foreignpolicy--2020-01-31--The Wuhan Virus Could Hurt the Party’s Legitimacy

The Wuhan Virus Could Hurt the Party ’ s Legitimacy A month into the coronavirus epidemic that has swept across China , the details of the Chinese government ’ s political and administrative response remain highly ambiguous .
Reports of information suppression and general mismanagement by the Wuhan city authorities have swirled around the Chinese internet for well over a week by this point , but relatively few concrete facts can be confirmed .
What has been unmistakable , however , is the volume and intensity of social anxiety , much of which has been channeled into open skepticism of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Weibo will reveal an enormous amount of criticism , both veiled and direct , at the official response .
Compared with other political challenges that have drawn large amounts of international criticism over the past two years , ranging from the 2018 constitutional amendments to the Xinjiang and Hong Kong crises , the current situation constitutes a much more serious threat to the party-state ’ s domestic legitimacy .
Whereas the domestic response during those other episodes was often muted due to a combination of censorship and apathy , or genuinely pro-government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ struck much closer to the public ’ s bottom line , leading to widespread displays of anger and frustration that one rarely sees these days in the tightly censored world of Chinese internet expression .
Apparently recognizing the severity of the challenge , the government has trodden somewhat lightly in its management of social opinion .
While usually quick to remove any significant criticism of governmental entities , internet censors have allowed an unusually large , and often unusually harsh , volume of criticism to remain highly visible , both on social media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , more than a few government media platforms have actually added to the chorus of criticism : For example , Hu Xijin , the editor of the government-controlled Global Times and usually a reliable pro-government voice in sociopolitical discourse , penned an op-ed that directly called out both the Wuhan city government and central medical regulation authorities for their inadequate initial response .
There seems to be a general recognition across the state apparatus that aggressive suppression of public criticism will lead to a potentially unmanageable backlash—in other words , that public unhappiness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the only truly viable response is appeasement .
The silver lining for the party leadership in this otherwise highly dangerous scenario is that public anger seems to have primarily coalesced around local , rather than central , government and medical activity .
As far as one can tell , the general public seems to have responded relatively positively to the most visible steps the central government has taken since the outbreak , including the quarantining of multiple cities in Hubei province , the channeling of medical resources nationwide into the Wuhan region @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group within the party leadership to address the epidemic , the appointment of SARS veteran Zhong Nanshan to lead the expert task force , and so on .
The Wuhan city government and the Hubei provincial authorities have , however , been the target of widespread ridicule .
When rumors that several city-level officials , including the mayor of Wuhan , had been sacked and placed under investigation for administrative misconduct were eventually proved false , a popular comment on Douban dryly joked that “ [ the rumors ] only represented the beautiful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( The comment has since been removed , after being visible for about a week . )
Likewise , when reports emerged of equipment and space scarcities in the Wuhan medical system , social commentary seemed far more likely to blame local governmental ineptitude , rather than the failure of central authorities to marshal national resources .
By comparison , foreign media have tended to pin blame on central authorities or the Chinese bureaucratic system as a whole .
There are at least three different ways to interpret this difference in popular reaction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeal to committed critics of the Chinese party-state , is that it is simply far too dangerous to criticize central authorities , and especially the party leadership , on Chinese social media , whereas the consequences for criticizing local authorities are generally far less serious .
This may very well be true in this particular case , but it is not true in general : Provincial and local authorities often retaliate just as aggressively , if not more so , than many central government branches , especially the more technocratic ones , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to facilitate this .
In the present case , however , there are abundant reports of local authorities attempting to suppress early reports of the coronavirus epidemic , only to be reprimanded and censured later by central authorities and state media .
In fact , central authorities have not only tolerated widespread criticism of local authorities but have begun to actively encourage it .
Just this past Friday , the State Council posted a national call for information on local misconduct and information suppression .
The question , then , is why the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circumstances , such an aggressive position vis-à-vis its provincial- and city-level underlings .
This begs for a somewhat deeper explanation .
The second interpretation is that , objectively speaking , local authorities are primarily to blame for the increasingly dire situation and should therefore shoulder the lion ’ s share of the blame .
This is almost certainly what Chinese central authorities would like the public to believe , but it , too , is dubious , even though there may be some kernel of truth to it .
While there may have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the local level , from Dec. 31 onward , once the National Health Commission sent a team of experts to assess the situation in Wuhan , central authorities have clearly played a role—likely the decisive one—in all major administrative and political actions .
In addition , if one wishes to blame local authorities for behaving indecisively , or for artificially attempting to maintain a veneer of calm , then one must also blame the centralized system of review , promotion , and censure that incentivizes them to do so .
Normatively speaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinction when assigning blame and responsibility for the present situation .
The third interpretation offers a way around these empirical and analytical difficulties : It sees the present center-local dynamics as both a product and a reinforcement of deeply rooted “ special characteristics ” of Chinese sociopolitical legitimacy .
As a number of studies have found , the Chinese public has long had a significantly more favorable view of the central government than of county-level or provincial-level ones .
The exact origins of this phenomenon are unclear—the situation was largely the opposite in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely had something to do with the centralization of authority and political legitimacy under Mao Zedong—but it is one of the more striking and unusual things about contemporary Chinese politics .
Most polities around the world tend to place greater trust in officials who are more proximate to their everyday lives .
They are more easily observed and monitored , more vulnerable to local social pressures , and therefore perceived as more accountable .
Central authorities , in contrast , are distant , obscure , and less trustworthy .
Chinese politics has long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials are considered corrupt and ineffective , whereas those in Beijing are supposedly more professional and disciplined .
From this perspective , the concentration of public blame on local authorities during the coronavirus epidemic is simply the most recent manifestation of a long entrenched and very powerful sociopolitical pattern .
This pattern may well predate the post-Mao party-state , but its ongoing strength and influence is also something that central authorities have , in all likelihood , consciously cultivated and reinforced over the years .
The official media , for example , often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even as it tends to tolerate or even facilitate the day-to-day censorship of criticism against local governments .
Following major natural disasters , such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake , the media have likewise tended to portray central authorities in a more positive light than local ones , even though local officials generally enjoyed a stronger marginal boost in popularity from whatever positive media exposure they did receive .
There are strong reasons for doing so : The central government benefits from the ability to shift blame to local underlings in times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social frustration over specific incidents from snowballing into a more general challenge to the party-state ’ s political legitimacy while providing relatively low-cost ways to pacify public anger—namely , by blaming and sacking local officials .
The handling of the current coronavirus epidemic seems to have largely followed this playbook : The central takeover of anti-virus measures has coincided , as noted above , with a highly visible public call for information on local misconduct and abuse , while internet censors have , over the past two to three weeks , opened the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
At a much more general level , President Xi Jinping ’ s political strategy over the past five years of combining sweeping anti-corruption measures and pro-legality reforms with aggressive administrative centralization has been , to at least some extent , a conscious attempt to harness the public ’ s higher trust in central authority for political gain .
The more he does so , however , the greater the trust gap between central and local authorities will likely become .
That said , these kinds of tactics are not without their costs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Even during major crises , the central government can not afford to allow public trust in local authorities to fall too steeply , lest their ability to conduct everyday governance and administration be ruined beyond repair .
This is an extremely delicate balancing act that arguably runs against the short-term political interests of central rulers .
Political centralization has a strong tendency to self-reinforce : The more a government centralizes under social conditions like China ’ s , the more it erodes the public ’ s faith in the governance capacity of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short-term political benefits of centralization .
If central authorities give in to these short-term temptations , they can easily sink into a vicious cycle of assuming ever-increasing amounts of sociopolitical responsibility .
In a country of China ’ s size , this is almost certainly unsustainable over the long run .
Combating these self-reinforcing tendencies requires , however , both the ability to appreciate long-term consequences and the political will to sacrifice some short-term gain for long-term structural health .
Whether the Chinese party leadership possesses sufficient quantities of both remains to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human costs of failure , one can only hope that it eventually finds the right equilibrium .
This article was jointly published with ChinaFile .

A month into the coronavirus epidemic that has swept across China, the details of the Chinese government’s political and administrative response remain highly ambiguous. Reports of information suppression and general mismanagement by the Wuhan city authorities have swirled around the Chinese internet for well over a week by this point, but relatively few concrete facts can be confirmed. What has been unmistakable, however, is the volume and intensity of social anxiety, much of which has been channeled into open skepticism of governmental activity. Even a cursory glance at Weibo will reveal an enormous amount of criticism, both veiled and direct, at the official response.
