foreignpolicy--2020-06-05--China Is Weaponizing Globalization

China Is Weaponizing Globalization

Each of these characteristics draws its potency from one key strategy : the CCP ’ s repurposing of globalization as an engine meant to power—and win global consent for—the party ’ s progress toward “ the center of the global stage.
” The party has identified globalization ’ s interconnectedness as a key driver of its rise : The need for China to continue deepening its connections to the rest of the world through trade and technological exchange is one of the most consistent themes of its leaders ’ speeches and writings .
The United States ’ rise was driven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and for many years , it and other countries encouraged China ’ s integration with the rest of the world in the hope that the CCP would become a “ responsible stakeholder ” within the international community .
In this framework , the party ’ s embrace of globalization was treated as evidence of its desire to reform and become “ more like us.
” To be sure , there is nothing inherently concerning about a rising power seeking to carve out space for itself in the global political order nor about it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and political interconnectedness to do so .
But this has not happened , nor was it ever—on the party ’ s side—intended to .
Rather , as its wealth and strength have grown , the party ’ s exercise of power abroad has increasingly come to resemble the structure of inducements and coercion it uses to get its way at home .
This is what should concern us : that as the party sheds its inhibitions on the coercive use of power abroad , it simultaneously wants to become more connected with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and finance .
Xi Jinping and other top CCP leaders know that national renewal and global leadership—what they call the “ great rejuvenation of the Chinese race ” —are not inevitable .
Sustaining China ’ s progress toward these goals will require the party to continue to “ unite our friends and isolate and attack our enemies ” —to cite Deng Xiaoping ’ s memorable description of how the CCP holds power domestically .
This mindset of rewarding friends and attacking enemies plays out in the context of an increasingly globalized party : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” are not only its allies and opponents at the national level but organizations , businesses , and institutions from the grassroots on up .
And the friends the party has cultivated domestically now have increasingly global footprints .
The party believes that deepening economic integration with the rest of the world will lend added potency to the already powerful set of tools it uses to reward friends—and attack enemies—in other countries .
Understanding these tools therefore helps us define the contours of what a CCP-led version of globalization might look like , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom of action depend more than ever before on their deference to Beijing ’ s continued rise .
None of the ways the party shapes other countries ’ politics would be possible without China ’ s central place in global flows of goods and services .
Money is its most powerful tool to win and reward compliance .
Researchers from the Lowy Institute found that in 2001 , more than 80 percent of countries had a larger volume of trade with the United States than with China .
But by 2018 , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with two-thirds of countries trading more with China than with the United States .
2001 was the year China joined the World Trade Organization , one of the key international organizations driving economic globalization .
The party moved to weaponize its growing trade relationships with surprising rapidity .
In 2010 , after a Norwegian committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to an advocate of constitutional government inside China , the party cut off imports of Norwegian salmon for seven years .
The incident was notable in part because the Nobel committee that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ body—Norwegian governments and businesses were punished for something they did not control .
This form of collective punishment is a common feature of the party ’ s attacks on its so-called enemies and is designed to encourage collective self-censorship .
Since then , countries and companies that have contravened the party ’ s line have routinely found themselves on the wrong end of such tactics .
In October 2019 , for example , Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey retweeted a single tweet expressing support for Hong Kong ’ s pro-democracy protest movement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s business in China on edge : NBA games were dropped from state television , NBA merchandise was taken down from online stores , and the Chinese government reportedly demanded that the league fire Morey .
Even though the furor has since died down , NBA commissioner Adam Silver estimated the economic damage to the league in the hundreds of millions of dollars .
Although—following heavy criticism from U.S. politicians—the NBA defended Morey ’ s right to free speech , China ’ s message still appears to have been received .
Since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ owners , or officials have made any public statements in support of Hong Kong protesters .
As in many other such incidents , the party paid a short-term public relations cost for its coercive tactics but appears to have successfully communicated to a powerful target the long-term costs of political noncompliance .
Governments and companies around the world now know that if they step too far out of line , the CCP will hit them where it hurts : their bottom line .
Silence and deference , on the other hand , will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global conversation about China More often than not , when the CCP weaponizes economic connectivity , it is to punish—or reward—a target for speaking about China in a particular way .
As at home , the party ’ s goal abroad is to erase or downplay information that could shine an unflattering light on its activities while putting forth an image of China as a benign partner for international cooperation .
Xi calls this process “ bringing together foreign and Chinese ” and describes it as a process of actively converging foreign perspectives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This convergence matters , because a world where narratives about China reflect the party ’ s preferences is , more than likely , one where there is less active resistance to the party ’ s goals .
As one FBI official recently put it when describing CCP outreach to local governments , “ perception adds up and creates a policy environment.
” Among countless examples globally of this process of “ bringing together , ” one that stands out is Hollywood .
In 1997 , U.S. studios released three major films that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , among them Seven Years in Tibet .
The CCP halted domestic distribution of all films by the offending studios and communicated that further such films would endanger the companies ’ business in China , including a planned Disney theme park in Shanghai .
After bringing in Henry Kissinger to help smooth things over , Disney would eventually get its theme park , but since that year no major American studio film has portrayed China negatively .
Films such as the remake of Red Dawn have been rewritten to posit other countries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential enemy instead of Beijing .
Indeed , many , such as The Martian , Independence Day : Resurgence , and Gravity , have taken pains to put China in a positive light .
By threatening a key pillar of American studios ’ global business ( Avengers : Endgame made about a quarter of its $ 2.8 billion global box office in China ) , the party has managed to deny visibility to adversarial narratives while piggybacking on U.S. soft power to transmit the image of China as a benign advocate of international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been the envy of Soviet leaders during the Cold War .
Indeed , when contrasted with Cold War-era portrayals of the USSR in films such as The Hunt for Red October , Red Dawn , and Rocky IV , the potency of the CCP ’ s approach—one rooted in its deep connections to global flows of goods and services—becomes particularly clear .
The CCP maintains one-party rule over 1.3 billion people by cultivating , co-opting , and coercing non-party elites , a process it calls the “ patriotic United Front.
” Many analysts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control tend to focus on its coercive security and censorship apparatus and not on how it rewards its partners in power .
In the party ’ s parlance , these “ friends ” or “ old friends ” are non-party elites who abide by its political leadership , while “ enemies ” are those who challenge the party ’ s right to rule .
By uniting its friends , the party seeks to splinter its enemies and force potential enemies within target elite groups to reconsider the costs of resistance .
This matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targeted by the party for cultivation and co-option include leading private corporations , businesspeople , intellectuals , and academics .
The party ’ s embrace of globalization has given all of these friends a growing global role ; several such individuals have interfered in the politics of countries like Australia and New Zealand in ways that appear to benefit Beijing .
None of these intermediaries more clearly demonstrates the advantages of the CCP ’ s globalized approach than the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei .
In less than 20 years , Huawei ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it grow into the world ’ s largest provider of 4G and 5G network backbone equipment , the second-largest seller of smartphones , and an active participant in global standards-setting bodies .
The company ’ s nominally private status means it can shape democratic countries ’ information spaces in ways that align with party messaging but would be difficult for the party to do itself , using tools of corporate thought leadership such as lobbying , direct advertising , and advocacy campaigns .
Huawei ’ s presence abroad also has a darker side @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assisting with Chinese intelligence work in Europe and Africa and of helping democratically elected African governments spy on political opponents .
The party also rewards friendly foreign elites .
Important foreign businesspeople and politicians can find that their advocacy of deepened commercial ties with China is rewarded with substantial business opportunities or lucrative positions on the boards of Chinese companies .
( Examples are numerous . )
In doing so , the party is able to outsource advocacy , relying on respected , credible voices in other societies to call for deepening economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authoritarian tendencies .
Other autocracies , like Russia , have similar tools .
But they are arguably not as effective as China ’ s , owing to the simple gravity exerted by the financial opportunities the CCP can offer .
Since opening to the outside world in 1978 , the CCP has tried its utmost to take advantage of the global Chinese diaspora , using the same familiar practice of rewarding friends and punishing enemies it practices at home .
These policies emerge from a race-centric worldview that evinces little appreciation for preexisting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential impact on the societal cohesion of other countries .
A Chinese general typified this mindset when he commented to a member of the U.S. armed forces of Chinese descent that “ blood is thicker than water .
Chinese blood runs through you .
You understand us , and know that no matter what flag you wear on your shoulders , you are Chinese first and foremost.
” The party ’ s appeal to racial solidarity is undergirded by a cold calculation of the usefulness of a globally connected diaspora .
One senior @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the real point of ‘ diaspora ties ’ isn ’ t in the ‘ ties ’ themselves but in the enormous use that can be made of these kind of ‘ ties.
’ … The use of [ overseas Chinese ] lies in the advantages of all of their funds , technology , and human resources .
Some are very well connected in their home countries and have strong commercial networks locally , regionally , and even globally.
” The party ’ s one-size-fits-all determination to exploit a globalized diaspora flattens the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of whose families have lived outside China for generations and feel no loyalty to an authoritarian Communist regime .
