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한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском On July 6, 2024, the military leaders of Mali (Assimi Goïta), Niger (Abdourahamane Tchiani) and Burkina Faso (Ibrahim Traoré) signed a treaty establishing the Confederation of Sahel States, or, more precisely, the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States—retaining the acronym AES (Alliance des États du Sahel in French). The document was signed in Niamey, Niger, during the summit of the Alliance of Sahel States, a military pact formed by the same countries on September 17, 2023. The Confederation’s founding signaled the determination of the governments of the three Sahel nations, which came to power via a series of military coups in 2020–2023, to chart a joint course of political and economic development. The AES was announced after Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger withdrew in January 2024 from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)—a regional bloc that urged the trio’s leaders to restore civilian rule in their countries. At the opening of the Niamey summit, Niger’s military leader said, inter alia, that his “people have irrevocably turned their back on ECOWAS” and that the new alliance would be a community immune to the “stranglehold of foreign powers.” At the same time, the three leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the principles and objectives of the UN and the African Union. They asserted that by forming the Confederation, the three countries would strengthen their sovereignty and more effectively counter terrorism and external Western influence. The charter of the AES stipulates that “any violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more Contracting Parties shall be considered as an aggression against the other Parties and shall give rise to a duty of assistance and relief by all the Parties, individually or collectively, including the use of armed force.” From Alliance to Confederation The first step towards political and economic integration of the three countries was the establishment of the Alliance of Sahel States on September 17, 2023, which grouped a total of over 72 million people and is primarily aimed at building a trilateral architecture of collective defense. The decision to set up the Alliance was taken after negotiations in Ouagadougou in early September 2023 between representatives of the three nations and a delegation from the Russian Defense Ministry, headed by Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. In other words, Russia played its role in founding the AES, thereby assuming certain obligations to support the Alliance’s counterterrorism efforts. The prospect of deeper integration of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso was first raised in late 2023, and in early July 2024, after Yevkurov’s next visit to the Sahel (Mali and Niger), the Confederation of Sahel States was established. The inaugural summit, in addition to security and military cooperation, addressed further trilateral cooperation in the socio-economic sphere. This suggests that the AES’s scope of activity will likely include the construction of new industrial facilities and the expansion of ties in areas such as energy, finance, healthcare, education, agriculture and natural resource management, as well as mining, transport, combating cybercrime, ICT development, sports and employment. The AES leaders decided to establish an investment bank and a stabilization fund, which, however, will only function if they can secure sufficient funding. Furthermore, the countries agreed to pool their resources to build large-scale transport and communications infrastructure, facilitate trade and the free movement of goods and people, and invest in various sectors of the economy. One example that demonstrates the feasibility of these plans is Niger’s agreement to sell 150 million liters of diesel to Mali at almost half the going rate, supporting a nation plagued by enduring electricity shortages. The three leaders also reaffirmed the decision taken after the meeting of the Alliance’s foreign ministers on May 17, 2024, to coordinate diplomatic actions and formulate common approaches to relations with external partners, although combating terrorism seems likely to remain the Confederation’s main priority. The trio has on many occasions pointed to the key reasons behind their collective actions: the failure of the AU and ECOWAS to provide adequate support in the fight against jihadists; “illegal sanctions” that harm the people of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger; and ECOWAS’s unwillingness and/or inability to break free from Western influence. In other words, this integration is driven not only by the desire for collective security, but also by the pushback to the former colonial ruler, France (with which the trio has severed all defense ties), and, more broadly, the collective West, which has clearly underestimated the Sahel’s frustration with years of ineffective military intervention [1]. As a result, French military contingents and most U.S. troops have withdrawn from the three nations, with Russian forces taking their place. So the Confederation’s main stated goal is to support one another in combating terrorism (the Sahel accounts for 43% of the world’s terrorism-related deaths). The Niamey summit saw calls to put an end to this scourge. The leader of Burkina Faso, in particular, addressed the forum participants with the following words: “In our veins runs the blood of those valiant warriors who fought and won for us this land that we call Mali, Burkina and Niger. In our veins runs the blood of those valiant warriors who helped the whole world rid itself of Nazism and many other scourges. In our veins runs the blood of those valiant warriors that were deported from Africa to Europe, America, Asia … and who helped to build those countries as slaves. In our veins runs the blood of worthy men, robust men, men who stood tall…” Yet this raises the question: will the armies of these three nations, which previously struggled to tackle the “Islamist evil,” grow much stronger if they come together? After all, the conflict in Mali involved military personnel from many African nations, not to mention Europeans, yet the problem of terrorism persisted. In some areas of all three countries, Islamists are “successfully” replacing public authorities and drawing recruits from the local population, and these processes have not stopped after the Alliance was established, nor after the Confederation was formed. Attacks on various facilities and civilians continue—in the first half of 2024, the number of victims of Islamist violence in the three countries exceeded 300, a significant increase compared to the same period in 2023. The AES has taken pride in routing the insurgents from the Malian town of Kidal in November 2023, but it is still unclear how lasting the trio’s victory in this direction has been. Or is all hope now pinned on Russia? The security landscape in the Sahel varies from country to country but remains very complex throughout the region. This is partly because the armed conflicts in the three nations have different origins and are not purely “Islamist.” In fact, disputes between herders and farmers, which all past governments of the trio tried and failed to resolve, pose a major and perhaps even greater threat to stability than the confrontation with the Tuareg. Meanwhile, this matter has not even been taken up by the military, possibly because it stems from socio-economic issues, and solving such problems is far more difficult than political or military ones. In response to instability, the regimes are tightening the screws and becoming more repressive, with opposition figures being arrested. Although references to Western experts may seem out of place in the context of today’s global upheavals, history has shown that increased repressiveness is a common feature of all illegitimate regimes, and governments that came to power through military coups are illegitimate by definition. If the military leaders fail to achieve significant breakthroughs soon in ensuring security, reconciling herders with farmers (whose conflict, exacerbated by Islamists, is only aggravated amid climate change in the Sahel), providing basic services to citizens and more, public discontent will grow and likely lead to more military coups, throwing the future of the Confederation into question. While the trio’s leaders currently enjoy at least the appearance of public support, if they do not hold elections in the next few years, there will be someone in their inner circle tempted to take their place. Especially since the military withdrew their countries from ECOWAS without consulting the public, which now fears the potential introduction of a visa regime between the trio and other West African nations. As of now, the Confederation has yet to prove itself as a solid union to the point where one can predict either positive or negative outcomes for its future. True, various joint projects are being set up—so far only on paper—ranging from food security and water resource management to energy, transport and ICT development, but these plans are financially fragile, and their implementation remains a distant goal. The three nations still use the CFA franc, with France controlling most of their foreign currency assets. The AES’s activities are apparently supposed to be funded through “membership fees,” but this has always been a major stumbling block. For ECOWAS, for example, the timely payment of dues has been intractable throughout the 50 years of its existence. For landlocked Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, the smooth functioning of logistics corridors for receiving goods from other continents is critical. This brings into focus the need to form a customs union and restore “working” relations with neighboring states—Benin and Côte d’Ivoire—which have recently soured, particularly due to plans to establish U.S. military bases in these countries. The Sahel is rich in natural resources—uranium, gold, iron ore, lithium, tin, copper, zinc, manganese, limestone, phosphates, marble, salt, gypsum and oil—but will the trio manage to extract them on their own (though jointly) in commercial quantities to gain economic sovereignty, not just political one? Or all hopes are again pinned on Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and other non-Western nations? And if so, is “sovereignty” the right word here? Of course, “dependence” on Russia, for example, would differ from neocolonialism by ensuring “fairness” and “equality between partners,” as evidenced by recent contacts between Moscow and the trio. The factor of ECOWAS The original mission of ECOWAS, established in 1975, was to achieve economic integration of the countries in West Africa, which involved establishing free trade zones, facilitating the free movement of labor, goods and capital across national borders, introducing a common currency—the eco—as well as improving and expanding regional infrastructure such as highways, railroads, seaports, airports, gas and oil pipelines, and more. There were also plans for joint energy projects and the development of shared communication, banking and customs systems, among others. In 1990, a trade liberalization scheme was formally adopted, which entailed gradual elimination of customs duties, and, indeed, by 2001, duties on raw materials and semi-finished products had been abolished, a common customs nomenclature was compiled, and free movement of labor was achieved. However, even at that time, more effective regional integration was hindered by the participation of certain West African nations in other groupings. In 1994, the French-speaking countries of the region (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo) along with Portuguese-speaking Guinea-Bissau, founded the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), where a duty-free trade regime has been in place since 1996, excluding only agricultural products and aviation equipment. The members of this union—now except for the Sahel trio—have consistently resisted deeper economic integration within ECOWAS, largely because of their alignment in all spheres of life with France, which continues to provide them with substantial financial and political-military support as the former colonial power. Moreover, the nations dominating WAEMU—Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal—are reluctant to see Nigeria as a regional leader. But these are subjective reasons for the slowdown in integration. Meanwhile, there are also several objective reasons why virtually no economic project within ECOWAS has been brought to fruition. ECOWAS was founded as an economic community and operated in an environment where most countries in the region had extremely low levels of economic development, the export commodity structure was monocultural and largely uniform, and the member states’ leaders had noticeable political disagreements. These and other divisive factors meant that integration processes were often more symbolic than practical and that the impact of free trade zones was weak. Civil wars and political conflicts—which erupted in individual countries time and again but had a negative effect both on the security of the region as a whole and on integration processes—made it inevitable that ECOWAS would gradually shift its focus from economic issues to political-military ones, especially since one of the Community’s founding documents, the 1978 Protocol on Non-Aggression, stated that economic integration could only be achieved in an atmosphere of peace and mutual understanding among member states. ECOWAS has an extensive sanctions toolkit, which is used against its member states in the event of their “disobedience.” The regional bloc imposed extremely tough sanctions on Mali and Niger in the early 2020s. In Niger, for example, the prices of rice and sorghum rose by over 16%, wheat and maize by 12%, millet by 6.4% and meat by 5.2% after the sanctions were imposed. Moreover, a $400 million deal to export crude oil from Niger to China via a pipeline linking the Agadem field to Benin’s port was delayed and put at risk. Even after ECOWAS lifted its sanctions, Benin chose not to reopen its land border (apparently under the influence of Paris), which further strained relations between the two nations. In all fairness, it should be noted that ECOWAS generally opts for diplomatic means to resolve various disputes, including those resulting from military coups, so the imposition of sanctions against some of the continent’s poorest countries and their expulsion from the organization were extraordinary precedents. While it may be tempting to see such actions as evidence of the Community’s “noble” intentions to uphold a principled stance on illegal changes of power, there was clearly some external influence in the cases of Mali and later Niger (Burkina Faso was not sanctioned). France relies on uranium supplies, with Niger accounting for 20% of total imports, so the Elysee’s desire to “teach the Sahel states a lesson” is quite “understandable.” Especially since Nigerien authorities in the summer of 2024 revoked the licenses of France’s Orano and Canada’s GoviEx to exploit uranium deposits. The 2001 ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance provided for the imposition of sanctions, including suspension of loans, discontinuation of aid program funding and more, if member states fail to comply with their commitments. However, in January 2022, after Bamako announced its decision to extend the transition period by five years, citing internal political instability, ECOWAS not only suspended Mali’s membership in the organization, but also imposed diplomatic, economic and trade sanctions against this country. These included freezing Mali’s assets in the central banks of the Community’s member states, closing land and air borders and imposing an export ban on all goods (with the exception of materials for the control of COVID-19, oil products and electricity), which dealt a heavy blow to the economy of this landlocked nation that imports 70% of its food and depends on humanitarian aid supplies. Some of the sanctions were lifted only in July 2022, a month after the Goïta government agreed to a 24-month transition period. Niger, which saw a military coup on July 30, 2023 that ousted civilian President Mohamed Bazoum, faced sanctions in February 2024. As part of these restrictions, land and air borders between Niger and other ECOWAS member states were closed, accounts of Niger’s state-owned enterprises in the ECOWAS Central Bank were frozen and financial assistance was suspended. Immediately after the developments in July, ECOWAS issued an ultimatum, giving the coup leaders a one-week deadline to reinstate deposed President Bazoum and threatening to use force. However, military intervention never materialized, although the ECOWAS Standby Force was activated for potential deployment in Niger. The very fact that ECOWAS could issue such a threat to one of its members undoubtedly alarmed the leaders of the three nations (and others), who are closely connected in various ways. As a result, their trust in the bloc was shattered, which led them to take further action—quit the association and form new alliances. They also believed that ECOWAS not only failed to help them in combating Islamic extremism, but instead weakened their positions by imposing sanctions. Indeed, ECOWAS, which in the 1990s and 2010s sought to diversify its economic ties and political contacts with the outside world, has in recent years adopted a pro-Western stance on many international issues, which is not surprising since the direction of any organization is largely shaped by the views of its leaders and sponsors. Regardless of who holds the rotating one-year ECOWAS chairmanship, Nigeria has always played first fiddle in the bloc and will continue to do so for a long time, as it shoulders nearly half of the Community’s expenses, including most of the funding for its peacekeeping operations. As the saying goes, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” Nigeria’s current president, Bola Tinubu, who also chairs ECOWAS, spent nearly a decade studying, working and living in the United States. From the moment he came to power in 2023, he has been determined to cultivate ties with the West, primarily with the U.S. and the UK, but also with France. The position of Nigeria and ECOWAS toward the trio is a vivid testimony to the enduring significance of the “role of the individual in history”: a country that had maintained friendly relations with Russia for decades is now gradually distancing itself from it and shifting its foreign policy orientation. For better or worse, after the coup in Niger and a harsher response from ECOWAS compared to the events in Mali and Burkina Faso, relations between the trio and the Community broke down, with Bamako and Ouagadougou expressing their readiness to leave the organization. As a result, on January 28, 2024, despite the Community’s decision to lift sanctions against Niamey, the governments of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS, driving the process of regional disintegration further. Shortly before that, the Sahel trio had one after another pulled out of the G5 Sahel—Mali in the spring of 2022, Burkina Faso and Niger in November 2023—leading to its collapse (the G5S had also included Mauritania and Chad). After the Confederation was founded, ECOWAS signaled its willingness to negotiate the possible return of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to the Community, especially since it had not received any formal notice of their departure, even though the proper procedure requires member states wishing to leave the bloc to provide one year's notice. The three countries made their announcement in January 2024, which should have given the ECOWAS a chance to try to convince them to reconsider their decision until January 2025, but the trio ignored the procedural rules and refused to continue fulfilling their obligations to ECOWAS. It seems that ECOWAS leaders have not yet come to understand that the trio is fighting not only for survival in the face of the Islamist threat, but also for an overhaul of trade and economic patterns, which subject underdeveloped nations to severe exploitation by developed powers. The Republic of the Niger, for example, is unhappy that despite being the world’s fourth largest producer of uranium and lighting up a third of France, 80% of its population has no electricity. So Niger has had to seek help from Nigeria, which, incidentally, cut off electricity supply after the July 2023 coup. In response to the establishment of the Confederation, the head of one of the Community’s bodies, the ECOWAS Commission, Omar Alieu Touray, said the three countries risked “diplomatic and political isolation,” the loss of millions of euros in investments and the possible introduction of visa requirements for their citizens wishing to travel to ECOWAS member states. Touray also warned that in addition to the numerous threats to peace and security along with economic challenges, there was also a risk of disintegration of the region, as ECOWAS on the one hand and the AES on the other become increasingly entangled in the conflict between non-African powers. As France and the U.S. are strengthening military ties with some ECOWAS countries (notably Côte d’Ivoire), the three AES members have established military relations with Russia after expelling Western troops. But is the rift between the AES and ECOWAS truly so noticeable? For example, on July 18, 2024, a delegation from the ECOWAS Water Resources Management Centre visited Burkina Faso to mark the 49th anniversary of the Water Museum’s founding. Since many countries in the region, including key players like Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, stand to lose economically from strained relations with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which are important trade partners, it seems that efforts to bring these “prodigal children” back into the Community’s fold will continue until they result in either a positive or negative outcome. There have been speculations about the possible withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger from WAEMU, which also imposed sanctions against these nations. However, since the trio has not yet developed the banking and financial infrastructure necessary for an independent system and cannot quickly ditch the CFA franc, which is used by WAEMU member states, their stance toward this currency union remains neutral. The founding of the Confederation raises questions—not least about the future of regional cooperation in West Africa. As Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have decided to chart their own course, ECOWAS’s role and policies are likely to change, although it is still unclear in what direction. There is also concern among the African public that the AES may attract into “their ranks” other countries grappling with similar issues and disillusioned with the regional bloc. For example, the idea of closing French military bases in Senegal has already been floated. Developing relations with Russia and other non-Western nations Russia has become a new strategic ally for the Sahel nations in their fight against Islamists, who are active across the three countries. Supported by the Russian military, Mali’s army has managed, as noted above, to retake the northeastern town of Kidal from insurgents in November 2023. Since April 2024, a mechanism for coordination between the militaries has been in the works, and operations are underway to divide the territory under Islamist control, which stretches from eastern Mali through northern Burkina Faso to Niger. Trade and economic cooperation are also expanding: since September 2023, several Russian private and state-owned companies have signed agreements with the AES countries in areas such as mining, industrial construction and others. While Russia focuses primarily on food security (Moscow shipped 50,000 tonnes of free grain to the Sahel in 2023) and developing the digital economy, China and Turkey are making inroads into energy production and mining precious and rare-earth metals. Moreover, Niger’s agreement to bring the extraction of these resources under the Confederation’s control reflects the trio’s willingness for deeper cooperation with Beijing and Ankara.***Without a doubt, the decision of the three nations to exit ECOWAS and form the Confederation demonstrates their readiness to strengthen their sovereignty, yet they did so amid resentment over sanctions and euphoria from their own assertiveness and growing ties with Russia. These steps cannot but deserve respect, especially against the backdrop of the turbulent geopolitical situation around the world and widespread, and largely valid, discussions that major European powers, including France, are losing their autonomy in foreign policy issues. Announcing the establishment of an integration project is one thing; strengthening it and making use of the benefits of cooperation is quite another. A telling example is ECOWAS, which has not become a truly effective economic or political community in the fifty years of its existence and now is even starting to fall apart. The problem for the AES is that “strengthening sovereignty” in its member states will take place in the context of weak economies, further strained by wars and conflicts, and lingering reliance on various forms of external aid, a habit that will take time to break. At the same time, dismantling the long-standing patterns of cooperation with the West, particularly with the former colonizer, cannot be done overnight. French enterprises and specialists—engineers, doctors, teachers, oil workers and others—are still working in the three countries; many families are linked to France through relatives living and children studying and working there; political, business and creative elites own real estate in France. In other words, it is too early to speak of a complete break with the former colonial ruler, although, of course, the three regimes see the Confederation as an opportunity to distance themselves from the legacy of French colonialism and the Françafrique policy. Ibrahim Traoré, for example, spoke very strongly against France’s presence in Africa at the Niamey summit. But speeches alone cannot bring about real change. In the context of its “return” to Africa, Russia appears determined—quite justifiably so—to support the AES in many, if not all, of its endeavors, but their outcomes will largely depend on the consistency and persistence of the military leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in defending their current ideals. It seems that relations between the members of the Confederation of Sahel States and Russia will deepen, especially since the AES sent a letter to the UN Security Council President in August 2024 condemning Ukraine (which could not but be welcomed by Moscow) for supporting terrorism in the Sahel and demanded that the Security Council prevent Kiev’s subversive actions in Africa. This primarily refers to the Islamist attack on a convoy of Russian and Malian soldiers in northern Mali, in which Ukrainian militants were confirmed to have participated by Ukraine itself. As a result, Bamako and Niamey broke off diplomatic relations with Kiev, and on August 7, 2024, Mali and Niger petitioned the Security Council to investigate Ukraine’s support for rebel groups in the Sahel. As the leaders of the three nations affirmed in their joint statement at the Niamey summit, they “have taken full responsibility before history.” However, only time will tell what the results of these actions—the withdrawal from ECOWAS and the creation of the AES—will be. In any case, the process of polarization in Africa between pro-Western nations and alliances on the one hand, and those trying to escape neocolonial dependence on the other, has already started and seems to have become irreversible. 1. Filippov V.R. African Policy of French President E. Macron: Chronicle of Actions and Evolution of Ideas. M.: IAS RAS, 2023.