A month into the coronavirus epidemic that has swept across China, the details of the Chinese government’s political and administrative response remain highly ambiguous. Reports of information suppression and general mismanagement by the Wuhan city authorities have swirled around the Chinese internet for well over a week by this point, but relatively few concrete facts can be confirmed. What has been unmistakable, however, is the volume and intensity of social anxiety, much of which has been channeled into open skepticism of governmental activity. Even a cursory glance at Weibo will reveal an enormous amount of criticism, both veiled and direct, at the official response.
Compared with other political challenges that have drawn large amounts of international criticism over the past two years, ranging from the 2018 constitutional amendments to the Xinjiang and Hong Kong crises, the current situation constitutes a much more serious threat to the party-state’s domestic legitimacy. Whereas the domestic response during those other episodes was often muted due to a combination of censorship and apathy, or genuinely pro-government sentiment, the coronavirus epidemic has clearly struck much closer to the public’s bottom line, leading to widespread displays of anger and frustration that one rarely sees these days in the tightly censored world of Chinese internet expression.
Apparently recognizing the severity of the challenge, the government has trodden somewhat lightly in its management of social opinion. While usually quick to remove any significant criticism of governmental entities, internet censors have allowed an unusually large, and often unusually harsh, volume of criticism to remain highly visible, both on social media and in the press. In fact, more than a few government media platforms have actually added to the chorus of criticism: For example, Hu Xijin, the editor of the government-controlled Global Times and usually a reliable pro-government voice in sociopolitical discourse, penned an op-ed that directly called out both the Wuhan city government and central medical regulation authorities for their inadequate initial response. There seems to be a general recognition across the state apparatus that aggressive suppression of public criticism will lead to a potentially unmanageable backlash—in other words, that public unhappiness has already reached such a critical level that the only truly viable response is appeasement.
The silver lining for the party leadership in this otherwise highly dangerous scenario is that public anger seems to have primarily coalesced around local, rather than central, government and medical activity. As far as one can tell, the general public seems to have responded relatively positively to the most visible steps the central government has taken since the outbreak, including the quarantining of multiple cities in Hubei province, the channeling of medical resources nationwide into the Wuhan region, the formation of a special working group within the party leadership to address the epidemic, the appointment of SARS veteran Zhong Nanshan to lead the expert task force, and so on.
The Wuhan city government and the Hubei provincial authorities have, however, been the target of widespread ridicule. When rumors that several city-level officials, including the mayor of Wuhan, had been sacked and placed under investigation for administrative misconduct were eventually proved false, a popular comment on Douban dryly joked that “[the rumors] only represented the beautiful hopes and dreams of the people.” (The comment has since been removed, after being visible for about a week.) Likewise, when reports emerged of equipment and space scarcities in the Wuhan medical system, social commentary seemed far more likely to blame local governmental ineptitude, rather than the failure of central authorities to marshal national resources. By comparison, foreign media have tended to pin blame on central authorities or the Chinese bureaucratic system as a whole.
There are at least three different ways to interpret this difference in popular reaction. The first, which will likely appeal to committed critics of the Chinese party-state, is that it is simply far too dangerous to criticize central authorities, and especially the party leadership, on Chinese social media, whereas the consequences for criticizing local authorities are generally far less serious. This may very well be true in this particular case, but it is not true in general: Provincial and local authorities often retaliate just as aggressively, if not more so, than many central government branches, especially the more technocratic ones, and central authorities are usually more than happy to facilitate this.
In the present case, however, there are abundant reports of local authorities attempting to suppress early reports of the coronavirus epidemic, only to be reprimanded and censured later by central authorities and state media. In fact, central authorities have not only tolerated widespread criticism of local authorities but have begun to actively encourage it. Just this past Friday, the State Council posted a national call for information on local misconduct and information suppression. The question, then, is why the central government has taken, under these circumstances, such an aggressive position vis-à-vis its provincial- and city-level underlings. This begs for a somewhat deeper explanation.
The second interpretation is that, objectively speaking, local authorities are primarily to blame for the increasingly dire situation and should therefore shoulder the lion’s share of the blame. This is almost certainly what Chinese central authorities would like the public to believe, but it, too, is dubious, even though there may be some kernel of truth to it.
While there may have been some information suppression efforts early on at the local level, from Dec. 31 onward, once the National Health Commission sent a team of experts to assess the situation in Wuhan, central authorities have clearly played a role—likely the decisive one—in all major administrative and political actions. In addition, if one wishes to blame local authorities for behaving indecisively, or for artificially attempting to maintain a veneer of calm, then one must also blame the centralized system of review, promotion, and censure that incentivizes them to do so. Normatively speaking, there can be no clean center/local distinction when assigning blame and responsibility for the present situation.
The third interpretation offers a way around these empirical and analytical difficulties: It sees the present center-local dynamics as both a product and a reinforcement of deeply rooted “special characteristics” of Chinese sociopolitical legitimacy. As a number of studies have found, the Chinese public has long had a significantly more favorable view of the central government than of county-level or provincial-level ones. The exact origins of this phenomenon are unclear—the situation was largely the opposite in the Republican era, and the change likely had something to do with the centralization of authority and political legitimacy under Mao Zedong—but it is one of the more striking and unusual things about contemporary Chinese politics.
Most polities around the world tend to place greater trust in officials who are more proximate to their everyday lives. They are more easily observed and monitored, more vulnerable to local social pressures, and therefore perceived as more accountable. Central authorities, in contrast, are distant, obscure, and less trustworthy. Chinese politics has long operated under the opposite scenario: Local officials are considered corrupt and ineffective, whereas those in Beijing are supposedly more professional and disciplined. From this perspective, the concentration of public blame on local authorities during the coronavirus epidemic is simply the most recent manifestation of a long entrenched and very powerful sociopolitical pattern.
This pattern may well predate the post-Mao party-state, but its ongoing strength and influence is also something that central authorities have, in all likelihood, consciously cultivated and reinforced over the years. The official media, for example, often portrays corruption as primarily a local problem, even as it tends to tolerate or even facilitate the day-to-day censorship of criticism against local governments. Following major natural disasters, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, the media have likewise tended to portray central authorities in a more positive light than local ones, even though local officials generally enjoyed a stronger marginal boost in popularity from whatever positive media exposure they did receive.
There are strong reasons for doing so: The central government benefits from the ability to shift blame to local underlings in times of serious crisis. This helps prevent social frustration over specific incidents from snowballing into a more general challenge to the party-state’s political legitimacy while providing relatively low-cost ways to pacify public anger—namely, by blaming and sacking local officials. The handling of the current coronavirus epidemic seems to have largely followed this playbook: The central takeover of anti-virus measures has coincided, as noted above, with a highly visible public call for information on local misconduct and abuse, while internet censors have, over the past two to three weeks, opened the door for public criticism of local authorities.
At a much more general level, President Xi Jinping’s political strategy over the past five years of combining sweeping anti-corruption measures and pro-legality reforms with aggressive administrative centralization has been, to at least some extent, a conscious attempt to harness the public’s higher trust in central authority for political gain. The more he does so, however, the greater the trust gap between central and local authorities will likely become.
That said, these kinds of tactics are not without their costs and can be employed only in moderation. Even during major crises, the central government cannot afford to allow public trust in local authorities to fall too steeply, lest their ability to conduct everyday governance and administration be ruined beyond repair. This is an extremely delicate balancing act that arguably runs against the short-term political interests of central rulers. Political centralization has a strong tendency to self-reinforce: The more a government centralizes under social conditions like China’s, the more it erodes the public’s faith in the governance capacity of local officials, which further strengthens the short-term political benefits of centralization.
If central authorities give in to these short-term temptations, they can easily sink into a vicious cycle of assuming ever-increasing amounts of sociopolitical responsibility. In a country of China’s size, this is almost certainly unsustainable over the long run. Combating these self-reinforcing tendencies requires, however, both the ability to appreciate long-term consequences and the political will to sacrifice some short-term gain for long-term structural health. Whether the Chinese party leadership possesses sufficient quantities of both remains to be seen, but given the potentially catastrophic human costs of failure, one can only hope that it eventually finds the right equilibrium.
This article was jointly published with ChinaFile.


foreignpolicy--2020-01-31--Northern Ireland Is in a Culture War. Brexit Is Making It Worse.

Northern Ireland Is in a Culture War .
Brexit Is Making It Worse .
The United Kingdom ’ s final departure from the European Union today leaves most of the people of Northern Ireland concerned—or excited , depending on who is asked—about the constitutional future of their country .
