Putin’s Folly

“ Get out now , or risk the consequences , ” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared last week to companies facilitating the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline .
The project to build a second set of pipes under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly to Germany has been delayed by U.S. sanctions , but it is on track to be finished in the coming months .
Now , the United States is threatening new sanctions in a last-ditch effort to impede the pipeline ’ s construction .
“ Companies aiding and abetting Russia ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ will not be tolerated.
” As the United States deepens its pressure campaign against Nord Stream 2 , friction with Germany , which would receive much of the pipeline ’ s gas , will intensify .
Washington is far from alone in criticizing Nord Stream 2 , of course .
Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe see the pipeline as a glaring example of German hypocrisy , as Berlin lectures them about carbon neutrality and human rights while guzzling fossil fuels from one of the most authoritarian country on the continent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dead set on finishing the pipeline to appease her country ’ s powerful corporate lobbies .
Germany has pushed the European Union to declare U.S. sanctions on Nord Stream 2 “ unacceptable ” and “ contrary to international law.
” In turn , Pompeo ’ s promise of yet more sanctions will exacerbate Washington ’ s already strained relations with the EU ’ s leading member state .
It is worth asking , therefore , whether those in the Trump administration advocating sanctions on Nord Stream 2 are right that the project will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Europe .
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is clearly correct in calling the project “ Putin ’ s pipeline.
” Although some of the pipeline ’ s backers continue to insist that the pipeline is purely “ commercial , ” even Merkel has admitted that there are “ political considerations ” behind the gas project .
Among the “ political considerations ” that must be considered in assessing the pipeline is the corruption of Germany ’ s own political elite .
The fact that Merkel ’ s predecessor Gerhard Schröder chairs the board of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s state-owned gas firm , Gazprom—is evidence that something may be rotten in the political system that prides itself on being Europe ’ s and the world ’ s moral conscience .
( Just imagine if former U.S. President Barack Obama was chairing the board of an Iranian pipeline company ! )
Schröder has been a reliable parrot of Kremlin talking points , describing Russia as a victim of “ encirclement ” and arguing that Russian President Vladimir Putin ’ s time as a KGB agent spying in Germany “ made it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all the dirty money sloshing around , Russia has fewer friends in Germany than it used to .
It was only a decade ago that Germany was talking about its “ modernization partnership ” with Russia , but today the thesis that trading with Russia will push the Kremlin to reform is heard only on the margins of German politics .
Even with a former German chancellor on the payroll of Nord Stream , German policy today is as tough on Russia as at any point since the Cold War .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within the EU to impose economic sanctions on Russia , which are now so widely accepted that they are renewed every six months as if on autopilot .
Even if Russia succeeds in buying a few more German friends with its new pipeline , this won ’ t be enough to convince Berlin to reassess its support for sanctions or its opposition to Russia ’ s war on Ukraine .
The more important question is what effect Nord Stream 2 will have on Ukraine .
It is no secret that the Kremlin wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or that energy has been one of the many tools it has used to pressure Kyiv .
In the medium term , the impact of Nord Stream 2 on Ukraine could be substantial , allowing Russia to ship more gas directly to Germany and other European customers , and thus to send less gas via existing pipelines that run through Ukraine .
In turn , Ukraine will make less money charging fees for gas transit , although Kyiv could find other sources of revenue if need be .
At the same time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ability to threaten to cut gas supplies to Ukraine .
So long as Russian gas sold to Europe transits Ukraine , Russia can not cut off gas to the country without Europe suffering , too .
This is what happened when in winter 2009 Russia cut gas deliveries to Ukraine , intending to punish Kyiv , but causing shortages across Europe .
Facing many angry customers , Russia was forced to back down .
Once the Kremlin can supply more to Europe via Nord Stream 2 , cutting off gas to Ukraine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ customers .
Kyiv could be left facing Moscow alone .
But much has changed since Russia ’ s gas cutoffs of 2009 .
European gas markets look radically different today .
Ten years ago , most countries in Central and Eastern Europe relied heavily , and often exclusively , on Gazprom , which pressured them into signing expensive long-term contracts .
Today , Russia remains the continent ’ s biggest supplier , but Gazprom ’ s monopolistic grip has been broken .
In 2012 , the European Commission brought an antitrust case against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market practices .
New infrastructure built across Europe makes it easier to move gas around the continent , guaranteeing that countries can buy from multiple sources .
The rise of liquified natural gas allows countries such as Poland and Lithuania to buy gas from Norway , Qatar , or the United States .
Even Ukraine finds itself in a far stronger negotiating position than many of Nord Stream ’ s critics admit .
The country can now import all the gas it needs from Europe , so it is far less vulnerable to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agreed to keep shipping some gas to Europe via Ukraine through at least 2024 , providing Ukraine with transit revenue .
Nord Stream isn ’ t a good thing for Ukraine , but its effects will be easily manageable .
For Germany , the pipeline will bring more costs than benefits , sullying Berlin ’ s reputation with its neighbors in exchange for gas that could have been acquired in far less controversial ways .
Even for Russia , “ Putin ’ s pipeline ” is far from the geopolitical masterstroke some U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cheap and plentiful gas , much of it already purchased from Russia .
But Gazprom ’ s pricing power in Europe has collapsed in the face of new competition .
So is the Kremlin ’ s newest pipeline does a tool of malign influence ?
Malign , perhaps .
But influential ?
Probably not .
Whenever it finally comes online , Nord Stream 2 will change little .

“Get out now, or risk the consequences,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared last week to companies facilitating the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The project to build a second set of pipes under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly to Germany has been delayed by U.S. sanctions, but it is on track to be finished in the coming months. Now, the United States is threatening new sanctions in a last-ditch effort to impede the pipeline’s construction. “Companies aiding and abetting Russia’s malign-influence projects,” Pompeo insisted, “will not be tolerated.”
“Get out now, or risk the consequences,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared last week to companies facilitating the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The project to build a second set of pipes under the Baltic Sea from Russia directly to Germany has been delayed by U.S. sanctions, but it is on track to be finished in the coming months. Now, the United States is threatening new sanctions in a last-ditch effort to impede the pipeline’s construction. “Companies aiding and abetting Russia’s malign-influence projects,” Pompeo insisted, “will not be tolerated.”
As the United States deepens its pressure campaign against Nord Stream 2, friction with Germany, which would receive much of the pipeline’s gas, will intensify. Washington is far from alone in criticizing Nord Stream 2, of course. Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe see the pipeline as a glaring example of German hypocrisy, as Berlin lectures them about carbon neutrality and human rights while guzzling fossil fuels from one of the most authoritarian country on the continent. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel is dead set on finishing the pipeline to appease her country’s powerful corporate lobbies. Germany has pushed the European Union to declare U.S. sanctions on Nord Stream 2 “unacceptable” and “contrary to international law.” In turn, Pompeo’s promise of yet more sanctions will exacerbate Washington’s already strained relations with the EU’s leading member state.
It is worth asking, therefore, whether those in the Trump administration advocating sanctions on Nord Stream 2 are right that the project will substantially enhance Russia’s influence in Europe. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is clearly correct in calling the project “Putin’s pipeline.” Although some of the pipeline’s backers continue to insist that the pipeline is purely “commercial,” even Merkel has admitted that there are “political considerations” behind the gas project.
Among the “political considerations” that must be considered in assessing the pipeline is the corruption of Germany’s own political elite. The fact that Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schröder chairs the board of Nord Stream AG—51 percent owned by Russia’s state-owned gas firm, Gazprom—is evidence that something may be rotten in the political system that prides itself on being Europe’s and the world’s moral conscience. (Just imagine if former U.S. President Barack Obama was chairing the board of an Iranian pipeline company!) Schröder has been a reliable parrot of Kremlin talking points, describing Russia as a victim of “encirclement” and arguing that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s time as a KGB agent spying in Germany “made it easier to work with him.”
But for all the dirty money sloshing around, Russia has fewer friends in Germany than it used to. It was only a decade ago that Germany was talking about its “modernization partnership” with Russia, but today the thesis that trading with Russia will push the Kremlin to reform is heard only on the margins of German politics. Even with a former German chancellor on the payroll of Nord Stream, German policy today is as tough on Russia as at any point since the Cold War. For six years, Berlin has led efforts within the EU to impose economic sanctions on Russia, which are now so widely accepted that they are renewed every six months as if on autopilot. Even if Russia succeeds in buying a few more German friends with its new pipeline, this won’t be enough to convince Berlin to reassess its support for sanctions or its opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The more important question is what effect Nord Stream 2 will have on Ukraine. It is no secret that the Kremlin wants Ukraine’s government to fail, or that energy has been one of the many tools it has used to pressure Kyiv. In the medium term, the impact of Nord Stream 2 on Ukraine could be substantial, allowing Russia to ship more gas directly to Germany and other European customers, and thus to send less gas via existing pipelines that run through Ukraine.