한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском There must be a reconciliation between the human rights agenda and current humanitarian realities. In Gaza, the daily struggle is frightening, and there appears no end or peace plan in sight.  As the Gaza conflict enters its second year, the situation in the Middle East is taking an alarming turn. Having already escalated tensions by carrying out a series of high-profile assassinations, including Hassan Nasrallah, head of Hezbollah, and its top leadership, as well as Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran on 31 July during his visit for President Masaoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration, Israel has now launched a ground incursion into Lebanon, further intensifying its conflict with Iran. As of 30 September, 42,337 Palestinians have lost the lives. This is compared to just 1,540 Israelis. Put differently, that number is 27 Palestinian killed for each Israeli since 7 October 2023. Although Israelis claim that a portion of Palestinians killed are Hamas fighters. On 18 September 2024, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution (124 nations in favour, 14 against, and 43 abstentions) demanding Israel end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories within 12 months. This resolution builds upon the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion outlining the illegality of Israel’s ongoing settlements in the Westbank, and called on all nations to refrain from acknowledging legitimacy of this protracted occupation. The UNGA’s call underscores the international community’s growing impatience with the ongoing conflict. Yet, as diplomatic pressures mount, the human cost of this prolonged strife remains devastatingly high. Glaring double standards and changing dynamics of global diplomacy  In the one year since the 7 October massacre, the conflict has taken a devastating toll on Palestinian civilians including nearly 16,765 children fatalities. Every hour, 15 people are killed, six of whom are children, while 35 are injured. This staggering figure contrasts sharply with the Ukraine War, which has seen far fewer civilian casualties with 1,551 children killed in more than two years. In addition to civilians, 210 aid workers have been killed, surpassing the annual toll of aid worker fatalities in any other past conflict in last 20 years, including the Ukraine-Russia conflict where 50 aid workers have died. More than 125 journalists have been killed in Gaza, compared to only 11 journalists who have died reporting the Ukraine war. This stark disparity underscores the disproportionality of rights violations in the Gaza conflict. While the US and its allies have been strongly critical of Russia, their criticism of Israel has been minimal in spite of the much larger scale of civilian casualties. While thousands of Palestinians continue to die in Gaza, and now with a ground war raging in Lebanon, the West has imposed limited sanctions against only a few Israeli settlers. For instance, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, while strongly condemning Russia for waging a “ruthless war,” remained mostly muted on Israel’s atrocities, leading EU staffers to criticize her “uncontrolled” support for Israel.  These double standards have led to protests from San Francisco to Sydney, speaking out against atrocities committed in the name of “self-defence.” The Gaza war has been changing the dynamics of international diplomacy as a growing number of countries have taken steps to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. As of June 2024, 146 of 193 UN member states have made this step, including several European nations like Norway, Poland, Iceland, and Romania. Spanish and Irish governments are leading voices in Europe, pushing for a joint recognition of Palestine, signalling a strengthening of support for a Palestinian state in the diplomatic landscape surrounding the conflict What lies ahead The path towards a just resolution remains elusive, and the questions raised demand a re-examination of the moral and ethical foundations that underpin global order. The fate of thousands of Palestinians hangs in the balance and the conflict shows no signs of abating. The escalation of tensions with Hezbollah and Iran complicates the situation, threatening to engulf the entire region in a wider conflict. The international community must act now, and decisively, to prevent further loss of lives and work towards a lasting peace in the region. Correcting the gross injustice to innocent civilians in Palestine and addressing the Israel-Gaza conflict starts with recognising humanity in equal measures as well as rights of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security side by side. It involves implementation of international law, upholding human rights, and a concerted effort to address root causes of the conflict, such as the displacement of Palestinians from their abode more than seven decades ago. While killing of any innocent civilians, including Israelis by Hamas, is not acceptable, what is also equally true is that when generations of Palestinians are born and grow up without a state and a sense of national identity, there is always a risk that frustration growing over decades can get out of control. The 18 September UNGA resolution demands that Israel return land in the West Bank and other “immovable property,” as well as all assets seized since the occupation began in 1967, and all cultural property and assets taken from Palestinians. It calls for Israel to allow all Palestinians displaced during the occupation to return to their place of origin and make reparation for the damage caused by its occupation. It urges UN member states to refrain from recognising Israel’s presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as lawful, preventing engagement in activities that support the occupation, ceasing imports of products from Israeli settlements, and implementing sanctions against entities involved in maintaining Israel’s unlawful presence. Unless some of the major players in the West, which includes countries like US, UK, Germany, and France, apply principles of rights and justice consistently, any effort will continue to remain infructuous. Advocating human rights and equality while turning a blind eye to atrocities does not work in the age of social media and digital platforms where the truth is more readily accessible and more difficult to suppress. The Gaza conflict is a wake-up call for the world, which has been for far too long oblivious to humanitarian crises. The fact that the state of Israel emerged from ruins of the untold sufferings caused to by the Nazis is a testament that justice prevailed. Today the Jewish peoples have a modern, prosperous, and democratic state in Israel. Hence, it is rather an irony that one of the educated and cultured populations of Middle East, the Palestinians, today are on the receiving end of human rights violation by a nation whose people went through one of the worst atrocities committed in the last century.

한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском A review of the African strategy of major powers considering the continent's growing global importance in economic, demographic, and even political terms. A few days ago, the United Nations General Assembly approved the so-called “Pact for the Future”, an action that the organization's Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, described as "a historic moment" because it will allow "a step forward towards a more effective and sustainable networked multilateralism”. In the corridors of the United Nations, intensive work has been carried out for more than nine months to find the greatest possible consensus, and although the document (a 42-page agreement outlining 56 actions in areas ranging from nuclear, climate, and digital issues to human rights) was not put to a vote in the Assembly, it is known to have the support of most nations in the world, with the exception of Russia and some countries like Belarus, Iran, North Korea, and Eritrea. In Africa, 54 countries rejected Russian amendments aimed at halting the dialogue around this document, something perhaps facilitated by the possibility that a second permanent seat for Africa in the United Nations Security Council could soon be consolidated. The United Nations, and therefore multilateralism, are going through a difficult time: Ukraine, Gaza, or Lebanon bear witness to this. The right to veto in the Security Council turns any serious initiative to stop conflicts around the world into a joke. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called for the reform of the organization to ensure that it becomes truly functional and democratic, in addition to demanding a well-deserved central role for the continent in conflict resolution and modern geopolitics. So, calls for multilateralism are heard everywhere, which basic definition, to put it simply, is when more than three countries agree to move together towards a specific goal, in a context where the world's geopolitics continues to function, breathe, and evolve like any living organism. This is also true in Africa.  China In early September, more than fifty African leaders (a record number) traveled to meet with President Xi Jinping at a new Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the major China-Africa gathering that began in the year 2000. As in each of the previous editions, President Xi announced a significant financial aid package, also outlining the main areas of future cooperation: $51 billion in loans, investments, and assistance for Africa over the next three years. Although this amount surpasses the $40 billion committed in 2021, it remains lower than the $60 billion promised in 2015 and 2018. The Africans also attended the meeting with a message: the trade balance needs to be adjusted. In 2023, Chinese exports to Africa reached $170 billion, while imports from the continent amounted to $100 billion, a significant difference that leaders like South African President Ramaphosa did not hide upon his arrival in Beijing. While China sends manufactured products, agricultural and industrial machinery, as well as vehicles, its imports from Africa are mainly concentrated in raw materials (oil, gas, metals, and minerals). China continues to be involved in initiatives such as the “Belt and Road Initiative”, the modernized Silk Road, and the construction of major infrastructure projects. Russia Russia's presence in Africa is not new. They were already in places like Angola during the Cold War and supported the struggles for independence in the 1960s, but perhaps now their actions on the continent are receiving more attention. With almost the entire world questioning its invasion of Ukraine, Russians find in Africa, especially in the Sahel countries, a point from which to secure mineral and economic resources and, at the same time, create tension and concern for the Europeans. Their support for military junta coups in countries like Mali, Niger, or Burkina Faso, or their influence in regimes like that of the Central African Republic, with a business model that exchanges security for mineral resources, for example, has shaken up the African geopolitical map. Their promises of cooperation in satellite or nuclear technology, still up in the air, captivate governments that have distanced themselves from the West and have chosen them as partners in recent years. The European Union In Europe, in my opinion, we continue struggling to understand how to approach our relationship and alignment with our African friends and neighbors. Individually, each country is making its efforts: Italy with the Mattei Plan, France repositioning itself after withdrawing from the Sahel countries, Denmark with a strong commitment, and now Spain, working on a new strategy of its own that we will learn about very soon. The migration factor and the colonial legacy continue to be issues that influence the relationship with African governments and even with civil societies. In geopolitical terms, Europe has given a name to its aspirations of influence: the Global Gateway. The undertaking is so vast and its objectives so ambitious that it deserves one, or even several, separate articles. Not only do I promise this, but I also share that, from Casa África, we will soon bring its representatives to the Canary Islands to explain what the Global Gateway entails, what funds it has, and how we, from the Archipelago, can act as a bridge with them. United States The U.S. elections are approaching, but before leaving office, Joe Biden will visit Africa (specifically Angola) for the first time in his term. This is a clear gesture towards the continent, which at least partially makes up for the fact that the previous president, Donald Trump, not only never visited it even once, but also left behind that infamous phrase caught by an open microphone in which he referred to African countries as “shitholes”. Faced with the overwhelming Chinese presence and the concerning Russian influence in the Sahel, many voices in the United States have called for a genuine diplomatic and economic effort on the continent. The choice of Angola is not trivial: the Americans are heavily invested in a strategic project crucial for the geopolitics of energy, the Lobito Corridor, a railway line that will connect the Angolan port of Lobito (on the Atlantic) with the city of Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The goal: the transit of strategic minerals for the North American and European markets, which is key to reducing dependence on China for the so-called critical minerals (lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, manganese, or rare earth elements). Türkiye For a few years now, Türkiye has had a very clear objective of increasing its presence and influence in Africa. In the last two decades, Türkiye has nearly quadrupled the number of its embassies in Africa: from 12 in 2002 to 44 in 2022. Its flag carrier, Turkish Airlines, connects Istanbul with 62 African destinations. At the same time, it has achieved diplomatic reciprocity: 38 African countries have established embassies in Ankara. All of this is reflected in trade volumes, which increased from $5.4 billion in 2003 to over $41 billion in 2022 (although they dropped slightly to $37 billion in 2023). For example, in 2011, President Erdogan was the first international leader to dare to set foot in Somalia in 20 years. Now, Türkiye has a military base in Mogadishu and oil and gas exploitation agreements. It is also the fourth-largest arms supplier to sub-Saharan Africa: helicopters and, above all, the famous Bayraktar drones have been sold to many African countries. And, finally, the Turks are also making significant strides in infrastructure construction (more than 1,800 projects in the last 20 years, including the modernization of Tanzania's railways, for example). A noteworthy effort, but obviously still far behind the Chinese and Russians. Published in Kiosco Insular, eldiario.es, and Canarias7 on September 27 and 28, 2024.