Through policies that actively attempt to encourage dual loyalties , the party also places at even greater risk a vulnerable population , one that must cope daily with the consequences of anti-Asian racism in the communities where they live and work .
Defending that population from the party ’ s coercion should be a key goal of democratic states .
Obvious attempts by the CCP to use wealthy Chinese émigrés to inappropriately influence politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have produced responses by democratic governments wishing to protect their sovereignty .
But poorly handled responses can inspire ugly racism and further alienate democratic countries ’ Asian populations .
There is to date no indication that top CCP leaders appreciate this dynamic nor that they care what effect their targeting the Chinese diaspora has on other societies .
Whether and to what extent the party intends to refashion global norms to make the world “ safe for autocracy ” is hotly debated in the analytical community .
It may well be that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America in 1901 certainly had no plan for the liberal global order that it would help usher into existence less than half a century later . )
However , it is beyond dispute that the increasing presence of the party and its proxies in globalized flows of goods , services , and capital is encouraging elites in other countries to behave in ways that are recognizably authoritarian .
Perhaps better than any other to date , one case illustrates the planet-sized stage on which these tendencies now play out , aided by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world ’ s largest financial institutions .
In early 2019 , the Wall Street Journal reported on Xi ’ s 2016 approval of a complex , corrupt offer to Malaysia ’ s government .
On Xi ’ s behalf , senior Chinese officials proposed that Chinese banks would provide billions of dollars in funding to bail out Malaysia ’ s corrupt 1MDB sovereign wealth fund , which was dragging down the electoral prospects of then-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak .
China also offered the Razak government the fruits of its “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kong-based Wall Street Journal reporters who had broken many of the 1MDB stories so that the Malaysian government could identify and nullify the Journal ’ s sources .
In return for this assistance , the Malaysian government would sign on to tens of billions of dollars ’ worth of Belt and Road infrastructure projects with “ above market profitability ” for Chinese contractors .
Although these efforts were disrupted by the unexpected victory of a democratic alliance in the Malaysian elections , and the subsequent prosecution of Razak and others , the scale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make clear the attraction of CCP-style globalization to would-be autocrats around the world .
Even in instances where the party is not directly involved , its contempt for civil liberties means that China-based companies have little reason to worry whether their actions encourage another government ’ s authoritarian behavior .
In Ecuador , for example , officials contracted with the Chinese state-owned surveillance technology supplier Hikvision to build a countrywide video surveillance system that was used to track and intimidate political opponents .
In Venezuela , officials reportedly asked ZTE—another state-owned technology company—to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens .
Citizens ’ information was then tied to an electronic identification card used to deny political dissidents access to public services .
The cases cited above are a small slice of a rapidly expanding universe of concerning overseas behavior by the Chinese party-state or its proxies .
They point to a series of conclusions that the United States and other democratic countries should consider when formulating their shared policy toward China , now and in the years to come : This combination of factors is one reason why some within the current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decoupling from the Chinese economy , in an effort to deny the party the sway in other countries ’ political systems that comes along with growing economic might .
Decoupling remains hugely controversial and would undoubtedly be hugely costly , if executed as envisioned by the more hawkish elements of the administration .
The administration has also had difficulty signing up allies for its vision , in part because the transnational cooperation it would require has been undermined by the administration ’ s mercantilist jawboning of many of those very same allies in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for decoupling live in a more realistic world than those who would advocate a return to the status quo ante , in that they at least attempt to grapple with the geopolitical implications of an authoritarian party intent on using globalization to power its continued rise .
Policymakers across the democratic world who want to secure the blessings of liberty and the benefits of global economic integration need to start working together to offer a middle way .
The U.K. government ’ s recent proposal for a club of 10 democracies that would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promising start .
But even those measures don ’ t begin to embrace the depth of the challenge Beijing poses .
To defend the best parts of the system we call globalization — the parts that uphold human dignity by enabling humanity ’ s capacity for creativity and collaboration to flower — democratic countries will have to band together in a cooperative effort that cuts across government , business , academia , science , and technology .
The sooner that this shared project can begin , the better .

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered calls in many countries for a reexamination of their relationship with China. In places like Australia and the Czech Republic, these calls have built on preexisting doubt, emerging from the realization that actors linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may be interfering with democratic political processes in “covert, coercive, or corrupting” ways. In a recent report for the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, I examined what makes this interference distinct from other authoritarian actors like Russia. The report finds that the party’s interference in democratic countries is characterized by five mutually reinforcing factors:
weaponization of China’s economy,
attempts to dominate the global conversation about China,
a reliance on elite intermediaries,
targeting the Chinese diaspora, and
a tendency to embed authoritarian norms
Each of these characteristics draws its potency from one key strategy: the CCP’s repurposing of globalization as an engine meant to power—and win global consent for—the party’s progress toward “the center of the global stage.” The party has identified globalization’s interconnectedness as a key driver of its rise: The need for China to continue deepening its connections to the rest of the world through trade and technological exchange is one of the most consistent themes of its leaders’ speeches and writings.
The United States’ rise was driven by many of the same forces, and for many years, it and other countries encouraged China’s integration with the rest of the world in the hope that the CCP would become a “responsible stakeholder” within the international community. In this framework, the party’s embrace of globalization was treated as evidence of its desire to reform and become “more like us.” To be sure, there is nothing inherently concerning about a rising power seeking to carve out space for itself in the global political order nor about it using globalization’s economic, technological, and political interconnectedness to do so. But this has not happened, nor was it ever—on the party’s side—intended to. Rather, as its wealth and strength have grown, the party’s exercise of power abroad has increasingly come to resemble the structure of inducements and coercion it uses to get its way at home. This is what should concern us: that as the party sheds its inhibitions on the coercive use of power abroad, it simultaneously wants to become more connected with the rest of the world through trade and finance.
Xi Jinping and other top CCP leaders know that national renewal and global leadership—what they call the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese race”—are not inevitable. Sustaining China’s progress toward these goals will require the party to continue to “unite our friends and isolate and attack our enemies”—to cite Deng Xiaoping’s memorable description of how the CCP holds power domestically. This mindset of rewarding friends and attacking enemies plays out in the context of an increasingly globalized party: Its “friends” and “enemies” are not only its allies and opponents at the national level but organizations, businesses, and institutions from the grassroots on up. And the friends the party has cultivated domestically now have increasingly global footprints. The party believes that deepening economic integration with the rest of the world will lend added potency to the already powerful set of tools it uses to reward friends—and attack enemies—in other countries. Understanding these tools therefore helps us define the contours of what a CCP-led version of globalization might look like, one where other countries’ well-being and freedom of action depend more than ever before on their deference to Beijing’s continued rise.
A worker removes a promotional banner for the NBA from a building in Shanghai on Oct. 9, 2019, following a tweet by the Houston Rockets general manager supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Weaponizing China’s economy
None of the ways the party shapes other countries’ politics would be possible without China’s central place in global flows of goods and services. Money is its most powerful tool to win and reward compliance. Researchers from the Lowy Institute found that in 2001, more than 80 percent of countries had a larger volume of trade with the United States than with China. But by 2018, that figure had shrunk to barely 30 percent, with two-thirds of countries trading more with China than with the United States. 2001 was the year China joined the World Trade Organization, one of the key international organizations driving economic globalization.
The party moved to weaponize its growing trade relationships with surprising rapidity. In 2010, after a Norwegian committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to an advocate of constitutional government inside China, the party cut off imports of Norwegian salmon for seven years. The incident was notable in part because the Nobel committee that made the decision is not a government body—Norwegian governments and businesses were punished for something they did not control. This form of collective punishment is a common feature of the party’s attacks on its so-called enemies and is designed to encourage collective self-censorship. Since then, countries and companies that have contravened the party’s line have routinely found themselves on the wrong end of such tactics.
In October 2019, for example, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey retweeted a single tweet expressing support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement. The resulting firestorm put the NBA’s business in China on edge: NBA games were dropped from state television, NBA merchandise was taken down from online stores, and the Chinese government reportedly demanded that the league fire Morey. Even though the furor has since died down, NBA commissioner Adam Silver estimated the economic damage to the league in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Although—following heavy criticism from U.S. politicians—the NBA defended Morey’s right to free speech, China’s message still appears to have been received. Since the controversy, no NBA players, owners, or officials have made any public statements in support of Hong Kong protesters. As in many other such incidents, the party paid a short-term public relations cost for its coercive tactics but appears to have successfully communicated to a powerful target the long-term costs of political noncompliance. Governments and companies around the world now know that if they step too far out of line, the CCP will hit them where it hurts: their bottom line. Silence and deference, on the other hand, will be rewarded.
A girl wearing Mickey Mouse ears watches the opening ceremony of the Shanghai Disney Resort on June 16, 2016. In 1997 after U.S. studios released three major films that painted the Chinese Communist Party in an unflattering light, the party threatened to pull out of its planned Disney theme park.