In turn, Ukraine will make less money charging fees for gas transit, although Kyiv could find other sources of revenue if need be. At the same time, Nord Stream 2 may enhance Russia’s ability to threaten to cut gas supplies to Ukraine. So long as Russian gas sold to Europe transits Ukraine, Russia cannot cut off gas to the country without Europe suffering, too. This is what happened when in winter 2009 Russia cut gas deliveries to Ukraine, intending to punish Kyiv, but causing shortages across Europe. Facing many angry customers, Russia was forced to back down. Once the Kremlin can supply more to Europe via Nord Stream 2, cutting off gas to Ukraine would have a smaller impact on other customers. Kyiv could be left facing Moscow alone.
But much has changed since Russia’s gas cutoffs of 2009. European gas markets look radically different today. Ten years ago, most countries in Central and Eastern Europe relied heavily, and often exclusively, on Gazprom, which pressured them into signing expensive long-term contracts. Today, Russia remains the continent’s biggest supplier, but Gazprom’s monopolistic grip has been broken. In 2012, the European Commission brought an antitrust case against Gazprom that forced it to adopt competitive market practices. New infrastructure built across Europe makes it easier to move gas around the continent, guaranteeing that countries can buy from multiple sources. The rise of liquified natural gas allows countries such as Poland and Lithuania to buy gas from Norway, Qatar, or the United States.
Even Ukraine finds itself in a far stronger negotiating position than many of Nord Stream’s critics admit. The country can now import all the gas it needs from Europe, so it is far less vulnerable to a Russian cutoff. Gazprom has already agreed to keep shipping some gas to Europe via Ukraine through at least 2024, providing Ukraine with transit revenue. Nord Stream isn’t a good thing for Ukraine, but its effects will be easily manageable. For Germany, the pipeline will bring more costs than benefits, sullying Berlin’s reputation with its neighbors in exchange for gas that could have been acquired in far less controversial ways.
Even for Russia, “Putin’s pipeline” is far from the geopolitical masterstroke some U.S. leaders imagine. Europe is awash with cheap and plentiful gas, much of it already purchased from Russia. But Gazprom’s pricing power in Europe has collapsed in the face of new competition. So is the Kremlin’s newest pipeline does a tool of malign influence? Malign, perhaps. But influential? Probably not. Whenever it finally comes online, Nord Stream 2 will change little.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-20--China Can Buy Influence, but It Can’t Buy Love

China Can Buy Influence , but It Can ’ t Buy Love Thanks to its large foreign investments and its global Belt and Road Initiative , China is winning plenty of friends around the world .
Western policymakers , meanwhile , are struggling to compete with a country that has deep pockets , little interest in human rights , and no qualms about bullying countries into becoming its allies .
And with economies around the world weakened by the coronavirus , the Chinese engine seems unstoppable .
But China ’ s supposed friends are beginning to rebel , as last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ networks showed .
If the mighty China wants to make a run for the United States ’ superpower-with-lots-of-friends throne , it should learn from the much-maligned East Germans , who lacked both cash and prestige but won friends by offering training—and friendship .
China has won new friends around the world , a footprint in many countries with which it previously had little connection , and lots of business for its firms .
Western countries , by contrast , have lost opportunities for friendships .
They can ’ t issue loans as China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t do so without thorough scrutiny of the recipient country ’ s intentions to adhere to human rights and the rule of law .
For example , 42.3 percent of Kyrgyzstan ’ s GDP is debt to China ; Belt and Road—and China ’ s other investments—strengthens China and weakens the West .
But as it turns out , China ’ s friendship is rather unpleasant .
The loans , of course , have to be repaid—a challenge for countries suffering from the effects of the coronavirus .
And some countries are discovering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
Last month , the government of Pakistan said it wanted to renegotiate Belt and Road repayments , accusing Chinese companies of inflating the cost of construction projects by $ 3 billion .
Also in June , a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted a China-Africa summit in Beijing , a Kenyan court declared a $ 3.2 billion Chinese loan for a Kenyan railway partly operated by a Chinese company illegal .
As the Economist reports , Egypt has suspended the construction of the world ’ s second-largest coal-fired power plant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while Bangladesh is dropping plans to build a Chinese-funded coal plant .
Pakistan has asked China to modify loans worth $ 30 billion for power projects .
And in April , Tanzanian President John Magufuli canceled a Chinese loan worth $ 10 billion , signed under his predecessor , for the construction of a large port in Bagamoyo—operated by a Chinese firm .
The contract , Magufuli said , could only be accepted by a drunken man .
In mid-July , the United Kingdom—which has for a decade courted Chinese investments—reversed its decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Not even Italy , one of China ’ s top friendship targets in Europe , is producing the hoped-for benefits ; Italian media is reporting that the government has rewritten its 5G requirements in a way that excludes Huawei participation .
If you search “ debt-trap diplomacy , ” you get countless articles about China .
The U.K. government , meanwhile , is facing Chinese revenge over its apparent plan to cancel Huawei participation in the country ’ s 5G network .
According to British media , the Chinese ambassador has threatened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ participate in Britain ’ s planned high-speed rail line and a new nuclear power plant .
The fallout is occurring now because China has successfully built a global network of commercial relationships—but it hasn ’ t built friendships .
If it ’ s going to compete with the United States for superpower status , it will have to match America ’ s soft power , a phenomenal platform the U.S. government has built over the years by initiating and nourishing friendships with a wide range of countries .
But China has a distinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attractive as America .
Few people around the world voluntarily listen to Chinese songs , watch Chinese television , use Chinese slang ( or any Chinese words ) , or dress like the Chinese people they see on TV .
East Germany , too , had an image problem and needed to make friends .
And unlike China , it had no cash to distribute .
But the much-maligned East Germans went about doing so with a much more effective strategy , one that was relatively inexpensive and won them lasting affection .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ formed a cornerstone of the East Germans ’ approach .
Between 1951 and 1989 , up to 78,400 students from more than 125 countries completed their university degrees in East Germany .
( As in West Germany , there was no bachelor ’ s degree , which meant the students spent five or more years in East Germany gaining a master ’ s degree , medical degree , or equivalent . )
Many of those 125 countries were socialist allies of East Germany , but many others were developing countries that sent promising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ university degree funded by the East Germans .
Michelle Bachelet , the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and a former president of Chile , studied medicine in East Berlin in the 1970s as a refugee from Chile ’ s Augusto Pinochet regime .
In addition , the East Germans hosted exchange students from the West .
Foreign students were even given a monthly stipend by the East Germans .
Indeed , East Germany ’ s fine universities were a key asset for the country ’ s diplomats .
While China does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eclectic educational diplomacy .
In a small town in the northern part of the country , it ran a training camp for guerrilla fighters from Nicaragua , Mozambique , Angola , and South Africa ’ s African National Congress ( ANC ) ; they all trained with the East Germans , who calculated that some of them had a realistic chance of taking power .
And they did .
One graduate , Mike Hala , went on to lead the ANC ’ s armed wing , Umkhonto we Sizwe , also known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kasrils , became a post-apartheid intelligence minister , while yet another South African , Siphiwe Nyanda , became a post-apartheid chief of South Africa ’ s armed forces and subsequently the country ’ s communications minister .
Kasrils later estimated that some 1,000 MK members had been trained by the East Germans and called the East German training superior to similar instruction provided by the Soviet Union .
( Unfortunately for East Germany , the ANC only came to power after East Germany itself had collapsed . )
The Chinese Communist Party has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Front apparatus , which focuses on so-called people-to-people diplomacy and includes state-sponsored friendship societies .
But while the East Germans used friendship outfits to convince foreigners of East Germany ’ s attractiveness , China pressures ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries to forge closer links with their “ home country.
” And in a survey of 65 countries , Freedom House reports that “ Chinese officials have held trainings and seminars on new media or information management with representatives from 36 [ countries ] .
” East Germany didn ’ t exactly provide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an ideology , a vision , much the same as the United States has done .
East Germany didn ’ t exactly provide training in democracy—but at least it offered an ideology , a vision , much the same as the United States has done through academic scholarship programs and training schemes for foreign officials .
China offers censorship training .
Some of the iron-fisted courting seems be paying dividends : In a recent U.N. Human Rights Council report on China ’ s new security law in Hong Kong , 53 mostly developing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Congo ) voted with China , while 27 mostly Western countries voted against it .
