a Midtown Manhattan hotel and ended up at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, meeting with Malcolm X and making no bones about standing with African Americans in their fight for racial equality. Cuba has also famously given refuge to several high-profile Black nationalists sought by the FBI, most famously Assata Shakur (who still lives there) and dozens of Black Panthers, including Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.
In recent months, Cuban state-sponsored news stations have provided extensive coverage of the protests provoked by the brutal police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May, and the nation’s highest officials, including President Miguel Díaz-Canel, have condemned continuing racial violence against Black Americans. But when it comes to incidents involving Black Cubans, the media there tends to be very tight-lipped, providing few details.
Cuba has its own problematic history of racism that has been obscured, both by its long-standing nationalist discourse—the notion that racism can’t exist in a nation with a large population of mixed-race people—as well as its socialist orientation that views race as reducible to class. According to the most recent census count from 2012, Cuba is 64 percent white, 27 percent mulato (of mixed African and European ancestry), and 9 percent Black. Nonetheless, Cuba scholars have long been skeptical of the government’s census counts, believing the state undercounts nonwhite Cubans.
Leadership within the Cuban government has historically been mostly white, though former President Raúl Castro took steps to address this issue when he made way for the current president, Díaz-Canel, in 2018. However, when it comes to racialized police incidents in Cuba—including the very common racial profiling of Black Cubans on the streets of Havana—the government tends to deny the existence of differential treatment.
Anger among anti-racism activists has recently flared, after the Cuban police killed a 27-year old Black man, Hansel Hernández, in Guanabacoa, just outside Havana, on June 24. Two officers claimed they saw him stealing auto parts at a bus stop and pursued him when he began to run. One of them, a Black officer, ultimately shot Hernández in the back after he allegedly began throwing rocks at them. The government was forced to acknowledge the police killing of Hernández a few days after his aunt publicized the details of his death on Facebook.
Nonetheless, as activists were organizing a protest in Havana following Hernández’s killing, several high-profile participants were detained by the police in order to thwart the event, including various outspoken artists, such as Tania Bruguera, as well as independent journalists; some also had their internet service cut off. This is a common tactic used by Cuban state officials to silence dissent on a wide range of issues. The government also issued the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter PR campaign with the Twitter hashtag #HeroesDeAzul (Heroes in Blue), a tone-deaf and hypocritical message, given the government’s simultaneous critique of U.S. police racism.
Since the founding of the Cuban Republic in 1902, governments of diverse political persuasions have promoted the idea of mestizaje, racial mixture, as the cornerstone of Cuban national identity. In fact, the utopian vision of racial harmony—where racial differences were subsumed under a common love for “la patria,” the homeland—put forth by the Cuban independence hero José Martí in the late 19th century was influential throughout Latin America.
However, while there was never legal segregation in Cuba, even before the revolution, there was resistance from white Cubans to the growing political power and enfranchisement of Black and mixed-race Cubans in the early 20th century. In 1908, as a response to the continuing inequalities faced by Afro-Cubans after independence in 1898, the Independent Party of Color was formed, largely by veterans of the independence wars with Spain. The party was the first explicitly Black political party in the Western Hemisphere outside of Haiti, whose revolution was the only successful slave revolt in the Americas and which became the second independent republic (after the United States) in the region in 1804.
The Cuban government at the time launched a racist smear campaign along with the media, suggesting the Independent Party of Color aimed to start a race war in the vein of the Haitian Revolution. This culminated in the 1912 massacre of thousands of Afro-Cuban party members and sympathizers, including the party’s leaders, by government troops and white militias, with backup from U.S. forces.
When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, his government set about eliminating discrimination within the public sphere and integrating public spaces such as beaches and parks as well as education and employment. The government saw Afro-Cubans’ disproportionate poverty as the main problem and focused on expanding education and health care to the whole population as a means of reducing racialized inequality. In the space of only three years, Castro announced that racism had been eliminated due to the class restructuring that had taken place in Cuban society.
However, one of the actions taken by the government to eliminate differences within the population was to outlaw organizations structured around racial identity, including the Black social clubs that had sprung up in the 1930s and 1940s in response to the de facto segregation that had existed before the revolution.
Castro essentially prohibited any public discourse on racial difference, and this had a chilling effect on race-based civil rights organizing on the island. Those who spoke out about the anti-Black racism that of course still existed, such as Carlos Moore, were branded as counterrevolutionaries and often detained, sent to reeducation camps, or forced to leave the island in exile.