Attempting to dominate the global conversation about China
More often than not, when the CCP weaponizes economic connectivity, it is to punish—or reward—a target for speaking about China in a particular way. As at home, the party’s goal abroad is to erase or downplay information that could shine an unflattering light on its activities while putting forth an image of China as a benign partner for international cooperation. Xi calls this process “bringing together foreign and Chinese” and describes it as a process of actively converging foreign perspectives on China with those of the party. This convergence matters, because a world where narratives about China reflect the party’s preferences is, more than likely, one where there is less active resistance to the party’s goals. As one FBI official recently put it when describing CCP outreach to local governments, “perception adds up and creates a policy environment.”
Among countless examples globally of this process of “bringing together,” one that stands out is Hollywood. In 1997, U.S. studios released three major films that painted the party in an unflattering light, among them Seven Years in Tibet. The CCP halted domestic distribution of all films by the offending studios and communicated that further such films would endanger the companies’ business in China, including a planned Disney theme park in Shanghai. After bringing in Henry Kissinger to help smooth things over, Disney would eventually get its theme park, but since that year no major American studio film has portrayed China negatively. Films such as the remake of Red Dawn have been rewritten to posit other countries, such as North Korea, as a potential enemy instead of Beijing. Indeed, many, such as The Martian, Independence Day: Resurgence, and Gravity, have taken pains to put China in a positive light.
By threatening a key pillar of American studios’ global business (Avengers: Endgame made about a quarter of its $2.8 billion global box office in China), the party has managed to deny visibility to adversarial narratives while piggybacking on U.S. soft power to transmit the image of China as a benign advocate of international cooperation. Such an achievement would have been the envy of Soviet leaders during the Cold War. Indeed, when contrasted with Cold War-era portrayals of the USSR in films such as The Hunt for Red October, Red Dawn, and Rocky IV, the potency of the CCP’s approach—one rooted in its deep connections to global flows of goods and services—becomes particularly clear.
An employee works at a Huawei mobile phone production line during a media tour in Dongguan, China, on March 6, 2019. Chinese telecom giant Huawei gave foreign media a peek into its state-of-the-art facilities as the normally secretive company stepped up a counteroffensive against U.S. warnings that it could be used by Beijing for espionage and sabotage.
Relying on elite intermediaries
The CCP maintains one-party rule over 1.3 billion people by cultivating, co-opting, and coercing non-party elites, a process it calls the “patriotic United Front.” Many analysts who study the party’s authoritarian control tend to focus on its coercive security and censorship apparatus and not on how it rewards its partners in power. In the party’s parlance, these “friends” or “old friends” are non-party elites who abide by its political leadership, while “enemies” are those who challenge the party’s right to rule. By uniting its friends, the party seeks to splinter its enemies and force potential enemies within target elite groups to reconsider the costs of resistance.
This matters for other countries. The elites specifically targeted by the party for cultivation and co-option include leading private corporations, businesspeople, intellectuals, and academics. The party’s embrace of globalization has given all of these friends a growing global role; several such individuals have interfered in the politics of countries like Australia and New Zealand in ways that appear to benefit Beijing.
None of these intermediaries more clearly demonstrates the advantages of the CCP’s globalized approach than the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei. In less than 20 years, Huawei’s close relationship with the party has helped it grow into the world’s largest provider of 4G and 5G network backbone equipment, the second-largest seller of smartphones, and an active participant in global standards-setting bodies. The company’s nominally private status means it can shape democratic countries’ information spaces in ways that align with party messaging but would be difficult for the party to do itself, using tools of corporate thought leadership such as lobbying, direct advertising, and advocacy campaigns. Huawei’s presence abroad also has a darker side: It has been credibly accused of assisting with Chinese intelligence work in Europe and Africa and of helping democratically elected African governments spy on political opponents.
The party also rewards friendly foreign elites. Important foreign businesspeople and politicians can find that their advocacy of deepened commercial ties with China is rewarded with substantial business opportunities or lucrative positions on the boards of Chinese companies. (Examples are numerous.) In doing so, the party is able to outsource advocacy, relying on respected, credible voices in other societies to call for deepening economic cooperation despite the CCP’s obvious authoritarian tendencies. Other autocracies, like Russia, have similar tools. But they are arguably not as effective as China’s, owing to the simple gravity exerted by the financial opportunities the CCP can offer.
Australian Labor Party Sen. Sam Dastyari apologizes in Sydney on Sept. 6, 2016, after asking a company with links to the Chinese government to pay a bill incurred by his office.
Targeting the Chinese diaspora
Since opening to the outside world in 1978, the CCP has tried its utmost to take advantage of the global Chinese diaspora, using the same familiar practice of rewarding friends and punishing enemies it practices at home. These policies emerge from a race-centric worldview that evinces little appreciation for preexisting national loyalties and little regard for its potential impact on the societal cohesion of other countries. A Chinese general typified this mindset when he commented to a member of the U.S. armed forces of Chinese descent that “blood is thicker than water. Chinese blood runs through you. You understand us, and know that no matter what flag you wear on your shoulders, you are Chinese first and foremost.”
The party’s appeal to racial solidarity is undergirded by a cold calculation of the usefulness of a globally connected diaspora. One senior official charged with diaspora outreach wrote that “the real point of ‘diaspora ties’ isn’t in the ‘ties’ themselves but in the enormous use that can be made of these kind of ‘ties.’ … The use of [overseas Chinese] lies in the advantages of all of their funds, technology, and human resources. Some are very well connected in their home countries and have strong commercial networks locally, regionally, and even globally.”
The party’s one-size-fits-all determination to exploit a globalized diaspora flattens the incredible complexity of this community, many of whose families have lived outside China for generations and feel no loyalty to an authoritarian Communist regime. Through policies that actively attempt to encourage dual loyalties, the party also places at even greater risk a vulnerable population, one that must cope daily with the consequences of anti-Asian racism in the communities where they live and work.
Defending that population from the party’s coercion should be a key goal of democratic states. Obvious attempts by the CCP to use wealthy Chinese émigrés to inappropriately influence politics in countries like Australia and New Zealand have produced responses by democratic governments wishing to protect their sovereignty. But poorly handled responses can inspire ugly racism and further alienate democratic countries’ Asian populations. There is to date no indication that top CCP leaders appreciate this dynamic nor that they care what effect their targeting the Chinese diaspora has on other societies.
Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak (center) leaves a court in Kuala Lumpur on April 3, 2019, while on trial for alleged involvement in the looting of the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
Embedding authoritarian norms
Whether and to what extent the party intends to refashion global norms to make the world “safe for autocracy” is hotly debated in the analytical community. It may well be that the party itself does not know. (America in 1901 certainly had no plan for the liberal global order that it would help usher into existence less than half a century later.) However, it is beyond dispute that the increasing presence of the party and its proxies in globalized flows of goods, services, and capital is encouraging elites in other countries to behave in ways that are recognizably authoritarian.
Perhaps better than any other to date, one case illustrates the planet-sized stage on which these tendencies now play out, aided by the party’s direct command of some of the world’s largest financial institutions. In early 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on Xi’s 2016 approval of a complex, corrupt offer to Malaysia’s government. On Xi’s behalf, senior Chinese officials proposed that Chinese banks would provide billions of dollars in funding to bail out Malaysia’s corrupt 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, which was dragging down the electoral prospects of then-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
China also offered the Razak government the fruits of its “full operational surveillance” of the Hong Kong-based Wall Street Journal reporters who had broken many of the 1MDB stories so that the Malaysian government could identify and nullify the Journal’s sources. In return for this assistance, the Malaysian government would sign on to tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Belt and Road infrastructure projects with “above market profitability” for Chinese contractors. Although these efforts were disrupted by the unexpected victory of a democratic alliance in the Malaysian elections, and the subsequent prosecution of Razak and others, the scale and bald-faced nature of the proposed deal make clear the attraction of CCP-style globalization to would-be autocrats around the world.
Even in instances where the party is not directly involved, its contempt for civil liberties means that China-based companies have little reason to worry whether their actions encourage another government’s authoritarian behavior. In Ecuador, for example, officials contracted with the Chinese state-owned surveillance technology supplier Hikvision to build a countrywide video surveillance system that was used to track and intimidate political opponents. In Venezuela, officials reportedly asked ZTE—another state-owned technology company—to build a comprehensive national database of its citizens. Citizens’ information was then tied to an electronic identification card used to deny political dissidents access to public services.
A sign advertising 5G mobile telecommunication is pictured in a shop in London on Jan. 28. The U.K. government recently proposed a club of 10 democracies that would develop alternatives to Huawei 5G.
Globalization with party characteristics
The cases cited above are a small slice of a rapidly expanding universe of concerning overseas behavior by the Chinese party-state or its proxies. They point to a series of conclusions that the United States and other democratic countries should consider when formulating their shared policy toward China, now and in the years to come:
First, the CCP views its globalization and its rise as intimately linked—a party-led order will be a global one.