But would countries vote with China if they had a viable option not to ?
As a country , East Germany was a failure .
Its economy was the subject of ridicule .
The Stasi kept an eye on visitors .
Yet even this sorry country could have built vassal-like relationships with even weaker countries .
( Think Cambodia . )
Instead it established friendships that lasted .
Years later , Bachelet described her time in East Germany @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I married [ in East Germany ] , the government gave me a larger apartment .
There were so many rights that people simply took for granted , ” she recalled .
And while African leaders such as Tanzania ’ s Magufuli feel they ’ re being taken for fools by China , African revolutionaries trained by the East Germans were amazed to find themselves waited on by white staff .
I ’ m not proposing that China train guerrillas , but Beijing needs to grasp that it can ’ t buy love—or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do well to study its long-gone humble socialist sister ’ s soft-power approach .
Otherwise many more leaders will join the clear-sighted Magufuli in rebelling against China ’ s brutish pursuits .

Thanks to its large foreign investments and its global Belt and Road Initiative, China is winning plenty of friends around the world. Western policymakers, meanwhile, are struggling to compete with a country that has deep pockets, little interest in human rights, and no qualms about bullying countries into becoming its allies. And with economies around the world weakened by the coronavirus, the Chinese engine seems unstoppable. But China’s supposed friends are beginning to rebel, as last week’s retreat from Huawei 5G networks showed. If the mighty China wants to make a run for the United States’ superpower-with-lots-of-friends throne, it should learn from the much-maligned East Germans, who lacked both cash and prestige but won friends by offering training—and friendship.
Thanks to its large foreign investments and its global Belt and Road Initiative, China is winning plenty of friends around the world. Western policymakers, meanwhile, are struggling to compete with a country that has deep pockets, little interest in human rights, and no qualms about bullying countries into becoming its allies. And with economies around the world weakened by the coronavirus, the Chinese engine seems unstoppable. But China’s supposed friends are beginning to rebel, as last week’s retreat from Huawei 5G networks showed. If the mighty China wants to make a run for the United States’ superpower-with-lots-of-friends throne, it should learn from the much-maligned East Germans, who lacked both cash and prestige but won friends by offering training—and friendship.
When, a number of years ago, I went with a group of Ethiopian long-distance runners on a pre-dawn training run in the hills outside Addis Ababa, I was surprised to stumble on a construction project staffed by Chinese construction workers. In recent years, such projects have proliferated. According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Belt and Road Tracker, between 2014 and 2017 alone China made loans worth over $120 billion to countries eager to build new infrastructure. The countries have—often using Chinese firms, as per the terms of their contracts with China—built highways and power plants, among other things.China has won new friends around the world. Western countries, by contrast, have lost opportunities for friendships.
China has won new friends around the world, a footprint in many countries with which it previously had little connection, and lots of business for its firms. Western countries, by contrast, have lost opportunities for friendships. They can’t issue loans as China does, and they especially can’t do so without thorough scrutiny of the recipient country’s intentions to adhere to human rights and the rule of law. For example, 42.3 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s GDP is debt to China; Belt and Road—and China’s other investments—strengthens China and weakens the West.
But as it turns out, China’s friendship is rather unpleasant. The loans, of course, have to be repaid—a challenge for countries suffering from the effects of the coronavirus. And some countries are discovering that the loan-cum-construction deals may not benefit them. Last month, the government of Pakistan said it wanted to renegotiate Belt and Road repayments, accusing Chinese companies of inflating the cost of construction projects by $3 billion.
Also in June, a week after Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted a China-Africa summit in Beijing, a Kenyan court declared a $3.2 billion Chinese loan for a Kenyan railway partly operated by a Chinese company illegal. As the Economist reports, Egypt has suspended the construction of the world’s second-largest coal-fired power plant, a project funded by China, while Bangladesh is dropping plans to build a Chinese-funded coal plant. Pakistan has asked China to modify loans worth $30 billion for power projects. And in April, Tanzanian President John Magufuli canceled a Chinese loan worth $10 billion, signed under his predecessor, for the construction of a large port in Bagamoyo—operated by a Chinese firm. The contract, Magufuli said, could only be accepted by a drunken man. In mid-July, the United Kingdom—which has for a decade courted Chinese investments—reversed its decision to include Huawei in its 5G network. Not even Italy, one of China’s top friendship targets in Europe, is producing the hoped-for benefits; Italian media is reporting that the government has rewritten its 5G requirements in a way that excludes Huawei participation.
If you search “debt-trap diplomacy,” you get countless articles about China. The U.K. government, meanwhile, is facing Chinese revenge over its apparent plan to cancel Huawei participation in the country’s 5G network. According to British media, the Chinese ambassador has threatened that Chinese firms will cancel plans to participate in Britain’s planned high-speed rail line and a new nuclear power plant.
The fallout is occurring now because China has successfully built a global network of commercial relationships—but it hasn’t built friendships. If it’s going to compete with the United States for superpower status, it will have to match America’s soft power, a phenomenal platform the U.S. government has built over the years by initiating and nourishing friendships with a wide range of countries. But China has a distinct disadvantage: It’s not as attractive as America. Few people around the world voluntarily listen to Chinese songs, watch Chinese television, use Chinese slang (or any Chinese words), or dress like the Chinese people they see on TV.
East Germany, too, had an image problem and needed to make friends. And unlike China, it had no cash to distribute. But the much-maligned East Germans went about doing so with a much more effective strategy, one that was relatively inexpensive and won them lasting affection. It built personal friendships.
University students formed a cornerstone of the East Germans’ approach. Between 1951 and 1989, up to 78,400 students from more than 125 countries completed their university degrees in East Germany. (As in West Germany, there was no bachelor’s degree, which meant the students spent five or more years in East Germany gaining a master’s degree, medical degree, or equivalent.) Many of those 125 countries were socialist allies of East Germany, but many others were developing countries that sent promising youth to East Germany for a first-rate university degree funded by the East Germans. Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights and a former president of Chile, studied medicine in East Berlin in the 1970s as a refugee from Chile’s Augusto Pinochet regime. In addition, the East Germans hosted exchange students from the West. Foreign students were even given a monthly stipend by the East Germans. Indeed, East Germany’s fine universities were a key asset for the country’s diplomats.
While China does debt-trap diplomacy, East Germany did distinctly eclectic educational diplomacy. In a small town in the northern part of the country, it ran a training camp for guerrilla fighters from Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, and South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC); they all trained with the East Germans, who calculated that some of them had a realistic chance of taking power. And they did. One graduate, Mike Hala, went on to lead the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, also known as MK. Another MK member, Ronnie Kasrils, became a post-apartheid intelligence minister, while yet another South African, Siphiwe Nyanda, became a post-apartheid chief of South Africa’s armed forces and subsequently the country’s communications minister. Kasrils later estimated that some 1,000 MK members had been trained by the East Germans and called the East German training superior to similar instruction provided by the Soviet Union. (Unfortunately for East Germany, the ANC only came to power after East Germany itself had collapsed.)
The Chinese Communist Party has long been cultivating friends though its United Front apparatus, which focuses on so-called people-to-people diplomacy and includes state-sponsored friendship societies. But while the East Germans used friendship outfits to convince foreigners of East Germany’s attractiveness, China pressures ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries to forge closer links with their “home country.” And in a survey of 65 countries, Freedom House reports that “Chinese officials have held trainings and seminars on new media or information management with representatives from 36 [countries].”East Germany didn’t exactly provide training in democracy—but at least it offered an ideology, a vision, much the same as the United States has done.
East Germany didn’t exactly provide training in democracy—but at least it offered an ideology, a vision, much the same as the United States has done through academic scholarship programs and training schemes for foreign officials. China offers censorship training. Some of the iron-fisted courting seems be paying dividends: In a recent U.N. Human Rights Council report on China’s new security law in Hong Kong, 53 mostly developing countries (including Togo and Republic of Congo) voted with China, while 27 mostly Western countries voted against it. But would countries vote with China if they had a viable option not to?
As a country, East Germany was a failure. Its economy was the subject of ridicule. The Stasi kept an eye on visitors. Yet even this sorry country could have built vassal-like relationships with even weaker countries. (Think Cambodia.) Instead it established friendships that lasted. Years later, Bachelet described her time in East Germany as “very happy.” “When I married [in East Germany], the government gave me a larger apartment. There were so many rights that people simply took for granted,” she recalled. And while African leaders such as Tanzania’s Magufuli feel they’re being taken for fools by China, African revolutionaries trained by the East Germans were amazed to find themselves waited on by white staff.