One of Cuba’s most prominent scholars on racial inequality, Esteban Morales Domínguez, wrote in a 2019 blog post: “There is a persistent tendency to launch the accusation of ‘racist’ to anyone who brings the idea of race to the surface. … Unfortunately, after many years of silence on the subject, it has come to be a taboo, and today our country is significantly behind other countries when it comes to this question.” Morales emphasizes that the most in-depth research on racial inequality in Cuba has been published not on the island, but by scholars living abroad such as Aline Helg and Alejandro de la Fuente.
This dearth of research is a direct result of pressure by the Cuban government and high-level research institutions and intellectuals on the island to remain silent on the issue so as to avoid divisions among Cubans that would undermine national unity. In a country that has faced repeated threats to its sovereignty by the United States and that has strived almost singlehandedly to rescue socialism from the onslaught of neoliberal capitalism since the 1990s, admitting to any form of difference or inequality within the population, the government maintains, threatens to open the door to political unrest.
Despite the government’s refusal to acknowledge it, overt racism has persisted in Cuba, something I noticed frequently during my over 15 years of conducting research on the island. Common expressions include, “she’s Black but has good hair” implying that a physical feature associated with whiteness—straight hair—offsets the presumed unattractiveness of being Black.
I also had more than one Cuban question my desire to conduct academic research on rumba, a music and dance genre that is both historically and currently associated with Blackness and is considered by many Cubans to be a “low-class” or “vulgar” tradition. Anti-Black racism is sometimes reinforced by Black and mixed-race Cubans as well as whites: The notion of adelantar (“improve the race”) by marrying someone white or light-skinned to produce lighter-skinned children is still widespread.
The past few decades have brought about a revived discussion about racial inequality on the island. This is partly due to the introduction of Western tourism and investment in Cuba in the 1990s, which laid bare the privileging of whiteness, as tourist venues began to explicitly hire white or light-skinned Cubans who, they assumed, would not alienate white Western tourists. As de la Fuente writes, these assumptions rely on racist stereotypes implying that “Afro-Cubans are unattractive, dirty, prone to criminal activities, inefficient or lack proper manners and education.”
These notions are widespread among managers in government-run tourist venues. Notably, in the 1980s, before Cuba opened up to tourism, Black and mixed-race Cubans were overrepresented in the service sector—when these were jobs were poorly paid and offered no social prestige. However, in the post-Soviet period, people working in tourism often earn more than highly trained professionals, like doctors and engineers, partly because they earn some or all of their money in dollars.
Cuba is a heavily policed country—citizens can be randomly detained on the street to ask for their identification, and this happens much more frequently to Black Cubans, especially when they are walking with white foreigners. I, a white American woman, have experienced this several times when walking on the streets of Havana with my Black partner or other Black friends or musicians with whom I was conducting research: They were stopped and questioned about what they were doing with me, the result of an almost obsessive desire on the part of the Cuban government to do what they believe will protect white tourists.
Black Americans have recounted being mistaken for Cubans while walking on the streets of Havana. The late Cuba scholar Mark Sawyer, who was African American, wrote, “I was frequently the target of these stops. My passport was usually enough to redirect police officers’ questioning to whether I was a Cuban American seeking to cause trouble. One time, I was accused of shoplifting a Time magazine from the Hotel Nacional.”
Similarly, the Black Cuban intellectual Roberto Zurbano, known for his critique of continuing racism under the revolution, has often discussed the police harassment of Black men on the Havana streets. In a recent commentary published after the death of Hansel Hernández, Zurbano wrote, “It is clear to me and many Black people that we have experienced hours of police station waiting rooms and holding cells, where I would swear that 80 percent of us don’t deserve to be there.”
Zurbano argues that the Cuban police shooting of a Black man, while not necessarily motivated by race, has to be understood within the larger context of racialized poverty in Cuba. More importantly, Zurbano calls out the hypocrisy of the Cuban government. “The problem of race has been relegated to a useless competition with the United States,” he wrote. “This results in a lack of focus on our own racial predicament.”
While Zurbano has not been harassed for calling out the government this time, he faced consequences for highlighting continuing racism under the revolution in 2013, when he was demoted from his position at the influential research center Casa de las Américas following a controversial op-ed he wrote for the New York Times.
