Category: PSIR

Drip, Jordan: Israel’s water war with Palestine ($)

August 11, 2021

To be honest, there is no Jordan River. There hasn’t been one since the mid-1960s, when Israel diverted the waters of Lake Tiberias into the National Water Carrier and thence to the coast and, famously, to the southern desert, that it might bloom. In the rush to control the region’s water resources, the Jordanians diverted the Yarmouk, which flows into the Jordan. The slender trickle that carries the name is composed largely of agricultural runoff and untreated sewage. What once was water, holy water, is now toxic sludge.

report-drip-jordan-by-ben-ehrenreich-_-harper_s-magazine-copyDownload

https://harpers.org/archive/2011/12/drip-jordan/

China and India Brawl at 14,000 Feet Along the Border

August 11, 2021

As China projects its power across Asia, and along the disputed India-China border in the Himalayas, India is feeling surrounded. Both sides insist they don’t want a war, but thousands of troops have been sent.

Analysts said that China did not intend to start a war but that it wanted to frustrate India’s road-building efforts. The race to make these high mountain roads is becoming increasingly fraught. The 2017 standoff between India and China began when Indian troops physically blocked a Chinese road crew in a disputed region claimed by Bhutan, a close ally of India’s.

Make the Free World Free Again

August 11, 2021

It’s time for a smaller, deeper liberal order.

The gatekeepers of the liberal international order erred by allowing authoritarian states to participate as equal members after the Cold War. Whether China’s influence over the World Health Organization, Saudi Arabia on the U.N. Human Rights Council, or Russia in the former G8, authoritarian states have proven themselves untrustworthy stewards of international responsibility. Instead they have undermined international security and international standards of transparency, accountability, and of human rights. Liberal democracies should take steps to minimize their exposure to authoritarians’ influence by reforming international institutions, expelling irresponsible members or withdrawing from them. The goal should be a narrower but deeper version of liberal order: limited to liberal democratic nations but more meaningful, trustworthy, and accountable to democratic publics around the world.

https://thedispatch.com/p/make-the-free-world-free-again?

How to end the perilous Indo-Chinese border spat ($)

August 11, 2021

To avoid escalation, both sides should agree on the “Line of Actual Control”

Yet whatever the efficacy of generals meeting in windblown tents, it is a reckless way to fix problems between two rising nuclear powers that are home to a third of humanity. India has previously suggested that, as a second-best to a formal agreement over where the border lies, the two sides should at least present maps showing their view of where the line of control runs in practice. China, perhaps thinking itself the more astute Go player, has always refused to do so. This allows it to claim that any Indian move is a violation of its own understanding.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/06/18/how-to-end-the-perilous-indo-chinese-border-spat

After the Liberal International Order

August 11, 2021

If Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump in November, the question he will face is not whether to restore the liberal international order. It is whether the US can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/biden-must-replace-liberal-international-order-by-joseph-s-nye-2020-07

Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan must learn how to share the Nile river

August 11, 2021

Once completed, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be nearly twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty and as wide as the Brooklyn Bridge is long. The reservoir behind it is roughly the size of London. Sitting on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile river, the dam is the largest hydro-electric project in Africa. Soon it will produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, more than double Ethiopia’s output today. With a little co-operation between Ethiopia and its downstream neighbours, Egypt and Sudan, the dam could be a boon for the whole region.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/07/02/egypt-ethiopia-and-sudan-must-learn-how-to-share-the-nile-river

Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order

August 11, 2021

I offer three main sets of arguments. First, because states in the modern world are deeply interconnected in a variety of ways, orders are essential for facilitating efficient and timely interactions. There are different kinds of international orders, and which type emerges depends primarily on the global distribution of power. But when the system is unipolar, the political ideology of the sole pole also matters. Liberal international orders can arise only in unipolar systems where the leading state is a liberal democracy.

https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/43/4/7/12221/Bound-to-Fail-The-Rise-and-Fall-of-the-Liberal#.Xt2mKjLdbEM.twitter

The Attack Of The Civilization-State

August 11, 2021

A world society seemed to be advancing. But then the civilization-state struck back.

As a civilization-state, China is organized around culture rather than politics. Linked to a civilization, the state has the paramount task of protecting a specific cultural tradition. Its reach encompasses all the regions where that culture is dominant.

The importance of this concept became more obvious to me in India during a conversation with Ram Madhav, the general secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. After a conference in Delhi, he explained: “From now on, Asia will rule the world, and that changes everything because in Asia, we have civilizations rather than nations.”

The Attack Of The Civilization-State