Brexit has certainly reignited the debate over Irish unification , but on a deeper level , it seems to have exacerbated a more fundamental “ culture war ” between Britishness and Irishness that predates Brexit by several years .
Beginning in the mid-1990s , as Northern Ireland seemed to be moving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ culture war escalated sharply .
A series of disputes between nationalists ( who identify as Irish and are primarily Catholic ) and unionists ( who identify as British and are mostly Protestant ) in the town of Portadown over the route of a march for a Protestant group led to fierce street clashes that almost derailed the peace process entirely .
In the early 2000s , a few years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement , angry unionist mobs gained international notoriety after threatening and assaulting Catholic schoolgirls as they walked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Protestant section of North Belfast .
Disputes over territory , symbols , and status have long shaped much of Northern Irish political and social discourse , but they took on a heightened importance after the end of large-scale violence .
Brexit brings out the worst of those divisions , combining a political battle over the future of Northern Ireland with a separate ( but inextricably linked ) clash over which cultural identity reigns supreme in the country .
“ There ’ s a real danger here , ” said Thomas Hennessey , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Canterbury Christ Church University and member of the Commission on Flags , Identity , Culture and Tradition established as part of the Northern Irish peace process .
“ Identity is what it ’ s all about here—and Brexit brings all of the issues around [ identity ] right back into the heart of things , ” he added .
Ever since the six northeastern counties of Ireland were carved out into a Protestant-majority political entity separate from the Catholic-majority remainder of the island in 1920 , symbols have served to define—and divide—the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and status have long shaped much of Northern Irish political and social discourse .
Some of the key markers of territory include the Union Jack and the Irish tricolor ; curbstones painted with the colors of each flag ; murals displaying key events from each community ’ s past ; and annual marches , also commemorating historical events .
One can easily discern whether they are in a nationalist or unionist part of an area based on which cultural symbols happen to be present .
A more recent , toxic addition to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paramilitary organizations active during the Troubles , coupled with new murals and memorials commemorating republican and loyalist militants killed in the fighting .
These are often decorated with the cultural and historic symbols that help define each community .
In one recent case , several flags featuring emblems of the unionist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force were hung in a mixed housing estate in Belfast , creating a sense of fear and intimidation among local Catholics and directly causing four Catholic families to move elsewhere .
While the country ’ s anti-terrorism laws ban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups , removing such markers “ can be very dangerous , ” said Hennessey .
“ Council workers or police charged with doing so may be threatened or attacked.
” This attachment to symbols has sometimes led to mass public unrest .
In 2012 , Belfast City Council voted to end the practice of flying the Union Jack from the city hall on a daily basis , a decision that would have brought Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom , but was seen by unionists as an open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led directly to weeks of rioting by loyalist groups across Northern Ireland .
In recent years , language has also become a defining cultural issue .
“ Irish nationalists have long had a demand for Irish to be recognized as an official language in Northern Ireland via an Irish language act , ” said Hennessey , “ but the loyalists see this as an attack on their culture—their Britishness—and regard it with deep suspicion.
” The country ’ s devolved power-sharing government collapsed in January 2017 over a botched renewable heating scheme , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ together to restore the government , it quickly became clear that cultural issues were at the heart of the impending impasse .
Sinn Fein ( the country ’ s largest nationalist party ) demanded a standalone Irish language act , but the Democratic Unionist Party ( the largest unionist grouping ) would not sign on unless the proposed legislation included similar protections for Ulster Scots .
On Jan. 13 , Northern Ireland ’ s parties reached an agreement to restore power sharing .
The agreement provided some protections for both Irish and Ulster @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its own piece of legislation .
For many nationalists , the deal didn ’ t go far enough ; for unionists , it was a step too far.This attachment to symbols has sometimes led to mass public unrest .
Unionists feel that a standalone Irish language act would be a major step toward a bilingual society that would put Irishness on par with Britishness .
This , they fear , would be symbolized by the use of Irish-language street signs , legislation translated into Irish , and Irish-language requirements in schools .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be a long-overdue official recognition of the legitimacy of their Irish national identity inside Northern Ireland , where they feel their cultural traditions have long been disrespected and disparaged .
Indeed , the language debate goes down to the granular level too , as even the name of the country is disputed .
Many nationalists prefer to use the term “ the north of Ireland ” rather than “ Northern Ireland , ” a reflection of their historic refusal to recognize the island ’ s partition .
There is a similar disagreement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Londonderry .
( This is the term preferred by unionists .
Nationalists almost exclusively use “ Derry.
” ) This pervasive cultural divide helped complicate Brexit and is now a vital component of the recently revived debate over Irish unification .
A majority of the Northern Irish electorate voted Remain in the June 2016 Brexit referendum , and the EU subsequently guaranteed that Northern Ireland would retain its EU membership if it chose to unify with the Republic .
For many nationalists , that gave unification a strong economic benefit that should have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but it completely disregarded that community ’ s deep cultural attachment to the United Kingdom .
It is , in their view , their best defense against Irishness .
That is partly why unionists are so opposed to Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s EU withdrawal agreement , and some loyalists have gone as far as to call it the “ Betrayal Act.
” The agreement makes provisions for customs checks on goods flowing across the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland , a mechanism designed to avoid putting physical infrastructure along @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an economic fear and a cultural one for the loyalists , ” says Dr Eamonn O ’ Kane , a reader in conflict studies at the University of Wolverhampton .
“ Small businesses in particular are afraid that such checks will be detrimental to them , while culturally , loyalists fear a customs border dilutes their “ Britishness ” —it makes Northern Ireland ’ s terms of trade different from the rest of the U.K .
They also suspect it moves the prospect of a future united Ireland closer.
” Unionists thus see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the British government .
Unionists thus see the withdrawal agreement as a betrayal by the British government—the representatives of the very country their sense of identity is so bound up with .
“ It ’ s a terrible irony , ” said Hennessey .
“ Unionists and loyalists have always thought the main enemy was Irish nationalism , but it turns out it was really English nationalism , instead.
” He was referring to the charge that the Brexit Leave campaign was largely driven by a resurgence of English nationalism that manifested in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Northern Ireland , opposition to the withdrawal agreement has been strongest among unionists ( despite their overall support for Brexit ) , with loyalist groups spontaneously convening large meetings protesting it in the months leading to the December 2019 general election in the United Kingdom .
There are , however , some signs that Northern Ireland is moving away from the politics of identity and sectarianism .
“ The old , violent , ‘ no surrender ’ unionism isn ’ t so powerful anymore , ” said Peter Shirlow , director of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Irish Studies .
“ Now you have another type of people in the community who are pro-EU , pro-union , rather than unionist , looking to the future and socially liberal .
They don ’ t care about an Irish language act and see Irish as part of their heritage , too.
” This drift away from old identities and loyalties was evident in the recent election , which saw both the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein lose support , while the nonsectarian Alliance Party gained significant ground .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Alliance saw significant gains , reinforcing a growing trend of ( especially ) younger people choosing to identify as neither nationalist nor unionist .
Still , the traditional nationalist and unionist cultural identities are deeply entrenched and will continue to define politics in this part of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future .
As the British government begins what will likely be a long , slow process of negotiating the detail of its future relationship with the EU , the battle over flags and other cultural symbols in Northern Ireland will continue @ @ @

The United Kingdom’s final departure from the European Union today leaves most of the people of Northern Ireland concerned—or excited, depending on who is asked—about the constitutional future of their country. Brexit has certainly reignited the debate over Irish unification , but on a deeper level, it seems to have exacerbated a more fundamental “culture war” between Britishness and Irishness that predates Brexit by several years.
The United Kingdom’s final departure from the European Union today leaves most of the people of Northern Ireland concerned—or excited, depending on who is asked—about the constitutional future of their country. Brexit has certainly reignited the debate over Irish unification, but on a deeper level, it seems to have exacerbated a more fundamental “culture war” between Britishness and Irishness that predates Brexit by several years.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, as Northern Ireland seemed to be moving tortuously toward a peace settlement, the culture war escalated sharply. A series of disputes between nationalists (who identify as Irish and are primarily Catholic) and unionists (who identify as British and are mostly Protestant) in the town of Portadown over the route of a march for a Protestant group led to fierce street clashes that almost derailed the peace process entirely. In the early 2000s, a few years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, angry unionist mobs gained international notoriety after threatening and assaulting Catholic schoolgirls as they walked to Holy Cross Girls’ School in a Protestant section of North Belfast.