한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском In this article, I consider how Israel’s justifications for war and rationalization of its conduct align with historical justifications for punitive war and unlicenced warfare. Approaches to forcible punishment in early modern writings in the Western Just War Theory tradition (JWT) relate both to defensive and offensive war. In the early modern period, the use of force for self-defence is a type of inter-state punishment justified by the aim of deterrence and the goal of preserving the state. Offensive war, by contrast, is deemed justified to deter aggressors, pre-emptively, or violators of the natural law, even warranting a rejection of a principle of discrimination between perpetrator and innocents.1 Most of the early modern jurists insisted that a right to inflict punishment was integral to claims of just war. For Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), wars were only justified to vindicate rights, which included wars to defend the common good,2 or interventions by a third party when crimes have been committed against another state. Before him, Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) warned of the danger associated with resort to the principle of punishment because it allowed space for acts of revenge or vengeance masquerading under the pretext of humanitarian protection – a guise that remains a common feature of contemporary international politics.3 Since the Spanish conquest of the Americas in the sixteenth century, settlers have justified their retaliatory actions against indigenous resistance as necessary for their own “self-preservation.” Furthermore, the “doctrine of double effect” provided moral justification, allowing them to consider the killing of innocents acceptable as an effect of achieving a moral objective such as preservation by means of self-defence.4 In exceptional circumstances where the levels of depravity were deemed abhorrent, the punishment of whole communities for violating the laws of nature was justified.5 The right to punish is no longer a regulative principle of international law. It was gradually replaced by principles of collective security, humanitarian intervention, and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. With its focus on preventative war, modern international law has reduced just causes for war (threat or use of force) to essentially two: first, self-defence under United Nations (UN) Charter Chapter VII: Article 51, and second, when authorized by the UN Security Council to maintain international peace and security (Article 39).6 Even though older theories by jurists in the law of nations have been superseded, international law and the JWT are not discordant doctrines. JWT provides the intellectual framework to international humanitarian law (IHL); minimally, for a war to be considered morally just, it must first and foremost be lawful.7 The Western JWT tradition provides two distinct judgments on war premised on the assumption that war can be justified in certain cases (jus ad bellum), while also establishing ethical limits on how war should be conducted (jus in bello).8 It is no wonder that the philosopher Immanuel Kant would describe its theorizers as “sorry comforters” in that they legitimized (and moralized) the intersection between the demands of morality and the pragmatism of foreign policy.  The permissive interpretation of IHL we are witnessing in Gaza since October 2023, as Jessica Whyte aptly describes, by a deliberate starvation policy to depopulate Gaza that also seeks to disavow any intent to do so, reveals Israel (and its allies) as Kant’s “unsorry comforters.”9 The use of starvation as an instrument of war, the imposition of military strategies akin to a scorched earth policy,10 and widespread violence against civilians suggest that Israel is using collective punishment against Palestinians in Gazan.11 This conduct has now led International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan to seek indictments against Israeli (and Hamas) leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Despite the excessive civilian death toll that has stemmed from Israel’s proclaimed self-defensive and genocide-preventive measures, Israeli authorities have remained steadfast in their military goal of irrevocably destroying Hamas’s military capacity rather than eradicating Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Since the 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel by Hamas-led forces, Israel has claimed that its military operations in Gaza are justified in two interrelated ways. First, it is executing its right to self-defence in retaliation for the attack on Israeli citizens, including civilians, by a terrorist organization whose avowed aim is to destroy Israel.12 Secondly, in exercising its right to self-defence, it is engaging in “genocide-prevention” – by destroying the capacity of Hamas and Palestine to perpetrate a “second Holocaust.” At the Hague, Tal Becker, legal advisor to the Israeli Defense Forces, insisted “Israel is in a war of defence against Hamas, not against the Palestinianpeople.”13 In international law, deliberate targeting of citizens is not permissible or condoned. Collateral damage is.14 The extent of the death toll and destruction of civilian infrastructure – hospitals, schools, and mosques, in addition to residential neighbourhoods – suggests, however, that these distinctions have largely been ignored.15 Israel’s deployment of advanced Ai systems has allowed its forces to reshape the acceptance of the technology’s margin of error, including the risks of collateral damage and civilian casualties. This is just one of the ways Israel’s actions distort or pervert JWT criteria, prompting new moral (and legal) questions for advanced warfare, including where to draw the boundaries of existing ethical constraints.16 If we reference those boundaries to modern international law, Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza is punitive because it violates the principle of proportionality. What further confines us to this limited international law framework is the current focus on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Since 7 October, the devastating civilian casualties caused by Israel, along with destructive rhetoric from Israeli leaders, quickly led to accusations of genocide and counter-accusations that Hamas committed genocide on7 October.17 The question is being considered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) thanks to a case brought by the Republic of South Africa. In large measure, the acrimonious global debate about genocide in Gaza is mired in legal technicalities due to the stringent requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (UNGC). Because the question admits only of a yes/no answer, other aspects of the conflict are missed: maybe we are witnessing an attack on civilians that amounts to “more than genocide”?18 Viewed historically, mass state violence against civilians is not an anomaly or exception in the international system as genocide implies: it is intrinsic to the very idea of statehood, and the kind of natural right of self-defence that Israel is invoking is central to the identity of many western states, whose formation is closely tied to imperial and colonial expansion.19 Early modern just war theorists often discussed wars in colonial contexts. Their theories accepted forms of punishment as well as unlicensed warfare in its normative schema, such as retribution, deterrence, restraint, and reform. They constitute a paradigm of punitive warfare.  Whether they realize it or not, commentators today are drawing on this paradigm in relation to Gaza. Edward Luttwak, for instance, arguably endorsed Samuel von Pufendorf’s (1632-1694) call for unrestricted warfare to achieve peace in his controversial 1999 article “Give War a Chance” (despite it being unclear if he has actually read the Saxonian jurist).20 Today he lauds Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza as a military success, while bemoaning the severity of the constraints “that has been placed on Israel’s combat operations” as “a major impediment to its fight.”21 That any action taken against an enemy other is justified finds support among many Israelis, who have no faith in diplomacy and view Israeli security solely in terms of pre-emption, intimidation, and deterrence. They believe in always supporting the military against a relentless and cruel enemy.22 Israel’s war in Gaza is punitive in the sense meant by some of the early modern international jurists. Here I demonstrate how Israel is reviving archaic forms and justifications of state practice that are deeply rooted in the Western tradition of just war and the justification of punitive wars. By revisiting these ideas, my aim is not to furnish Israel with justifications for its war in Gaza from the archive of the law of nature and of nations, but rather to place it within the intellectual history of punitive war. This contextualization is anything but a consolation, for as I conclude, the genocide concept is an outgrowth of this history.  Historicizing the Right to Punitive War  The early modern just war theory discourse of punishment opens up at least two ways to think about Israel’s war as punitive. First, for security reasons, that is for reasons of self-preservation, which also include measures of preventative and non-proportional warfare (defensive punitive wars). Secondly, by constructing Palestinians as “barbarians” (see below), as the quintessential host is humani generis, enemy of humankind, thereby legitimating violence in the name of the state and the jus gentium, that affords them a right to punish “crimes against natural law” (offensive punitive wars). For the Europeans, this particular right opened a way to punishment without injury to the state, and thus cemented amoral pathway for colonial ventures and exploitation. Portraying Hamas as Nazis – the archetypical genocidaires – functions to criminalize Palestinians and allows the Israeli leadership to present them as a persistent genocidal threat.23 Defensive Punitive Wars  Punitive wars were a common feature in JWT during the medieval period. Pope Innocent IV (1195–1254), for instance, used his universal jurisdiction to include the spiritual care of the souls of infidels, which at this time meant principally Muslims, and retained a right to intervene with impunity in their domestic affairs.24 The medieval concept of punitive war emerged from the rejection of the Roman Law principle of self-defence in early Christian theology. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), for instance, contended that killing in self-defence could not align with God’s law because it stemmed from humans’ attachment to their earthly life. Augustine linked punishment with sin and heresy, advocating for persecution and punishment driven by the desire to do good and eradicate evil, thus framing the punishment of heretics as an act of charity. Gregory the Great (540–604) championed this idea, threatening divine retribution against rulers who did not support the clergy’s efforts to suppress and punish barbarians and heretics. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Church had expanded its authority to punish its enemies, ultimately merging just war theory with the concept of holy war.25 The gradual shift from a punitive to a defensive conception of war is expressed in the thought of sixteenth-century theologians, where the two paradigms coexist. Writing in the context of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, for the Salamanca theologian Vitoria every punitive war has a defensive character, and no defensive war is effective without a punitive element.26 Punishment was not grounded in vengeance, or vendetta; it had to fit the crime, which promoted a principle of proportionality.27 Although we have obligations based on our universal common rights, these do not justify waging war on the Indians, whether to punish them for violating natural law or to convert them to Christianity by force for their eternal salvation. The natural rights of the Indians are inviolable, and it would be unjust for the Spaniards to violate these rights with impunity.28 Yet, Vitoria contemplates the possibility of saving innocents by prohibiting and punishing offenders “from practicing any nefarious custom or rite.”29 Vitoria, nevertheless, imposes strict conditions on such humanitarian endeavours, insisting that they must bedriven by “right intention.” Punishing to save innocents from cannibalism is a noble intention, but using it as a pretext for war is unjustifiable. Slaughtering of innocents is not permissible, however, Vitoria does introduce exceptions to this rule in extenuating circumstances that relate to a prince’s necessity to obtain peace and security.30 Unlike Vitoria, the Italian jurist Alberico Gentili (1552–1608) recognized a state’s right to punish as an instrument of self-preservation.31 Sovereigns are justified in using preemptive force to deter threats, prioritizing state preservation even before these threats fully develop. The kind of state’s right to what Dirk Moses has termed “permanent security” is theorized with a remarkable clarity in Gentili’s writing.32 This also implies that general deterrence can be invoked as a justification for punishment that exceeds the balance between the wrongdoer and the enforcer. While Gentili maintains that war(and post-war punishment) should address a broadly defined injury, the concept of deterrence as a proactive measure can be applied even before any act directly impacts the state.33 Both Vitoria and Gentili acknowledged the reformative and retributive aspects of punishment, as well as punishing an offender to prevent future misconduct by the offender or by others,34 implicitly conflating punishment with deterrence. For Gentili, self-defence falls under the “category of expediency,” which is considered an autonomous source of justice and, as such, is less restrictive about the requirements of predicate injury. Grotius, as we will see, insisted on an even more permissive right to punitive war against those who offend against nature. This implies that a sovereign can justifiably wage war against another state for any violations without needing to prove harm or have that harm be “proportionate.” That is, the anticipation of injury, along with the harm already endured, provides a legitimate justification for war.35 Generally, cruelty in war is forbidden, but harsher warfare against uncivilized peoples is permitted, because “with respect to barbarians violence is more potent than kindness.”36 The reasoning that certain wartime circumstances, like self-defence or genocide, justify exceptions to norms of restraint for war and in war (jus ad bellum and jus in bello) extends to the discussion of Israel’s war in and on Gaza. This JWT archetype has been invoked in the Gaza context by the prominent political theorist Michael Walzer.37 His views are significant because his book, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), revived the JWT in academic and public discourse, and he has applied the doctrine to Israel’s past attacks on Gaza, urging the principle of distinction while defending Israel’s right to retaliate against Hamas’s missiles.38 Because of academic reputation and occasional criticisms of Israeli military retaliation with statements (Israel today does not have cause “for revenge against the people ofGaza”39), he is regarded as a prestigious commentator with moral standing. He has now written about the conflict in Gaza since 7 October 2023. Walzer’s scrupulous regard for civilian protection would seem to distance him from the likes of Gentili. However, he allows for extensive civilian destruction in two circumstances.  First, his advocacy for “emergency ethics” (morally) justifying the targeting of civilians during war indicates a continuation of early modern arguments about punitive warfare. Walzer argues that military leaders may dispense with the ordinary moral constraints, including the prohibition against killing non-combatants, when the political community is existentially threatened, which he calls the “supreme emergency.”40 Supreme emergency requires that two conditions be met, namely, first, that the threat be imminent, and second, that it be a kind of radical threat to human lives and values that is beyond ordinary military defeat.41 Supreme emergency pertains to jus in bello because it considers revisions to the rules that guide conduct in war. The historical context for conceptualizing this doctrine is the Allied carpet bombing of German cities in World War II. Nazism represented an existential threat to British national existence, and the Allies were entitled to bomb German civilians until that immediate security threat passed.42  Second, Walzer goes further and argues in terms of permanent security, reflecting the colonial logic of thinkers like Gentili. He now argues even Hamas does not constitute an immediate threat (“supreme emergency”), massive Palestinian civilian casualties can still be justified in terms of Israel’s longer-term security.43 The justification of a military campaign with a shocking civilian casualty count through reasoning in terms of self-preservation is reminiscent of early modern thinkers:  Israel is fighting a war of existential importance, but there was no concrete threat of genocide against the Israeli civilian population. This war is existential in that if Israel does not succeed in securing its borders and deterring future attackers, many citizens would probably leave the country. But at this moment, it is not a supreme emergency. Therefore, the country is bound to the same standards that it adhered to in previous conflicts.44 As of this moment, and according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, Israel is illegally occupying Gaza, and only has the right to enforce immediate security, not permanent security. It can respond to immediate threats but not wage an endless campaign to achieve “absolute victory” to ensure that Gaza “never again” poses a threat. However, Walzer justifies, as Gentili had, an ongoing military campaign that produces a massive civilian casualty count in terms of anticipatory self-preservation (permanent security).45 By arguing for an existential threat exists that satisfies the principles of jus ad bellum, while simultaneously arguing the Israeli state must still satisfy the principles of jus in bello because there is no supreme emergency, Walzer has found a way to justify a war conducted in a manner that results in a massive civilian casualty count.  Walzer’s emphasis on self-preservation as a rationale for jus ad bellum is comparable then to Gentili’s “category of exception,” where the harm suffered does not need to be “proportionate,” also a condition for jus ad bellum, to justify and commit warfare.46 So while Walzer insists that Israel’s response is neither genocidal nor punitive, he clearly believes it to be proportionate: “if there were almost 10,000 Hamas fighters among the30,000 Palestinians killed, it’s not a bad ratio for such a war on urban terrain.”47 In order to maintain his view that the war is being conducted ethically, Walzer appears willing to give the Israeli state the benefit of the doubt. He denies, for example, reports that Israel is bombing Hamas targets after they enter their homes, thereby guaranteeing largescale civilian casualties, especially on women and children.48 Gentili’s JWT exposes Walzer’s appetite for offensive war against Hamas, because of the ambiguity between defensive and offensive war when justified for reasons of permanent security. However, permanent security concerns were not the only grounds for offensive war, including those of a punitive kind.  Offensive Punitive Wars  The issue of whether Europeans had the right to wage war as a means of punishing non-Europeans is a central topic in early modern just war theory discussions. Gentili was adamant that the Spaniards were justified in waging war against the Indians due to their practices of “abominable lewdness even with beasts” and cannibalism. This justification was based on the idea that the Indians, through such actions, had violated the natural and divine laws that form the bonds of union between all people,49 and “it is ordained by nature herself that all sinners should be punished.”50 The issues of European expansion, indigenous rights, moral questions of dignity, safety, self-preservation and humanitarian intervention were manifest in one of the most famous debates of the sixteenth century between the humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1494–1573), and the Dominican Bartholomé de Las Casas (1484–1566), at Valladolid in 1550. Here, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V commanded that all wars of conquest be suspended until a panel of intellectuals convened in the imperial Spanish capital of Valladolid deliberated on the question by what right Spaniards subdue the Amerindians, and subject them topunishment.51  One of the many issues to be resolved was whether the Spanish were justified in punishing the American Indians for their violations of natural law. The contours of Sepúlveda’s argument can be simply stated: Native Americans were barbarians by both habits (e.g. by engaging in human sacrifice) and nature, tainted by their barbarous vices, and by right of nature, people in this state must obey the more civilized and prudent, or be punished for resisting the universal moral order. Designating this supposed natural defect in the capacity for rational thought to the American Indians cemented a strict God sanctioning order of classification. Resistance of this natural order of dominion gave their Spanish overlords grounds for waging just war against them. The American Indians, Sepúlveda insisted, had to be saved from themselves and subjected to their European masters in order to bring them into the fold of Christianity, and to save their souls. His stipulation for just war maintained first, that the American Indians killed innocents among themselves, hailing their salvation as a just enterprise and something to be encouraged. “If anyone doubts,” Sepúlveda contended, “no one who is a real Christian doubts that all men who wander outside the Christian religion die an eternal death.”52 To protect “innocent persons from such injurious acts” would give the Spanish “the right, already granted by God and nature, to wage war against these barbarians to submit them to Spanishrule.”53 And second, that these depraved acts of indecency were sanctioned and systematized by their own public customs and political institutions – a point, which caused Sepúlveda greater concern than individual acts of depravation.54 This institutionalization of evil required nothing less than a regime change and total victory through war and forcible subjection, a method that “is the most expeditious and best suited for accomplishing these ends and securing the salvation of souls.”55 The Spanish duties to humanity were irrefutable, as far as Sepúlveda was concerned, and they were morally obligated to civilize and Christianize the American Indians. It seemed obvious to Sepúlveda that the Indians lacked sufficient reason to be entrusted with their own affairs. The common bond of humanity, established by divinity and the natural law, considers all people as our neighbours, Sepúlveda asserted, “provided we can do so without harm to ourselves.”56 God has given human beings commandments concerning his or her neighbour, and we have a duty to obey such divine laws. If we do not, then we commit heresy.  