I’m not proposing that China train guerrillas, but Beijing needs to grasp that it can’t buy love—or even admiration. The Chinese government would do well to study its long-gone humble socialist sister’s soft-power approach. Otherwise many more leaders will join the clear-sighted Magufuli in rebelling against China’s brutish pursuits.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-20--The Romans Knew That Violence Isn’t Power

Faced with civil unrest in almost every major American city , brought on by the collapse of police legitimacy as the result of a number of shocking videos of misconduct , Defense Secretary Mark Esper declared : “ We need to dominate the battlespace ” of U.S. cities , with military force .
President Donald Trump echoed this advice calling on governors to use the National Guard and even regular military to restore order , to achieve , in his words , “ total domination.
” “ If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States military and quickly solve the problem for them , ” he declared .
The theme of domination and threats of further escalation subsequently permeated administration rhetoric , even as more soldiers were called to the capital .
Threatening to send in the troops like this made for some tough-sounding bravado—even though it was rapidly walked back as the president claimed that he was actually talking about “ dominating the streets with compassion.
” As federal forces teargas moms in Portland , that language is returning , since the administration loves the tropes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thinks that all it needs to do at home is to “ dominate the battlespace , ” then it has misunderstood the role of armed force and fallen into a classic error in security thinking .
They have mistaken violence for power , a mistake that leaders have been making quite literally since the ancient world .
The philosopher Hannah Arendt expounded on the distinction between violence and power in her seminal 1972 essay “ On Violence.
” Violence , the ability of the state to coerce using armed force , is contrasted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to act in concert ” used by a leader only inasmuch as they are “ empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.
” The University of North Carolina military history professor Wayne Lee adds a third , intermediate category to this analysis : force .
Force in this sense includes violence but is extended to include also the threat of violence , including the threat implied by the mere existence of force without its application .
Consider the example of driving up to a red light .
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red light and were stopped by a police officer and arrested for your reckless driving , that is , in Arendt ’ s dichotomy , violence .
An armed agent of the state is actively compelling you to submit .
If instead , coming to the red light , you noticed the police car sitting there and so decided to stop because of it , that was force , in Lee ’ s thinking .
It was not violence , but the threat of violence and the knowledge of the presence of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to stop .
But of course , there are far more red lights in any country than there are police officers .
Most of us know well that the chances of being pulled over for running our local stoplight are trivially low .
But we stop anyway .
We stop because we respect the majesty of the law , or because we believe in automotive safety , because it is polite to other drivers , or simply because it is what one does .
That is power at work ; we observe the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legitimacy as a group .
The Romans , ever forward-thinking , had a word for this sort of power when vested in a person or institution : auctoritas , from where we get the English word “ authority.
” In a proper , working state , the agents of the government guide the citizens using power , relying on their voluntary acquiescence to state directives .
This power lets the state raise force , by recruiting citizens and taxing citizen production to furnish and equip its soldiers and police .
Force , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the product of nonviolent state power .
How does all of this factor into keeping the peace in a civilian population ?
The Roman experience is instructive .
Whereas modern police forces , surveillance capabilities , and vast industrialized armies provide the tantalizing illusion of being able to control a domestic civilian populace by force alone , the Romans could have no such illusions .
Bruce Frier , a professor of Classics at the University of Michigan , estimates that the population of the Roman Empire in 14 A.D. was 45.5 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To control this vast empire , the Romans had about 300,000 soldiers , only half of them citizens .
( The remainder were auxilia , recruited from the many noncitizen subjects of the empire . )
While the Romans had acquired empire through shocking amounts of violence , ruling such a vast expanse by force alone was never an option .
Of course , as the experiences of revolution and decolonization for the last century have shown , in the utter absence of power , controlling a population through force alone is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it was for the Romans ; the relative poverty of ancient states merely removed the illusion .
This flies in the face of the popular conception of Roman rule , which tends to focus on the areas of Roman failure , such as the provinces of Britannia and Judaea .
Such failures make for compelling stories , in part because they have served as part of both religious and national mythology .
Roman violence was spectacular and frequently commemorated , both by the Romans themselves and by moderns looking back .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as Tacitus , who had his Caledonian chieftain Calgacus upbraid the Romans for “ making a desert , and calling it peace.
” But these places were not typical .
Most Roman provinces had no significant military presence at all ; by the death of Augustus , the first emperor , Rome ’ s 25 legions were almost all stationed in a thin line along the frontier , along with their supporting auxilia .
Many of the most populous provinces had no legions stationed in them at all .
They couldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already stretched the budget to the breaking point .
This was not because the Romans were nice .
They most certainly were not—the Romans were capable of stunning brutality , such as the destruction of Carthage and the near-total destruction of the Helvetians .
More force was simply not practical .
Instead , Roman provincial administration focused on developing power , rather than deploying force , in most of the provinces .
This was not an intentional effort so much as the ad hoc development of standards of governance as Roman military commands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conquest to peacekeeping and then finally to administration , mostly driven not by a formal doctrine but by cultural norms within the Roman aristocracy .
Nevertheless , clear patterns of action emerged that enabled the Romans to effectively develop power in regions they had acquired through violence and force .
Roman authorities might resolve disputes between communities , or particularly difficult cases ( especially capital crimes ) , but the day-to-day administration of law and order was left to local leaders .
First , the Romans tended to avoid trying to act directly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this was simply utilitarian ; there were far too few Romans in most provinces to handle administration on the ground .
Roman governors preferred to work through city governments , tribal leaders , and local stakeholders whenever possible .
Roman authorities might resolve disputes between communities , or particularly difficult cases ( especially capital crimes ) , but the day-to-day administration of law and order was left to local leaders , who benefited from the legitimacy of long-standing tradition and deep social ties .
Rather than trying to replace the power these figures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their provincial administration as partners in Roman order , rewarding useful local notables with political advantage and even citizenship .
Second , the Romans took progressive steps to hold provincial governors accountable for corruption or brutality in pacified provinces .
Roman efforts on this front met mixed success , as prosecuting a powerful politician in Rome for actions taken miles away from the capital was always a risky endeavor .
Nevertheless , the Calpurnian Law on Extortion in 149 B.C .
established a permanent court to facilitate the recovery of damages by provincials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law was steadily strengthened by repeated further legislation that more narrowly defined legal conduct for governors and strengthened the penalties against them .
Later on , issues of fairness to provincials would be a topic of repeated imperial edicts , like the repeated imperial edicts and rescripts attempting to resolve or punish abuses of the vehiculatio , a right to requisition food and supplies for official business on the roads .
These were not laws about protecting the rights and property of Roman citizens , but rather the rights and property of recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at best , unevenly enforced , and they often became deeply political , these laws represented a real concern at Rome that provincial governors wielding Roman authority ought to behave fairly , even towards subjugated peoples , and there were high-profile convictions of important Roman politicians on those grounds .
Finally , through this , Roman authorities developed a reputation , particularly in the Greek East , of being relatively impartial outside mediators who could , more or less fairly , resolve disputes among the elites .
Most Roman governors served short terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , leaving them as outsiders to local politics .
The lack of local knowledge was less of an issue , because in most places Hellenized or Romanized elites could be relied upon to supply a self-interested measure of local knowledge .
At the same time , there was an expectation , admittedly not always followed , that a Roman governor ’ s decisions would be honored by his successors in the post .
And while , as noted , efforts to hold governors accountable were not always successful , the clear effort by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good governance clearly played into the reputation for impartiality and relative incorruptibility they enjoyed .
This isn ’ t a paean to Roman rule .
The standards for good governance were quite a bit lower in the ancient world than today .
Most Roman subjects seemed to have expected little more than that the taxes were not overly harsh and Roman armies kept armed threats far away .
Roman commanders and governors did sometimes act in ways that appalled contemporary sensibilities , much less modern ones .
Nevertheless , in the great majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in keeping the peace , it is not hard to see how their actions contributed to the accumulation of power that let them govern in the absence of force or violence .
That power was what made the empire possible in the first place .
The Roman failures are also instructive .
To take one example , the Roman province of Judaea ( now Israel , the Palestinian territories , and Jordan ) , the Romans initially governed the province through intermediate client kings , but when these proved unreliable , the region @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a province .
Roman governors , confounded by sharp religious differences between the local Jewish population and themselves , repeatedly attempted to use force in lieu of power , using soldiers to try to intimidate the population into submission .
The result was the steady erosion of Roman power in the province .
The loss of power led to the reversion to more force and eventually from force to violence , culminating in the catastrophic First Jewish Revolt of 66 A.D. , documented by the Jewish writer Josephus .
That revolt led to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the famous siege of Masada .