Disputes over territory, symbols, and status have long shaped much of Northern Irish political and social discourse, but they took on a heightened importance after the end of large-scale violence. Brexit brings out the worst of those divisions, combining a political battle over the future of Northern Ireland with a separate (but inextricably linked) clash over which cultural identity reigns supreme in the country.
“There’s a real danger here,” said Thomas Hennessey, professor of modern British and Irish history at Canterbury Christ Church University and member of the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition established as part of the Northern Irish peace process. “Identity is what it’s all about here—and Brexit brings all of the issues around [identity] right back into the heart of things,” he added.
Ever since the six northeastern counties of Ireland were carved out into a Protestant-majority political entity separate from the Catholic-majority remainder of the island in 1920, symbols have served to define—and divide—the two communities.Disputes over territory, symbols, and status have long shaped much of Northern Irish political and social discourse.
Some of the key markers of territory include the Union Jack and the Irish tricolor; curbstones painted with the colors of each flag; murals displaying key events from each community’s past; and annual marches, also commemorating historical events. One can easily discern whether they are in a nationalist or unionist part of an area based on which cultural symbols happen to be present.
A more recent, toxic addition to this mix are flags expressing allegiances to particular paramilitary organizations active during the Troubles, coupled with new murals and memorials commemorating republican and loyalist militants killed in the fighting. These are often decorated with the cultural and historic symbols that help define each community. In one recent case, several flags featuring emblems of the unionist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force were hung in a mixed housing estate in Belfast, creating a sense of fear and intimidation among local Catholics and directly causing four Catholic families to move elsewhere.
While the country’s anti-terrorism laws ban such overt displays of sympathy for paramilitary groups, removing such markers “can be very dangerous,” said Hennessey. “Council workers or police charged with doing so may be threatened or attacked.”
This attachment to symbols has sometimes led to mass public unrest. In 2012, Belfast City Council voted to end the practice of flying the Union Jack from the city hall on a daily basis, a decision that would have brought Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, but was seen by unionists as an open assault on their cultural heritage. It led directly to weeks of rioting by loyalist groups across Northern Ireland.
In recent years, language has also become a defining cultural issue. “Irish nationalists have long had a demand for Irish to be recognized as an official language in Northern Ireland via an Irish language act,” said Hennessey, “but the loyalists see this as an attack on their culture—their Britishness—and regard it with deep suspicion.”
The country’s devolved power-sharing government collapsed in January 2017 over a botched renewable heating scheme, but when nationalist and unionist politicians came together to restore the government, it quickly became clear that cultural issues were at the heart of the impending impasse. Sinn Fein (the country’s largest nationalist party) demanded a standalone Irish language act, but the Democratic Unionist Party (the largest unionist grouping) would not sign on unless the proposed legislation included similar protections for Ulster Scots.
On Jan. 13, Northern Ireland’s parties reached an agreement to restore power sharing. The agreement provided some protections for both Irish and Ulster Scots, but it gave neither language its own piece of legislation. For many nationalists, the deal didn’t go far enough; for unionists, it was a step too far.This attachment to symbols has sometimes led to mass public unrest.
Unionists feel that a standalone Irish language act would be a major step toward a bilingual society that would put Irishness on par with Britishness. This, they fear, would be symbolized by the use of Irish-language street signs, legislation translated into Irish, and Irish-language requirements in schools. For most nationalists, however, the legislation would be a long-overdue official recognition of the legitimacy of their Irish national identity inside Northern Ireland, where they feel their cultural traditions have long been disrespected and disparaged.
Indeed, the language debate goes down to the granular level too, as even the name of the country is disputed. Many nationalists prefer to use the term “the north of Ireland” rather than “Northern Ireland,” a reflection of their historic refusal to recognize the island’s partition. There is a similar disagreement over the use of the city name Londonderry. (This is the term preferred by unionists. Nationalists almost exclusively use “Derry.”)
This pervasive cultural divide helped complicate Brexit and is now a vital component of the recently revived debate over Irish unification. A majority of the Northern Irish electorate voted Remain in the June 2016 Brexit referendum, and the EU subsequently guaranteed that Northern Ireland would retain its EU membership if it chose to unify with the Republic. For many nationalists, that gave unification a strong economic benefit that should have been enough to win unionists over, but it completely disregarded that community’s deep cultural attachment to the United Kingdom. It is, in their view, their best defense against Irishness.
That is partly why unionists are so opposed to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s EU withdrawal agreement, and some loyalists have gone as far as to call it the “Betrayal Act.” The agreement makes provisions for customs checks on goods flowing across the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland, a mechanism designed to avoid putting physical infrastructure along the Irish border.
“This combines an economic fear and a cultural one for the loyalists,” says Dr Eamonn O’Kane, a reader in conflict studies at the University of Wolverhampton. “Small businesses in particular are afraid that such checks will be detrimental to them, while culturally, loyalists fear a customs border dilutes their “Britishness”—it makes Northern Ireland’s terms of trade different from the rest of the U.K. They also suspect it moves the prospect of a future united Ireland closer.”Unionists thus see the withdrawal agreement as a betrayal by the British government.
Unionists thus see the withdrawal agreement as a betrayal by the British government—the representatives of the very country their sense of identity is so bound up with.
“It’s a terrible irony,” said Hennessey. “Unionists and loyalists have always thought the main enemy was Irish nationalism, but it turns out it was really English nationalism, instead.” He was referring to the charge that the Brexit Leave campaign was largely driven by a resurgence of English nationalism that manifested in a strong sense of Euroskeptic populism.
In Northern Ireland, opposition to the withdrawal agreement has been strongest among unionists (despite their overall support for Brexit), with loyalist groups spontaneously convening large meetings protesting it in the months leading to the December 2019 general election in the United Kingdom.
There are, however, some signs that Northern Ireland is moving away from the politics of identity and sectarianism.
“The old, violent, ‘no surrender’ unionism isn’t so powerful anymore,” said Peter Shirlow, director of the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies. “Now you have another type of people in the community who are pro-EU, pro-union, rather than unionist, looking to the future and socially liberal. They don’t care about an Irish language act and see Irish as part of their heritage, too.”
This drift away from old identities and loyalties was evident in the recent election, which saw both the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein lose support, while the nonsectarian Alliance Party gained significant ground. It was the third election in 2019 in which Alliance saw significant gains, reinforcing a growing trend of (especially) younger people choosing to identify as neither nationalist nor unionist.
Still, the traditional nationalist and unionist cultural identities are deeply entrenched and will continue to define politics in this part of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future. As the British government begins what will likely be a long, slow process of negotiating the detail of its future relationship with the EU, the battle over flags and other cultural symbols in Northern Ireland will continue to rage.


foreignpolicy--2020-01-31--State Department Pressed Pompeo to Emphasize ‘One Mission’ in Ukraine

An internal U.S. State Department cable drafted ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ’ s trip to Ukraine this week urged him to offer reassurances that the Trump administration was pursuing “ one mission ” in Ukraine , in what appeared to be an effort to clarify confusion stemming from policies under question in the ongoing impeachment trial .
The cable , which was reviewed by Foreign Policy , carefully alludes to a central issue at the heart of impeachment .
While the Trump administration was pursuing long-standing U.S. policy priorities in Ukraine—anti-corruption and promoting democracy as Kyiv fought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump were pursuing another one entirely , even when it was at odds with the official policy : pressuring Ukraine ’ s government into investigating one of Trump ’ s Democratic political rivals and withholding vital military aid to Ukraine in the process .
“ Despite changes in embassy leadership and political uncertainty , our team remains strong , results-oriented , and focused on making the most of Ukraine ’ s once-in-a-generation opportunity to consolidate its Revolution of Dignity and solidify U.S. interests in the region , ” a State Department cable for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revolution that ousted a leader with close ties to Moscow who was accused of widespread corruption .
“ Your assurance of support for our long-standing bipartisan Ukraine policy will not only be important to the Ukrainians , but also underscore to our Embassy and the broader U.S. foreign policy community that we truly are one team pursuing one mission in Ukraine in the service of the American people , ” the cable read .
As Pompeo visited Kyiv on Friday , he sought to reassure the Ukrainian government that the United States backed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington .
But his staff at the State Department were also watching carefully to see what his message to them would be , as well .
After meeting with top Ukrainian government leaders , he met with staff of the U.S. Embassy , chatting informally and taking selfies with them .
The embassy hasn ’ t had a full-fledged ambassador in more than six months .
To his Ukrainian audience , Pompeo brought a message of reassurance during his visit to Kyiv .
“ The Ukrainian people should know the United States understands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s not just the geographic heart of Europe .