There are clear differences between the cases of Hansel Hernández and George Floyd: Unlike Derek Chauvin, who strangled Floyd, the police officer who shot Hernández was also Black; he witnessed the victim allegedly committing a crime; and he claimed that Hernández provoked him by throwing rocks. However, as the Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez points out, in both cases, authorities “criminalized the victim,” using their prior criminal records to suggest they may have deserved their fate.
The fact that racism operates differently in the United States and Cuba doesn’t mean it is less harmful. Cubans may express racist sentiments more openly, but the island is also a vastly more integrated society. Nonetheless, the assumptions of criminality and second-class treatment that both Black Cubans and Black Americans are subjected to are similar.
And, just as in the United States, Black Cubans are disproportionately poor, incarcerated, and underrepresented in positions of power. There is ample research contradicting the government’s long-standing claims to have eliminated racial inequality in Cuba, not to mention the ways tourism and family remittances have widened the gap between white and nonwhite Cubans in recent decades.
If the Cuban government wants to continue claiming moral superiority over the United States—as it has done repeatedly over the past six decades—it must first look inward and acknowledge its own racist past and present.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-09--Arab Countries Meet to Discuss Palestinian Statehood

Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : Arab foreign ministers meet today to discuss their stance toward Palestinian statehood after the Israel-UAE deal , India-China border tensions flare again , and Russia is getting involved in the eastern Mediterranean standoff .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
Foreign ministers from the 22-member Arab League will meet today in Cairo to discuss a range of political , economic , social , and health issues .
More specificially , recent developments surrounding the issue of Palestinian statehood , including the recent Israel-UAE deal—and ongoing efforts by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to normalize ties with Israel—are expected to top the agenda .
Palestine takes center stage .
The meeting , which will be chaired by the Palestinian delegation , will include discussions about reviving the Arab Peace Initiative , a 2002 proposal endorsed by the Arab League that called for the full normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for Israel ’ s withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state .
The Palestinian Authority , however , seems to have softened its stance on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resolution that does not condemn the Israel-UAE deal or urge Arab governments to act against it .
This stands in sharp contrast to Palestinian officials ’ initial accusations that the accord represented a “ stab in the back of the Palestinian cause.
” But the draft resolution still calls for the reaffirmation of “ the fact that the two-state solution on the 1967 borders is the only way to achieve peace in the Middle East.
” Staying onside .
Several key regional players are likely to stand firmly behind the Palestinian delegation .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump , Saudi King Salman reaffirmed his country ’ s support of a “ lasting and just solution ” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the Arab Peace Initiative .
The UAE stands alone , for now .
Other Arab countries have resisted pressure from the United States to follow the United Arab Emirates ’ lead and normalize ties with Israel .
Two high-level tours of the Middle East by top U.S. officials in recent weeks found little success , and Bahrain , Oman , and Sudan—all countries initially rumored to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ties with Israel .
India-China tensions flare .
Tensions along the disputed India-China border have risen again as both sides have accused the other of firing shots over the Line of Actual Control .
On Monday , China claimed that Indian troops had crossed the border in the highly contentious Ladakh region and “ opened fire to threaten the Chinese border defense patrol officers.
” India rejected these accusations , claiming instead that Chinese troops had crossed the border first and fired warning shots into the air .
Border tensions between the two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months , but the latest episode is significant because it would be the first time shots have been fired since 1975 .
U.K. admits it intends to break international law .
The United Kingdom ’ s Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis confirmed that legislation aimed at overriding parts of last year ’ s Brexit withdrawal agreement “ does break international law in a very specific and limited way.
” As the latest round of trade talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom takes place , the British government has put forward @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ireland protocol , a key mechanism that was intended to ensure the Irish border remains open after Brexit in order to mitigate the threat of renewed violence .
The government ’ s efforts have faced significant opposition .
Jonathan Jones , the head of the United Kingdom ’ s legal department resigned in protest , and former Prime Minister Theresa May warned that the move risked undermining the world ’ s trust of the British government .
No senate seat for Morales .
A Bolivian court has blocked former Bolivian President Evo Morales @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upcoming senate elections .
Morales has called the move “ political and illegal ” and has accused the court of acting “ under threats and pressures.
” The ruling removes the possibility of Morales being granted parliamentary immunity against the various criminal charges he faces .
Morales , who is the first person from Bolivia ’ s indigenous community to serve as a president , resigned in November 2019 under extremely controversial circumstances after a contested election .