And in the minds of many , this is where the story ends ; the Romans had “ made a desert and called it peace.
” That sense of finality and conclusion is no accident—it is part of Josephus ’ s narrative .
While Josephus started as a Jewish rebel himself , by the time he was writing he was a member of the victorious Roman Emperor Vespasian ’ s court ; it would not do to suggest the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Titus and Domitian , was anything less than perfect .
But it clearly was less than perfect .
While the Romans achieved momentary control of Judaea , in doing so they had actually damaged their power in the region .
The destruction of the temple removed one of the key local sources of authority in Judaea , the Sadducees , whose leaders had been both closely connected to the temple but also generally pro-Roman .
As it so often does , the application of violence had actively furthered the erosion of power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and violence are opposites ; where the one rules absolutely , the other is absent.
” The aftermath of the First Jewish Revolt thus laid the groundwork for further unrest , culminating in the Second Revolt in 132 , in which the Romans resorted to violence that likely amounted to genocide and were forced to replace the city of Jerusalem itself with a Roman colony to keep order .
This , it should be stressed , is a story of abject failure .
The Roman effort to rule first by force and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The small region soaked up far greater Roman forces and produced far more Roman casualties than it was worth .
The Roman Empire was , after all , a tributary empire : The provinces were held so that the Romans could extract value from them .
Not only did the cost of holding Judaea exceed any possible value it had , but the Romans had also been forced to destroy the most productive part of the place—its people—in order to try to keep hold of it .
Like so many counterinsurgency operations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too little on power , the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolts may have had tactical military successes , but they were strategic failures .
There is a lesson here for administrations that imagine that they can “ dominate ” problems that arise out of failures of power .
As Arendt writes , such “ domination of man over man by means of violence ” is the very opposite of power .
But power is not produced by violence ; it is destroyed by it .
“ Dominating the battlespace ” will not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legitimacy that caused the current civil unrest go away .
All that soldiers in the street can do is exercise momentary control , to create a space for civil authorities to reestablish power .
They can not establish power by themselves .
Power can arise from many sources , as the Roman example shows .
It can arise out of strong cultural norms , out of a feeling of reciprocity with authority , out of a sense that those in power are accountable .
Very often a great deal of power is found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily interactions in their own small sphere create a fertile space for the formation of this kind of influence .
It is not hard to see how state power and authority , that “ human ability to act in concert ” can be reestablished .
It starts with holding those who wield state violence accountable for their actions .
It works through local leaders whose own authority in their community is untarnished by the abuse of state violence .
Reestablishing power in this way is never easy , but it can be done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and no substitute for it .
If all the president can think to do is meet future street protests with state violence , he will not have resolved the issue , but rather , like those Roman governors in Judaea , merely delayed an ever-more-cataclysmic explosion .
He will have replaced power with violence and leadership with bravado .

Faced with civil unrest in almost every major American city, brought on by the collapse of police legitimacy as the result of a number of shocking videos of misconduct, Defense Secretary Mark Esper declared : “We need to dominate the battlespace” of U.S. cities, with military force. President Donald Trump echoed this advice calling on governors to use the National Guard and even regular military to restore order, to achieve, in his words, “total domination.” “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary … then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he declared. The theme of domination and threats of further escalation subsequently permeated administration rhetoric, even as more soldiers were called to the capital.
Faced with civil unrest in almost every major American city, brought on by the collapse of police legitimacy as the result of a number of shocking videos of misconduct, Defense Secretary Mark Esper declared: “We need to dominate the battlespace” of U.S. cities, with military force. President Donald Trump echoed this advice calling on governors to use the National Guard and even regular military to restore order, to achieve, in his words, “total domination.” “If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary … then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he declared. The theme of domination and threats of further escalation subsequently permeated administration rhetoric, even as more soldiers were called to the capital.
Threatening to send in the troops like this made for some tough-sounding bravado—even though it was rapidly walked back as the president claimed that he was actually talking about “dominating the streets with compassion.” As federal forces teargas moms in Portland, that language is returning, since the administration loves the tropes of militarism. But if the administration thinks that all it needs to do at home is to “dominate the battlespace,” then it has misunderstood the role of armed force and fallen into a classic error in security thinking. They have mistaken violence for power, a mistake that leaders have been making quite literally since the ancient world.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt expounded on the distinction between violence and power in her seminal 1972 essay “On Violence.” Violence, the ability of the state to coerce using armed force, is contrasted with power, “the human ability to act in concert” used by a leader only inasmuch as they are “empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.” The University of North Carolina military history professor Wayne Lee adds a third, intermediate category to this analysis: force. Force in this sense includes violence but is extended to include also the threat of violence, including the threat implied by the mere existence of force without its application.
Consider the example of driving up to a red light. If you were to attempt to run the red light and were stopped by a police officer and arrested for your reckless driving, that is, in Arendt’s dichotomy, violence. An armed agent of the state is actively compelling you to submit. If instead, coming to the red light, you noticed the police car sitting there and so decided to stop because of it, that was force, in Lee’s thinking. It was not violence, but the threat of violence and the knowledge of the presence of the tools of violence, that caused you to stop.
But of course, there are far more red lights in any country than there are police officers. Most of us know well that the chances of being pulled over for running our local stoplight are trivially low. But we stop anyway. We stop because we respect the majesty of the law, or because we believe in automotive safety, because it is polite to other drivers, or simply because it is what one does. That is power at work; we observe the red light because we respect its fundamental legitimacy as a group. The Romans, ever forward-thinking, had a word for this sort of power when vested in a person or institution: auctoritas, from where we get the English word “authority.”
In a proper, working state, the agents of the government guide the citizens using power, relying on their voluntary acquiescence to state directives. This power lets the state raise force, by recruiting citizens and taxing citizen production to furnish and equip its soldiers and police. Force, and the violence that force can create, is the product of nonviolent state power.
How does all of this factor into keeping the peace in a civilian population? The Roman experience is instructive. Whereas modern police forces, surveillance capabilities, and vast industrialized armies provide the tantalizing illusion of being able to control a domestic civilian populace by force alone, the Romans could have no such illusions. Bruce Frier, a professor of Classics at the University of Michigan, estimates that the population of the Roman Empire in 14 A.D. was 45.5 million, stretched over 1,280,000 square miles.
To control this vast empire, the Romans had about 300,000 soldiers, only half of them citizens. (The remainder were auxilia, recruited from the many noncitizen subjects of the empire.) While the Romans had acquired empire through shocking amounts of violence, ruling such a vast expanse by force alone was never an option. Of course, as the experiences of revolution and decolonization for the last century have shown, in the utter absence of power, controlling a population through force alone is no more possible today in the long term than it was for the Romans; the relative poverty of ancient states merely removed the illusion.
This flies in the face of the popular conception of Roman rule, which tends to focus on the areas of Roman failure, such as the provinces of Britannia and Judaea. Such failures make for compelling stories, in part because they have served as part of both religious and national mythology. Roman violence was spectacular and frequently commemorated, both by the Romans themselves and by moderns looking back. It was also occasionally criticized by Roman moralists such as Tacitus, who had his Caledonian chieftain Calgacus upbraid the Romans for “making a desert, and calling it peace.”
But these places were not typical. Most Roman provinces had no significant military presence at all; by the death of Augustus, the first emperor, Rome’s 25 legions were almost all stationed in a thin line along the frontier, along with their supporting auxilia. Many of the most populous provinces had no legions stationed in them at all. They couldn’t have; Rome’s armies already stretched the budget to the breaking point. This was not because the Romans were nice. They most certainly were not—the Romans were capable of stunning brutality, such as the destruction of Carthage and the near-total destruction of the Helvetians. More force was simply not practical.
The Plough Driven Over the Site of Carthage from Cassell's Illustrated Universal History Vol. II—Rome, by Edmund Ollier, 1890.
Instead, Roman provincial administration focused on developing power, rather than deploying force, in most of the provinces. This was not an intentional effort so much as the ad hoc development of standards of governance as Roman military commands in different regions shifted from missions of conquest to peacekeeping and then finally to administration, mostly driven not by a formal doctrine but by cultural norms within the Roman aristocracy. Nevertheless, clear patterns of action emerged that enabled the Romans to effectively develop power in regions they had acquired through violence and force.
Roman authorities might resolve disputes between communities, or particularly difficult cases (especially capital crimes), but the day-to-day administration of law and order was left to local leaders.