Sepúlveda grounded this enlargement of just war theory beyond a principle of self-defence. Even if the Indians possessed natural rights (afforded to all humankind by the Natural Law) – to for instance self-defence, property and political autonomy, they had so blatantly misused them that they are now forfeited as a result of their ungodly practices.57 Wars were a necessary mean to combat their resistance in obeying the Natural Law. These crimes were a direct affront to God, and it was incumbent upon the Spanish to avenge, punish and restrain such crimes. Punitive wars such as these were salutary, but nothing to be celebrated.58 Sepúlveda was not concerned, as Las Casas had been, about the collateral damage of punitive wars, exactly because Natural Law permits collective punishment of those who violate its tenets. In fact, there is a slippage between what we might term collateral damage (unfortunate, but legitimate violence) and collective punishment (moral imperative to reform or deter) because the category of “innocent” is suspended. Sepúlveda is expounding the latter:  And the point he [Las Casas] makes about being obliged to refrain from waging a war aimed at punishing the few guilty parties if it cannot be accomplished without a much larger number of innocent people coming to grief is irrelevant. For in a city or community where human sacrifice was performed by public authority, all are guilty, since all approve of the practice.59, As evidenced further below, Israel’s claim that there are no “uninvolved civilians,” and that any casualties among “human shields” are morally the responsibility of Gazans, aligns with Sepúlveda’s reasoning. In a recent Israel Affairs article, the philosopher Per Bauhn adjudicates on the question of moral responsibility for non-combatants’ death in Gaza. He exonerates Israel and attributes all culpability to Hamas. By posing an “unjust danger to the state of Israel”, Bauhn says, “Hamas has created a situation in which Israel is morally justified in waging a war of self-defence that puts Palestinian non-combatants at risk of being accidentally killed.”60 This claim is not only deeply rooted in permanent security reasoning, it also presupposes that moral responsibility is a zero-sum concept. Yet, the Israeli leadership and the IDF are not exempt from moral scrutiny by the culpability attributed to Hamas for the conflict in Gaza, which the two morally distinct judgements of just war theory also implies.  What we have seen so far is that the idea of placing belligerents outside of the moral realm is a central framework for that of extreme emergency exceptions but also for offensive punitive wars. One of the fundamental presuppositions of theorizing about war is the belief that civilization consists in the gradual elimination of force from our relations with others. Thus, to uphold civilization means finding a way of regulating and humanizing armed conflict. However, there are those who do not fight under the auspice of a state; those who fall outside or are deemed to be outside of the civilized world. Laws of war do not apply to them to the same degree as actors within the society of civilized states, and these can be punished. Pirates, barbarians, and non-Europeans all fell within this exclusionary category among many classic international jurists.  Sonja Schilling describes how this narrative logic of deviance is closely associated with punitive war.61 Civilized humanity stands against a brutal, barbaric invader. The loser faces annihilation, and if civilization is defeated, humanity will revert to a dreadful state of constant warfare. The hostis humani generis idea assumes a consistent and unquestioned conflict between civilization and the Other, situated in a marginal area between the empire and a non-white wilderness. Evidenced below, Israeli officials frequently invoke the term wilderness, as an imposing “nature,” meaning it is a space where, due to its inherent characteristics, the state of nature exists.62 The act of claiming ownership achieves something important as it brings land into the legal or civilized domain for the first time.63 From the 1980s onwards, Palestinian violence against Israel was increasingly depicted not as a negotiable territorial dispute, but as a fundamental conflict between civilization and its inherent Other.64 As Schilling remarks “[t]he civil societies of both the United States and Israel are constructed as conceivable institutional enablers of civilization because these countries adhere to the universal and international principles of human rights.”65 Grotius prominently asserted the limitations of recognizing belligerency with whom we cannot hope to build moral relations, maintaining a strict distinction between lawful and unlawful enemies.66 For him “unlawful” enemies ultimately demarcated the boundary of international society, and the lingering problem remained whether they can be transformed into legal combatants recognized and protected by the law of nations. Grotius would – reluctantly – insist that promises and good faith should be kept even with pirates and brigands. Given that both Hamas, as an unlawful enemy (violent non-state actor), and Israel (recognized sovereign state) continue to be impervious to the ethical and legal standards of war, the importance of Grotius’s distinction seems less relevant. Wars against unlawful enemies cannot retain recognition that confers legal validation. Pirates are a particular kind of enemy. Pirates violate the commercial rights of humankind. In defending these commercial rights no declaration of war, for instance, is needed, since these violators have already declared war against all.67 In fact, Grotius writes that determining the “manner” of a war is best done on account of the enemy you are fighting: “they are Enemies, who publicly denounce War against us, or we against them; the rest are but Pirates, or Robbers.”68 Pirates and atheists are outside the moral community. War between “lawful” enemies implies that there is a thin aspect of respect that requires explanation when they are acting coercively against one another (one does not need to like one’s neighbour to have a binding social relationship). We can imagine that if a lawful enemy commits heinous crimes against humanity that warrant punitive action, it would need to be declared and follow the rules of the laws of war as a recognition of that relationship.  The right of punishment was fundamental for Grotius to determine how to enforce rights and duties to regulate relationships between states.69 The right to inflict punishment follows from the right to defend oneself, the right to recover property and the right to exact debt. Grotius specified four just causes of war, self-defence, recovery of property, obtaining what is owed, and the exacting of punishment.70 The first, afforded by natural law, arising “directly and immediately from the Care of our own Preservation.”71The latter was in effect punitive wars to address uncorrected wrongs – a state right he positioned as central to upholding international order and peace. States have permissive rights to punish human beings or peoples who grievously transgress or sin against natural law by engaging in acts of cannibalism, unnecessary killings, inhumanity toward parents, piracy, as well as religious impiety in public.72 Given that Grotius allows a permissive right to punish violations of the natural law, what exactly is the purpose of the punishment? There are a number of possibilities, of course. It could be retribution for committing a moral wrong, or a deterrent to prevent future violations, or indeed, it could be to reform the character of peoples, to force them to see the error of their ways. Grotius’s underlying assertion is that punishment has to have a deterrent effect; and this is where punishment may be considered a moral power. To deter someone from consorting with animals, for example, would be to prevent them from committing amortal sin, and to prevent an indelible stain on their soul.73 Punishment, then, is not exacted for retaliation or vengeance, but rather as precaution.  With his doctrine of a natural right to punish, Grotius recognized that there are some violations of the law of nature which affect us all, and for the sake of humankind should not go unpunished.74 Barbarians, who are more “beasts than men” are to all the world “a Foe,” and “such abominable Crimes do they allow of in their public Decrees, that if any City upon Earth should enjoin, or had enjoined, the like, it ought to have been, by the general Voice of Mankind, lain in ruin.”75 Gentili had pressed this permissibility even further. Not only were wars undertaken for the common interest of humankind and on behalf of others more honourable, upholding fundamental standards of justice for humanity, violators who commit the kind of crimes that legitimises such wars, must be defeated through a form of violence aimed at total destruction.76 The kinds of enemies that warrant this kind of punitive measures, as we have seen, are unjust or unlawful enemies. However, in “solemn wars,” those that are fought against a lawful enemy, Grotius generally cautions moderation in situations of war against women and children:“[W]e must not attempt any Thing which may prove the Destruction of Innocents,” Grotius says, “unless for some extraordinary Reasons, and for the Safety of many.”77 Retaliation, or collective punishment, against a whole people is forbidden, and to pretend that “Enemies are but one entire Body engaged against us” is absurd,78 because disproportionate punitive actions exceeded the need to maintain the peace.Recovering the Pufendorian Perspective on Licence for War  Unlike Grotius, Pufendorf denies that, in times of war, there are any moral jus in bello rules. The end of war is peace, and peace is most effectively achieved by unconstrained vengeance. There is a rich history to consider concerning the relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello – and, as David Boucher shows, we can see how this relationship fluctuates. Since 9/11, the growing emphasis had been on jus ad bellum, and less emphasis on the principles of jus in bello.79 The disastrous consequences of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Israel, the balance seems to have swung the other way towards jus in bello. It is Israel’s conduct of the war that has come under severe scrutiny, not its right to go to war on the basis of a just cause (self-defence).80 For Pufendorf, such jus in bello scrutiny was unnecessary, as he allowed for unrestricted use of force in wars of self-defence.  Wars for Pufendorf could never really be properly punitive. Pufendorf is famous for denying the reality of independent international law, because ultimately law needs an author and an enforcer, and for Pufendorf it is God. International Law is for him the law of nature as applied to states.81 It is the law of nature that regulates the relations among states, and states are regulated by the moral constraints of the natural law. Pufendorf is much more preoccupied by the morality of war, and not its legality. As such, pace the arguments of Sepúlveda and Grotius, there could be no justifiable grounds for reforming the practices of the American Indians.82 Because the force of inflicting “punishment” in the international context does not emanate from a (temporal) authoritative superior, states cannot have the right to punish, but they may, of course, have just cause for war. If a belligerent puts itself outside the protection of the natural law, by for instance being an aggressor –and thereby violating the fundamental law of nature it has placed itself outside of its protection. This opens up a sort of licence for unrestricted war of self-defence. It is, in essence, defence against “unjust” violence. Pufendorf is very clear on the fact that “a state of hostility of itself grants one the license to do another injury without limit.”83  The very violation of the duty of peace against another provokes the licence of any force necessary to bring the war to an end and achieve peace; without this licence, Pufendorf argues, the end of war could never be feasible. Pufendorf conceptualizes states the same way as individuals in the state of nature. To protect one’s own security, Pufendorf prescribes any means necessary that “will best prevail against such a person, who, by the injury done to me, has made it impossible for me to do him an injury, however Imay treat him, until we have come to a new agreement to refrain from injuries in thefuture.”84 According to Pufendorf, the violation of the law of nature releases the victims from the obligation to observe it in relation to the violator. Excess in war is justifiable, and without this permission to go to extremes, the war will never have an end in sight. The aim of force is not to reform the offender by punishing them, but to protect our security, property, and rights. Pufendorf does, however, caution those states who engage in gratuitous violence against the enemy. On prudential grounds restraint should be exercised. One never knows when the table might turn, and the enemy becomes dominant and acts gratuitously towards you. As such, behaving in a manner that is considered inappropriate by other civilized nations can be counterproductive as one’s own reprehensible or cruel acts may be emulated and then used against them. Other reasons to observe the customs of warfare are that they can add to the prestige and honour of a ruler and ultimately it is in the interest of countries to be cooperative and not to cause unnecessary damage to states they may find themselves in alliance with again once the conflict is over, despite the fact that, in a state of war, they have a legal right to do as they please.85 Information: Here is a part called “Israel’s Justification for War against Gazans” – To read the full Article please visit the Original Source under: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2406098?scroll=top&needAccess=true  Conclusion  Andrew Fitzmaurice has convincingly demonstrated how Raphael Lemkin developed the concept of genocide out of a critique of colonialism, thus inverting the Genocide Studies and Settler Colonial Studies preoccupation with the deployment of the genocide concept to explain 500 years of colonialism. This reframing allows Fitzmaurice to ask important questions about how colonialism has impacted the concept of genocide itself.133 “It is a moot point,” Fitzmaurice remarks “whether the word ‘genocide’ can be meaningfully used to describe the horrors of colonization in centuries that preceded the context in which Lemkin coined the term.”134 To comprehend the dispossession and destruction experienced by occupied peoples in the colonies, Lemkin aligns with the tradition of anti-imperial thought, wherein the framework of universal human rights and therefore also genocide emerged in response to issues concerning the status of colonized population. In these concluding remarks, I draw kinship with Fitzmaurice’s thought in positing the notion of genocide as a product of the history of the critique of colonialism that began with Las Casas, one of Lemkin’s heroes. However, I diverge from his emphasis on genocide as a concept emerging from the anti-imperial tradition, instead viewing genocide (as a practice), as an extension of what Benton calls “projects of peace making.” Colonial wars were invariably punitive wars, and genocide is a product of the punitive war theory tradition.  Israel’s arguments for the war in Gaza rely on an indiscriminate use between both defensive and offensive moral justifications for war. Previously, just war was seen as a punishment for an injustice committed by an adversary, with a jurisdictional enlargement of the right to punish that also included violations of natural law without being limited to direct injury. Now our focus on the right to self-defence, which categorizes wars as either “defensive” or “aggressive” to justify them, shows a noticeable absence of the normative application of the right to punish in modern international law.135 However, rather than absence between the older conception of punishment and modern international law and practice, Israel’s military actions in Gaza expose its continuity. The formal disappearance of the principle of the right to punish as an articulated objective of modern international law has not, therefore, meant the disappearance of punitive wars. Instead, punitive measures are often undertaken under a different guise as modern international law continues to implement measures addressing behaviour that violates its norms. Since7 October 2023, we have seen Israel reasserting this right in justification and conduct by measures of collective punitive actions, deterrence, and punishment of the unlawful genocidal enemy other. We have seen a justification for actions that place the responsibility for the immoral act of violating the laws of wars onto the victims, that is Palestinians, of that immoral act. The genocide concept has had a central role to play for this kind of political deceit, not least because of the way that “genocide prevention” that Israel purports its war to be is unavoidably punitive. The problem of caging in punitive action in the language of justification is that it places the argument into a sacrosanct place that causes hesitation in obligatory and legal frameworks meant to prevent it. Calling something justified does not make it so even when something bares the character but not the spirit of an idea. Just war theories have nuance and contingency not simply to be flexible to permissibility, but also the opposite, to redraw what is impermissible. In practice, however, the intent to punish and deter, which is integral to JWT tradition, is hard to distinguish from the intent to destroy, as the punishing and deterring we are witnessing in Gaza, often involves causing significant destruction to many people.  Acknowledgements I am grateful to A. Dirk Moses, David Boucher, Andrew Fitzmaurice, and Matthew C. Murray for making invaluable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Also, to Katia Yesiyeva and Salaam Farhan for their research support. Lastly, to the Fall 23 Saving Strangers FYWS students, whose critical engagement with Walzer and Luttwak in the context of Gaza war prompted me to write this article. It goes without saying that any infelicities are mine alone.  Disclosure Statement  No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).  Notes on Contributor  Camilla Boisen is a senior lecturer in the Writing Program at New York University, Abu Dhabi. She is a historian of political thought, and has published widely on the intellectual history of empire and humanitarian intervention. She is also the co-author of Justice, Merit, and the Political Theory of Academic Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Notes 1 The organising terms “defensive” and “offensive” punitive war is loosely derived from Alexis Blane and Benedict Kingsbury, “Punishment and the ius post bellum,” in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations, ed. Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 241–65. For example, “[p]urely defensive uses of force are permissible to both individuals and states alike; each has the right to forceful self-defence when not the aggressor. However, once the immediate threat abates, only the state has the right to use force for a punitive end, to revenge a wrong that it suffers. […] The right to offensive uses of force belongs solely to the state and can be employed beyond its own borders in defence both of the interests of its citizens and of its own interests as a collectivity” (249).2 Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ed. Richard Tuck, trans. John Morrice et al. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), ii, xx, II, viii.3 Rajan Menon, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).4 A. Dirk Moses, The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 2. For discussion on the doctrine of double effect, see Alison McIntyre, “Doing Away with Double Effect,” Ethics 111, no. 2 (2001): 219–55.5 Natural law was a (perceived) shared framework that yielded ever-revealing truths of natural design to create rules and establish the just and right conduct of individuals and governments. Its content and prescriptions changed, but it was always presented as a set of transfixed immutable laws sanctioned by God.6 Essentially, starting a war without UN Security Council approval is illegal, so states must demonstrate either that they acted in self-defence or had the host government’s consent. In recent decades some states have opted for another permissible justification, claiming that their use of force was implicitly authorized by the Security Council, as seen with some NATO members in Kosovo and the US, UK, and Australia in Iraq or that it was done for humanitarian purposes. See also Alex Bellamy, “The Responsibilities of Victory: ‘Jus Post Bellum’ and the Just War,” Review of International Studies 34, no. 4 (2008): 601–25; Kevin Jon Heller, “The Illegality of ‘Genuine’ Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention,” Journal of International Law 32, no. 2 (2021): 613–47; Jennifer M. Welsh, ed., Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Philip Cunliffe, “The Doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ as a Practice of Political Exceptionalism,” European Journal of International Relations 23, no. 2 (2017): 466–86.7 Mary E. O’Connell, “The Just War Tradition and International Law against War: The Myth of Discordant Doctrines,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 35, no. 2 (2015): 33–51.8 In the classical just war theory, the principles of proportionality and necessity are applied twice: first, in the criteria for deciding to go to war (jus ad bellum), and second, in the rules for how war is conducted (jus in bello). This means the theory demands that both the war as a whole and each specific action within it must be proportionate and necessary. See Jeff McMahan, “Proportionality and Necessity in Jus in Bello,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War, ed. Seth Lazar and Helen Frowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 418–39.9 Jessica Whyte, “A ‘Tragic Humanitarian Crisis’: Israel’s Weaponization of Starvation and the Question of Intent,” Journal of Genocide Research (17 April 2024), https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2024.2339637. On the “foundational myth” of the Geneva Conventions see Boyd van Dijk’s excellent work, Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).10 Eiland quoted in ibid., 14.11 Collective punishment refers to any non-individual punitive measure or sanction imposed on all members of a group for actions they did not commit. Article 33(1) of the Fourth Geneva Convention declares a war crime: “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”12 Commentators have consistently challenged the legality of Israel’s excessive use of force in Gaza. See, for example, Ralph Wilde, “Israel’s War in Gaza is Not a Valid Act of Self-defence in International Law,” Opinio Juris, (9 November 2023), http://opiniojuris.org/2023/11/09/israels-war-in-gaza-is-not-a-valid-act-of-self-defence-in-international-law/. The second ruling of 24 May 2024 by the ICJ that Israel should with immediate effect cease the military offensive in Rafah points now to the danger of excessive force amounting to genocide, and therefore military action should cease. One judge, however, underlined that the court could not ban Israel from taking legitimate action in self-defence.13 “War against Hamas in Gaza is act of self-defence, Israel tells world court,” UN News, 12 January 2024, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/01/1145452.14 The principle of collateral damage forms part of the necessary criteria that has to be met to establish wars legitimacy. According to IHL, civilians cannot be directly targeted, but they may be lawfully killed as collateral damage. Although numbers are classified, militaries used a specific value of the collateral damage estimation (CDE), which gauges the accepted number of civilian casualties for any military action. From an ethical standpoint of how much collateral can be accepted in order to obtain the purpose of a war or military humanitarian intervention is the question. Charles P. IV Trumbull, “Proportionality, Double Effects, and the Innocent Bystander Problem in War,” Stanford Journal of International Law 59, no. 1 (2023): 35–74. Regardless, the principle of collateral damage continues to be morally troubling. See also F. M. Kamm, “Terror and Collateral Damage: Are They Permissible?,” Journal of Ethics 9, nos. 3–4 (2005): 381–401.15 Israeli President Isaac Herzog remarked on 13 October that the entire people of Gaza are responsible for the 7 October attacks as part of a wider phenomenon of modern war where the targeting of civilians is increasingly prevalent. Elyse Semerdjian, “Gazification and Genocide by Attrition in Artsakh/Nagorno Karabakh and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Journal of Genocide Research (17 July 2024): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2024.2377871.16 Bethan McKernan and Harry Davies, “‘The Machine Did it Coldly’: Israel used AI to Identify 37,000 Hamas Targets,” The Guardian, 4 April 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes.17 Raz Segal, for example, is vocal in labelling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. See Raz Segal, “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Jewish Currents Magazine, 13 October 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide.18 A. Dirk Moses, “More than Genocide,” Boston Review, 14 November 2023. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/more-than-genocide/.19 See Moses, The Problems of Genocide.20 Edward N. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Affairs, no. 78 (1999): 36–44.21 Edward N. Luttwak, “Why Israel is Winning in Gaza,” Tablet, 9 February 2024, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-winning-gaza.22 Comments by American-Israeli analyst and cited in Steven Erlanger, “Netanyahu, Defiant, Appears to Have Gone Rogue, Risking a Regional War,” New York Times, 2 August 2024.23 Zoé Samudzi, “‘We are Fighting Nazis’: Genocidal Fashionings of Gaza(ns) After 7 October,” Journal of Genocide Research (18 January 2024): https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2024.2305524.24 F. E. Peters, The Monotheists: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Conflict and Competition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 146; James Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), chaps. 1–2. I have laid out aspects of the early modern theories of punishment in JWT before. See Camilla Boisen and David Boucher, “The medieval and early modern legacy of rights: The rights to punish and to property,” in Medieval Foundations of International Law, ed. William Bain (New York: Routledge, 2017), 148–65.25 Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 24–25.26 Pärtel Piirimäe, “Alberico Gentili’s Doctrine of Defensive War and its Impact on Seventeenth-Century Normative Views” in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire, ed. Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 187–209, 189–93.27 See Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations: A General History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 68; Blane and Kingsbury, “Punishment and the ius post bellum,” 248.28 Francisco Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 219.29 Vitoria, Political Writings, 288. Emphasis in original. The connection between the right of property and Vitoria’s argument concerning saving the innocent is explored in William Bain, “Saving the Innocent, Then and Now: Vitoria, Dominion, and World Order,” History of Political Thought 34 (2013): 588–613.30 A. Dirk Moses, “Empire, Resistance, and Security: International Law and the Transformative Occupation of Palestine,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development 8, no. 2 (2017): 384. See also Vitoria, Political Writings, 324.31 Blane and Kingsbury, “Punishment and the ius post bellum,” 250.32 Moses, The Problems of Genocide.33 Ibid., 251; Alberico Gentili, Three Books on the Law of War, trans. John C. Rolfe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), i, chapter xiv, 62.34 It is worthwhile to consider the underlying metaphysical differences between Vitoria and his protestant successors. As a Thomist, Vitoria was deeply invested in the idea of human sociability, rooted in mutual affection within society, including between different peoples. Consequently, wars of retribution and reprisal conflicted with these core beliefs. In contrast, Grotius, along with other seventeenth-century natural law theorists, adhered to what Kant described as a theory of "unsociable sociability," which underpinned the social contract – a concept unnecessary for Vitoria, who, following Aristotle, believed societies naturally predate the individual. Contrarily, for someone like Grotius, the notion of unsociable sociability was based on the assumption that self-preservation is humanity's primary goal, and this was considered the first law of nature. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that these seventeenth-century natural law writers would allow for a more aggressive pursuit of self-interest than Vitoria, for instance, had endorsed. I thank Andrew Fitzmaurice for bringing this important difference to my attention.35 Blane and Kingsbury, “Punishment and the ius post bellum,” 251–2. See also fn.8 above.36 Gentili, On the Law of War, iii, chap ii, 293.37 Recently also by Per Bauhn, “Just War, Human Shields, and the 2023–24 Gaza War,” Israel Affairs (21 August 2024): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537121.2024.2394289?src = .38 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Boston: Basic Books, 2015); Avishai Margalit and Michael Walzer, “Israel: Civilians & Combatants,” New York Review of Books, 14 May 2009; Michael Walzer, “Israel Must Defeat Hamas, But Also Must Do More to Limit Civilian Deaths,” New Republic, 30 July 2014.39 Michael Walzer, “Justice Demands the Defeat of Hamas, Not Revenge against the Palestinians,” K. Jews, Europe, XXIst Century, 19 October 2023, https://k-larevue.com/en/michael-walzer-justice-demands-the-defeat-of-hamas-not-revenge-against-the-palestinians/.40 Walzer’s doctrine of supreme emergency has met with understandable criticism over the years. Especially Walzer’s moral exercise of it. See for example Alex J. Bellamy, “Supreme Emergencies and the Protection of Non-Combatants in War,” International Affairs 80, no. 5 (2004): 829–50; Robin May Schott, “Just War Theory and the Problem of Evil,” Hypatia 23, no. 2 (2008): 122–40.41 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 251–5.42 Ibid., 253.43 Michael Walzer, “Gaza and the Asymmetry Trap,” Quillette, 1 December 2023, https://quillette.com/2023/12/01/gaza-and-the-asymmetry-trap/.44 Michael Walzer, “What is a Just War,” Zeit Magazine, 17 April 2024, https://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/leben/2024-04/michael-walzer-just-war-israel-gaza-english.45 International Criminal Court, “Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” 9 July 2024, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf.46 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 305.47 Walzer, “What is a Just War.”48 Yuval Abrhaham, “‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza,” 972 Magazine, 30 November 2023, https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/; Yuval Abhraham, “‘Lavender’: The AI Machine Directing Israel’s Bombing Spree in Gaza,” 972 Magazine, 3 April 2024, https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/49 Gentili, On the Law of War, i, chap. xxv, 122–123.50 Ibid., iii, chap. xi, 330.51 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 69.52 Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, “The Defence of the Book, On the Just Reasons for War (Apologia pro libro de iustiis belli causis)” in Sepúlveda on the Spanish Invasion of the Americas: Defending Empire, Debating Las Casas, ed. and trans. Luke Glanville, David Lupher, and Maya Feile Tomes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 191–224, 207.53 Lewis Hanke, All Mankind is One: A Study of the Disputation Between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1550 on the Intellectual and Religious Capacity of the American Indian (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994), 86.54 Sepúlveda, “The Defence,” 204–7.55 Ibid., 213.56 Ibid., 210.57 David Boucher, The Limits of Ethics in International Relations: Natural Law, Natural Rights and Human Rights in Transition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 172; Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1959), 35–42.58 Sepúlveda, “Contained Herein is a Debate or Disputation (Aquí se contiene una disputa o controversia),” Sepúlveda on the Spanish Invasion of the Americas, 225–350, 281.59 Ibid., 283.60 Bauhn, “Just War, Human Shields, and the 23–24 Gaza War,” 3.61 Sonja Schilling, Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence (Hannover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2016), 91.62 Ibid.63 Ibid., 100.64 Ibid., 208.65 Ibid., 200.66 I have laid out some of these ideas before in “Hugo Grotius, Declaration of War, and the International Moral Order,” Grotiana 41 (2020): 282–303. It must be said that Grotius is somewhat ambivalent about punishment of violent non-state actors. He advocates for the eradication of pirates and other actors against humanity, but he is, of course, also famous for his tract defending Jacob van Heemskerck, commander of a fleet of eight vessels belonging to the United Amsterdam Company (and Grotius’ cousin), whose actions in attacking the Portuguese in 1603 were performed without authorization from the Dutch state. Grotius would go on to argue that the seizure of the Portuguese ship Santa Catarina and its cargo were good prize in a just war. See also Randall Lesaffer, “Grotius on Reprisals,” Grotiana 41 (2020): 330–48.67 Hans W. Blom and Mark Somos, “Public-Private Concord through Divided Sovereignty: Reframing Societas for International Law,” Journal of the History of International Law 22 (2020): 565–88.68 Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, iii.ii.i, 1246.69 Piirimäe, “Gentili’s Doctrine of Defensive War,” 202.70 Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ii, xx.71 Ibid., ii, i, 397.72 Ibid., ii, xx, 1021–24;1027–31;1051–52.73 Ibid.74 Straumann, Roman Law in the State of Nature, 215. See also Camilla Boisen, “The Law of Nations and The Common Law of Europe: the Case of Edmund Burke,” in International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century 1776—1914 – From the Public Law of Europe to Global International Law?, ed. Randall Lesaffer and Inge Van Hulle (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 20–44. The idea that wars waged for the purpose of self-preservation, including pre-emptive ones and wars undertaken by third parties against those who disrupted the sociability of the international order was commonplace among early modern thinkers. Specifically, Grotius believed this principle was why the society of nations functioned as a society rather than existing in a state of nature, as Hobbes suggested. Grotius contended that what elevated the law of nations to the status of a legal order, rather than a mere convention, was the readiness of its members to sanction those who posed a threat to others.75 Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, ii, xx, 1024.76 Claire Vergerio, War, States, and International Order: Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 116.77 Ibid., iii, xi, viii, 1439.78 Ibid., xvi, 1452–53.79 David Boucher, “The Just War Tradition and its Modern Legacy: Jus ad bellum and jus in bello,” European Journal of Political Theory 11, no. 2 (2011): 92–111.80 That being said, the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 has many implications for Israel’s claims of a right to self-defense (jus ad bellum). The occupation is per se illegal, and not simply the way it is conducted (jus in bello). Israel cannot claim self-defense when it is committing an ongoing act of aggression through the illegal occupation; moreover, Palestinians have, under international law, a right to resist alien occupation, colonial domination, and racist regimes. See: UNGA resolution 3314 (1974), UNGA resolution 37/43 (1982), and Article 1(4) of API to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. I am grateful to Jinan Bastaki for pointing this out.81 Samuel von Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Eight Books (1672), trans. C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), i.ii.6; ii, iii, 23.82 Ibid., viii, iii, 4–7.83 Ibid., viii, vii, 2.84 Ibid., vi, 7.85 Francesca Iurlaro, The Invention of Custom Natural Law and the Law of Nations, ca. 1550–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 142. It is important not to downplay the significance of natural law by over-focusing on interest and self-preservation as states’ main motivation for agreeing to follow customs. In opposition to Iurlaro, Peter Schröder rightly points to the error in giving too much consideration to interest as a basis for Pufendorf ’s international political thought. Pufendorf thinks that states’ behaviour can be regulated by natural law, the primary concept of which is socialitas. See Peter Schröder, “Sovereignty and Interstate Relations,” in Pufendorf's International Political and Legal Thought, ed. Peter Schröder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 155–74. In same volume, see also Boisen, “Pufendorf ’s Enduring Legacy for International Law,” 251–69.133 Andrew Fitzmaurice, “Anticolonialism in Western Political Thought: The Colonial Origins of the Concept of Genocide,” in Moses, Empire, Colony, Genocide, 55–80.134 Ibid., 74.135 Piirimäe, “Alberico Gentili’s Doctrine of Defensive War,” 189. The modern focus on self-defence, and its implications, is explored in detail in James Turner Johnson, “Then and Now: The Medieval Conception of Just War Versus Recent Portrayals of the Just War Idea,” in Medieval Foundations of International Relations, 117–31.

한국어로 읽기 Leer en español In Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربية Lire en français Читать на русском As the Pacific Islands Forum came to an end, the underlying questions remain: who has a voice and legitimacy to influence the region, and who doesn’t  The Pacific Islands – a grouping largely made up of small island developing states – is in the middle of an increasingly contested strategic space, making regional politics an important, and closely observed, site. At the end of August, Pacific Islands Forum heads of government met in Tonga for the organisation’s annual leaders’ meeting. Along with the Pacific heads of government, other dignitaries were also present, including United Nations Secretary General António Guterres. This is the apex event on the regional calendar, and it came with a crowded agenda, including issues like climate change, transnational crime and health security. But one of the pressing issues facing the Forum is an existential one, as membership debates and geopolitical tussles highlight: the question of who and what the Forum represents. In recent years, divisions within the region have become apparent, including the perceived marginalisation of North Pacific countries in what was initially called the South Pacific Forum. These tensions culminated in the decision by five Micronesian states to leave the Forum in 2021, although this was later reversed. Yet, the final Forum communiqué demonstrates that Pacific leaders are on the same page on many issues, covering agreed outcomes relating to health, education, fisheries and other key issues. Climate change was highlighted as ‘a matter of priority to the Pacific region’ and as an intersecting and broad-ranging issue affecting Pacific states. A new Pacific Policing Initiative – a proposal to create a multinational Pacific police force and invest in subregional policing hubs – was endorsed, although in a nod to some debate surrounding its implementation, leaders emphasised the need for further consultation. Emerging geopolitical frictions  A controversy over the final version of the communiqué, however, highlights enduring divisions in the Forum. In the communiqué initially published online on Friday afternoon, paragraph 66 read that ‘Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China.’ This refers to Taiwan’s established status as a ‘development partner’ of the Forum. After public statements from China’s special envoy for the Pacific Qian Bo criticising this language, the communiqué was taken offline and revised, with the paragraph referencing Taiwan removed. Forum officials blamed the confusion on an administrative error. Three of the 18 full members of the Forum recognise Taiwan: Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu. While the Pacific was once a key focus of Taiwan’s diplomatic strategy, its influence has waned in the region in recent years with moves from Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru to shift recognition to Beijing, prompted by a diplomatic offensive by the People’s Republic of China. In an increasingly contested geopolitical context, Taiwan’s status in regards to the Forum is likely to remain a difficult topic for member countries. The concept of sovereignty has always been relatively flexible in the Forum: founding members include the Cook Islands and Niue, which are countries in free association with New Zealand and are not UN member states. In light of rising strategic competition, issues of membership of the Forum also raise existential questions for its future. In 2016, the French territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia became full Forum members. But their political status does pose interesting questions for the Forum, especially considering the recent riots and ongoing tensions in New Caledonia. In the Forum communiqué, leaders reaffirmed a decision to send a mission to New Caledonia, a move that has been fraught; prior to the meeting, the French Ambassador to the Pacific had asserted that ‘New Caledonia is French territory and it is the [French] State which decides on who enters’. The communiqué also endorsed the applications for associate member status for Guam and American Samoa, two US territories with clear ambitions to accede to full membership status in the future as New Caledonia and French Polynesia have. The concept of sovereignty has always been relatively flexible in the Forum: founding members include the Cook Islands and Niue, which are countries in free association with New Zealand and are not United Nations member states and also do not issue their own passports. Yet, the 2016 decision represented a substantive shift in the principles of Forum membership, one likely to bolster the claims to full membership of other territories. On the one hand, it can be argued that the Forum is becoming more representative in encompassing more Pacific polities and acknowledging the remarkable diversity in political status that exists in the region. On the other, an expanding membership raises questions of the influence of metropolitan powers like France and the US in the Forum. This is an already fraught conversation given the perceived outsized influence of founding member states Australia and New Zealand. Pacific leaders have in the past been outspokenly critical about the role of larger countries in the Forum, given the power differentials and differences in policy on key issues like climate change. France and the US, along with Australia and New Zealand, all have colonial histories – and, for many, an enduring colonial presence – in the region. Given this context, their present and prospective roles in the Forum have been critiqued as preventing the institution from being a truly Pacific space. Pacific leaders like former Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama have in the past been outspokenly critical about the role of larger countries in the Forum, given the power differentials and differences in policy on key issues like climate change. Behind all of these decisions and controversies are fundamental questions: who has a voice in the Forum and who does not; who has the legitimacy to exert influence in the region and who does not. Resolving these issues in a way that strengthens the Forum’s own legitimacy as the primary regional institution is a pressing and existential matter. In the midst of this, what was not on the Forum agenda is also worth considering. Even in the presence of two elected women heads of government – President Hilda Heine of Marshall Islands and Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa of Samoa – and even following last year’s endorsement of a Revitalised Pacific Leaders Gender Equality Declaration, gender equality is absent from the 2024 communiqué.