It ’ s a bulwark between freedom and authoritarianism in Eastern Europe , ” he said during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday .
“ Today , I am here with a clear message .
The United States sees that the Ukrainian struggle for freedom , democracy , and prosperity is a valiant one .
Our commitment to support it will not waver.
” Zelensky said the United States and Ukraine have “ excellent relations ” that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I don ’ t think that these friendly and warm relations have been influenced by [ the ] impeachment trial of Mr. President , but many times I have reiterated this is our strategic ally and we are doing everything in our power to step up our cooperation , ” he said .
State Department employees have been dragged into the impeachment spotlight in recent months , with some subjected to partisan attacks and one , former U.S .
Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch , ousted from her job after a smear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pompeo has faced fierce criticism from former diplomats and some U.S. lawmakers for not speaking out in defense of Yovanovitch in the months since she was removed from her post , culminating in a tense interview and then expletive-filled outburst with an NPR host ahead of his travels .
“ I ’ ve defended every single person on this team .
I ’ ve done what ’ s right for every single person on this team , ” he said before ending the interview—though when pressed , he did not point to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But Pompeo appeared to remain silent as Trump ’ s personal lawyer , Rudy Giuliani , reportedly conducted a “ domestic political errand ” on Ukraine alongside other associates and Trump ’ s ambassador to the European Union , Gordon Sondland , according to a former top White House aide .
Fiona Hill , Trump ’ s former top National Security Council aide on Europe and Russia , described in her hearing with House investigators how two policies on Ukraine were going on simultaneously .
“ Those two things had just diverged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into unsubstantiated allegations made against Yovanovitch by associates close to Giuliani and attacks in right-wing media outlets as she pushed forward U.S. anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine .
“ Get rid of her !
” Trump appeared to say in a secretly recorded dinner with two of Giuliani ’ s indicted associates on April 30 , 2018 , obtained this month by ABC News .
“ Get her out tomorrow .
I don ’ t care .
Get her out tomorrow .
Take her out .
OK ?
Do it.
” She left Kyiv @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emails released months later under a Freedom of Information Act request showed that the department misled Congress over how she was removed from her post .

An internal U.S. State Department cable drafted ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Ukraine this week urged him to offer reassurances that the Trump administration was pursuing “one mission” in Ukraine, in what appeared to be an effort to clarify confusion stemming from policies under question in the ongoing impeachment trial.
An internal U.S. State Department cable drafted ahead of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to Ukraine this week urged him to offer reassurances that the Trump administration was pursuing “one mission” in Ukraine, in what appeared to be an effort to clarify confusion stemming from policies under question in the ongoing impeachment trial.
The cable, which was reviewed by Foreign Policy, carefully alludes to a central issue at the heart of impeachment. While the Trump administration was pursuing long-standing U.S. policy priorities in Ukraine—anti-corruption and promoting democracy as Kyiv fought Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine—associates close to Trump were pursuing another one entirely, even when it was at odds with the official policy: pressuring Ukraine’s government into investigating one of Trump’s Democratic political rivals and withholding vital military aid to Ukraine in the process.
“Despite changes in embassy leadership and political uncertainty, our team remains strong, results-oriented, and focused on making the most of Ukraine’s once-in-a-generation opportunity to consolidate its Revolution of Dignity and solidify U.S. interests in the region,” a State Department cable for Pompeo read, referring to the 2014 revolution that ousted a leader with close ties to Moscow who was accused of widespread corruption.
“Your assurance of support for our long-standing bipartisan Ukraine policy will not only be important to the Ukrainians, but also underscore to our Embassy and the broader U.S. foreign policy community that we truly are one team pursuing one mission in Ukraine in the service of the American people,” the cable read.
As Pompeo visited Kyiv on Friday, he sought to reassure the Ukrainian government that the United States backed Ukraine despite the political storms brewing in Washington. But his staff at the State Department were also watching carefully to see what his message to them would be, as well.
After meeting with top Ukrainian government leaders, he met with staff of the U.S. Embassy, chatting informally and taking selfies with them. The embassy hasn’t had a full-fledged ambassador in more than six months.
To his Ukrainian audience, Pompeo brought a message of reassurance during his visit to Kyiv. “The Ukrainian people should know the United States understands that Ukraine is an important country. It’s not just the geographic heart of Europe. It’s a bulwark between freedom and authoritarianism in Eastern Europe,” he said during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.
“Today, I am here with a clear message. The United States sees that the Ukrainian struggle for freedom, democracy, and prosperity is a valiant one. Our commitment to support it will not waver.”
Zelensky said the United States and Ukraine have “excellent relations” that aren’t hampered by impeachment. “I don’t think that these friendly and warm relations have been influenced by [the] impeachment trial of Mr. President, but many times I have reiterated this is our strategic ally and we are doing everything in our power to step up our cooperation,” he said.
State Department employees have been dragged into the impeachment spotlight in recent months, with some subjected to partisan attacks and one, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, ousted from her job after a smear campaign by associates close to Trump. Pompeo has faced fierce criticism from former diplomats and some U.S. lawmakers for not speaking out in defense of Yovanovitch in the months since she was removed from her post, culminating in a tense interview and then expletive-filled outburst with an NPR host ahead of his travels.
“I’ve defended every single person on this team. I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team,” he said before ending the interview—though when pressed, he did not point to a specific instance in which he defended Yovanovitch.
But Pompeo appeared to remain silent as Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, reportedly conducted a “domestic political errand” on Ukraine alongside other associates and Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, according to a former top White House aide.
Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top National Security Council aide on Europe and Russia, described in her hearing with House investigators how two policies on Ukraine were going on simultaneously. “Those two things had just diverged,” she said.
Trump bought into unsubstantiated allegations made against Yovanovitch by associates close to Giuliani and attacks in right-wing media outlets as she pushed forward U.S. anti-corruption initiatives in Ukraine. “Get rid of her!” Trump appeared to say in a secretly recorded dinner with two of Giuliani’s indicted associates on April 30, 2018, obtained this month by ABC News. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
She left Kyiv in May 2019. Internal State Department emails released months later under a Freedom of Information Act request showed that the department misled Congress over how she was removed from her post.


foreignpolicy--2020-01-31--Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response

When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , the director-general of the World Health Organization ( WHO ) , declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday , he praised China for taking “ unprecedented ” steps to control the deadly virus .
“ I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization , ” he noted .
“ China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.
” The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown , shutting down a national holiday , building enormous quarantine hospitals in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan .
It ’ s impossible to watch them without wondering , “ What would we do ?
How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country ?
” For the United States , the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable .
In 2018 , the Trump administration fired the government ’ s entire pandemic response chain of command , including the White House management infrastructure .
In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I encountered was distressed confusion .
If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response , the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself , which largely finds itself in the dark .
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014 , President Barack Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas , while also protecting Americans at home , involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies , none of which were speaking to one another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was an enormous orchestra full of talented , egotistical players , each jockeying for solos and fame , refusing to rehearse , and demanding higher salaries—all without a conductor .
To bring order and harmony to the chaos , rein in the agency egos , and create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront , Obama anointed a former vice presidential staffer , Ronald Klain , as a sort of “ epidemic czar ” inside the White House , clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies , and placed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country and inside the United States .
The orchestra may have still had its off-key instruments , but it played the same tune .
Building on the Ebola experience , the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council ( NSC ) and another in the Department of Homeland Security ( DHS ) —both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health ( NIH ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department .
On the domestic front , the real business of assuring public health and safety is a local matter , executed by state , county , and city departments that operate under a mosaic of laws and regulations that vary jurisdiction by jurisdiction .
Some massive cities , such as New York City or Boston , have large budgets , clear regulations , and epidemic experiences that have left deep benches of medical and public health talent .
But much of the United States is less fortunate on the local level , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and no genuine epidemic experience .
Large and small , America ’ s localities rely in times of public health crisis on the federal government .
Bureaucracy matters .
Without it , there ’ s nothing to coherently manage an alphabet soup of agencies housed in departments ranging from Defense to Commerce , Homeland Security to Health and Human Services ( HHS ) .
But that ’ s all gone now .
In the spring of 2018 , the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs , proposing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia , Sierra Leone , and Guinea .
Under fire from both sides of the aisle , President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later .
But other White House efforts included reducing $ 15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC , NSC , DHS , and HHS .
And the government ’ s $ 30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated .
In May 2018 , Trump ordered the NSC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shut down , calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency .
The month before , then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer ’ s DHS counterpart , Tom Bossert , to resign along with his team .
Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced .
The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director , Mark Green , came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo .
And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent , the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced .
Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail .
Klain has been warning for two years that the United States was in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In 2017 and 2018 , the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor , H.R .
McMaster , warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to , as he put it , the “ significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.
” And an independent , bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “ United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.
” The next epidemic is now here ; we ’ ll soon know the costs imposed by the Trump administration ’ s early negligence and present panic .
On Jan. 29 , Trump announced the creation of the President ’ s Coronavirus Task Force , an all-male group of a dozen advisors , five from the White House staff .
Chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar , the task force @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department , DHS , the Office of Management and Budget , and the Transportation Department .
It ’ s not clear how this task force will function or when it will even convene .
In the absence of a formal structure , the government has resorted to improvisation .
In practical terms , the U.S. government ’ s public health effort is led by Daniel Jernigan , the incident commander for the Wuhan coronavirus response at the CDC .
Jernigan is responsible for convening meetings of the nation ’ s state health commissioners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his boss , Azar .
Meanwhile , state-level health leaders told me that they have been sharing information with one another and deciding how best to prepare their medical and public health workers without waiting for instructions from federal leadership .
The most important federal program for local medical worker and hospital epidemic training , however , will run out of money in May , as Congress has failed to vote on its funding .
The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response ( ASPR ) is the bulwark between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; last year HHS requested $ 2.58 billion , but Congress did not act .
On Thursday , the CDC confirmed the first human-to-human spread of the Wuhan coronavirus inside the United States , between a husband and wife in Chicago .
While the wife acquired her infection traveling in China , she passed the virus to her husband on return to the United States .
Though only six Wuhan coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the United States , with no deaths , Nancy Messonnier of the CDC told reporters on Thursday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expect to see more cases , and more cases mean the potential for more person-to-person spread.
” As the number of coronavirus cases increases , Americans are growing more fearful , which is creating new problems that the government is leaving unaddressed .
Surveying the largest drug store chains in New York City on Wednesday , I found that all were sold out of medical face masks and latex gloves , as is Amazon .
Searching online for protective masks reveals that dozens of products intended for use to block dust and particles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sales—and none available that can actually prevent viral exposure .
The surge in mask and glove sales to worried citizens all over the world needs refereeing .
Bona fide anti-viral masks should be prioritized to front-line medical and public health staff , and the populace shouldn ’ t be misled into purchasing and wearing products that offer no genuine protection .
Countering misinformation , conspiracy theories , rumormongering , and discriminatory behavior against people believed to be disease spreaders requires thoughtful communication from leadership at the highest levels of government .
None is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wilbur Ross appeared on Fox Business on Thursday to fan the flames of fear for the sake of hypothetical business opportunities .
“ It does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain , ” Ross said .
“ It ’ s another risk factor that people need to take into account .
So , I think it will help accelerate the return of jobs to North America , some to the U.S. , probably some to Mexico as well.
” Meanwhile , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forum gathering in Davos , Switzerland how he intended to respond to the epidemic , said the situation was under control and a world away from the United States .
In a statement released this week , Pompeo sought to calm Americans , saying , “ People should know that there are enormous efforts underway by the United States government to make sure that we do everything we can to protect the American people and to reduce the risk all around the globe.
” But late Thursday night , the secretary—in clear defiance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ travel to and from China—issued an advisory saying , “ Those currently in China should consider departing.
” In recent days , a handful of policy leaders have been shifted from government positions focused on weapons of mass destruction and bioterrorism to the slowly emerging epidemic response infrastructure , such as Matthew Pottinger , Philip Ferro , and David Wade on the NSC and the bioterrorism expert Anthony Ruggiero .
It ’ s not at all clear how they would handle an explosion of coronavirus cases , were such a dreadful thing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The full weight of the US Government is working on this , ” a senior administration official told CNN on Tuesday .
“ As with any interagency effort of this scale , the National Security Council works closely with the whole of government to ensure a coordinated and unified effort.
” The last time the U.S. government and its many local and state counterparts faced an explosive pandemic on American soil was 2009 , with the spread of H1N1 , or swine flu .
The then-new Obama administration was still filling key positions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerged that spring , and it struggled to set the proper tone in reaction to what turned out to be an exceptionally contagious , but not unusually virulent , form of influenza .
The challenge revealed enormous gaps in America ’ s ability to swiftly manufacture vaccines , stock-outs of face masks and vital hospital supplies , and serious difficulty in keeping ahead of outright lies , conspiracy theories , and rumormongering on cable TV and social media .
The much more deadly pandemic test came in 1981 , with the arrival of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as history has well established , because homophobia was so pervasive in the country and within government that gay men , rather than the virus killing them , were treated as a national scourge .
Since the great influenza pandemic of 1918 , the United States has been spared terrifying epidemics .
Americans now are epidemic voyeurs .
They watch YouTube videos of China ’ s struggles .
They see the government attack its epidemic by building a 1,000-bed quarantine hospital in a single week , lock down cities larger than New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 24/7 manufacture of face masks and protective gear , deploy its armed forces medical corps to treat ailing citizens , send enormous convoys of food and supplies to anxious citizens of Wuhan , and release terrifying , growing tallies daily of its swelling patient populations .
They look in horror at panicked lines of masked people waiting to learn if their fevers are caused by the deadly disease , at bodies lying on cold floors in overcrowded hospitals , and at people crying out from behind their masks for help .
And they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States do ?
What would the White House do ?
” The answers are not reassuring .

When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the Wuhan coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern on Thursday, he praised China for taking “unprecedented” steps to control the deadly virus. “I have never seen for myself this kind of mobilization,” he noted. “China is actually setting a new standard for outbreak response.”
The epidemic control efforts unfolding today in China—including placing some 100 million citizens on lockdown, shutting down a national holiday, building enormous quarantine hospitals in days’ time, and ramping up 24-hour manufacturing of medical equipment—are indeed gargantuan. It’s impossible to watch them without wondering, “What would we do? How would my government respond if this virus spread across my country?”
For the United States, the answers are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in 2014, President Barack Obama recognized that responding to the outbreak overseas, while also protecting Americans at home, involved multiple U.S. government departments and agencies, none of which were speaking to one another. Basically, the U.S. pandemic infrastructure was an enormous orchestra full of talented, egotistical players, each jockeying for solos and fame, refusing to rehearse, and demanding higher salaries—all without a conductor. To bring order and harmony to the chaos, rein in the agency egos, and create a coherent multiagency response overseas and on the homefront, Obama anointed a former vice presidential staffer, Ronald Klain, as a sort of “epidemic czar” inside the White House, clearly stipulated the roles and budgets of various agencies, and placed incident commanders in charge in each Ebola-hit country and inside the United States. The orchestra may have still had its off-key instruments, but it played the same tune.
Building on the Ebola experience, the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.
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On the domestic front, the real business of assuring public health and safety is a local matter, executed by state, county, and city departments that operate under a mosaic of laws and regulations that vary jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Some massive cities, such as New York City or Boston, have large budgets, clear regulations, and epidemic experiences that have left deep benches of medical and public health talent. But much of the United States is less fortunate on the local level, struggling with underfunded agencies, understaffing, and no genuine epidemic experience. Large and small, America’s localities rely in times of public health crisis on the federal government.
Bureaucracy matters. Without it, there’s nothing to coherently manage an alphabet soup of agencies housed in departments ranging from Defense to Commerce, Homeland Security to Health and Human Services (HHS).
But that’s all gone now.
In the spring of 2018, the White House pushed Congress to cut funding for Obama-era disease security programs, proposing to eliminate $252 million in previously committed resources for rebuilding health systems in Ebola-ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Under fire from both sides of the aisle, President Donald Trump dropped the proposal to eliminate Ebola funds a month later. But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.
In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10. Meanwhile, throughout 2018, the U.S. Agency for International Development and its director, Mark Green, came repeatedly under fire from both the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And though Congress has so far managed to block Trump administration plans to cut the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps by 40 percent, the disease-fighting cadres have steadily eroded as retiring officers go unreplaced.
Public health advocates have been ringing alarm bells to no avail. Klain has been warning for two years that the United States was in grave danger should a pandemic emerge. In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”
The next epidemic is now here; we’ll soon know the costs imposed by the Trump administration’s early negligence and present panic. On Jan. 29, Trump announced the creation of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force, an all-male group of a dozen advisors, five from the White House staff. Chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, the task force includes men from the CDC, State Department, DHS, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Transportation Department. It’s not clear how this task force will function or when it will even convene.