First, the Romans tended to avoid trying to act directly on the local populace. In part this was simply utilitarian; there were far too few Romans in most provinces to handle administration on the ground. Roman governors preferred to work through city governments, tribal leaders, and local stakeholders whenever possible. Roman authorities might resolve disputes between communities, or particularly difficult cases (especially capital crimes), but the day-to-day administration of law and order was left to local leaders, who benefited from the legitimacy of long-standing tradition and deep social ties. Rather than trying to replace the power these figures wielded, Rome incorporated these stakeholders into their provincial administration as partners in Roman order, rewarding useful local notables with political advantage and even citizenship.
Second, the Romans took progressive steps to hold provincial governors accountable for corruption or brutality in pacified provinces. Roman efforts on this front met mixed success, as prosecuting a powerful politician in Rome for actions taken miles away from the capital was always a risky endeavor. Nevertheless, the Calpurnian Law on Extortion in 149 B.C. established a permanent court to facilitate the recovery of damages by provincials against badly behaved Roman governors. That law was steadily strengthened by repeated further legislation that more narrowly defined legal conduct for governors and strengthened the penalties against them.
Later on, issues of fairness to provincials would be a topic of repeated imperial edicts, like the repeated imperial edicts and rescripts attempting to resolve or punish abuses of the vehiculatio, a right to requisition food and supplies for official business on the roads. These were not laws about protecting the rights and property of Roman citizens, but rather the rights and property of recently conquered noncitizens. While they were, at best, unevenly enforced, and they often became deeply political, these laws represented a real concern at Rome that provincial governors wielding Roman authority ought to behave fairly, even towards subjugated peoples, and there were high-profile convictions of important Roman politicians on those grounds.
Finally, through this, Roman authorities developed a reputation, particularly in the Greek East, of being relatively impartial outside mediators who could, more or less fairly, resolve disputes among the elites. Most Roman governors served short terms in their provinces before returning to Rome, leaving them as outsiders to local politics. The lack of local knowledge was less of an issue, because in most places Hellenized or Romanized elites could be relied upon to supply a self-interested measure of local knowledge. At the same time, there was an expectation, admittedly not always followed, that a Roman governor’s decisions would be honored by his successors in the post. And while, as noted, efforts to hold governors accountable were not always successful, the clear effort by the Romans to afford some degree of good governance clearly played into the reputation for impartiality and relative incorruptibility they enjoyed.
This isn’t a paean to Roman rule. The standards for good governance were quite a bit lower in the ancient world than today. Most Roman subjects seemed to have expected little more than that the taxes were not overly harsh and Roman armies kept armed threats far away. Roman commanders and governors did sometimes act in ways that appalled contemporary sensibilities, much less modern ones. Nevertheless, in the great majority of provinces where the Romans largely succeeded in keeping the peace, it is not hard to see how their actions contributed to the accumulation of power that let them govern in the absence of force or violence. That power was what made the empire possible in the first place.
The Roman failures are also instructive. To take one example, the Roman province of Judaea (now Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan), the Romans initially governed the province through intermediate client kings, but when these proved unreliable, the region was brought directly under Roman rule as a province. Roman governors, confounded by sharp religious differences between the local Jewish population and themselves, repeatedly attempted to use force in lieu of power, using soldiers to try to intimidate the population into submission. The result was the steady erosion of Roman power in the province. The loss of power led to the reversion to more force and eventually from force to violence, culminating in the catastrophic First Jewish Revolt of 66 A.D., documented by the Jewish writer Josephus.
That revolt led to a brutal seven-year Roman crackdown that included the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the famous siege of Masada. And in the minds of many, this is where the story ends; the Romans had “made a desert and called it peace.” That sense of finality and conclusion is no accident—it is part of Josephus’s narrative. While Josephus started as a Jewish rebel himself, by the time he was writing he was a member of the victorious Roman Emperor Vespasian’s court; it would not do to suggest the victory won by Vespasian and his sons, Titus and Domitian, was anything less than perfect.
The Destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem by Titus by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).
But it clearly was less than perfect. While the Romans achieved momentary control of Judaea, in doing so they had actually damaged their power in the region. The destruction of the temple removed one of the key local sources of authority in Judaea, the Sadducees, whose leaders had been both closely connected to the temple but also generally pro-Roman. As it so often does, the application of violence had actively furthered the erosion of power. As Arendt notes, “power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.” The aftermath of the First Jewish Revolt thus laid the groundwork for further unrest, culminating in the Second Revolt in 132, in which the Romans resorted to violence that likely amounted to genocide and were forced to replace the city of Jerusalem itself with a Roman colony to keep order.
This, it should be stressed, is a story of abject failure. The Roman effort to rule first by force and then by violence in Judaea was a catastrophe. The small region soaked up far greater Roman forces and produced far more Roman casualties than it was worth. The Roman Empire was, after all, a tributary empire: The provinces were held so that the Romans could extract value from them. Not only did the cost of holding Judaea exceed any possible value it had, but the Romans had also been forced to destroy the most productive part of the place—its people—in order to try to keep hold of it. Like so many counterinsurgency operations that focus too heavily on violence and too little on power, the Roman suppression of the Jewish revolts may have had tactical military successes, but they were strategic failures.
There is a lesson here for administrations that imagine that they can “dominate” problems that arise out of failures of power. As Arendt writes, such “domination of man over man by means of violence” is the very opposite of power. But power is not produced by violence; it is destroyed by it. “Dominating the battlespace” will not make the fundamental erosion of power and legitimacy that caused the current civil unrest go away. All that soldiers in the street can do is exercise momentary control, to create a space for civil authorities to reestablish power. They cannot establish power by themselves.
Power can arise from many sources, as the Roman example shows. It can arise out of strong cultural norms, out of a feeling of reciprocity with authority, out of a sense that those in power are accountable. Very often a great deal of power is found in local leaders and authorities, whose daily interactions in their own small sphere create a fertile space for the formation of this kind of influence. It is not hard to see how state power and authority, that “human ability to act in concert” can be reestablished. It starts with holding those who wield state violence accountable for their actions. It works through local leaders whose own authority in their community is untarnished by the abuse of state violence. Reestablishing power in this way is never easy, but it can be done. Violence provides no shortcut to power, and no substitute for it.
If all the president can think to do is meet future street protests with state violence, he will not have resolved the issue, but rather, like those Roman governors in Judaea, merely delayed an ever-more-cataclysmic explosion. He will have replaced power with violence and leadership with bravado.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-20--The Brutality of Brazil’s Pandemic Call Centers

SÃO PAULO — “ I feel like I ’ m going to die.
” It was just after midnight on April 16 , and Vanessa Pereira was chatting with one of her best friends , Jaci Diniz , on WhatsApp .
Three days earlier , a doctor had told the 27-year-old psychology student that her exhaustion and shortness of breath were symptoms of COVID-19 .
She was tested and sent home with a note to bring to her bosses at the call center where she worked in the northern São Paulo neighborhood of Santana .
She was employed by Atento @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latin America and is owned by Boston-based private investment firm Bain Capital , which is in talks to sell its equity stake in the company .
Atento is present in 13 countries , but the majority of its work is done in Brazil , where it employs some 70,000 people and has 33 of its 48 call centers .
Pereira started working there in 2013 , first as an operator and later training new staff in a position known internally as a multiplier .
Her commute was long—two hours each way by subway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hit Brazil , she was still working six days a week .
Her heart murmur—a condition , according to a representative from a public-relations firm hired by Atento , Pereira didn ’ t tell them about—put her at a high risk of infection , as did obesity , a condition impossible to hide .
The company had allowed some of her colleagues to work from home because of pregnancy , old age , and other medical conditions , but Pereira ’ s husband said she continued to work at the five-story building at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning of April .
According to Atento , Pereira was slated to work from home after completing her shift at the office on April 8 .
But that same day , she sent a former colleague a work schedule showing her shifts through the end of April , which Pereira said she was being made to work from the office .
The day before she was set to return for her scheduled shift on the 14th , she found out she might be infected .
“ I ’ m afraid , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work for Atento .
“ Really .
I ’ ve never felt so weak .
If something happens , I won ’ t be able to tell you .
I love you.
” Eleven days later , she was gone .
Now that the coronavirus has swept Brazil—ranked second behind only the United States in both confirmed cases and deaths , with July 16 tallies at 2,012,151 and 76,688 , respectively—these women face extreme risk as they weigh the consequences of staying in a job that could endanger their lives or walking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ keep their families afloat .
According to the São Paulo Union of Telemarketing , Direct Marketing , and Related Companies ( Sintelmark ) , Brazil ’ s call center industry brought in 43.4 billion reais ( currently $ 8.1 billion ) in revenue in 2014 ; if it were a city , it would have had the sixth-highest gross domestic product among Brazilian municipalities at the time .