Second, the party believes that this order need not be a liberal one.
Third, the tools the party uses to win international consent for its rise closely resemble those it uses to hold power at home. Because the party believes its success derives from its past ability to wield these tools, its use of them is unlikely to change in the future.
Fourth, backstage maneuvering and the means of raw national power will play a more important role in a Chinese-led global order than they do now. Machiavellian power politics have their place in a U.S.-led order, but the United States has historically also been willing to bind its power within a set of transparent, agreed-on rules for mediating disputes. (Indeed, the animating philosophy of the current U.S. president is most succinctly summarized as an outright rejection of this willingness to play by the rules.) The party is likely to be bound to such rules only to the extent that other states can force its compliance.
This combination of factors is one reason why some within the current U.S. administration have pushed hard for economic decoupling from the Chinese economy, in an effort to deny the party the sway in other countries’ political systems that comes along with growing economic might. Decoupling remains hugely controversial and would undoubtedly be hugely costly, if executed as envisioned by the more hawkish elements of the administration. The administration has also had difficulty signing up allies for its vision, in part because the transnational cooperation it would require has been undermined by the administration’s mercantilist jawboning of many of those very same allies in other trade negotiations.
But those pushing for decoupling live in a more realistic world than those who would advocate a return to the status quo ante, in that they at least attempt to grapple with the geopolitical implications of an authoritarian party intent on using globalization to power its continued rise. Policymakers across the democratic world who want to secure the blessings of liberty and the benefits of global economic integration need to start working together to offer a middle way. The U.K. government’s recent proposal for a club of 10 democracies that would develop alternatives to Huawei 5G is a promising start. But even those measures don’t begin to embrace the depth of the challenge Beijing poses. To defend the best parts of the system we call globalization — the parts that uphold human dignity by enabling humanity’s capacity for creativity and collaboration to flower — democratic countries will have to band together in a cooperative effort that cuts across government, business, academia, science, and technology. The sooner that this shared project can begin, the better.


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China ’ s condemnation of racism and police brutality in the United States looks hypocritical in comparison to its own human rights record .
Meanwhile , the strategic approach that led to China ’ s coronavirus response dates back further than President Xi Jinping ’ s rule .
And as businesses across the world begin the process of reopening after the pandemic , workers will be the group most vulnerable to another outbreak .
1 .
As U.S .
Injustices Rage , China ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Communist Party is condemning the United States for its record on police brutality and racism , but China ’ s own human rights record raises questions about its motivations , Ho-fung Hung writes .
Xi ’ s predecessor presided over changes to the Chinese Communist Party ’ s internal system that set the stage for the reckless response to the coronavirus pandemic , Dan Blumenthal writes .
3 .
Canada May Host the World ’ s First Incel Show Trial A 17-year-old who allegedly killed a woman in Toronto due to his own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Simon Cottee asks whether men who identify with the online “ incel ” community should be treated as terrorists .
The Trump administration ’ s response to protests in Washington could mark the country ’ s slide into illiberalism , John Allen writes .
5 .
As Economies Reopen , It ’ s the Law of the Jungle for Workers As communities and businesses around the world decide on the next tentative steps to loosen lockdowns and return to business , exposure to a possible second wave of coronavirus infections is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @

China’s condemnation of racism and police brutality in the United States looks hypocritical in comparison to its own human rights record.
China’s condemnation of racism and police brutality in the United States looks hypocritical in comparison to its own human rights record.
Meanwhile, the strategic approach that led to China’s coronavirus response dates back further than President Xi Jinping’s rule.
And as businesses across the world begin the process of reopening after the pandemic, workers will be the group most vulnerable to another outbreak.
Here are Foreign Policy’s top weekend reads.
White House Protesters
The Chinese Communist Party is condemning the United States for its record on police brutality and racism, but China’s own human rights record raises questions about its motivations, Ho-fung Hung writes.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shakes hands with China's former President Hu Jintao
Xi’s predecessor presided over changes to the Chinese Communist Party’s internal system that set the stage for the reckless response to the coronavirus pandemic, Dan Blumenthal writes.
A stuffed doll of Pepe the Frog sits at the main entrance of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus in Hong Kong on Nov. 23, 2019.
A 17-year-old who allegedly killed a woman in Toronto due to his own sexual frustrations will be charged with terrorism. Simon Cottee asks whether men who identify with the online “incel” community should be treated as terrorists.
U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the White House to go to St. John's Church in Washington on June 1.
The Trump administration’s response to protests in Washington could mark the country’s slide into illiberalism, John Allen writes.
Employees eating lunch at a Dongfeng Honda auto plant in Wuhan, China, shortly after returning to work, on March 23.
As communities and businesses around the world decide on the next tentative steps to loosen lockdowns and return to business, exposure to a possible second wave of coronavirus infections is the main worry, Michael Moran writes.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-06--Indians Are Supporting George Floyd—and Ignoring Police Brutality in Their Own Country

Indians Are Supporting George Floyd—and Ignoring Police Brutality in Their Own Country As tens of thousands of Americans continue to protest the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis last week , the world ’ s attention has focused on the problems of racism and police brutality in the United States .
Thousands of miles away , in India , prominent public figures and Bollywood stars such as Priyanka Chopra have taken to social media to express their sadness at the way in which Floyd died .
But the U.S. protests also raise an uncomfortable question in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are there no mass demonstrations over the frequent cases of police brutality in India ?
While Americans examine the role of race in their society and how it impacts policing , the underlying factors behind excessive police force and corruption in India are more complicated , including the divisions created by religion , caste , power , and wealth .
Some attitudes and structures enabling police brutality date back to colonization and laws put in place by the British .
But while India was able to assert its independence more than seven decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address the inequities within its society .
In the eastern state of Bihar , police sought a bribe from a man who was transporting potatoes during lockdown .
When he refused , they shot at him .
In Madhya Pradesh , the police punished a man who violated the lockdown by writing the words “ I have violated lockdown , stay away from me ” on his forehead .
Punjab ’ s police punished one scofflaw by rubbing his nose on the ground .
These instances disproportionately impacted the country ’ s millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work to put food on the table , and out-of-state workers , who were displaced by the sudden orders to stay at home.Not a single policeman has been arrested for the documented excesses during the riots .
Some recent police activity seems vengeful .
In the past six weeks , Delhi ’ s police have arrested several student union leaders and other dissidents who legally protested anti-Muslim government laws in January and February—demonstrations that came to a halt primarily because of the coronavirus lockdown .
Since there is limited access to courts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thwart the potential for renewed protests once lockdown restrictions are lifted .
Delhi ’ s police force , which reports directly to the central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi , faced blame in February when religious violence ripped apart neighborhoods in the city ’ s northeast .
A clash between demonstrators for and against the government ’ s controversial citizenship laws flared into riots after police threw stones at Muslim protesters and beat young Muslim men to death , according to the BBC .
One video caught cops smashing closed-circuit TV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men gather stones to throw .
Several reports showed that policemen stood by while the attackers went about their business , leading expert observers to describe the rioting as a state-backed pogrom .
Not a single policeman has been arrested for the documented excesses during the riots .
Police overreach is not new , of course .
Last year , United Nations experts said they were “ extremely concerned ” about a spate of extrajudicial killings by police in the state of Uttar Pradesh .
The killings , known locally as “ encounters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police as necessary acts of self-defense .
Many of the problems with policing in India go back to the colonial era .
The British Raj deployed the police largely to discipline the local population .
When India become independent in 1947 , its new government retained much of the old British playbook for policing , such as a tiered system for recruitment .
The upper tier is reserved for those who pass highly competitive examinations , requiring years of focused study .
Candidates who pass those tests are recruited into the Indian Police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are fast-tracked to high-level planning and strategy roles , creating a sort of upper class within the national police corps .
Only those who can afford to spend several years studying after graduating college can hope to hold these positions .
In India , many aspirants from the so-called lower castes are the first in their families to be literate , and so they start with an immense—and often insurmountable—disadvantage when applying to join the police force .
Outside of the IPS , police recruits usually undergo about a couple of years of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the lower rungs of the force , mostly the constabulary .
The police system reflects the caste and class hierarchies of their communities , with entrenched beliefs about positions in society .
Although police recruits go through training to sensitize them , prejudices are carried forward into their policing duties .
Fourteen percent of police personnel feel that Muslims are “ very much ” naturally prone to committing crimes , while 36 percent feel that Muslims are “ somewhat ” naturally prone to committing crimes , according to a survey by Common @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies , a social-science research institute .
Two in 5 police personnel are of the opinion that gender-based complaints of violence are likely false .
A reason for that could be the massive underrecruitment of women in the police force , as well as a lack of training and sensitization .
According to the 2019 India Justice Report , if the state of Madhya Pradesh continues to recruit women into the force as it is doing today , it would need 294 years to meet the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new recruits be women.Corruption and power keep the system going .
If India isn ’ t seeing mass protests demanding police accountability , it may be because the police itself broadly represents the problems within the country ’ s citizenry .