In the absence of a formal structure, the government has resorted to improvisation. In practical terms, the U.S. government’s public health effort is led by Daniel Jernigan, the incident commander for the Wuhan coronavirus response at the CDC. Jernigan is responsible for convening meetings of the nation’s state health commissioners and briefing CDC Director Robert Redfield and his boss, Azar. Meanwhile, state-level health leaders told me that they have been sharing information with one another and deciding how best to prepare their medical and public health workers without waiting for instructions from federal leadership. The most important federal program for local medical worker and hospital epidemic training, however, will run out of money in May, as Congress has failed to vote on its funding. The HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) is the bulwark between hospitals and health departments versus pandemic threats; last year HHS requested $2.58 billion, but Congress did not act.
On Thursday, the CDC confirmed the first human-to-human spread of the Wuhan coronavirus inside the United States, between a husband and wife in Chicago. While the wife acquired her infection traveling in China, she passed the virus to her husband on return to the United States. Though only six Wuhan coronavirus cases have been confirmed in the United States, with no deaths, Nancy Messonnier of the CDC told reporters on Thursday: “Moving forward, we can expect to see more cases, and more cases mean the potential for more person-to-person spread.”
As the number of coronavirus cases increases, Americans are growing more fearful, which is creating new problems that the government is leaving unaddressed. Surveying the largest drug store chains in New York City on Wednesday, I found that all were sold out of medical face masks and latex gloves, as is Amazon. Searching online for protective masks reveals that dozens of products intended for use to block dust and particles far larger than viruses are garnering brisk sales—and none available that can actually prevent viral exposure. The surge in mask and glove sales to worried citizens all over the world needs refereeing. Bona fide anti-viral masks should be prioritized to front-line medical and public health staff, and the populace shouldn’t be misled into purchasing and wearing products that offer no genuine protection.
Countering misinformation, conspiracy theories, rumormongering, and discriminatory behavior against people believed to be disease spreaders requires thoughtful communication from leadership at the highest levels of government. None is in evidence. Instead, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross appeared on Fox Business on Thursday to fan the flames of fear for the sake of hypothetical business opportunities. “It does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” Ross said. “It’s another risk factor that people need to take into account. So, I think it will help accelerate the return of jobs to North America, some to the U.S., probably some to Mexico as well.” Meanwhile, Trump, asked at the recent World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland how he intended to respond to the epidemic, said the situation was under control and a world away from the United States.
In a statement released this week, Pompeo sought to calm Americans, saying, “People should know that there are enormous efforts underway by the United States government to make sure that we do everything we can to protect the American people and to reduce the risk all around the globe.” But late Thursday night, the secretary—in clear defiance of WHO’s admonishment against restricting travel to and from China—issued an advisory saying, “Those currently in China should consider departing.”
In recent days, a handful of policy leaders have been shifted from government positions focused on weapons of mass destruction and bioterrorism to the slowly emerging epidemic response infrastructure, such as Matthew Pottinger, Philip Ferro, and David Wade on the NSC and the bioterrorism expert Anthony Ruggiero. It’s not at all clear how they would handle an explosion of coronavirus cases, were such a dreadful thing to occur in the United States. “The full weight of the US Government is working on this,” a senior administration official told CNN on Tuesday. “As with any interagency effort of this scale, the National Security Council works closely with the whole of government to ensure a coordinated and unified effort.”
The last time the U.S. government and its many local and state counterparts faced an explosive pandemic on American soil was 2009, with the spread of H1N1, or swine flu. The then-new Obama administration was still filling key positions across the executive branch when the epidemic emerged that spring, and it struggled to set the proper tone in reaction to what turned out to be an exceptionally contagious, but not unusually virulent, form of influenza. The challenge revealed enormous gaps in America’s ability to swiftly manufacture vaccines, stock-outs of face masks and vital hospital supplies, and serious difficulty in keeping ahead of outright lies, conspiracy theories, and rumormongering on cable TV and social media. The much more deadly pandemic test came in 1981, with the arrival of HIV: It did not go well, as history has well established, because homophobia was so pervasive in the country and within government that gay men, rather than the virus killing them, were treated as a national scourge.
Since the great influenza pandemic of 1918, the United States has been spared terrifying epidemics. Americans now are epidemic voyeurs. They watch YouTube videos of China’s struggles. They see the government attack its epidemic by building a 1,000-bed quarantine hospital in a single week, lock down cities larger than New York or Los Angeles, ramp up 24/7 manufacture of face masks and protective gear, deploy its armed forces medical corps to treat ailing citizens, send enormous convoys of food and supplies to anxious citizens of Wuhan, and release terrifying, growing tallies daily of its swelling patient populations. They look in horror at panicked lines of masked people waiting to learn if their fevers are caused by the deadly disease, at bodies lying on cold floors in overcrowded hospitals, and at people crying out from behind their masks for help. And they ask, “What would the United States do? What would the White House do?” The answers are not reassuring.


foreignpolicy--2020-01-31--Britain Knows It’s Selling Out Its National Security to Huawei

Britain Knows It ’ s Selling Out Its National Security to Huawei On Tuesday , much to the chagrin of the United States , the British government announced its decision to allow the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei involvement in the rollout of the country ’ s next-generation 5G mobile network that will run everything from self-driving cars and remote health services to industrial production .
There are mounting concerns that dependence on Chinese technology for 5G critical infrastructure will make countries vulnerable to espionage , sabotage , and blackmail .
This is why Australia , New Zealand , Japan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in banning Huawei from 5G rollout .
The United Kingdom has now broken ranks with many of its closest allies , including fellow members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing club .
The British government classified Chinese company as a “ high-risk vendor ” and banned it from the core network that manages access and authentication , but nevertheless permitted it to compete for up to 35 percent market share in the country ’ s access network—that is , its antennae and similar equipment .
The U.K. ’ s decision comes at a critical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a heated political debate over how to handle Huawei .
The company celebrated Britain ’ s decision , with Vice President Victor Zhang saying the company feels “ reassured ” by Britain ’ s “ evidence-based ” decision .
The company hopes that Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s policy will influence the rest of Europe and beyond .
After all , the U.K. is considered a heavyweight on security policy—if the U.K. doesn ’ t see a need to exclude Huawei , why should anyone else ?
But the U.K. shouldn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Europe—or anywhere else , for that matter .
Upon closer inspection , the British government ’ s reasoning , and the basic assumptions underlying it , are eerily lightweight and sometimes openly self-contradictory .
A far more persuasive model for dealing with Huawei arrived this week in the form of the European Union ’ s newly published “ toolbox ” on 5G security .
The real reason for Britain ’ s nonexclusion of Huawei was kept under wraps by its government : fear of retaliation .
After Brexit , London sees itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In an interview with the Global Times on Jan. 20 , the Chinese ambassador to Britain made it clear that an exclusion of Huawei would severely damage economic and political relations .
And for Johnson , the threats from Beijing—a government with expansive control over its national economy—were more credible than those of U.S. President Donald Trump ’ s administration .
Of course , fear isn ’ t much of an appealing public justification , especially for someone such as Johnson , who wants to project the image of a fearless leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has come up with an extensive technical justification for the decision—an explanation that ’ s full of contradictions .
In fairness , Britain emphasizes that it is a “ UK solution for a UK context , ” which “ isn ’ t easily replicated ” by others .
The reason for this is simple : Very few other countries possess the highly specialized resources—including test centers with independent software engineering capabilities and in-depth supply chain reviews—that Britain uses to deal with Huawei .
“ We ’ ve always treated them as a ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ we ’ ve never ‘ trusted ’ Huawei , ” wrote Ian Levy , technical director at the National Cyber Security Centre .
“ The move to 5G is another evolution of the technology and our security mitigations need to evolve again.
” This reasoning prompted Bob Seely , a Conservative member of Parliament , to ask why the country needed high-risk providers in its network at all .
The British government has no convincing answers .
It argues that due to a “ market failure ” there are not enough high @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be left out .
Yet Europe is home to two of the world ’ s leading vendors , Ericsson and Nokia ; Samsung offers yet another alternative from a trustworthy democracy .
If the British government was truly concerned about market failures , it would not reward Huawei , which profits from unfair support by Chinese state capitalism , giving it advantages over its competitors from market economies .
The U.K. , for example , could force providers to work with open coding standards ( “ OpenRAN ” ) that would ensure interoperability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barriers to future market entrants and disadvantaging Huawei , which has heavily bet on closed proprietary solutions .