Hiring in the previous 10 years increased 244 percent , leading to 1.6 million direct jobs and putting 12 billion reais ( $ 2.25 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also noted that income earned by call center workers is , on average , equal to 70 percent increase in their families ’ total income .
Call centers are notorious for having their employees work in close quarters—sometimes at four to a desk and thousands per floor—in offices with closed doors and windows that don ’ t open .
They spend their shifts trying to speak above the din of ringing phones and colleagues ’ conversations , creating the perfect storm for the spread of the coronavirus , which is easily transmitted through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ populated spaces .
On March 20 , an updated national decree was issued adding work done at call centers to the list of the country ’ s essential services , defined by Brazil ’ s federal government as services and activities that , if not carried out , “ endanger the survival , health or safety of the population.
” Atento employees swiftly filed a complaint with the Telecommunication Companies Workers ’ Union ( SINTETEL ) .
According to the employees , no preventative measures had been taken by the company to protect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They said they continued to work at full capacity , without masks , hand sanitizer , or any information about how to keep themselves safe during the pandemic .
Pereira worked with the bank Cetelem , one of Atento ’ s more than 400 clients on a list that includes U.S.-based companies Whirlpool , Motorola , and Riot Games , which announced its partnership with the call center company in May .
Brazil ’ s call center industry started to go global around 2005 , when companies from the United States and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lower wages and increase profits .
While the shift meant bigger business for Brazil ’ s managerial class , much of the predominantly female workforce remained mired in poverty .
“ When they declared call centers an essential service I was really scared , ” said one 19-year-old woman who works as a phone operator at Atento and asked that her name not be revealed , for fear of losing her job .
She lives with her sister , who has a heart condition , and three young nephews , one of whom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 200 monthly salary supports her entire household .
The representative hired by Atento said the company is operating in compliance with the federal decree and now has its call centers working at half capacity , with 30,000 of its employees either sent home because they are at high risk of infection or working from home .
The company also said it started implementing “ rigorous preventative measures ” in mid-March , and began taking employees ’ temperatures on April 13 and handing out masks on April 29 .
In June , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dividers in its break rooms .
According to vice president of SINTETEL Mauro Cava de Britto , Atento , like other telemarketing companies the union has been pushing to better protect employees from possible infection , hasn ’ t been transparent in responding to requests for information about how the company is addressing employee health and safety .
Employees at Almaviva do Brasil , another company that operates call centers across the country , went on strike at the end of March , protesting outside one of its locations in downtown São Paulo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Almaviva do Brasil ’ s office in Itu because of the pandemic , and who did not want to be identified because she is hoping to get her job back , said that health inspectors visited the company that same month after receiving complaints there was no soap or hand sanitizer in the building .
The next day , the products were made available , but the woman said they were watered down so they would last longer .
Another former employee , an 18-year old woman who quit working for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her health , but who did not wish to be identified for fear of being blackballed from telemarketing jobs , confirmed the lack of supplies and added that , although Almaviva do Brasil started implementing social distancing measures and stopped scheduling shifts on Sundays , those measures didn ’ t extend to Saturdays .
“ At lunch , it was really crowded and all the chairs were still one next to the other , ” she said .
“ Nobody wore masks yet because they weren ’ t mandatory and all the doors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was made to have employees work from home , but they were called back into the office after the equipment they took home didn ’ t work .
Almaviva do Brasil declined requests for an interview , but said in a statement that it has “ spared no steps to guarantee the safety of its employees during this moment of the COVID-19-related pandemic and rigorously follows the guidelines of the Brazilian Teleservices Association ( ABT ) , the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization ( WHO ) .
” Many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her death on social media .
Some only came to know what happened days later , when their bosses at Atento told them she wouldn ’ t be coming back to work .
But the rest of the employees would .
Pereira hadn ’ t been to the office since April 8 , and Atento didn ’ t think it was necessary to send the others home .
The government had deemed call centers essential .
Nothing could stop their work .
Not even death .

SÃO PAULO — “I feel like I’m going to die.”
It was just after midnight on April 16, and Vanessa Pereira was chatting with one of her best friends, Jaci Diniz, on WhatsApp. Three days earlier, a doctor had told the 27-year-old psychology student that her exhaustion and shortness of breath were symptoms of COVID-19.
She was tested and sent home with a note to bring to her bosses at the call center where she worked in the northern São Paulo neighborhood of Santana. She was employed by Atento, a telemarketing company that operates in Latin America and is owned by Boston-based private investment firm Bain Capital, which is in talks to sell its equity stake in the company. Atento is present in 13 countries, but the majority of its work is done in Brazil, where it employs some 70,000 people and has 33 of its 48 call centers.
Pereira started working there in 2013, first as an operator and later training new staff in a position known internally as a multiplier. Her commute was long—two hours each way by subway and bus—and when the coronavirus pandemic first hit Brazil, she was still working six days a week. Her heart murmur—a condition, according to a representative from a public-relations firm hired by Atento, Pereira didn’t tell them about—put her at a high risk of infection, as did obesity, a condition impossible to hide.
The company had allowed some of her colleagues to work from home because of pregnancy, old age, and other medical conditions, but Pereira’s husband said she continued to work at the five-story building at least two times a week through the beginning of April.
According to Atento, Pereira was slated to work from home after completing her shift at the office on April 8. But that same day, she sent a former colleague a work schedule showing her shifts through the end of April, which Pereira said she was being made to work from the office.
The day before she was set to return for her scheduled shift on the 14th, she found out she might be infected. “I’m afraid,” she wrote to Diniz, who also used to work for Atento. “Really. I’ve never felt so weak. If something happens, I won’t be able to tell you. I love you.”
Eleven days later, she was gone.
More than 70 percent of Brazil’s call center employees are women. Many are single mothers or women who have been out of the job market in order to take care of children and other tasks related to the family and home. The jobs they take on are high-stress, and the working conditions are often poor. It’s not uncommon for these women to work six hours a day for six or seven days a week in extremely tight quarters, with cameras monitoring their every move, limited bathroom breaks, and salaries that rarely break Brazil’s minimum wage of roughly $200 a month.
Now that the coronavirus has swept Brazil—ranked second behind only the United States in both confirmed cases and deaths, with July 16 tallies at 2,012,151 and 76,688, respectively—these women face extreme risk as they weigh the consequences of staying in a job that could endanger their lives or walking away from the salary they need to keep their families afloat.
According to the São Paulo Union of Telemarketing, Direct Marketing, and Related Companies (Sintelmark), Brazil’s call center industry brought in 43.4 billion reais (currently $8.1 billion) in revenue in 2014; if it were a city, it would have had the sixth-highest gross domestic product among Brazilian municipalities at the time. Hiring in the previous 10 years increased 244 percent, leading to 1.6 million direct jobs and putting 12 billion reais ($2.25 billion) into circulation. The union has also noted that income earned by call center workers is, on average, equal to 70 percent increase in their families’ total income.
Call centers are notorious for having their employees work in close quarters—sometimes at four to a desk and thousands per floor—in offices with closed doors and windows that don’t open. They spend their shifts trying to speak above the din of ringing phones and colleagues’ conversations, creating the perfect storm for the spread of the coronavirus, which is easily transmitted through spittle, especially in enclosed and highly populated spaces.
On March 20, an updated national decree was issued adding work done at call centers to the list of the country’s essential services, defined by Brazil’s federal government as services and activities that, if not carried out, “endanger the survival, health or safety of the population.”
Atento employees swiftly filed a complaint with the Telecommunication Companies Workers’ Union (SINTETEL). According to the employees, no preventative measures had been taken by the company to protect them from the spread of the coronavirus. They said they continued to work at full capacity, without masks, hand sanitizer, or any information about how to keep themselves safe during the pandemic.
Vanessa Pereira, a 27-year-old call center employee in São Paulo, who died of COVID-19.
Pereira worked with the bank Cetelem, one of Atento’s more than 400 clients on a list that includes U.S.-based companies Whirlpool, Motorola, and Riot Games, which announced its partnership with the call center company in May. Brazil’s call center industry started to go global around 2005, when companies from the United States and other developed countries saw an opportunity to lower wages and increase profits. While the shift meant bigger business for Brazil’s managerial class, much of the predominantly female workforce remained mired in poverty.
“When they declared call centers an essential service I was really scared,” said one 19-year-old woman who works as a phone operator at Atento and asked that her name not be revealed, for fear of losing her job. She lives with her sister, who has a heart condition, and three young nephews, one of whom suffers from asthma. She said her $200 monthly salary supports her entire household.