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском The concept of a multipolar (or polycentric) world order [1] was first coined by Academician Yevgeny Primakov in 1996 [Primakov 1996]. Like everything new, it was not immediately accepted, but ultimately became a significant contribution to both domestic and world theory of international relations, offering a compelling alternative to Western approaches, particularly the one proposed in Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations [Huntington 1993]. It informed the idea of trilateral cooperation between Russia, China and India, implemented by Primakov and later embodied in the BRICS group. By now, the idea of multipolarity has been recognized in global political science, has entered the conceptual framework and the language of international diplomacy and is used in Russia’s doctrinal documents. In 2015, we proposed the scenario of a new bipolarity [2] as one of the possible trajectories for global development. Today, many scholars, both Chinese and American, [3] suggest that China-centric and U.S.-centric poles are emerging. This article discusses the “multipolarity — new bipolarity” dichotomy. Long Global Macro-Transformations World history shows that a new world order typically emerges after the end of a major war (see Table 1). Table 1. International system (world order)    Source: systematized by A.A. Dynkin, IMEMO RAS Europe was usually the “kitchen” where the world order was cooked. Take the last 200 years. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert of Europe emerged and lasted for 100 years. The century-long stability of that system could be explained by the homogeneity of the political organization of its guarantor states. All members of the Concert of Europe were monarchies. World War I produced the Versailles system, which lasted only 20 years. One of the reasons for its short life was the exclusion of the Soviet Union, Germany and China. The Yalta-Potsdam system was formed by the victors in World War II. Its guarantors were the “Big Three” powers—the Soviet Union, the U.S. and the UK—along with France and China. The three defeated powers—Germany, Japan and Italy—were discriminated and disenfranchised. This system existed for 45 years and was initially thought to be polycentric, but quickly degenerated into a bipolar order, and the Cold War commenced. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the system became unipolar, dominated by the West, primarily the U.S. It disregarded Russia’s interests and, from 2018 onward, began discriminating against China as well. February 2022 can be considered the formal date of the unipolar world’s demise. However, today’s predictions suggest it will take at least 10 years before the new post-unipolar system becomes stable. The economic center of gravity is a spatial indicator of the economic strength of states, borrowed from physics. To put it simply, this is a geographical point of equilibrium for GDP, trade and investment flows of different countries. Figure 1 shows a map of how the world’s economic center of gravity shifted for over a thousand years. It appeared in Central Asia, on the territory of the Ghaznavid Empire (modern-day Afghanistan). The center then migrated northwest, while the devastation in post-war Europe forcefully pushed it (within just 10 years) to the West, toward Greenland. Then it turned east again. The sharpest shift, to the southeast, occurred in 2000–2010 and is associated with the rise of China. The economic center of gravity has almost returned to the same meridian but remained more than 2,000 km north of the starting point, which indicates a return to the millennial balance of economic power between the West and the East. Figure 1. “Journey” of the three-dimensional economic center of gravity    Source: Dobbs R., Remes J., Manyika J. et al. Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class. McKinsey Global Institute, 2012. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/urbanization/urban-world-cities-and-the-rise-of-the-consuming-class. Statistic calculations by IMEMO RAS for 60 years of peace (1960–2021) indicate the stability of the center’s latitudinal (horizontal) position. This suggests a relatively consistent proportion of GDP production by the countries in the Global South and Global North, under the economic leadership of the Northern Hemisphere. The shift to the East has also been clearly confirmed. According to our projections up to 2050, the future position of the globe’s center of economic activity will lie on the border of India and China. This method of analysis reveals a high level of inertia in time and geographic monotonicity of changes in the balance of economic power of states. It also shows that wars can drastically disrupt the natural course of events. The center of gravity method can also be applied to the arsenals of strategic and tactical weapons (see Figure 2). For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. had a huge advantage, but then there was a clear pivot to the northeast—the creation of superior nuclear capabilities in the Soviet Union. With the onset of arms control in 1993, a reversing loop emerged, heading southwest. This was followed by a curve to the east with an implied southward inclination, which reflects the growing nuclear stockpiles of India, Pakistan, North Korea, and the rapid buildup of strategic and tactical nuclear forces in China. The military center of gravity follows its economic peer with a lag of 20 years, reflecting the geopolitical ambitions of Asian powers. These interpretations also clearly demonstrate the end of unipolarity and point to the rise of multipolarity. Figure 2. Movement of the nuclear center of gravity Source: calculations by K.V. Bogdanov, Center for International Security at IMEMO RAS, based on the data from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-notebook/. Technology. Politicians tend to be techno-optimists. Barack Obama predicted that 3D printing would transform the entire world. [4] George W. Bush promised that decoding the human genome would revolutionize medicine. [5] All false starts. Economists traditionally measure the rate of technological progress (TP) using the total factor productivity (TFP) index. To put it simply, this is the part of economic growth driven not by an increase in inputs—labor and capital—but rather by improvements in the efficiency of their use. Technological progress means not only the generation of new scientific and technological ideas but also their mass replication. Without economic validation of the impact of wide dissemination of innovations, scientific or technological achievements remain in history as brilliant breakthroughs with only local economic effects, giving rise to journalistic generalizations at best, such as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” or “the sixth techno-economic paradigm.” Statistical metrics rely on data of technologically advanced nations, while catching-up countries have room for growth by approaching the TP frontier, i.e. adopting and improving existing ideas and technologies. Technological leaders spend more resources pushing the TP frontier, while those catching up can accelerate at lower costs, effectively staying in the “wind shadow” of the leaders. The TFP index growth rate has been steadily declining in developed countries for many years, but this has been especially conspicuous since the mid-2000s. Today, the growth is below 1.5% and even 1% per year (see Figure 3). Figure 3. Average annual growth of total factor productivity, % Source: calculations by IMEMO RAS based on the data from the International Productivity Monitor. No. 38, Spring 2020. http://www.csls.ca/ipm/ipm38.asp#:~:text=Martin%20Neil%20Baily%2C%20Barry%20P.%20Bosworth%20and %20Siddhi%20Doshi%0ALessons%20from%20Productivity%20Comparisons%20 of%20Germany%2C%20Japan%2C%20and%20the%20United%20States%C2%A0; Innovative China: New Drivers of Growth. World Bank Group, and the Development Research Center of the State Council, P.R. China. 2019. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1335-1. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/833871568732137448/pdf/Innovative-China-New-Drivers-of-Growth.pdf. A similar pattern of dramatic TFP deceleration was observed in China. The consensus interpretation of these figures is that the main effects of the Third Industrial (i.e., computer) Revolution have largely been exhausted, and no new general-purpose breakthrough technologies (such as electricity, internal combustion engines, or computers and mobile communications) have emerged. However, it seems that the intellectualization of technologies and approaches to project management, as well as informatization, simply do not fit into the traditional factor-based view of progress that was established many years ago. The scale of knowledge is growing, new professions are springing up, the role of emotional intelligence and cognitive functions is increasing. All this dramatically changes the structure of capital assets (see Figure 4). From the beginning of the 21st century and until the 2008 crisis (2000–2007), equipment accounted for over 50% of the increase in capital’s contribution (investment) to output growth, whereas in 2019–2021, almost 63% of this increase was attributable to intellectual property assets. This result of our research suggests a refocusing of technological progress from final products to intellectual technologies, enabling the production of a range of innovative goods and services tailored to highly segmented demand. Figure 4. Transformation of the capital structure in the U.S. private sector Source: Total Factor Productivity for Major Industries—2022. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/prod3_03232023.htm. There are now hopes that the pace of technological progress may accelerate due to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which will spark a new industrial revolution. An indirect sign of its imminence is the sharp rise in the rate of business births and deaths in the U.S. economy in 2020–2022. [6] The spillover of labor from companies that are losing efficiency to corporations with increasing market shares has also accelerated. These are some sort of leading indicators that suggest the structural results of TP are approaching. Similar developments occurred 30 years ago, on the cusp of the computer revolution. The above-mentioned intellectualization of fi ed capital, where trusted AI will be applied, adds credibility to these hopes. In addition, AI is one of the critical areas of technological sovereignty. It is no coincidence that Vladimir Putin described AI as “crosscutting, universal and essentially revolutionary technology.” [7] The Russian President announced the preparation of a new edition of the National AI Development Strategy and a respective decree. I believe that this prioritization is justified. China’s experience in the semiconductor race is a good model to be emulated (see Figure 5). Its distinguishing feature is the focus on companies as drivers of development, with massive, cumulatively growing state support. Figure 5. Focusing on China’s priorities (nanometer chip race) Source: Systematized by I.V. Danilin, IMEMO RAS The U.S. strategy of curbing technological development of Russia (in all areas) and China (in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing and electric cars) leads to stiff competition in high technology, which is fraught with fragmentation, diversification of technical standards, legal norms and rules. And this is another argument in favor of a new bipolarity. Demographic processes. According to UN projections, by the middle of the 21st century, Russia will drop from its current 9th place to 14th in terms of population, while remaining the most populous country in Europe. [8] A more significant problem for Russia is population aging. The proportion of elderly people, who are typically not part of the labor force, is increasing. Japan, Spain and Italy are leading this process today, but neither China nor India will be spared. Nigeria appears to be the only major country where population and the share of young people will continue to grow until the end of the 21st century. As of December 2023, one in 10 people worldwide was aged 65 or over, with health spending taking up 10% of global GDP. [9] In this context, the importance of medical technologies cannot be overstated, as they can extend not only people’s life expectancy but also the duration of their healthy and socially active life, thereby easing labor market pressures. Needs always steer technological progress toward overcoming economic growth constraints tied to the scarcest resource in any given historical period. A serious risk associated with the problem of aging is a slowdown in innovation, since it is people under 40—the age group that will shrink throughout the 21st century—who are the primary drivers and consumers of innovation. So far, this risk has been mitigated by the large youth cohorts in China and India. This is why these two nations are experiencing almost exponential growth in patenting, massive reengineering and, consequently, in middle-class numbers. Demographics give India an edge until around 2060, which is already evident in the growth rates of Indian economy. Combined with the influx of hi-tech investments and the contribution of the Indian diaspora, India has good prospects, making its position crucial to the future architecture of the world order, regardless of how it evolves. The U.S. understands this and has been figuratively “clinging” to this nation for the past 20 years. I believe that the Russian Academy of Sciences should significantly bolster scientific and educational ties with India and its dynamically developing neighbors in Southeast Asia—Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. The anticipated tension in the global market of new generations of innovators aggravates inter-country competition for this scarcest resource. I think that the international reputation of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a powerful tool to attract and retain young people and foster their creative motivation. We should reassert this as we celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Academy of Sciences. Ideology. Dirigisme [10], or statism, is the main trend in both economic theory and economic policy of the West. A pivot to a more state-controlled economy began with the disappointing outcomes of the Washington Consensus, which aimed to guide post-socialist countries from planned to market economies. The 2008–2009 financial crisis cemented the trend toward statism, and the COVID-19 pandemic elevated it to unprecedented proportions. In the U.S., Democrats are among the most vocal proponents of greater government intervention in all spheres of life, but they are not alone. Republicans are also actively advocating industrial policy, repudiation of free trade, as well as strict control over Big Tech, among other measures. The popularity of the so-called cultural Marxism is on the rise. [11] Its origins go back to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School (H. Marcuse, E. Fromm and others). These ideas are moving from the realm of ideological and theoretical confrontations into political activism. For example, the leaders of the BLM movement publicly self-identify as “trained Marxist organizers.” The essence of the strategy inspired by “cultural Marxism” is the rejection of direct political struggle on the barricades, since the proletariat has been “bought off by the bourgeoisie and is no longer capable of anything,” and the ranks of the classic proletariat are rapidly thinning. The direction of social change is set, on the one hand, by intellectuals with personal power and, on the other hand, by marginalized groups seeking to assert their “right to identity.” The strategy of activists who form this paradoxical combination of intellectuals and marginalized individuals is the creeping takeover of the main institutions of power and society by planting “correct” ideas in the mass consciousness. In the U.S., the fighters for political correctness have already hijaked the school system, university campuses, major media outlets and the entertainment industry (Hollywood). Civil servants are forced to take courses in critical race theory, which postulates not only the socially constructed nature of race and the recognition of systemic racism [Delgado, Stefancic 2017: 45] but also a sense of guilt in one part of society toward another. This, in turn, allegedly requires addressing moral and material injustices by organizing public life in line with such an ideology. Similar concepts are being pushed into public discourse as well. It is already dominated by the ideas of radical feminism, cancel culture, anti-systemic racism and postcolonialism, the fight against global warming and the green agenda, which claims to be universal and non-negotiable. As a result, the energy transition is motivated more by ideology than by the comparative market efficiency of energy supplies. Different environmental-political discourses—eco-nationalism, eco-imperialism and green growth—are competing in shaping the green agenda, eroding the attractiveness of the dominant sustainable development model. Another universal weapon in fighting any dissent is political correctness. Large corporations, government agencies and universities are developing and implementing strategies to promote DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) principles, which are nothing but tools of ideological control over employees. Universities are required to fi reports on their compliance with such principles and efforts to promote them, which causes mounting criticism as they violate academic freedom and cultivate ideological conformity. [12] However, ideological censorship has already taken deep root in various spheres of public life, and questioning its compatibility with democracy is deemed politically incorrect. Revising cultural norms has become a cultural norm in and of itself, deepening divisions in modern polarized societies, primarily in the U.S., but also in Old Europe [Semenenko 2023: 27-35]. Another curious phenomenon is associated with the new agenda. In the 20th century, the left championed progress, advocating faster economic growth, rapid technological advancement and better social welfare. Now the ideas of zero or even negative growth and post-growth are popular among them. [Buchs, Koch 2017: 218]. Such ideological narratives exacerbate the question of how to treat the poor countries of the South, but also their own poor: the welfare state for all no longer fit into this agenda. On the contrary, it becomes a selective tool of backing the “right” minorities. This creates a breeding ground for stronger positions of populist forces. Such contradictory internal political processes distort public consciousness as well as domestic and foreign policy decision-making. The new elites are extremely ideologized. The U.S. political system is becoming less effective at regulating the economy. Two rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, have downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from the top mark of AAA. In November 2023, Moody’s lowered its outlook on the U.S. credit rating to “negative” from “stable.” All three agencies agree on the main reason for the downgrade: the growing dysfunctionality of the political system. In foreign policy, the U.S. has withdrawn from 16 major international treaties and agreements on arms control, global trade, climate and the Arctic since the beginning of the century [Dynkin 2020]. In other words, the unipolar world order with its unbridled appetite for expansion has brought the world into a zone of extra-high risks. And the paradigms that are dominant in the West have proven incompatible with either Russian or Chinese value-oriented political projects. Therefore, the ideological sphere will inevitably see increased confrontation, marking another step toward bipolarity. IMEMO RAS researchers have repeatedly warned about the West’s miscalculated strategic hopes: 1) that Russia would face an economic catastrophe because of an unprecedented sanctions war in modern history; 2) that the unipolar world order would remain unchallenged; 3) that a global blockade of Russia’s export-oriented economy would be feasible. And we were not the only ones who made these warnings. In response, we only heard propagandistic clichés like “a gas station masquerading as a country,” “a regional power” and “Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters”. This kind of “expertise” led the Washington establishment to believe that Russia is a “declining power” whose strategic interests could be safely neglected. This “strategic lunacy” is a consequence of a universalist mindset—a product of the West’s political experience and culture, which tends to elevate Anglo-Saxon and European historical tradition to absolutes—and of a failure to understand the shifts in the balance of power in the 21st century. Today, Russia is the world’s fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP), while the top fi e global economic powers include three BRICS nations and none from the blooming “garden” of Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief who has recently been fired. Now a new narrative has been launched into the propaganda orbit: “Russia is about to attack Eastern Europe.” The logical gap between the image of a declining power and that of an “aggressive bear” is conveniently ignored. This primitive, one-dimensional perception of complex non-linear processes can only lead to disappointment—just as it did when the West lulled itself into believing that Chinese reforms would eventually lead to political pluralism. As a result, the West has an inexhaustible stream of surprises. It appears that their experts are increasingly out of touch with Russian (and any other non-Western) realities. Figuratively speaking, they are staring into a distorting rearview mirror constructed by their own rhetoric and propaganda. But the main real surprise was the fantastic resilience of the Russian economy. I dare say that no other economy in the world, not even China’s, could withstand such aggressive pressure. The high resistance of the Russian economy to external shocks can be explained by three fundamental reasons. First, it is the result of difficult, sometimes agonizing institutional and structural reforms. These efforts have ultimately produced a self-sufficient, adaptive and highly diversified market economy. Second, the crisis of 2022 was the fifth (!) in the history of post-Soviet Russia. The government, federal regulators and the Bank of Russia have accumulated hard-earned professional experience in crisis management and counter-cyclical strategies. The same can be said about business. Our economic entities have demonstrated time and again that there are always more effective solutions than there are problems. Finally, the West miscalculated its ability to isolate our economy. The dual containment of Russia and China, in fact, only strengthens ties between the BRICS member states. Transformations of the 2020s. The first half of the 2020s has fi y buried what was once known as “European security.” It is impossible to glue this “broken cup” back together without Russia. The unwillingness of the Ukrainian side and the West to stop the armed conflict at its very beginning, the dangerous escalation, NATO’s constant violation of its own “red lines” and the accession of Sweden and Finland to the North Atlantic Alliance are all symptoms of the European security system transforming into a transatlantic one. Meanwhile, the Eurasian security system is taking shape. The outcomes of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China hint that the “political East” is starting to form, if not as an alternative to the long-standing “political West,” then at least as an equal partner. Without considering its interests, any debate about “rules-based” global security will be mere fantasy. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Moscow after his recent reelection is in the same vein. Of course, geography cannot be changed, and Russia has been and will remain a European power. However, it is also the geographic center of Eurasia, providing the infrastructure backbone for the Eurasian partnership—from the Northern Sea Route and up to the Trans-Siberian Railway, Baikal–Amur Mainline, Trans-Asian Highway and cross-continental pipelines. The “post-Ukrainian” world seems to be moving toward a new, indivisible Eurasian security architecture, relying on existing institutions: the Union State, CSTO, EAEU, CIS, BRICS, SCO and ASEAN. Minsk has put forward an initiative to develop a Eurasian Charter for Diversity and Multipolarity—a strategic vision for a new system of international relations to replace the “rules-based” world order. An important event of 2024 in this context is the expansion of the BRICS club (see Figure 6). Its combined economic power could potentially reach $67 trillion, surpassing the total GDP of the G7 countries. Figure 6. Economic potential of BRICS countries Source: calculations by A.A. Dynkin, IMEMO RAS, based on the data from the IMF, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Steel Association, Energy Transition Institute, Statistical Review of World Energy 2023, International Energy Agency. And there are still 28 more countries on the “waiting list”. In several important markets such as metals, automotive industry, oil and mineral fertilizers, BRICS already matches or exceeds the potential of the G7 nations. Russia, which took over the BRICS rotating presidency in 2024, faces the task of energizing the harmonized economic and technological policies of the members. This approach is the institutional cornerstone of the future polycentric world. What will the coming world order look like? It is difficult to say which of the two trends—bipolarity or polycentrism—will prevail in the end. It is more likely that they will coexist: for example, rigid bipolarity in the Global North and polycentrism in the Global South. Signs of military, economic and technological bipolarity are already visible in the North. Interestingly, New Delhi tends to categorize China as a country of the North [Jaishankar 2020: 240]. This viewpoint has substance, as China is far ahead of other countries of the Global South in terms of GDP per capita ($12,541). For comparison, India’s GDP per capita is $2,612. [13] The decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies has not affected trade flows yet, but only technology and investment. In 2023, China saw a reversal of foreign direct investment inflows, with funds previously invested being withdrawn. Negative trends took hold, and the outflow approached negative $1.5 trillion (see Figure 7). Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific macro-region is gaining greater internal dynamics, unlike Europe or North America. Figure 7. U.S.–China Economic Decoupling Source: UN Comtrade Database. https://comtradeplus.un.org/; State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) of the People’s Republic of China. https://www.safe.gov.cn/en/. Meanwhile, the trend toward political polycentricity persists. For example, New Delhi and Ankara were initially poles apart on the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. This is also the dawning of post-unipolarity, where the new centers of power are increasingly guided by their own interests in decision-making rather than by any “rules” or advice from Washington, Beijing or Moscow. It would be unrealistic to expect that the future world order will be free of conflict. The world will retain its diversity, with different potentials of countries and their competition. It is crucial that, despite their differences, the interests of larger and smaller nations are respected, and problems are solved through constructive dialogue. Russia was the first to challenge the notorious unipolar world order. Today we can state that most countries in the Global South have responded to this challenge and refused to subscribe to the Western interpretation of the conflict in Ukraine . The future world order is taking shape right before our eyes. I am sure that a multipolar world is preferable for Russia as a developed, self-sufficient and sovereign nation. But this world also requires a new system of global governance, development and strengthening of its institutions, such as BRICS, G20, SCO and EAEU. For instance, the EAEU member states (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan) are faring much better than the five other post-Soviet countries. In 2022, GDP per capita in the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union was 3.5 times higher than the average for the fi e other CIS states that are not part of the EAEU (Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) (see Figure 8). Our strategy in these organizations requires a solid approach and “stereoscopic” vision from socio-economic, scientific, technological and political perspectives. Here, the Russian Academy of Sciences should play a major role as a leader of scientific and expert community. Figure 8. Economic trends of EAEU and CIS countries Source: EEC. https://eec.eaeunion.org/?ysclid=lr7rtdg7np631919243; IMF. https://www.imf.org/; World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/.  Conclusion In conclusion, there are compelling arguments both for multipolarity and for a new bipolarity. Leading U.S. experts are asking similar questions: “What order will replace the crumbling US-led system is far from certain. Will China push aside the United States as the global hegemon to lead a world according to rules written in Chinese characters? Will the world become bipolar, divided between two more or less rigidly defined blocs led by the United States and China? Will a genuinely multipolar world emerge based on several states or coalitions of more or less equal strength?” [Graham 2023: 272]. These questions are yet to be answered, and definitive conclusions in this case are premature. Given this high uncertainty, one should be prepared for any scenario. The essential prerequisite for such readiness is Russia’s strategic autonomy based on military-strategic parity with the U.S. The fundamental question to which the author has no answer today is: how likely is the emergence of a new world order without a major war? In 2024, presidential or parliamentary elections will take place (or have already taken place) in 50 countries, which account for more than 45% of the world’s GDP and population. Perhaps their results will clarify our vision of the near future. Dynkin A.A. (2024). World order transformation: economy, ideology, technology. Polis. Political Studies, 5, 8-23. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2024.05.02 This article was prepared with the support of a grant from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for major scientific projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development No. 075-15-2024-551 “Global and regional centers of power in the emerging world order”. The author expresses gratitude to his colleagues at IMEMO RAS R.I. Kapelyushnikov, V.D. Milovidov, I.S. Semenenko, I.V. Danilin, S.V. Zhukov, K.V. Bogdanov, A.P. Guchanova for consultations and assistance in preparing this article. References Büchs, M., & Koch, M. (2017). Critiques of growth. In M. Büchs, & M. Koch. Postgrowth and Wellbeing: Challenges to Sustainable Welfare (pp. 39-56). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3319-59903-8_4 Delgado, R.,& Stefancic, J. (2017). Critical race theory. Anintroduction. New York: New York University Press. Graham, T. (2023). Getting Russia right. UK: Polity Books. Huntington, S.P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72(3), 22-49. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash-civilizations Jaishankar, S. (2020). The India way: strategies for an uncertain world. New Delhi; New York: Harper Collins Publishers India. Kupchan, C. (2021). Bipolarity is back: why it matters. The Washington Quarterly, 44(4), 123-139. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2021.2020457 Yan Xuetong. (2016). Political leadership and power redistribution. The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 9(1), 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/pow002 Dynkin, A.A. (2020). International turbulence and Russia. Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 90(2), 127-137. https://doi.org/10.1134/S101933162002001X. Primakov, E.M. (1996). Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya nakanune XXI veka: problemy, perspektivy [International Relations on the eve of 21st century: problems, prospects]. Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’, 10, 3-13. (In Russ.) Semenenko, I.S. (2023). Razdelyonnye obshchestva [Divided societies]. In I.S. Semenenko (Ed.), Identichnost’: lichnost’, obshchestvo, politika. Novye kontury issledovatel’skogo polya [Identity: The Individual, Society, and Politics. New Outlines of the Research Field] (pp. 27-35). Moscow: Ves’ Mir. (In Russ.) https://www.imemo.ru/files/File/ru/publ/2023/Identichnost-Semenenko-2023.pdf Литература на русском языке Дынкин А.А. 2020. Международная турбулентность и Россия. Вестник РАН. Т. 90. № 3. С. 208-219. https://doi.org/10.31857/S0869587320030032. EDN: WINCQO. Примаков Е.М. 1996. Международные отношения накануне XXI в.: проблемы, перспективы. Международная жизнь. № 10. С. 3-13. Семененко И.С. 2023. Разделенные общества. Идентичность: личность, общество, политика. Новые контуры исследовательского поля. Отв. ред. И.С. Семененко. М.: Весь Мир. С. 27-35. https://www.imemo.ru/files/File/ru/publ/2023/Identichnost-Semenenko-2023.pdf. EDN: NTQYRB. 1. The world order or international system is a stable set of institutions and norms of military-political and economic relations, which is institutionalized and legitimate in the international legal sense. The world order remains stable during the active life of at least one generation—a universal measure of social time. However, in the wake of geopolitical macro-crises, illegitimate systems emerge, forcibly imposed by the winner. This was the case with the unipolar world order. 2. Dynkin A., Burrows M. Here’s the Playbook for Getting U.S.–Russian Cooperation Back on Track. The National Interest. 07.12.2015. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/heres-the-playbook-getting-us-russian-cooperation-back-track-14527. 3. For example, see: [Yan Xuetong 2016; Kupchan 2021]. 4. Remarks by the President in the State of the Union Address. The White House. President Barack Obama. 12.02.2013. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/remarks-president-state-union-address. 5. President Bush Calls on Senate to Back Human Cloning Ban. Remarks by the President on Human Cloning Legislation. The East Room. The White House. President George W. Bush. 10.04.2002. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020410-4.html. 6. Private sector establishments birth and death, seasonally adjusted. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 25.10.2023. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewbd.t08.htm. 7. Artificial Intelligence Journey 2023 conference. President of Russia. Official website. 24.11.2023. http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/72811. 8. World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/MostUsed/. 9. Global Health Expenditure database. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/nha/database. 10. Dirigisme is a policy of active state intervention in the national economy, pursued by France and the UK in mid-1940s. 11. Mendenhall A. Cultural Marxism is Real. The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. 04.01.2019. https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real/. 12. AFA Calls for an End to Required Diversity Statements. Press Release. AFA. Princeton, NJ. 22.08.2022. https://academicfreedom.org/afa-calls-for-an-end-to-required-diversity-statements/. 13. World Economic Outlook Database (October 2023 Edition). International Monetary Fund. 10.10.2023. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October.

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском The pursuit of critical minerals does not come at the expense of the environment; a global moratorium on deep-sea mining should be the natural course of action The world is looking at a potential geopolitical and environmental point of conflict, which will affect every country in more ways than one. This dispute stems from a search for critical minerals in the deep sea. Critical minerals are considered the building blocks of contemporary technology. To say that they are crucial to the economic and national security of every country would be an understatement. Due to the inherited complexities of mining and attaining critical minerals from challenging geographies, the hunt for them has intensified. Beyond land, many countries are now looking at space as an alternative. Finding and commercially harnessing minerals from celestial bodies like the Moon and asteroids, however, is still a challenge. Therefore, the search for critical minerals in the deep sea has now entered a new phase of competition, where countries are no longer waiting but are actively engaged in the process of deep-sea mining. In this race, while some countries such as China, India, and South Korea (see Table 1) are preparing to grab the opportunity and are trying to build capacities and capabilities, others have raised the environmental and ecological impacts of deep-sea mining. Against this background, it is crucial to identify the key players in this race and understand the accompanying international legal nuances. Table 1: Exploration Contracts issued by the International Seabed Authority (ISA)   Source: ISA. What’s the rush? The urgency of the critical mineral problem is exacerbated by two factors: Fast-depleting reserves of critical minerals for human use and their rising demand. Behind this sudden rush are two important reasons: Firstly, the focus on clean and renewable energy, which is crucial in driving the green energy transition, and secondly, the increasing consumption of high-technology products, which depends on the heavy use of critical minerals. As an illustration, consider its application in high-tech items of various sizes, such as smartphones, electric car magnets, and intricate machinery like F35 stealth aircraft. A F35 aircraft, for example, needs 920 pounds of rare earth elements, demonstrating the significance of these minerals for any nation. Although deep-sea mining is not an exclusively Indo-Pacific phenomenon, competition is most felt in this region due to the high stakes involved. The major actors involved in this race are China, India, South Korea, and even non-state actors, such as private companies such as the Metals Company (TMC, a Canada-based company, which have considerable stakes in the space. International Seabed Authority: China and influence politics Under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the International Seabed Authority (ISA) was constituted with the mandate to ‘organise and control all mineral resources-related activities’ and guarantee ‘effective protection of the marine environment’ on the seabed of international waters, which are a global commons. ISA is constituted by the Assembly, Council, and Secretariat. ISA’s key advisory body, the Legal and Technical Commission (LTC), should help the authority frame the rules, regulations and procedures (RRPs) to govern mining activities on the international seabed. While the conversation on setting a legal framework for undersea mining has been in process since 2016, ISA has garnered increasing international attention due to the triggering of the ‘two-year rule’ by the island nation of Nauru back in 2021. As per UNCLOS, if the Council of ISA fails to adopt the relevant RRPs within two years of receiving the application for approval of a plan of work for exploitation, the council will have to consider and approve such plan ‘based on the provisions of the Convention and any rules, regulations and procedures that the Council may have adopted provisionally, or based on the norms contained in the Convention and the terms and principles contained in this Annex as well as the principle of non-discrimination among contractors.’ Since this incident, negotiations have naturally picked up, with China playing the leading role in shaping the deep sea mining code, as it wants to influence and is eager to push forward the negotiations in its infancy phase. In the 2023 ISA Council’s July meeting, China blocked the motion introduced by France, Chile, and Costa Rica to discuss a moratorium on deep sea mining. The absence of the United States (US) from the ISA elevates Beijing's role to a prominent position. This discussion will likely have severe implications for the future of the high seas, which cover 60 percent of the world’s oceans. At the ISA’s Council meeting in July 2023, China and other states like Nauru, Japan, Australia, India, Norway, and Russia supported deep-sea mining against a group of 20 countries that opposed it due to lack of scientific evidence and are pushing to put a moratorium in place. France was the exception, calling for a total ban on deep-sea mining. Apart from nation states, many international Multinational Corporations (MNCs) like Google, Samsung, BMW, Volvo Group, and Tesla have also joined the call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. This call includes 804 marine science and policy experts from 44 countries recommending a ‘pause until sufficient and robust scientific information’ is obtained. The call for a moratorium has increased since the discovery of “dark oxygen” on the seafloor. Even the European Union has adopted a resolution to support a moratorium in response to Norway’s decision to initiate deep-sea mining in the Arctic . Stuck in a limbo As commercial deep-sea mining comes closer than ever to being a reality, it is critical to analyse and take stock of the complex interplay of geopolitical, environmental, and legal challenges that will define the future of international relations and environmental stewardship. As nations such as China, Norway, South Korea, and even India accelerate their efforts to exploit these untapped resources, the world faces a crucial decision: To prioritise immediate economic and technological gains or the fragile ecosystems of the deep ocean. China's geopolitical and strategic goals and its growing influence on international organisations, including the ISA, must be kept in mind while taking a call when the stakes are undeniably high, not just for the Indo-Pacific but for the entire planet. The moratorium is also being proposed as per the established precautionary approach. This approach is a broad legal and philosophical principle that suggests a pause and reassessment in case of a human innovation/activity that could potentially result in harm given the lack of scientific knowledge. In light of the pressing concerns raised by scientists, environmentalists, and several nations, a global moratorium on deep-sea mining should be the natural course of action. While some have argued that such a precautionary pause would not be in accordance with UNCLOS, including the current Secretary General of ISA, it would be an obligation under the constitution of the oceans. In an advisory opinion, the International Tribunal on Law of Sea (ITLOS) has confirmed a trend of precautionary approach becoming a part of customary international law and stated that it is a ‘binding obligation’ on both states and the ISA. This approach is enshrined in Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration. An example of such a moratorium under international law is the International Whaling Convention, which was adopted based on the precautionary approach and has been largely followed for the past 35 years. As the global community navigates this uncharted territory, it must ensure that the pursuit of critical minerals does not come at the expense of the environment that sustains us all. The choices made today will have far-reaching consequences, shaping the geopolitical landscape and determining whether the international community can unite in the face of shared challenges or whether the race for resources will lead to further fragmentation and conflict.