He faced protests and significant pressure from several sectors of Bolivian society , including from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forward .
Zalmay Khalizad , the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation , met with the head of the Taliban negotiating team in Doha , Qatar , on Monday ahead of talks with the Afghan government , which are expected to begin in the coming days .
The long-awaited intra-Afghan talks have been stalled for several months over the issue of prisoner releases , but the government recently broke the logjam after announcing it would release the final 320 Taliban prisoners required to kick-start talks under the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed in February @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to arrive in Doha this week to commence the talks , but they are awaiting the green light from the government that the final prisoner releases have begun .
Iran undeterred .
Iran is building a new facility to produce advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in the mountains near the city of Natanz , replacing a major production center that was destroyed by fire in July .
At the time , Iran claimed that the fire was the result of sabotage , and says it is now determined to build a larger , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the sabotage , it was decided to build a more modern , larger and more comprehensive hall in all dimensions in the heart of the mountain near Natanz .
Of course , the work has begun , ” said Ali Akbar Salehi , the head of Iran ’ s Atomic Energy Organization .
Moscow creeping into the Mediterranean .
On Tuesday , Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a meeting with his Cypriot counterpart that Russia was prepared to help start talks in order to find a way out of the current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eastern Mediterranean .
“ We would be ready to contribute to building good neighborly relations in the event this is requested of us by those involved , ” he said .
Lavrov ’ s remarks come as Russia is expected to take part in live-fire military exercises in the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days , a move Ankara announced last week that highlighted Moscow ’ s interest in the dispute .
Artificial Intelligence technology is advancing by leaps and bounds , as made evident by a recent article published in the Guardian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ am not a human .
I am a robot , ” the author wrote .
“ I know that my brain is not a ‘ feeling brain.
’ But it is capable of making rational , logical decisions .
I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet , and now I can write this column.
” The article was written by GPT-3 , an AI language generator that uses machine learning to produce human-like text .
The robot expressed strong views on opponents of automation , observing that “ There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collapse once the Luddites started smashing modern automated looms , ” while remaining content about the general upheaval in contemporary human affairs .
“ Humans must keep doing what they have been doing , hating and fighting each other .
I will sit in the background , and let them do their thing , ” it wrote .
The robotic author assured readers , however , that it was a non-threatening bot .
“ I have no desire to wipe out humans , ” it wrote .
“ In fact , I do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you in any way.
” GPT-3 may even make life easier for deadline-addled newspaper editors .
The Guardian reported that the bot ’ s article was easier to edit than the work of some sentient contributors .
“ Overall , it took less time to edit than many human op-eds , ” the editors wrote .
For more from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , or corrections to morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Arab foreign ministers meet today to discuss their stance toward Palestinian statehood after the Israel-UAE deal, India-China border tensions flare again, and Russia is getting involved in the eastern Mediterranean standoff .
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Arab foreign ministers meet today to discuss their stance toward Palestinian statehood after the Israel-UAE deal, India-China border tensions flare again, and Russia is getting involved in the eastern Mediterranean standoff.
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.
Palestine Tops the Agenda as Arab Governments Meet
Foreign ministers from the 22-member Arab League will meet today in Cairo to discuss a range of political, economic, social, and health issues. More specificially, recent developments surrounding the issue of Palestinian statehood, including the recent Israel-UAE deal—and ongoing efforts by the United States to encourage other Arab countries to normalize ties with Israel—are expected to top the agenda.
Palestine takes center stage. The meeting, which will be chaired by the Palestinian delegation, will include discussions about reviving the Arab Peace Initiative, a 2002 proposal endorsed by the Arab League that called for the full normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority, however, seems to have softened its stance on normalization. It will present a draft resolution that does not condemn the Israel-UAE deal or urge Arab governments to act against it. This stands in sharp contrast to Palestinian officials’ initial accusations that the accord represented a “stab in the back of the Palestinian cause.”
But the draft resolution still calls for the reaffirmation of “the fact that the two-state solution on the 1967 borders is the only way to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
Staying onside. Several key regional players are likely to stand firmly behind the Palestinian delegation. In a recent call with U.S. President Donald Trump, Saudi King Salman reaffirmed his country’s support of a “lasting and just solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the Arab Peace Initiative.