The lived experience of an upper-caste , upwardly mobile man in a police station would be starkly different from that of an oppressed-caste , poor woman—just as it would be in businesses throughout the country .
The 2016 Death Penalty India Report estimated that 74 percent of prisoners who were sentenced to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society .
Corruption and power keep the system going .
Police forces are supervised by the political executive—headed by home ministers of respective states .
Recruitment and career advancement are directly overseen by political leaders , making the police accountable to the politicians and not the public .
Some attempts at reform have been made .
In 2006 , a Supreme Court judgment on police reform resulted in the drafting of a new Model Police Act , which was meant to have an independent body scrutinize police actions .
But according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 17 of 29 states had even ratified the act by 2018 .
While celebrities , politicians , and regular Indian citizens might tweet angrily against police brutality in the United States , their words mean little if they don ’ t rise up to examine their own problems closer to home .
But for many , that would mean giving up their own powers and privileges .

As tens of thousands of Americans continue to protest the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis last week, the world’s attention has focused on the problems of racism and police brutality in the United States. Thousands of miles away, in India, prominent public figures and Bollywood stars such as Priyanka Chopra have taken to social media to express their sadness at the way in which Floyd died.
As tens of thousands of Americans continue to protest the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis last week, the world’s attention has focused on the problems of racism and police brutality in the United States. Thousands of miles away, in India, prominent public figures and Bollywood stars such as Priyanka Chopra have taken to social media to express their sadness at the way in which Floyd died.
But the U.S. protests also raise an uncomfortable question in the world’s largest democracy: Why are there no mass demonstrations over the frequent cases of police brutality in India?
While Americans examine the role of race in their society and how it impacts policing, the underlying factors behind excessive police force and corruption in India are more complicated, including the divisions created by religion, caste, power, and wealth. Some attitudes and structures enabling police brutality date back to colonization and laws put in place by the British. But while India was able to assert its independence more than seven decades ago, it has yet to conclusively address the inequities within its society.
In the weeks following India’s strict coronavirus lockdown that began on March 25, a gush of media reports told a story of unfettered police aggression. In the central Indian city of Pune, an ambulance driver was beaten by the police on suspicion of illegally transporting passengers in his vehicle. (He was not.) In West Bengal, a man was allegedly assaulted by the police when he stepped out to buy milk. He later died from his injuries. In just the first week of the country’s shutdown, the police assaulted 173 people and were allegedly responsible for 27 deaths, according to a report by a local nonprofit organization.
In the eastern state of Bihar, police sought a bribe from a man who was transporting potatoes during lockdown. When he refused, they shot at him. In Madhya Pradesh, the police punished a man who violated the lockdown by writing the words “I have violated lockdown, stay away from me” on his forehead. Punjab’s police punished one scofflaw by rubbing his nose on the ground. These instances disproportionately impacted the country’s millions of daily wage laborers, who needed to work to put food on the table, and out-of-state workers, who were displaced by the sudden orders to stay at home.Not a single policeman has been arrested for the documented excesses during the riots.
Some recent police activity seems vengeful. In the past six weeks, Delhi’s police have arrested several student union leaders and other dissidents who legally protested anti-Muslim government laws in January and February—demonstrations that came to a halt primarily because of the coronavirus lockdown. Since there is limited access to courts in this period, the arrests effectively thwart the potential for renewed protests once lockdown restrictions are lifted.
Delhi’s police force, which reports directly to the central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, faced blame in February when religious violence ripped apart neighborhoods in the city’s northeast. A clash between demonstrators for and against the government’s controversial citizenship laws flared into riots after police threw stones at Muslim protesters and beat young Muslim men to death, according to the BBC. One video caught cops smashing closed-circuit TV cameras, while another showed them helping men gather stones to throw. Several reports showed that policemen stood by while the attackers went about their business, leading expert observers to describe the rioting as a state-backed pogrom.
Not a single policeman has been arrested for the documented excesses during the riots.
Police overreach is not new, of course. Last year, United Nations experts said they were “extremely concerned” about a spate of extrajudicial killings by police in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The killings, known locally as “encounters,” are often defended by the police as necessary acts of self-defense.
Many of the problems with policing in India go back to the colonial era. The British Raj deployed the police largely to discipline the local population. When India become independent in 1947, its new government retained much of the old British playbook for policing, such as a tiered system for recruitment. The upper tier is reserved for those who pass highly competitive examinations, requiring years of focused study. Candidates who pass those tests are recruited into the Indian Police Service (IPS), where they are fast-tracked to high-level planning and strategy roles, creating a sort of upper class within the national police corps. Only those who can afford to spend several years studying after graduating college can hope to hold these positions. In India, many aspirants from the so-called lower castes are the first in their families to be literate, and so they start with an immense—and often insurmountable—disadvantage when applying to join the police force.
Outside of the IPS, police recruits usually undergo about a couple of years of mainly physical training and join at one of the lower rungs of the force, mostly the constabulary. The police system reflects the caste and class hierarchies of their communities, with entrenched beliefs about positions in society. Although police recruits go through training to sensitize them, prejudices are carried forward into their policing duties.
Fourteen percent of police personnel feel that Muslims are “very much” naturally prone to committing crimes, while 36 percent feel that Muslims are “somewhat” naturally prone to committing crimes, according to a survey by Common Cause, a nongovernmental organization, and the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a social-science research institute.
Two in 5 police personnel are of the opinion that gender-based complaints of violence are likely false. A reason for that could be the massive underrecruitment of women in the police force, as well as a lack of training and sensitization. According to the 2019 India Justice Report, if the state of Madhya Pradesh continues to recruit women into the force as it is doing today, it would need 294 years to meet the official requirement of having one-third of its new recruits be women.Corruption and power keep the system going.
If India isn’t seeing mass protests demanding police accountability, it may be because the police itself broadly represents the problems within the country’s citizenry. The lived experience of an upper-caste, upwardly mobile man in a police station would be starkly different from that of an oppressed-caste, poor woman—just as it would be in businesses throughout the country. The 2016 Death Penalty India Report estimated that 74 percent of prisoners who were sentenced to death belong to economically vulnerable sections of society.
Corruption and power keep the system going. Police forces are supervised by the political executive—headed by home ministers of respective states. Recruitment and career advancement are directly overseen by political leaders, making the police accountable to the politicians and not the public.
Some attempts at reform have been made. In 2006, a Supreme Court judgment on police reform resulted in the drafting of a new Model Police Act, which was meant to have an independent body scrutinize police actions. But according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, only 17 of 29 states had even ratified the act by 2018.
While celebrities, politicians, and regular Indian citizens might tweet angrily against police brutality in the United States, their words mean little if they don’t rise up to examine their own problems closer to home. But for many, that would mean giving up their own powers and privileges.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-06--The NYPD Sees Coordination in Protests. It’s Incentivized To.

The NYPD Sees Coordination in Protests .
It ’ s Incentivized To .
As protests over the killing of George Floyd , in which a Minneapolis police officer has been charged with murder , stretched into their seventh day on Monday , the top terrorism official at the New York City Police Department ( NYPD ) held a press conference on outside interference in the protests .
“ Demonstrations … were successful and peaceful and orderly until outside groups showed up and changed the tenor and tone and began to act with disorder and violence , ” said John Miller @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counterterrorism , and a former FBI public affairs specialist .
Miller alleged that the disorder was orchestrated by “ outside groups ” because the unspecified agitators had a “ complex network of bicycle scouts ” to scope out areas ahead of the protests and used “ encrypted communications ” and to coordinate looting , vandalism , and attacks against the police .
In the following days , the NYPD hypothesized that a crate of rocks found on a street in south Brooklyn had been placed there by anti-fascist protestors , and news outlets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters in New York about their ties to anarchist groups .
New York ’ s was not the only U.S. police department to suggest there was some conspiracy behind the violence that accompanied some of the protests : Officials in Minneapolis blamed the mayhem on outside agitators , and the governor of Kentucky said on May 30 he had intelligence that protests would become violent .
Yet in reality , there is scant evidence that the outbursts of violence across the country are coordinated .
In New York , the demonstrations have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s comments reveal how the NYPD and other police departments approach protest and dissent , in a pattern eerily familiar to students of intelligence and its failings .
The police are incentivized to treat political protests as organized threats to be investigated and neutralized .
Led by the NYPD , the largest U.S. police departments have spent the last two decades adopting the equipment and tactics of international anti-terrorism campaigns , investing millions of dollars in the creation of counterterrorism units and the acquisition of surveillance technology .
New York City has made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a policing strategy that prioritizes preemptive surveillance of possible security threats .
After 9/11 , the department adopted an intelligence-first framework on the principle that , as one deputy commissioner put it , “ to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long.
” By 2008 , the department had hired more than 1,000 counterterrorism officials and expanded its counterintelligence apparatus ’ s budget to around $ 100 million annually .
The NYPD tested out this counterterrorism framework in its preparations for the Republican National Convention in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traveled abroad to spy on anti-war and environmental groups , seeking advance intelligence about planned demonstrations .