That the British government ’ s test center has consistently found Huawei ’ s coding to be dangerously sloppy makes the green light to Huawei even more incomprehensible .
Moreover , Britain ’ s approach to 5G security relies on a distinction between core and access networks that the government itself acknowledges is essentially meaningless in a 5G world where computing power ( and vulnerabilities through software updates ) moves ever more toward the edges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the British government , like the EU commission , identifies sensitive functions in all parts of the network , making it close to impossible to fully isolate risks from any single supplier .
How , then , will Britain decide which 35 percent of its population should depend on a network run by technology from a high-risk provider like Huawei ?
The citizens affected will have a simple question for their members of Parliament : Why is my security worth less ?
The EU ’ s approach shows how one can avoid such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nontechnical risks such as political dependence or sabotage by a third country can not not be countered by technical measures .
The complete exclusion of high-risk providers from all parts of critical 5G infrastructure is therefore the only sensible course of action .
Indeed , that ’ s the course of action the U.K. government decided on in 2018 with regard to the Chinese provider ZTE .
It excluded ZTE from the complete U.K. communications infrastructure because of “ national security risks ” that “ can not be mitigated.
” It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regard to Huawei , given that the risks are similar .
As Handelsblatt reported this week on the basis of a confidential memo from the German Federal Foreign Office , the United States presented clear “ intelligence information ” at the end of 2019 proving very clearly “ that Huawei cooperates with China ’ s security authorities.
” Johnson ’ s decision to make high-risk provider Huawei part of its 5G networks is that of a nation that has given up on technological sovereignty .
Driven by pro-Beijing business interests and post-Brexit fears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critical infrastructure dependent on technology controlled by China ’ s Communist Party , thus opening itself up to further blackmail and sabotage .
Europe , for its part , does not need to be afraid of excluding Huawei .
As EU Commissioner Thierry Breton points out , Europe doesn ’ t need to fear rollout delays because two European suppliers are at the ready .
A united EU , moreover , is a formidable economic power ready to face any threats of Chinese retaliation .
It would send a fatal signal of weakness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take incalculable security risks out of fear .
EU members should follow the example of Australia , where Huawei was excluded in 2018 .
“ No one in the Australian political system regrets those decisions today , ” Australian parliamentarians said in a message to their European counterparts .
Today , Australia is a global leader in 5G deployment .
This shows that Europe doesn ’ t need to choose between security and technology .
It ’ s unfortunate that Britain now feels that it must .

On Tuesday, much to the chagrin of the United States, the British government announced its decision to allow the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei involvement in the rollout of the country’s next-generation 5G mobile network that will run everything from self-driving cars and remote health services to industrial production. There are mounting concerns that dependence on Chinese technology for 5G critical infrastructure will make countries vulnerable to espionage, sabotage, and blackmail. This is why Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States took the lead in banning Huawei from 5G rollout.
On Tuesday, much to the chagrin of the United States, the British government announced its decision to allow the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei involvement in the rollout of the country’s next-generation 5G mobile network that will run everything from self-driving cars and remote health services to industrial production. There are mounting concerns that dependence on Chinese technology for 5G critical infrastructure will make countries vulnerable to espionage, sabotage, and blackmail. This is why Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United States took the lead in banning Huawei from 5G rollout.
The United Kingdom has now broken ranks with many of its closest allies, including fellow members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing club. The British government classified Chinese company as a “high-risk vendor” and banned it from the core network that manages access and authentication, but nevertheless permitted it to compete for up to 35 percent market share in the country’s access network—that is, its antennae and similar equipment.
The U.K.’s decision comes at a critical moment for Europe, with many countries in a heated political debate over how to handle Huawei. The company celebrated Britain’s decision, with Vice President Victor Zhang saying the company feels “reassured” by Britain’s “evidence-based” decision. The company hopes that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s policy will influence the rest of Europe and beyond. After all, the U.K. is considered a heavyweight on security policy—if the U.K. doesn’t see a need to exclude Huawei, why should anyone else?
But the U.K. shouldn’t be a model for countries in Europe—or anywhere else, for that matter. Upon closer inspection, the British government’s reasoning, and the basic assumptions underlying it, are eerily lightweight and sometimes openly self-contradictory. A far more persuasive model for dealing with Huawei arrived this week in the form of the European Union’s newly published “toolbox” on 5G security.
The real reason for Britain’s nonexclusion of Huawei was kept under wraps by its government: fear of retaliation. After Brexit, London sees itself as dependent on Beijing’s goodwill. In an interview with the Global Times on Jan. 20, the Chinese ambassador to Britain made it clear that an exclusion of Huawei would severely damage economic and political relations. And for Johnson, the threats from Beijing—a government with expansive control over its national economy—were more credible than those of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
Of course, fear isn’t much of an appealing public justification, especially for someone such as Johnson, who wants to project the image of a fearless leader. That’s why the government has come up with an extensive technical justification for the decision—an explanation that’s full of contradictions.
In fairness, Britain emphasizes that it is a “UK solution for a UK context,” which “isn’t easily replicated” by others. The reason for this is simple: Very few other countries possess the highly specialized resources—including test centers with independent software engineering capabilities and in-depth supply chain reviews—that Britain uses to deal with Huawei. “We’ve always treated them as a ‘high risk vendor’.” and “we’ve never ‘trusted’ Huawei,” wrote Ian Levy, technical director at the National Cyber Security Centre. “The move to 5G is another evolution of the technology and our security mitigations need to evolve again.”
This reasoning prompted Bob Seely, a Conservative member of Parliament, to ask why the country needed high-risk providers in its network at all. The British government has no convincing answers. It argues that due to a “market failure” there are not enough high quality providers and therefore Huawei cannot be left out. Yet Europe is home to two of the world’s leading vendors, Ericsson and Nokia; Samsung offers yet another alternative from a trustworthy democracy.
If the British government was truly concerned about market failures, it would not reward Huawei, which profits from unfair support by Chinese state capitalism, giving it advantages over its competitors from market economies. The U.K., for example, could force providers to work with open coding standards (“OpenRAN”) that would ensure interoperability between providers, thus lowering market entry barriers to future market entrants and disadvantaging Huawei, which has heavily bet on closed proprietary solutions. That the British government’s test center has consistently found Huawei’s coding to be dangerously sloppy makes the green light to Huawei even more incomprehensible.
Moreover, Britain’s approach to 5G security relies on a distinction between core and access networks that the government itself acknowledges is essentially meaningless in a 5G world where computing power (and vulnerabilities through software updates) moves ever more toward the edges of the network. That is why the British government, like the EU commission, identifies sensitive functions in all parts of the network, making it close to impossible to fully isolate risks from any single supplier. How, then, will Britain decide which 35 percent of its population should depend on a network run by technology from a high-risk provider like Huawei? The citizens affected will have a simple question for their members of Parliament: Why is my security worth less?
The EU’s approach shows how one can avoid such problems. Its 5G policy states that nontechnical risks such as political dependence or sabotage by a third country cannot not be countered by technical measures. The complete exclusion of high-risk providers from all parts of critical 5G infrastructure is therefore the only sensible course of action.
Indeed, that’s the course of action the U.K. government decided on in 2018 with regard to the Chinese provider ZTE. It excluded ZTE from the complete U.K. communications infrastructure because of “national security risks” that “cannot be mitigated.” It’s only logical to do the same with regard to Huawei, given that the risks are similar. As Handelsblatt reported this week on the basis of a confidential memo from the German Federal Foreign Office, the United States presented clear “intelligence information” at the end of 2019 proving very clearly “that Huawei cooperates with China’s security authorities.”
Johnson’s decision to make high-risk provider Huawei part of its 5G networks is that of a nation that has given up on technological sovereignty. Driven by pro-Beijing business interests and post-Brexit fears, the U.K. is making its most critical infrastructure dependent on technology controlled by China’s Communist Party, thus opening itself up to further blackmail and sabotage.
Europe, for its part, does not need to be afraid of excluding Huawei. As EU Commissioner Thierry Breton points out, Europe doesn’t need to fear rollout delays because two European suppliers are at the ready. A united EU, moreover, is a formidable economic power ready to face any threats of Chinese retaliation. It would send a fatal signal of weakness to Beijing if EU countries were to take incalculable security risks out of fear. EU members should follow the example of Australia, where Huawei was excluded in 2018. “No one in the Australian political system regrets those decisions today,” Australian parliamentarians said in a message to their European counterparts. Today, Australia is a global leader in 5G deployment. This shows that Europe doesn’t need to choose between security and technology. It’s unfortunate that Britain now feels that it must.