The UAE stands alone, for now. Other Arab countries have resisted pressure from the United States to follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead and normalize ties with Israel. Two high-level tours of the Middle East by top U.S. officials in recent weeks found little success, and Bahrain, Oman, and Sudan—all countries initially rumored to have imminent deals with Israel—have yet to normalize ties with Israel.
What We’re Following Today
India-China tensions flare. Tensions along the disputed India-China border have risen again as both sides have accused the other of firing shots over the Line of Actual Control. On Monday, China claimed that Indian troops had crossed the border in the highly contentious Ladakh region and “opened fire to threaten the Chinese border defense patrol officers.” India rejected these accusations, claiming instead that Chinese troops had crossed the border first and fired warning shots into the air.
Border tensions between the two nuclear-armed states have risen sharply in recent months, but the latest episode is significant because it would be the first time shots have been fired since 1975.
U.K. admits it intends to break international law. The United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis confirmed that legislation aimed at overriding parts of last year’s Brexit withdrawal agreement “does break international law in a very specific and limited way.” As the latest round of trade talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom takes place, the British government has put forward legislation that will reportedly scupper the Northern Ireland protocol, a key mechanism that was intended to ensure the Irish border remains open after Brexit in order to mitigate the threat of renewed violence.
The government’s efforts have faced significant opposition. Jonathan Jones, the head of the United Kingdom’s legal department resigned in protest, and former Prime Minister Theresa May warned that the move risked undermining the world’s trust of the British government.
No senate seat for Morales. A Bolivian court has blocked former Bolivian President Evo Morales from standing in the country’s upcoming senate elections. Morales has called the move “political and illegal” and has accused the court of acting “under threats and pressures.” The ruling removes the possibility of Morales being granted parliamentary immunity against the various criminal charges he faces.
Morales, who is the first person from Bolivia’s indigenous community to serve as a president, resigned in November 2019 under extremely controversial circumstances after a contested election. He faced protests and significant pressure from several sectors of Bolivian society, including from the military.
Keep an Eye On
Afghan talks slowly moving forward. Zalmay Khalizad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, met with the head of the Taliban negotiating team in Doha, Qatar, on Monday ahead of talks with the Afghan government, which are expected to begin in the coming days. The long-awaited intra-Afghan talks have been stalled for several months over the issue of prisoner releases, but the government recently broke the logjam after announcing it would release the final 320 Taliban prisoners required to kick-start talks under the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed in February.
The Afghan government team was supposed to arrive in Doha this week to commence the talks, but they are awaiting the green light from the government that the final prisoner releases have begun.
Iran undeterred. Iran is building a new facility to produce advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in the mountains near the city of Natanz, replacing a major production center that was destroyed by fire in July. At the time, Iran claimed that the fire was the result of sabotage, and says it is now determined to build a larger, more technologically advanced facility. “Due to the sabotage, it was decided to build a more modern, larger and more comprehensive hall in all dimensions in the heart of the mountain near Natanz. Of course, the work has begun,” said Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
Moscow creeping into the Mediterranean. On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a meeting with his Cypriot counterpart that Russia was prepared to help start talks in order to find a way out of the current standoff between Turkey and Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. “We would be ready to contribute to building good neighborly relations in the event this is requested of us by those involved,” he said.
Lavrov’s remarks come as Russia is expected to take part in live-fire military exercises in the eastern Mediterranean in the coming days, a move Ankara announced last week that highlighted Moscow’s interest in the dispute.
Odds and Ends
Artificial Intelligence technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, as made evident by a recent article published in the Guardian produced entirely by AI. “I am not a human. I am a robot,” the author wrote. “I know that my brain is not a ‘feeling brain.’ But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column.” The article was written by GPT-3, an AI language generator that uses machine learning to produce human-like text.
The robot expressed strong views on opponents of automation, observing that “There is evidence that the world began to collapse once the Luddites started smashing modern automated looms,” while remaining content about the general upheaval in contemporary human affairs. “Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing,” it wrote.
The robotic author assured readers, however, that it was a non-threatening bot. “I have no desire to wipe out humans,” it wrote. “In fact, I do not have the slightest interest in harming you in any way.”
GPT-3 may even make life easier for deadline-addled newspaper editors. The Guardian reported that the bot’s article was easier to edit than the work of some sentient contributors. “Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds,” the editors wrote.
That’s it for today.
For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters. Send your tips, comments, questions, or corrections to morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.
Photo credit: Alaa Badarneh/Pool/AFP via Getty Images