Despite facing lawsuits for its espionage activities , the department has spied on protest groups for years , dispatching video teams more than 400 times between 2011 and 2016 to record interactions among Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter activists .
Since 9/11 , the NYPD ’ s intelligence mandate has swelled , extending to the hiring of a “ scholar-in-residence ” and the creation of an “ international liaison ” program that stationed officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , France , and the Dominican Republic .
These liaisons essentially function as international detectives , embedding with local police departments to follow leads about crimes planned to be committed in New York City .
The initiative , which costs about $ 1 million per year , is funded by the department ’ s charitable foundation and thus is not subject to review by elected officials .
In last year ’ s budget , the department allocated $ 15.6 million for the completion of the Domain Awareness System , a network of cameras @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detectors that it first began building more than 12 years ago .
As the federal government sought to leverage local law enforcement operations in the years after 9/11 , it opened up funding for intelligence and surveillance units at police departments around the country .
Units once focused on narcotics and organized crime now devoted themselves to collecting and analyzing information related to potential security threats , no matter how nebulous .
Urban police departments filled their counterintelligence departments with dozens or hundreds of new hires , diverting taxpayer funds to these departments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And the federal government continued to provide ample institutional and material support .
The Department of Justice created the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative , tasking police departments from Houston to Philadelphia with collecting information on social and political groups .
Officers at local departments generated “ suspicious activity reports ” on individuals and groups suspected of terrorism—even if they couldn ’ t meet the standards of probable cause—then funneled these reports up to federal agencies .
In Los Angeles , the list of suspicious activities included taking photos , using binoculars , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police kept tabs on anti-war groups such as Veterans for Peace and on the leftist history professor Howard Zinn .
The Department of Homeland Security , created in 2002 to fight terrorism and illegal immigration , gave hundreds of millions of dollars in annual grants for intelligence-gathering equipment and the hiring of intelligence analysts .
Departments have spent these funds on nonessential technology and gear such as facial recognition software and armored tanks .
Meanwhile , the Department of Defense ’ s 1033 program , which allows the military to donate excess equipment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smaller departments to acquire gear ranging from planes and helicopters to night-vision goggles and grenade launchers .
The upshot : Local law enforcement agencies are outfitted to detect and battle a threat that most of them have never actually encountered .
The focus on counterterrorism and the availability of federal money has also shifted the way some police departments operate , giving them structural incentive to identify organized conspiracies even where there are none .
The NYPD spent around $ 187 million on counterterrorism operations last year , compared to $ 116 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rarity of actual terrorist incidents—even in New York—the additional manpower and high-tech equipment are deployed to monitor political groups and protesters who have no intention of committing illegal activity .
Prominent law enforcement officials were on board with bringing local police operations in line with larger national security policy from the beginning : In a 2006 essay , the former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton and the criminologist George Kelling wrote that the broken-windows theory of policing “ can be adapted for the war on terror.
” By tracking the smallest indications of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stop terrorist incidents before they happened .
Many departments ’ surveillance and intelligence-gathering have led to accusations of civil and human rights abuses .
The Los Angeles police dropped a plan to conduct “ mapping ” of the city ’ s Muslim neighborhoods after public outcry , while the NYPD settled a lawsuit in 2018 over alleged indiscriminate surveillance of Muslim communities .
In Baltimore , the police department is facing a lawsuit over the use of police planes to monitor over 90 percent of the city ’ s land area .
So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brutality , intelligence officers have every institutional reason to concentrate on the small number of supposed infiltrators .
By bringing international counterterrorism techniques to bear on domestic citizens , police departments have abandoned a focus on de-escalation and crowd control in favor of an approach that treats political dissent as a coordinated threat .
This approach has led to misconceptions about the nature of the protests that began over George Floyd ’ s death .
Combined with unprecedented access to weapons of warfare , these misconceptions can endanger innocent protesters .
U.S. President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the military to enforce curfews and dispel crowds—threats met with condemnation from local leaders in cities such as New York and Chicago .
But these cities and others already have their own local armies to command .
The global power of the U.S. military , focused since 9/11 on stamping out terrorism , has been replicated over the same period in U.S. police departments .
The NYPD ’ s ongoing attempt to portray the protesters as organized and violent , then , is not just an attempt to distract from the demonstrations .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is built to do : bring the so-called war on terror home to American shores .

As protests over the killing of George Floyd, in which a Minneapolis police officer has been charged with murder, stretched into their seventh day on Monday, the top terrorism official at the New York City Police Department (NYPD) held a press conference on outside interference in the protests. “Demonstrations … were successful and peaceful and orderly until outside groups showed up and changed the tenor and tone and began to act with disorder and violence,” said John Miller, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, and a former FBI public affairs specialist.
As protests over the killing of George Floyd, in which a Minneapolis police officer has been charged with murder, stretched into their seventh day on Monday, the top terrorism official at the New York City Police Department (NYPD) held a press conference on outside interference in the protests. “Demonstrations … were successful and peaceful and orderly until outside groups showed up and changed the tenor and tone and began to act with disorder and violence,” said John Miller, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, and a former FBI public affairs specialist.
Miller alleged that the disorder was orchestrated by “outside groups” because the unspecified agitators had a “complex network of bicycle scouts” to scope out areas ahead of the protests and used “encrypted communications” and to coordinate looting, vandalism, and attacks against the police. In the following days, the NYPD hypothesized that a crate of rocks found on a street in south Brooklyn had been placed there by anti-fascist protestors, and news outlets reported that the FBI was questioning detained protesters in New York about their ties to anarchist groups.
New York’s was not the only U.S. police department to suggest there was some conspiracy behind the violence that accompanied some of the protests: Officials in Minneapolis blamed the mayhem on outside agitators, and the governor of Kentucky said on May 30 he had intelligence that protests would become violent.
Yet in reality, there is scant evidence that the outbursts of violence across the country are coordinated. In New York, the demonstrations have been spontaneous and leaderless. But Miller’s comments reveal how the NYPD and other police departments approach protest and dissent, in a pattern eerily familiar to students of intelligence and its failings. The police are incentivized to treat political protests as organized threats to be investigated and neutralized. Led by the NYPD, the largest U.S. police departments have spent the last two decades adopting the equipment and tactics of international anti-terrorism campaigns, investing millions of dollars in the creation of counterterrorism units and the acquisition of surveillance technology.
New York City has made the largest and most expensive investment in a policing strategy that prioritizes preemptive surveillance of possible security threats. After 9/11, the department adopted an intelligence-first framework on the principle that, as one deputy commissioner put it, “to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long.” By 2008, the department had hired more than 1,000 counterterrorism officials and expanded its counterintelligence apparatus’s budget to around $100 million annually.
The NYPD tested out this counterterrorism framework in its preparations for the Republican National Convention in 2004. Officers combed internet profiles and traveled abroad to spy on anti-war and environmental groups, seeking advance intelligence about planned demonstrations. Despite facing lawsuits for its espionage activities, the department has spied on protest groups for years, dispatching video teams more than 400 times between 2011 and 2016 to record interactions among Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter activists.
Since 9/11, the NYPD’s intelligence mandate has swelled, extending to the hiring of a “scholar-in-residence” and the creation of an “international liaison” program that stationed officers overseas in countries including Israel, Singapore, France, and the Dominican Republic. These liaisons essentially function as international detectives, embedding with local police departments to follow leads about crimes planned to be committed in New York City. The initiative, which costs about $1 million per year, is funded by the department’s charitable foundation and thus is not subject to review by elected officials. In last year’s budget, the department allocated $15.6 million for the completion of the Domain Awareness System, a network of cameras, license plate scanners, and gunshot detectors that it first began building more than 12 years ago.
As the federal government sought to leverage local law enforcement operations in the years after 9/11, it opened up funding for intelligence and surveillance units at police departments around the country. Units once focused on narcotics and organized crime now devoted themselves to collecting and analyzing information related to potential security threats, no matter how nebulous. Urban police departments filled their counterintelligence departments with dozens or hundreds of new hires, diverting taxpayer funds to these departments under the auspices of public safety.
And the federal government continued to provide ample institutional and material support. The Department of Justice created the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, tasking police departments from Houston to Philadelphia with collecting information on social and political groups. Officers at local departments generated “suspicious activity reports” on individuals and groups suspected of terrorism—even if they couldn’t meet the standards of probable cause—then funneled these reports up to federal agencies. In Los Angeles, the list of suspicious activities included taking photos, using binoculars, and taking notes; in Boston, police kept tabs on anti-war groups such as Veterans for Peace and on the leftist history professor Howard Zinn.
The Department of Homeland Security, created in 2002 to fight terrorism and illegal immigration, gave hundreds of millions of dollars in annual grants for intelligence-gathering equipment and the hiring of intelligence analysts. Departments have spent these funds on nonessential technology and gear such as facial recognition software and armored tanks. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which allows the military to donate excess equipment to local law enforcement, has enabled smaller departments to acquire gear ranging from planes and helicopters to night-vision goggles and grenade launchers.