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском In the weeks leading up to the appointment of Michel Barnier as France’s new prime minister, there was one word in particular to hang on the lips of those at the Elysée Palace – “coalitation”. The portmanteau of “coalition” and “cohabitation”, “coalitation” serves to refer to the situation of acute governmental deadlock in which France finds itself, more than two months after the snap parliamentary elections called by Emmanuel Macron failed to land any party an absolute majority of seats. Under the Fifth Republic, France has known three cohabitations following parliamentary elections won by the opposition to the president’s party. The first was between the socialist president François Mitterrand and conservative prime minister Jacques Chirac from 1986 to 1988; the second, between president Mitterrand and Édouard Balladur from 1993 to 1995, and the third between president Chirac and socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002. Under such circumstances, the president took on a secondary role, including tasks such as appointing the prime minister or presiding the council of ministers, while the prime minister and national assembly set the political agenda. However, the current situation is very different, recalling more the paralysis of the Fourth Republic than any of the duos listed above. While the presidential camp lacks even a relative majority, none of the parties or coalitions from the recent legislative elections come close to securing one either. Michel Barnier will therefore have to rely on a new coalition or new ad hoc agreements to get his legislative proposals passed and avoid being censured. The French neologism coalitation is therefore more appropriate to describe the situation in which Emmanuel Macron and Michel Barnier find themselves. A notion of performance In addition, such a state of affairs is not without recalling expressions used in the labour world, such as ‘remote working’, ‘presenteeism’, ‘management’ and ‘coworking’. In the 1980s, the expressions ‘management’ and ‘managers’ became widely used terms in France to describe the challenges of optimising resources and managing people in organisations. This period marked the proliferation of neologisms, particularly of English origin, in the business world. It highlighted the importance of individual and collective performance, helping French companies compete in an increasingly global market. By the 1990s, expressions like “New Public Management” and “New Managerialism” emerged in English-speaking countries. These terms were particularly applied to setting performance targets – especially financial ones – in organisations originally serving the public interest, such as health and education sectors. An expression used by Macron? The term “coalitation” was first coined by advisers to the President of the Republic. We can read its use as an attempt to downplay the lack of a presidential majority and to ease the transition into the upcoming cohabitation. This strategy can be seen as a way for the President to maintain the upper hand despite his party’s defeat in the parliamentary elections. It functions as a semantic tool that allows Macron to frame this cohabitation in a modern and new way, setting it apart from previous ones. But the links between this term and management-inspired neologisms also reflect Macron’s profile as a “politician manager” and his managerial approach to politics. An advocate of free enterprise and entrepreneurship, often associated with the “start-up nation” concept, Emmanuel Macron embodies a political philosophy directly influenced by the business world. His terms in office have stood out through their use of team-building seminars, the use of consultants from private firms, and staff reshuffles following unmet performance targets. Inability to renew? Back home, the seemingly contradictory term also echoes the president’s fondness for the expression of “En même temps” (“At the same time”) that has become part of the Macron brand. The adverbial phrase sees him lay out a position, only to deconstruct it and espouse its contrary proposition. Critics say it shows the centrist president’s inability to adopt a stance, opting instead for a verbal fudge of saying one thing, then its opposite and ultimately, nothing at all. The neologism coalitation also embodies a new form of the Macronist “at the same time” philosophy by emphasising the need to find common ground between opposing programmes and political forces. For supporters of the president, this term highlights the relevance and timeliness of an approach developed by Emmanuel Macron. In this context, Michel Barnier’s profile as a negotiator and moderate can be seen as a reaffirmation of this strategy. Historically, however, the use of such neologisms has sometimes served to mask the challenges of ineffective or risky strategies. Some researchers have questioned whether introducing expressions like ‘management’ and ‘manager’ into the French vocabulary truly changed how companies and social relations worked, emphasising the sometimes artificial nature of these approaches. The same applies today to the term “coalitation” as this neologism seems to illustrate Emmanuel Macron’s struggle to offer a new way of doing politics despite the promises made on the night of his re-election. Macron France French Politics Barnier Politics

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском Lebanese families have been fleeing the country’s south in the thousands amid escalating tensions and an Israeli bombardment that has so far killed hundreds. Their fear, echoed by many onlookers, is that Israel will accompany the airstrikes with something that has the potential to have far worse consequences: a ground invasion of south Lebanon. The rational behind such a move, from the Israeli government’s perspective, is that a ground offensive may be its best chance to push Hezbollah fighters beyond the Litani River in the middle of the country. This would achieve an Israeli war goal of securing its northern borders and allowing an estimated 60,000 residents who have been forced to flee northern Israel to go back to their homes. Irrespective of motive, a ground invasion and potential occupation is more than wild speculation. Israel has placed thousands of soldiers on standby close to the Lebanon border for such an eventuality. Nor is such a move without precedent. As a scholar of Lebanese history, I know Israel and Lebanon have been here before. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in the middle of the latter’s civil war, imposing a siege on the capital Beirut. The results were catastrophic for the whole region. Not only did the ground invasion result in the death of thousands of civilians, the occupation of Lebanon plunged an already fragile nation into lasting political and economic chaos and led to the birth of Hezbollah, the very group that threatens northern Israel today. Refuge and armed resistance The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 had its roots in the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, much as the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel does today. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” for the Palestinians. In the violent birth pangs of a Jewish state on land inhabited by, among others, Arab populations with deep ancestral ties to villages, more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled. Many refugees entered Lebanon, where in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization was born. By the mid-1970s, the armed resistance group had recruited and trained over 20,000 fighters who actively participated in launching attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil. By 1982, Lebanon was already seven years into its civil war, with violence flaring between Lebanese Christians and Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims. On June 6, 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a future leader of the country, launched Operation Peace for Galilee and invaded Lebanon with the purpose of eliminating the PLO. More than 40,000 Israeli troops with hundreds of tanks entered Lebanon from three points: by land across the border into south Lebanon; by sea from the coast of Sidon; and by air as the Israeli forces bombed the Beqaa Valley, Beirut and its Palestinian refugee camps. For two months, Beirut was under siege, with water and electricity cut off. As a result of the heavy bombardment and lack of access to basic needs, an estimated 19,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian civilians and combatants died, of which 5,500 were civilians from West Beirut. The Lebanese authorities appealed to the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom for help. These countries formed the multinational peacekeeping force, which was designed to restore peace in Lebanon, assist the Lebanese armed forces and evacuate PLO fighters to Tunisia. By August 1982, the multinational force had successfully relocated PLO fighters and began pulling out of Lebanon. They were called back, however, as violence flared. After the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel on Sept. 14, 1982, the Christian Phalangist militia entered the two Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and killed over 2,000 Palestinian civilians. The Israeli government later set up the Kahan Commission of Inquiry to look into the killings, which concluded that Israel was indirectly responsible for the massacres. The birth of Hezbollah All of this history remains relevant to the current situation in the region. Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon, its siege on Beirut and the massacres that followed all led to the birth of Hezbollah. While members of Lebanon’s marginalized Shiite community in the south had long sought to mobilize through pan-Arab political parties and militias, it was Israel’s invasion that galvanized members of the community to ultimately create Hezbollah in 1985. As former Israeli Defense Minister and Prime Minister Ehud Barak noted in a 2006 interview: “It was our presence there that created Hezbollah.” Israel’s invasion also soured Lebanon’s relations with the West. Many Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims considered the multinational force – especially the United States – to be a failure and even an accomplice to Israel. From 1982 onward, Americans and other Westerners became a target. In the following decade, more than 80 Americans and Europeans were taken hostage by Hezbollah fighters. Some were tortured for months; others died in custody. And on Oct. 23, 1983, a terrorist attack targeted the American barracks in Beirut, killing over 300 people, including 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. Minutes later, a second suicide attack killed 58 French paratroopers. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the two attacks; some of its members are thought to be among those who officially founded Hezbollah in February 1985. Aiding Hezbollah recruitment Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon failed to accomplish its goals of stemming attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon. If anything, it had the opposite effect by turning many Lebanese against Israel and creating the conditions in which Hezbollah could recruit. Although Israel retreated from Beirut in August 1982, it continued to occupy south Lebanon until 2000. During that period it unlawfully detained many Lebanese suspected of resisting the Israeli occupation. Some were detained without charges in inhumane conditions, while others were illegally transferred into Israel. With such a backdrop, Hezbollah’s legitimacy in the eyes of many Lebanese grew – as did its support. So much so that in 1989, at the end of the Lebanese civil war, the authorities signed an agreement that, although not referencing Hezbollah directly, asserted Lebanon’s right to resist the Israeli occupation in the south. This clause was interpreted by Hezbollah as legitimizing its armed fight against occupation. After occupation ended in 2000, Hezbollah had to reinvent its role, claiming that it would continue fighting against Israel until the liberation of the disputed Shebaa Farms, the Golan Heights and occupied Palestine. In 2006, Hezbollah entered Israeli territory for the first time, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two, demanding the release of Lebanese prisoners in exchange. In retaliation, the Israel Defense Forces attacked Lebanon by air, sea and land, with Israeli ground forces entering Lebanon and carrying out a number of operations on Lebanese territory. A subsequent war saw no such prisoner swap but resulted in the deaths of about 1,100 Lebanese civilians and 120 Israelis, mostly soldiers. History repeating? Until Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, there had been hopes that decades of hostilities between Lebanon and Israel could be on the cusp of turning. In October 2022, Lebanon and Israel signed a maritime border agreement brokered by the U.S – interpreted as the beginning of normalizing relations between two countries technically at war. But the magnitude of the human crisis in Gaza and the series of events that followed in Lebanon have ended such hopes for now. Hezbollah’s vow of solidarity with Hamas has resulted in a running series of tit-for-tat attacks with Israel that have escalated over the past year. The attack using booby-trapped pagers that targeted Hezbollah fighters and killed several civilians across Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024, has set off a chain of events that have now seen nearly 500 Lebanese killed and Hezbollah extend the geographical scope of its missile attacks in Israel. Its long-range ballistic missiles can reach 250-300 kilometers (155-186 miles) and have reached Haifa and the city’s Ramat David Airbase. The next step in this deadly escalation could well be a ground invasion. But in 1982, such an operation resulted only in catastrophic results for all concerned – and set in place the conditions for decades of hostilities across the Lebanon-Israel border. A similar offensive today would almost certainly have similar results – especially for the people of Lebanon.

한국어로 읽기Leer en españolIn Deutsch lesen Gap اقرأ بالعربيةLire en françaisЧитать на русском After more than 50 days of deadlock in forming a government (an unprecedented political situation under the Fifth Republic), the choice of Michel Barnier to become Prime Minister may appear as a "solution" to end the crisis, but it above all reveals the current political weakness of President Macron, oscillating between the hope of maintaining control and forced failure. But this nomination puts him at odds with the messages sent by voters during the electoral sequence that he himself chose to trigger. Three key lessons Three lessons from the July legislative election are unambiguously necessary to understand the paradoxes of the current sequence. 1. The rejection of “Macronism” In the previous European election, the Macron camp had been soundly defeated. In confirmation, the message from voters in the legislative elections is one of rejection of the power in place since the presidential parliamentary group went from 245 elected representatives to 163 and the two most pronounced opposition blocs went from 89 to 143 (the RN and its allies) and from 153 to 193 for the left bloc. The aggregation of the various votes therefore expresses a desire to see notable political changes come out of the ballot boxes to break with all or part of Macron's policies. But the differences in direction to translate these inflections maintain the confusion. The left wants to repeal the immigration law, while the RN wants to toughen it up, for example. 2. The refusal of the National Rally in power While it was fashionable to declare it moribund, the "republican front" has regained strength in this summer of 2024. Through a political surge, which is as much an ideological rejection as the expression of sincere fears about the damage of the RN at Matignon, the forces hostile to the RN have accepted mutual withdrawals to "block". This electoral gamble paid off, and if the RN has progressed, it has remained far from the expected absolute majority. Nevertheless, this "republican front" has not led to a political alternative: it was only a front of refusal and not the premises of a probable future governmental cooperation. Hence the current impasse and the threats hanging over the survival of the future Barnier government. 3. The marginalization of the Republican right The emergence of Emmanuel Macron in the political game, eager to overcome the divide and the alternations of government between the PS and the Republicans, has put the right in a vice. Stuck between the center right embodied by Macron and the hard right embodied by Le Pen, the Republican Party has seen its voters melt away on both sides. We must add the electoral rise of the RN to the ordeal of the right. On these early legislative elections, the dilemma remained the same. The president of LR, Éric Ciotti, crossed the Rubicon and made an alliance with the RN, while the rest of the party opposed him without however winning back its voters who had gone to the Marconian camp. In the end, LR, proclaimed heir to Gaullism, which gave four presidents to the Fifth Republic, is no more than a parliamentary force, even if the senatorial voting system still ensures it a counter-power in the Senate. Let us note, however, that if we add a large part of Macron's voters with those of LR and RN, we are entitled to affirm that the parliamentary barycenter is clearly positioned to the right of the hemicycle. However – ultimate confusion – it is the left-wing coalition that comes out on top in the hemicycle.span> The Barnier choice against these messages from voters These three lessons are followed by a governmental choice that has all the makings of a paradox, not to say a contradiction. Indeed, if we sum things up brutally, appointing Michel Barnier amounts to choosing a representative of the minority party (LR), whose profile and political positions poorly embody a break with "Macronism", and who owes his appointment to the benevolent neutrality (to date) of the National Rally. Indeed, President Macron made it clear that "non-censurability" was the decisive criterion for his choice. However, he declared that he had made this choice (after the tests of many other names failed) because he had ensured "the conditions of stability and the broadest rallying". Knowing the disappointment of the New Popular Front, this explicitly indicates that President Macron obtained the commitment of the RN not to censor Michel Barnier a priori. Which was confirmed a few minutes after his nomination by Marine Le Pen. Without of course entering the government, the RN therefore becomes the arbiter of its choice, the arbiter of a censure. The parties of the presidential camp have therefore agreed to make an electoral pact with the left front (yet widely hated in their ranks) in the name of the government barrier to the RN, so that the president ends up appointing a prime minister thanks to the RN's promise not to censure him. A choice of both hope and failure President Macron is primarily responsible for the current political chaos , through a dissolution that was as perilous as it was failed, the success of which rested on the bet that the left would be incapable of uniting and would once again have to resolve to a republican front in the face of the "RN threat". However, he is trying to take advantage of the complexity of the moment to keep control. He wants to be the expert in time, extending for several weeks a government clearly disavowed at the ballot box. He wants to be the expert in the partisan game, imposing the trans partisan coalition including the central bloc as the only horizon for access to Matignon. All this, while claiming to do so in respect of the will of the French people… The Macronists who have been calling for more than 50 days for an “overcoming” of divisions, for “inventiveness” in the creation of an unprecedented coalition, are here benefiting from their central position on the left-right axis to refuse a cohabitation-alternation, in favor of a coalition-continuation (which will nevertheless involve some political inflections). But the choice of Michel Barnier, by default certainly, has the virtue of guaranteeing that Emmanuel Macron's political achievements will not be brutally unraveled, as happens in the case of cohabitation, and as the New Popular Front loudly wanted. President Macron can therefore probably feel a little relief today. He can even hope to convince the French, by invoking that France is on the right and that the left-wing coalition has been intransigent. One Man's Political Failure Yet this nomination is weighted with many signals that speak of the political failure of a man. Emmanuel Macron wanted to dynamite the partisan game: he found himself prisoner of a Republic of ukases, each party announcing who they were going to censor on the sole basis of their name. He wanted to embody a policy breaking with the "old world": here he is giving the Fifth Republic one of the oldest prime ministers (after having sacrificed the youngest by dissolving it). The political party he created around his person, Renaissance, published a press release in reaction to the nomination, specifying that it was not signing a "blank check" to Michel Barnier. This situation thus indicates that, even within the Macronist camp, preparations are already being made for the post-Macron period. This is true of Edouard Philippe, already a candidate for his succession, and of Gabriel Attal who secured his influence by being elected leader of his parliamentary group. Emmanuel Macron has consistently been elected (in 2017, 2022, and in the 2024 legislative elections) in the name of a Republican barrier to the National Rally, benefiting from the votes of the left. And now he owes his (provisional) exit from the crisis to the neutrality negotiated with Marine Le Pen. This unbalanced position can only reinforce frustration, even anger against him, in the left-wing electorate, and can sow confusion among some centrists. Not to mention that being at the parliamentary mercy of the National Rally will very quickly place the head of government in a dilemma: whether to make concessions to the RN in exchange for its survival. The immigration law has left scars within the so-called "left wing" of Macronism. Even greater and more symbolic concessions made to the RN could fracture its own party and further confirm the end of "Macronism" - the left/right divide regaining strength and vigor.