The representative hired by Atento said the company is operating in compliance with the federal decree and now has its call centers working at half capacity, with 30,000 of its employees either sent home because they are at high risk of infection or working from home. The company also said it started implementing “rigorous preventative measures” in mid-March, and began taking employees’ temperatures on April 13 and handing out masks on April 29. In June, the representative said, it installed 1,800 acrylic dividers in its break rooms.
According to vice president of SINTETEL Mauro Cava de Britto, Atento, like other telemarketing companies the union has been pushing to better protect employees from possible infection, hasn’t been transparent in responding to requests for information about how the company is addressing employee health and safety.
Employees at Almaviva do Brasil, another company that operates call centers across the country, went on strike at the end of March, protesting outside one of its locations in downtown São Paulo.
One woman who was laid off from Almaviva do Brasil’s office in Itu because of the pandemic, and who did not want to be identified because she is hoping to get her job back, said that health inspectors visited the company that same month after receiving complaints there was no soap or hand sanitizer in the building. The next day, the products were made available, but the woman said they were watered down so they would last longer.
Another former employee, an 18-year old woman who quit working for the company in April because she feared for her health, but who did not wish to be identified for fear of being blackballed from telemarketing jobs, confirmed the lack of supplies and added that, although Almaviva do Brasil started implementing social distancing measures and stopped scheduling shifts on Sundays, those measures didn’t extend to Saturdays. “At lunch, it was really crowded and all the chairs were still one next to the other,” she said. “Nobody wore masks yet because they weren’t mandatory and all the doors were closed.” She said one attempt was made to have employees work from home, but they were called back into the office after the equipment they took home didn’t work.
Almaviva do Brasil declined requests for an interview, but said in a statement that it has “spared no steps to guarantee the safety of its employees during this moment of the COVID-19-related pandemic and rigorously follows the guidelines of the Brazilian Teleservices Association (ABT), the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO).”
Pereira’s COVID-19 test came back positive on April 26. The next day, after spending one week at a field hospital, she died.
Many of her friends and colleagues found out about her death on social media. Some only came to know what happened days later, when their bosses at Atento told them she wouldn’t be coming back to work.
But the rest of the employees would.
Pereira hadn’t been to the office since April 8, and Atento didn’t think it was necessary to send the others home. The government had deemed call centers essential. Nothing could stop their work. Not even death.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-20--It Is Too Late to Save These Victims of the Pandemic

It Is Too Late to Save These Victims of the Pandemic It has been clear for a while now that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not evenly spread across U.S. society .
One particularly hard-hit group is foreign-born workers .
And now , on top of all the other economic chaos wrought by the disease , the shutdowns are grinding the industries in which many of them work to a halt and draining their pockets of the remittances that usually help sustain their family members in their home countries .
According to data from Migration Data Portal , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported COVID-19 cases per every 100,000 migrants in the United States .
That may be somewhat lower than the overall case rate in the country , but making things worse for migrant workers is the economic devastation .
At the peak in May , there had been 40 million layoffs since the start of the pandemic .
According to National Migration Forum , about half of immigrant workers are employed in some of the industries most affected by the pandemic : educational and health care services ; professional , scientific , management , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arts , entertainment , recreation , accommodation , and food services ; and manufacturing .
Missing paychecks are a problem both for the workers themselves and for families abroad .
For decades , the United States has been the world ’ s biggest source of remittances , accounting for nearly 20 percent of the global total in the most recent figures .
In 2018 , immigrants sent home about $ 68.5 billion in remittances , an average of nearly $ 3,000 per worker , which represents between 2 and 38 percent of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year ’ s crash in remittances is not yet available , but the experience during the 2007-2008 financial crisis is instructive .
Between 2008 and 2011 , outflows fell by roughly 10 percent .
This time around , the World Bank has predicted a global fall in remittances of over 20 percent .
The International Monetary Fund likewise forecasts that money sent to sub-Saharan Africa will drop by 20 percent .
It is hard to overstate the devastation , in 2019 , remittances to the region totaled $ 47 billion , making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than foreign direct investment and official development aid .
In May , the economist Michael Clemens added detail to the grim overall picture .
“ In the Philippines alone , ” he noted , “ a 20 percent drop in remittances would throw about 380,000 people into extreme poverty , according to rigorous estimates by Dean Yang and Claudia Martinez.
” And “ in Mexico , for example , a 20 percent cut in remittance income would cause roughly 800 additional deaths of children under age one each year.
” There is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the COVID-19 pandemic .
The flow of remittances may quickly return to ( or even exceed ) pre-pandemic levels .
But for many , it will be too late .
As Orla Doyle of the University College Dublin showed in a study from April , a child ’ s first 2,000 days in the world matter significantly to their lifetime achievements .
Good early childhood intervention raises the child ’ s future prospects and the lack of it could result in the opposite .
Disadvantaged households that are highly dependent on income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less to invest in their children ’ s health and development during this period .
Such shortfalls can not be remedied by future economic recoveries .
The impact of a shock to remittances on babies being born during the pandemic will last for a lifetime .
In fact , as the researcher Douglas Almond found in a 2006 study , the negative effects of the 1918 pandemic were still apparent in census data from 1980 ; children in utero during the pandemic were worse off in terms of income , educational attainment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to predict exactly when affected economies will stage a comeback .
The 2007-2008 financial crisis lasted about 17 months ; the COVID-19 crisis may last longer .
And many—especially some immigrant workers in the United States and those who rely on remittances they send home—may never recover .

It has been clear for a while now that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not evenly spread across U.S. society. One particularly hard-hit group is foreign-born workers. And now, on top of all the other economic chaos wrought by the disease, the shutdowns are grinding the industries in which many of them work to a halt and draining their pockets of the remittances that usually help sustain their family members in their home countries.
It has been clear for a while now that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not evenly spread across U.S. society. One particularly hard-hit group is foreign-born workers. And now, on top of all the other economic chaos wrought by the disease, the shutdowns are grinding the industries in which many of them work to a halt and draining their pockets of the remittances that usually help sustain their family members in their home countries.
According to data from Migration Data Portal, as of June, there were 653.4 reported COVID-19 cases per every 100,000 migrants in the United States. That may be somewhat lower than the overall case rate in the country, but making things worse for migrant workers is the economic devastation. At the peak in May, there had been 40 million layoffs since the start of the pandemic. According to National Migration Forum, about half of immigrant workers are employed in some of the industries most affected by the pandemic: educational and health care services; professional, scientific, management, administrative, and waste management services; arts, entertainment, recreation, accommodation, and food services; and manufacturing.
Missing paychecks are a problem both for the workers themselves and for families abroad. For decades, the United States has been the world’s biggest source of remittances, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the global total in the most recent figures. In 2018, immigrants sent home about $68.5 billion in remittances, an average of nearly $3,000 per worker, which represents between 2 and 38 percent of their U.S. earnings.
A full accounting of this year’s crash in remittances is not yet available, but the experience during the 2007-2008 financial crisis is instructive. Between 2008 and 2011, outflows fell by roughly 10 percent.
This time around, the World Bank has predicted a global fall in remittances of over 20 percent. The International Monetary Fund likewise forecasts that money sent to sub-Saharan Africa will drop by 20 percent. It is hard to overstate the devastation, in 2019, remittances to the region totaled $47 billion, making up a larger source of foreign income than foreign direct investment and official development aid.
In May, the economist Michael Clemens added detail to the grim overall picture. “In the Philippines alone,” he noted, “a 20 percent drop in remittances would throw about 380,000 people into extreme poverty, according to rigorous estimates by Dean Yang and Claudia Martinez.” And “in Mexico, for example, a 20 percent cut in remittance income would cause roughly 800 additional deaths of children under age one each year.”
There is no question the world will one day recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The flow of remittances may quickly return to (or even exceed) pre-pandemic levels. But for many, it will be too late.
As Orla Doyle of the University College Dublin showed in a study from April, a child’s first 2,000 days in the world matter significantly to their lifetime achievements. Good early childhood intervention raises the child’s future prospects and the lack of it could result in the opposite. Disadvantaged households that are highly dependent on income from migrant relatives and friends will have less to invest in their children’s health and development during this period.
Such shortfalls cannot be remedied by future economic recoveries. The impact of a shock to remittances on babies being born during the pandemic will last for a lifetime. In fact, as the researcher Douglas Almond found in a 2006 study, the negative effects of the 1918 pandemic were still apparent in census data from 1980; children in utero during the pandemic were worse off in terms of income, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status.
It is impossible to predict exactly when affected economies will stage a comeback. The 2007-2008 financial crisis lasted about 17 months; the COVID-19 crisis may last longer. And many—especially some immigrant workers in the United States and those who rely on remittances they send home—may never recover.