The upshot: Local law enforcement agencies are outfitted to detect and battle a threat that most of them have never actually encountered.
The focus on counterterrorism and the availability of federal money has also shifted the way some police departments operate, giving them structural incentive to identify organized conspiracies even where there are none. The NYPD spent around $187 million on counterterrorism operations last year, compared to $116 million on officer training last year. Given the rarity of actual terrorist incidents—even in New York—the additional manpower and high-tech equipment are deployed to monitor political groups and protesters who have no intention of committing illegal activity.
Prominent law enforcement officials were on board with bringing local police operations in line with larger national security policy from the beginning: In a 2006 essay, the former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton and the criminologist George Kelling wrote that the broken-windows theory of policing “can be adapted for the war on terror.” By tracking the smallest indications of radicalism, they argued, police could stop terrorist incidents before they happened.
Many departments’ surveillance and intelligence-gathering have led to accusations of civil and human rights abuses. The Los Angeles police dropped a plan to conduct “mapping” of the city’s Muslim neighborhoods after public outcry, while the NYPD settled a lawsuit in 2018 over alleged indiscriminate surveillance of Muslim communities. In Baltimore, the police department is facing a lawsuit over the use of police planes to monitor over 90 percent of the city’s land area.
So as thousands of people demonstrate against police brutality, intelligence officers have every institutional reason to concentrate on the small number of supposed infiltrators. By bringing international counterterrorism techniques to bear on domestic citizens, police departments have abandoned a focus on de-escalation and crowd control in favor of an approach that treats political dissent as a coordinated threat. This approach has led to misconceptions about the nature of the protests that began over George Floyd’s death. Combined with unprecedented access to weapons of warfare, these misconceptions can endanger innocent protesters.
U.S. President Donald Trump has now threatened to deploy the military to enforce curfews and dispel crowds—threats met with condemnation from local leaders in cities such as New York and Chicago. But these cities and others already have their own local armies to command. The global power of the U.S. military, focused since 9/11 on stamping out terrorism, has been replicated over the same period in U.S. police departments.
The NYPD’s ongoing attempt to portray the protesters as organized and violent, then, is not just an attempt to distract from the demonstrations. The department is doing exactly what it is built to do: bring the so-called war on terror home to American shores.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-06--The World’s Weakest Strongman

The World’s Weakest Strongman

If you know where the continuing wave of public protests in the United States is going to lead us , you ’ re smarter than I am .
In fact , figuring out what is going to happen when mass protesters go up against the coercive apparatus of the government is inherently difficult to predict and maybe impossible .
Part of the reason , as Timur Kuran explained in a seminal article ( and subsequent book ) , is that an individual ’ s propensity to rebel ( or , in this case , join a demonstration ) is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ascertain in advance , even in a democracy .
Even today , it is hard for outside observers to know what might be the final straw that would provoke more people to go out into the streets or what sort of government response might lead them to stay home .
And as Susanne Lohmann and other theorists have argued , protests also benefit from “ cascade effects ” : You might not be willing to be the first person out in the street , but you might be willing to be number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movements can grow larger over time and especially if the government reacts in ways that reinforce the initial burst of popular anger .
President Donald Trump ( and other violence junkies like Republican Sen. Tom Cotton ) seems to think that all that is needed to make the demonstrations cease is a ruthless show of force .
He should think again .
Overwhelming force sometimes works , especially when there is a genuine threat to regime stability , the public at large is supportive , and one can count on the security forces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But as the Shah of Iran and other autocrats have discovered , wielding the mailed fist can also turn peaceful protests violent , drive more people into the opposition and onto the streets , and eventually cause the security apparatus to switch sides or dissolve .
Even if a tyrant ultimately “ wins , ” the country may be but a hollow shell ( see : Syria ) .
More importantly , we are nowhere near the level of public disorder that would justify all-out repression of the sort that Trump and Cotton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been some criminal looting ; those responsible for it should be roundly condemned , arrested , and tried .
But preliminary data from the Crowd Counting Consortium suggests that the overwhelming majority of the demonstrations have been remarkably peaceful , with violent incidents being the rare exception rather than the norm .
Moreover , in several cases , it appears that overreaction by local police forces triggered the violence , not the other way around .
Most important of all : The protesters are not trying to destroy public institutions or upend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ setting fire to the U.S. Capitol ; storming the gates of the White House ; trying to kidnap mayors , senators , or chiefs of police ; or even confronting legislators with guns and other threatening gestures , like those right-wing goons did in Michigan a few weeks ago .
Not a single governor has requested federal assistance to deal with the demonstrations .
According to the FBI , that supposedly dangerous bogeyman known as the “ Antifa ” movement is not fomenting violence ( by contrast , some right-wing militias appear to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terribly disappointed .
Instead , the main threat to the constitutional order is coming not from the protesters but from the White House itself .
That is the main reason why we are now seeing public pushback from U.S. military leaders ( both retired and active ) who understand that there is no need for the kind of massive force Trump seems to want .
They also understand that the American people are not a “ battlespace ” to be “ dominated ” and that the armed services ’ proper role is to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against foreign enemies , not to advance a president ’ s personal political fortunes .
This deeply troubling situation reveals one thing clearly : Trump , an incompetent and increasingly desperate president , has no other cards left to play .
The economy is circling the drain , and unlike his predecessor—who successfully led the country out of the 2008 recession—Trump has no plan for reviving it anytime soon .
The most recent jobs report notwithstanding , tens of millions of Americans will still be out of work on Election Day , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this condition because Trump ’ s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was embarrassingly inept .
His claim that it would magically disappear was a typical Trumpian lie , and his lies didn ’ t stop there , even after 100,000 Americans had died .
Meanwhile , countries blessed with more able leaders are already starting to recover and reopen safely .
That situation won ’ t change either , and there ’ s every reason to fear another spike of infections come fall .
Finally , his impulsive , know-nothing approach to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ angered allies while failing to deliver a single significant foreign-policy achievement .
He has no idea how to fix that problem either .
His only recourse , therefore , is to sow as much division as he can , even if it does more permanent damage to the country as a whole .
Indeed , Trump has every reason to want the level of violence to get worse , both to distract us from his other failures and to convince Americans that they are facing a massive threat to public order and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It really is mind-boggling : For the first time in U.S. history , an American president may genuinely believe that openly encouraging violence and disorder at home could benefit him politically .
Not even Richard Nixon went quite that far .
The appropriate response , therefore , is to deny him the carnage that he so desperately needs .
As my colleague Erica Chenoweth and her co-author Maria Stephan have shown , nonviolent civil resistance is a far more effective means of social change than violent insurrection .
The reason is simple : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state to justify repression , and the coercive arm of the state is usually stronger than the protesters .
If protests remain peaceful , however , it becomes harder to justify repression and harder to convince the police or National Guard or other coercive agencies to carry it out .
If they try , other Americans will see it for what it is and be properly repulsed .
Violent crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations will be a further reminder of just how badly this president has failed the nation .
But here ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current protests are primarily about racial injustice—for obvious and entirely understandable reasons—some of the problems America faces transcend race .
In addition to legitimate concerns about racial inequality ( including the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority populations ) , the protests are also another manifestation of mass political anger at a political and economic elite that in recent years has done a better job of enriching itself than addressing broader social needs and is rarely held accountable .
It is the anger directed at police forces that resist reform and refuse to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It is the anger directed at the Wall Street insiders who cratered the economy in 2008 and were never held accountable .
It is the rage aimed at the Harvey Weinsteins who abused power for decades before being exposed and punished .
It is the frustration of watching so-called foreign-policy experts like John Bolton and Elliott Abrams receiving endless opportunities to screw up .
This broader perception of elite betrayal and privilege is what transformed the unlikely and otherwise dissimilar figures of Trump and Bernie Sanders into formidable political forces .
Back in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discontent by falsely portraying himself as a blunt-speaking outsider who would “ drain the swamp ” and bring his ( fictitious ) business acumen to bear on the nation ’ s problems .
The con now lies fully exposed , even if his supporters still can not bring themselves to see it .
Far from draining the swamp , he staffed his administration with lobbyists , plutocrats , loyalists , hacks , and unqualified family members while he continued to profit at public expense .
His chaotic management style produced an endless series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appointments , leading to the highest turnover rate of any administration in U.S. history and rendering the federal government even less capable of meeting the country ’ s needs .
Suddenly faced with a public health emergency and a grave economic crisis , Trump has exhibited zero capacity to comfort , unite , inspire , or govern .
Lying , preening , and blaming others are the only political skills he ever mastered .
My guess is that the level of anger is going to get worse between now and November—especially in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond the issue of racial injustice .
As federal support payments dry up and personal savings are exhausted , more and more people will be unable to pay rent and will face eviction .
More and more young people will have to put their dreams for the future on hold .
People will continue to get sick , some of them will die , and all of us will wonder when we will be able to resume some semblance of a normal life .
Americans will watch with envy as better governed nations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why they are unable to follow suit .
And Donald the Divider will be right there , pouring gasoline on the flames , in the hope of sparking an inferno and resurrecting his failing fortunes .
We know his playbook by heart : He ’ ll blame America ’ s problems on China , the World Health Organization , Nancy Pelosi , Barack Obama , Hillary Clinton ’ s email server , the news media , the so-called deep state , fluoridated drinking water , and , if necessary , he ’ ll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Inquisition , and the Illuminati .
Anyone but himself .
He ’ ll call Joe Biden silly names and invent more dark lies about his family .
If the demonstrations continue , maybe he ’ ll use them as a pretext to justify an armed crackdown so that his base will continue to see him as a strong , manly leader .
Maybe he ’ ll get Attorney General Bill Barr to conjure up specious legal arguments to justify suspending the election .
Or maybe he ’ ll try to use some of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppress the vote .
Who knows ?
There is no limit to how far this pathetic excuse for a leader will go .
Because at this point he has no other options .

If you know where the continuing wave of public protests in the United States is going to lead us, you’re smarter than I am. In fact, figuring out what is going to happen when mass protesters go up against the coercive apparatus of the government is inherently difficult to predict and maybe impossible.
If you know where the continuing wave of public protests in the United States is going to lead us, you’re smarter than I am. In fact, figuring out what is going to happen when mass protesters go up against the coercive apparatus of the government is inherently difficult to predict and maybe impossible.
Part of the reason, as Timur Kuran explained in a seminal article (and subsequent book), is that an individual’s propensity to rebel (or, in this case, join a demonstration) is a form of private information that is impossible to ascertain in advance, even in a democracy. Even today, it is hard for outside observers to know what might be the final straw that would provoke more people to go out into the streets or what sort of government response might lead them to stay home. And as Susanne Lohmann and other theorists have argued, protests also benefit from “cascade effects”: You might not be willing to be the first person out in the street, but you might be willing to be number 5,000. In this way, protest movements can grow larger over time and especially if the government reacts in ways that reinforce the initial burst of popular anger.
President Donald Trump (and other violence junkies like Republican Sen. Tom Cotton) seems to think that all that is needed to make the demonstrations cease is a ruthless show of force. He should think again. Overwhelming force sometimes works, especially when there is a genuine threat to regime stability, the public at large is supportive, and one can count on the security forces to obey orders and respond brutally. But as the Shah of Iran and other autocrats have discovered, wielding the mailed fist can also turn peaceful protests violent, drive more people into the opposition and onto the streets, and eventually cause the security apparatus to switch sides or dissolve. Even if a tyrant ultimately “wins,” the country may be but a hollow shell (see: Syria).
More importantly, we are nowhere near the level of public disorder that would justify all-out repression of the sort that Trump and Cotton seem to want. Yes, there has been some criminal looting; those responsible for it should be roundly condemned, arrested, and tried. But preliminary data from the Crowd Counting Consortium suggests that the overwhelming majority of the demonstrations have been remarkably peaceful, with violent incidents being the rare exception rather than the norm. Moreover, in several cases, it appears that overreaction by local police forces triggered the violence, not the other way around.
Most important of all: The protesters are not trying to destroy public institutions or upend the constitutional order. No one is setting fire to the U.S. Capitol; storming the gates of the White House; trying to kidnap mayors, senators, or chiefs of police; or even confronting legislators with guns and other threatening gestures, like those right-wing goons did in Michigan a few weeks ago. Not a single governor has requested federal assistance to deal with the demonstrations. According to the FBI, that supposedly dangerous bogeyman known as the “Antifa” movement is not fomenting violence (by contrast, some right-wing militias appear to be). Fox News must be terribly disappointed.
Instead, the main threat to the constitutional order is coming not from the protesters but from the White House itself. That is the main reason why we are now seeing public pushback from U.S. military leaders (both retired and active) who understand that there is no need for the kind of massive force Trump seems to want. They also understand that the American people are not a “battlespace” to be “dominated” and that the armed services’ proper role is to uphold the Constitution and defend the country against foreign enemies, not to advance a president’s personal political fortunes.
This deeply troubling situation reveals one thing clearly: Trump, an incompetent and increasingly desperate president, has no other cards left to play. The economy is circling the drain, and unlike his predecessor—who successfully led the country out of the 2008 recession—Trump has no plan for reviving it anytime soon. The most recent jobs report notwithstanding, tens of millions of Americans will still be out of work on Election Day, and he knows it. The country is in this condition because Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was embarrassingly inept. His claim that it would magically disappear was a typical Trumpian lie, and his lies didn’t stop there, even after 100,000 Americans had died. Meanwhile, countries blessed with more able leaders are already starting to recover and reopen safely. That situation won’t change either, and there’s every reason to fear another spike of infections come fall. Finally, his impulsive, know-nothing approach to foreign policy has simultaneously emboldened adversaries and angered allies while failing to deliver a single significant foreign-policy achievement. He has no idea how to fix that problem either.
His only recourse, therefore, is to sow as much division as he can, even if it does more permanent damage to the country as a whole. Indeed, Trump has every reason to want the level of violence to get worse, both to distract us from his other failures and to convince Americans that they are facing a massive threat to public order and that any and all measures are justified. It really is mind-boggling: For the first time in U.S. history, an American president may genuinely believe that openly encouraging violence and disorder at home could benefit him politically. Not even Richard Nixon went quite that far.
The appropriate response, therefore, is to deny him the carnage that he so desperately needs. As my colleague Erica Chenoweth and her co-author Maria Stephan have shown, nonviolent civil resistance is a far more effective means of social change than violent insurrection. The reason is simple: Violent acts make it easier for the state to justify repression, and the coercive arm of the state is usually stronger than the protesters. If protests remain peaceful, however, it becomes harder to justify repression and harder to convince the police or National Guard or other coercive agencies to carry it out. If they try, other Americans will see it for what it is and be properly repulsed. Violent crackdowns on peaceful demonstrations will be a further reminder of just how badly this president has failed the nation.
But here’s what really worries me. Although the current protests are primarily about racial injustice—for obvious and entirely understandable reasons—some of the problems America faces transcend race. In addition to legitimate concerns about racial inequality (including the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minority populations), the protests are also another manifestation of mass political anger at a political and economic elite that in recent years has done a better job of enriching itself than addressing broader social needs and is rarely held accountable. It is the anger directed at police forces that resist reform and refuse to fire officers who repeatedly commit abuses. It is the anger directed at the Wall Street insiders who cratered the economy in 2008 and were never held accountable. It is the rage aimed at the Harvey Weinsteins who abused power for decades before being exposed and punished. It is the frustration of watching so-called foreign-policy experts like John Bolton and Elliott Abrams receiving endless opportunities to screw up. This broader perception of elite betrayal and privilege is what transformed the unlikely and otherwise dissimilar figures of Trump and Bernie Sanders into formidable political forces.
Back in 2016, Trump capitalized on broad popular discontent by falsely portraying himself as a blunt-speaking outsider who would “drain the swamp” and bring his (fictitious) business acumen to bear on the nation’s problems. The con now lies fully exposed, even if his supporters still cannot bring themselves to see it. Far from draining the swamp, he staffed his administration with lobbyists, plutocrats, loyalists, hacks, and unqualified family members while he continued to profit at public expense. His chaotic management style produced an endless series of resignations, firings, and acting appointments, leading to the highest turnover rate of any administration in U.S. history and rendering the federal government even less capable of meeting the country’s needs. Suddenly faced with a public health emergency and a grave economic crisis, Trump has exhibited zero capacity to comfort, unite, inspire, or govern. Lying, preening, and blaming others are the only political skills he ever mastered.
My guess is that the level of anger is going to get worse between now and November—especially in the nation’s cities—and it will expand beyond the issue of racial injustice. As federal support payments dry up and personal savings are exhausted, more and more people will be unable to pay rent and will face eviction. More and more young people will have to put their dreams for the future on hold. People will continue to get sick, some of them will die, and all of us will wonder when we will be able to resume some semblance of a normal life. Americans will watch with envy as better governed nations begin to reopen and recover and wonder why they are unable to follow suit.
And Donald the Divider will be right there, pouring gasoline on the flames, in the hope of sparking an inferno and resurrecting his failing fortunes. We know his playbook by heart: He’ll blame America’s problems on China, the World Health Organization, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton’s email server, the news media, the so-called deep state, fluoridated drinking water, and, if necessary, he’ll drag in George Soros, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Illuminati. Anyone but himself. He’ll call Joe Biden silly names and invent more dark lies about his family.
If the demonstrations continue, maybe he’ll use them as a pretext to justify an armed crackdown so that his base will continue to see him as a strong, manly leader. Maybe he’ll get Attorney General Bill Barr to conjure up specious legal arguments to justify suspending the election. Or maybe he’ll try to use some of the country’s security forces to suppress the vote. Who knows? There is no limit to how far this pathetic excuse for a leader will go. Because at this point he has no other options.